Diverging from the mission

Asking a government monopoly to be accountable for its charges, or better still, to be continuously searching for efficiencies to support the industry that pays their wages, seems to be a step too far these days.

Recent media attention directed at Airservices, including a specially convened Senate Rural Affairs and Transport Committee hearing, makes the point. Why should a government monopoly have an executive bonus scheme – or as it was termed in a ‘Sir Humprey’ moment – “an at-risk component of the overall remuneration package”? Similarly with CASA, it has been nine months since the first of the new management arrived and over 60 days since the new board, and yet no major change has emerged that might be seen as a signal that urgency in repair is a virtue. The real challenges for industry are still coming. CAO 48. 1 – covering the fatigue management regime – is already black letter law even though the implementation date has now been pushed back by CASA for six months – mostly so it can have time to transition the 800 plus AOCs it obviously hadn’t planned for.

And yet, a new draft of amendments to CAO 48. 1 is now out for consultation. Additional conversations – unfair to call them negotiations given the regulator holds all the cards – are continuing, including a fundamental unease from industry as to the validity of the research being used to support the new fatigue management regime.

How is industry meant to hit a moving target? How can manuals be prepared or approved when the regulations are still in a state of flux? How can these proposals have got this far without any shred of testing or quality assurance? How can the very nature of the aviation mission be ignored? The changes to CAO 48. 1 are being pushed in the name of ‘science’, but their adoption has been anything but scientific.

The rush to introduce this more expensive regime has barely given a nod to the importance of still being able to do the job economically, and the problem supposedly being solved has neither been identified nor quantified. The need certainly does not seem to be supported by safety statistics.

How is industry meant to hit a moving target?

Of course we want safe operations – that is what industry has continually pursued for decades and why accident rates continue to fall or have plateaued at realistically quite low levels – including in aerial application. But if the new CASA allows the drift to widen much further between being able to do the mission and regulations that are not underpinned by a close observance of the practical needs of industry, then the direction must be questioned.

It is interesting to note that the same types of warnings were given to CASA over its changes to maintenance licensing. These changes have now seen the closure of Australia’s three biggest TAFE providers of LAME apprentice training. In any other industry this would be an outrage of the first proportions. But in aviation it seems to blend into thebackground of the dislocation of regulator from the practical.

The point here is that the impact on companies, directors, pilots and LAMEs is very harsh when politicians, public servants, policies and regulations become divorced from the practical implications of increased costs and the performance of the mission.

CASA would do well to urgently re-establish the GA Taskforce to help implement better, lighter, more effective regulations and initiatives. CAO 48. 1 and a wide range of other so-called safety initiatives can then be fundamentally rethought because they offer so little to safety and may actually threaten the viability of industry.

It is dangerous ground for any regulator or government agency to be isolated but still chant the mantra of ‘we know better’.