Common Threads

Bartsch is a qualified lawyer and has held senior positions at Qantas and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA). He is an ATPLqualified pilot, with 7,000 hours on the clock and has command ratings on the BeechJet and 717.

His rounded career now gives him a formidable armoury of expertise and experience in his most recent challenge – providing legal and risk management-based consultancy services to clients in Australia and internationally. For Bartsch, this is the culmination of a career that started in 1979 as a flying instructor.

There is no aspect of the aviation industry that is not related to the law.

Fundamentals

In his book Aviation Law in Australia , Bartsch takes readers back to the fundamentals of aviation to make a point about how intertwined are aviation and risk.

“Strange as it may seem to us today, weary veterans of crowded commercial airliners and depressing airports, the invention of the airplane was at first perceived by many as an aesthetic event with far reaching implications. . . that excited people’s imagination and appeared to guarantee the coming of a New Age … its invention nonetheless inspired an extraordinary outpouring of feeling and gave rise to utopian hopes and gnawing fears. ” It was those gnawing fears that created the impetus for a safety culture around aviation, something that has developed alongside aviation’s extraordinary evolution.

“A healthy safety culture can only be created by demonstrated commitment to safety by the most senior management,” Bartsch told a conference when discussing making airlines more profitable by making them safer, something he calls ‘the safety quinella’. He sees safety and business co-existing in a healthy culture, interdependent for their successful delivery.

But it needs to be a structured delivery. Today, with the benefit of his vast but concentrated experience in safety and compliance, Bartsch explained it was not the responsibility of safety departments to “do safety” and that the responsibility for managing risk must be vested at the lowest appropriate level of an organisation so safety cultures can be built from the ground-floor up.

Accountability for safety, however, remains at the very highest level.

Translating those fundamentals to today’s regulatory environment and with the benefit of his experience, Bartsch said relationships between operators and the regulator must be “founded on mutual respect between the parties. The end game should be the same for both – safety outcomes.

Trust can only develop through open and honest communication. ” Moreover, he said the regulator “needs to be fair, consistent and firm”, adding that importantly to contemporary issues facing the industry, “tension between the regulator and industry from time to time should not be seen as necessarily bad – but rather as part of a normal relationship. ”

Legal threads

“The common thread of regulation, risk and compliance in my career was intentional,” Bartsch told Australian Aviation .

“There is no aspect of the aviation industry that is not related to the law – and the basis of essentially all aviation legislation is to achieve a safety outcome. No industry is more strictly and extensively regulated than is the aviation industry,” he added.

“I elected to undertake legal studies with a Bachelor of Laws at the University of New South Wales as I felt ‘inadequate’ as a safety regulator when I joined the then Department of Aviation in Canberra in the mid-1980s,” he explained.

In 1993 Bartsch was admitted to practice as a barrister to the High Court of Australia. He has also lectured in aviation law for more than 25 years and has published numerous titles on the subject.

Indeed Bartsch was the youngest ever examiner of airmen when he took up the role in Canberra in 1984, a position having been spawned in his days as a flying instructor, something he did as his first fulltime job. He then was promoted to executive officer South East Region in 1996 within what had become the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, a position he held for four years before becoming manager airline operations in the Sydney Airlines Office between 2000 and 2007.

Throughout his career, Bartsch has immersed himself to the core of his disciplines, something he feels is vital if he is to bring pragmatism and understanding to often hugely complex issues. He cites his practical flying experience as having been key to understanding the operational environment he was regulating, so kept his ATPL current while working with CASA.

He reflected: “I still retain my ATPL, but since having left CASA in 2007 I do not fly myself much these days as I’m too busy. I used to do 717 simulator sessions four times a year when I was with CASA to try and remain current. My 7,000 hours flying experience and 30 years industry experience has been invaluable in my role in CASA, as head of safety with Qantas and as a consultant. ” Having acted as regulator for 23 years, Bartsch moved to Qantas in 2007, for which he had developed a unique insight during his time heading the airline standards office with CASA. In his new role as group general manager safety compliance and operational risk, a position he held until 2009, Bartsch was able to see a different perspective of the regulatory environment.

