Crash Or Crash Through?

This is certainly having an impact, both within and without CASA. One airline CEO at the recent Regional Aviation Association of Australia (RAAA) Convention told AA that he’d “never seen CASA so dysfunctional”. And CASA’s recent moves to limit aircraft movement rates at GAAP (General Aviation Aerodrome Procedure) airports (ie Archerfield, Bankstown, Camden, Jandakot, Moorabbin and Parafield) with less than a week’s notice was both a shock and a source of outrage for some operators at those airports.

But your editor, listening in to the CASA CEO give his address to the RAAA Convention, was struck that McCormick’s time may yet come. There was a general sense of anticipation before his talk that some RAAA delegates, particularly those involved in aircraft operation and airline management, would engage the CASA chief in “robust” debate about their issues with the regulator. Instead, McCormick’s speech was direct, clear and concise (despite professing not to having a prepared speech) about his view on CASA’s role, and in particular why CASA took the action it did on GAAP airports. He probably gave the audience a better understanding on where CASA is heading and why – and consequently there was not the expected robust discussion in the Q&A session following his talk.

McCormick’s messages are ones that need to get through, and I suspect they really haven’t been doing that, and I would suggest this is one of the organisation’s key challenges at the moment. The GAAP changes are a good example of this.

McCormick told the RAAA audience he introduced the changes in response to a report from aviation management and engineering consulting firm the Ambidji Group, which found “intolerable” risks with the GAAP procedures at Bankstown, Jandakot and Moorabbin.

Says that report’s executive summary, “. . . immediate interim action is required to reduce risks to within tolerable limits at Bankstown, Jandakot and Moorabbin. . . ”. The report is dated June 30, CASA’s press release advising of changes to GAAP procedures in response was issued on July 16, and the changes took effect from July 21.

It’s hard not to argue that the decision was made for good reason. If you were the CASA director of aviation safety and you were handed a report that told of “intolerable” risks, what would you do? But it’s hard not to get the impression CASA was scrambling to play catch-up in communicating the need for changes and what they comprised, once they had been implemented. While the GAAP interim changes took effect on July 21, an information brochure sent out to pilots explaining the changes, and their need, didn’t go out until early August.

So the bigger issue is not that a seemingly valid safety decision was taken, but that the communication to the industry of why the decision was taken, and what the changes mean, was always playing catch-up. And confusion over a change in procedures introduced hastily on a safety basis can have a counter-productive effect.

Plus, if that’s how CASA is communicating externally, if internal communications are following the same path that may well explain the “dysfunction” that our airline CEO described.

Still, in time, once the aviation industry itself and CASA staff have a better understanding of where McCormick is taking the organisation, he may well crash through rather than crash in implementing his changes and programs, which the industry clearly needs. He is clearly a man of action, and action is certainly what is needed – the two decade old regulatory reform process the biggest case in point.

We’ll all be watching with interest.