To this point he had seen the business of running an airline from the outside and the senior Qantas role added the third element of the rounding of Bartsch’s career – having moved from flying instructor to regulator to senior airline executive.

The corporate exposure and airline insight added more capabilities in a chain of calculated moves that enabled Bartsch to subsequently represent his experience as a consultant in the fields of aviation law, regulation and risk management when he started AvLaw the year he left Qantas.

Networking and new business

Having progressively built up his practice since 2009, as chairman Bartsch is now leading the expansion of AvLaw to form a network of aviation consultancy organisations and law firms operating as AvLaw International (ALI). Collectively, these organisations trading under their existing names make up what is referred to as the ALI Network in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and India.

AvLaw has become a sought-after specialist in a market thirsty for the niche services the firm offers.

Underway at present are around 10 projects and three major projects across Asia, Australia and the United States.

Included among them is a contract with the Department of Defence to review the feasibility of aligning civil and military airworthiness standards across the ADF.

AvLaw was awarded the tender in October this year “to provide specialist airworthiness services to conduct a review and gap analysis of current defence airworthiness and engineering standards against both CASA and EASA part 145 and part 42 requirements,” Bartsch explained about the benchmark project, which is due for completion in May next year.

Another significant project is in the field of unmanned aircraft systems – or UASs. “Our subsidiary company UAS International is heavily into new technologies. UASs will revolutionise the industry to the extent the jet engine did – perhaps even greater!” Bartsch said.

UAS International provides a range of technical, regulatory, legal and insurance consultancy services to the rapidly emerging UAS operations in civil airspace.

The potential value of UAS use in the non-defence arena is as profound in the US as it is becoming in Australia.

Although in Australia CASA has approved more than 50 commercial UAVs, by the end of this year the US government is expected to release a draft regulation governing the operation of small UASs. The Federal Aviation Administration awarded two restricted category type certifications – to the Boeing Insitu ScanEagle X200 and AeroVironment Puma AE – earlier this year, for the first time permitting operators to fly unmanned aircraft commercially.

Demand for AvLaw’s networked services has seen it increase its stable of consultants from five to 35 in three years.

“By the end of 2014 AvLaw International will have consultants and lawyers in a dozen Asian countries – we are going to replicate internationally the formula we have successfully applied domestically. ” For Bartsch, the factor that has seen his firm develop rapidly in recent years has been assembling a calibre of technical consultants and lawyers that make AvLaw the demonstrably highly competent supplier to the industry it is.

“Being an effective aviation consultant – particularly at the international level – I believe requires three attributes.

First, extensive and diverse industry experience. Second, a comprehensive understanding of both international and the domestic aviation legal and regulatory structure, and finally knowing how to treat clients. In the international context that means having crosscultural communication skills and awareness,” he explained.

These are the very attributes Bartsch has amassed in his now more than 30 years in the industry.

“Aviation law and regulation is meaningless unless you understand its operational context. Likewise unless you understand the legal framework you cannot effectively (and compliantly) perform your operational tasks – the two go hand in hand. ” These principles account for how Bartsch has structured his career – applying the same logic and ordered thought that reflects the acute mind of a lawyer, regulatory auditor, pilot and risk practitioner.

“My advice to anyone working in the aviation industry is to be knowledgeable and be creative.

Look at the growth sectors of the industry – resource sector, developing Asian markets and UAS is where you should be looking.

“With ever-increasing competitiveness in the industry you need to be agile. Resting on your laurels and continuing to do things the way you always have will ensure failure. ” Finally, Bartsch offered advice that is equally fit for anyone entering the industry or who having been in the industry, already knows well: “Embrace change – the most risky decision may be to continue to do what you have in the past. ”

. . . unless you understand the legal framework you cannot effectively (and compliantly) perform your operational tasks.