Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By Genghis the Engineer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1799316
I just looked up the piece (I confess, on my Readly subscription, as I find it more legible). Yes Ian, I agree totally - most major public bodies have an independent overseeing board. CAA does have such a board of-course, here it is...

https://www.caa.co.uk/Our-work/About-us ... and-staff/

Absolutely not one of whom comes from any part of the aircraft operating, designing, or maintaining communities at any scale of aircraft. They are all either CAA employees, or professional committee-sitters (or both!).

Various overseeing groups have existed over the years. The Airworthiness Requirements Board, the GACC, and so-on. But CAA have always carefully engineered their removal whenever they started to actually achieve anything useful to the operating communities. Plus they were always relatively low down the pecking order, not overseeing the authority's work as a whole.

Very well said.

I think that what's probably called for is an overall independent overseeing board, with the power to appoint specialist sub-committees, and the teeth to force timely changes to policy and behaviours where they see it as appropriate.

There's an excellent model for this in the LAA and BMAA councils.

G
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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1799339
This is a VERY complex issue and those who lay it at the door of government policy are right. CAA is faced with an immensely complex regime and its primary purpose is to facilitate safe CAT, everything else is a second class citizen.

Those of us who fly certified aircraft internationally need an ICAO compliant regime, but how that regime is established and operated is a different matter. Given the government's obsession with outsourcing maybe they could outsource us to EASA :twisted:
#1799343
IMCR wrote:...the lack of unity within the GA community makes the community...

...a fiction? A lack of unity suggests to me no 'community' at all, but is that really true?

Your earlier post spoke about the difference in the acceptance of sailing. That, I believe, is historical, sailing being such an ancient pursuit there was, is, an acceptance of 'the right to navigate'. Flying as a relative newcomer does not have that historical right of acceptance, was surely seen as intrinsically risky with the earth-bound fearful that the sky might fall. So we have regulation and regulation and yet more regulation.

To head back on topic I agree with Rob L's post #1799233...
The CAA being an Authority, a Regulator and a Prosecutor all at the same time should be the first point of redress.
That is just so fundamentally flawed I'm surprised it has never been challenged.
#1799368
rf3flyer wrote:
IMCR wrote:...the lack of unity within the GA community makes the community...

...a fiction? A lack of unity suggests to me no 'community' at all, but is that really true?

Your earlier post spoke about the difference in the acceptance of sailing. That, I believe, is historical, sailing being such an ancient pursuit there was, is, an acceptance of 'the right to navigate'. Flying as a relative newcomer does not have that historical right of acceptance, was surely seen as intrinsically risky with the earth-bound fearful that the sky might fall. So we have regulation and regulation and yet more regulation.

To head back on topic I agree with Rob L's post #1799233...
The CAA being an Authority, a Regulator and a Prosecutor all at the same time should be the first point of redress.
That is just so fundamentally flawed I'm surprised it has never been challenged.


I think you are right - it is historical.

I do think there is a community, but I think it is a community that has bickered within for far far too long. Non of the ABC organisations are able to work together, and AOPA UK is the worst of the lot - I am told no one wants to work with them. All of these things can change but it requires the decent grass root community on here and around the airfields to make it clear enough is enough.
#1799378
GtE wrote
Absolutely not one of whom comes from any part of the aircraft operating, designing, or maintaining communities at any scale of aircraft. They are all either CAA employees, or professional committee-sitters (or both!).

I'd say Dave King doesn't fit that bill and has a lot of light aircraft background.

Unfortunately, mostly looking at wreckage.
#1799383
The CAA being an Authority, a Regulator and a Prosecutor all at the same time should be the first point of redress.
That is just so fundamentally flawed I'm surprised it has never been challenged.


Couldn't agree more. It is very difficult to disagree or argue with those who have powers to inconvenience you, whether delaying any licence/rating application or suspend/revoke your licence.

On a wider note, the CAA finances must be under severe pressure with so many commercial pilots and aircraft having transferred registration to other EASA countries. Their costs are likely to increase when taking on more direct oversight as design authority etc. A radical change to their funding structure will be required. It could be considered as an inevitable extra cost of BREXIT.
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By Pete L
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1799418
CAA is currently looking for a complete airspace change team. Tempted to apply again - they currently insist on significant ATC and airspace design knowledge but there's a good argument they should have someone in the team from with at least more empathy with the GA user or anti-noise groups.

Other more qualified candidates who want to make a difference should apply :D
#1799428
I believe it's probably a 'blob' problem.

What I mean by this is the unwritten and unspoken assumption that a major (if not the major) purpose of the organisation is to provide employment for its staff. The funding model (from charges on the regulated) encourages a complex and heavy bureaucracy with charges levied for every simple administrative action because without it there would be insufficient funding to support a large staff.

In 2018/19 the CAA's cost per employee was £52,588.
https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP1806_CAAAnnualReportandAccounts201819.pdf

Add in the revolving door employment situation that exists with NATS, the RAF and various parts of commercial aviation and you don't get much incentive for streamlining, efficiency and lean operation. Nor is there much prospect of unhealthily-close ties to other organisations being shaken up, or organisational group-think being challenged meaningfully from outside.
#1799434
Pete L wrote:Tempted to apply again - they currently insist on significant ATC and airspace design knowledge


Which will surely lead to what one of @G-BLEW's recent interviewees described (with reference to Brize/Oxford) as "an ATC solution, designed by ATC and for the benefit of ATC".
#1799442
In many corridors of wisdom you will heard it said from those that almost certainly know the CAA has seen a raft of change in recent times, to a situation where most are now career bureaucrats for who the concept of flying a rubber band in the real world is very far removed from what they do in their ivory tower.

What is needed more than ever before is NOT experts in the design of airspace (as much as they have their place) but experts in its day to day application.

There is a depressing analogy. My personal suspicion is the 10 o'clock curfew was introduced by similiar experts. Anyone who has any understading at all of how young people behave would have realised the folly before it got past the drawing board. You didnt need to hear a young person say - "we will start an hour earlier, and then we will go back to a mates house after, cram together in the small front room, and have a few more beers". It is painfully obvious. I just find it odd that it wasnt obvious to those who matter, and I can only assume they are either so far removed from their student days, or their student days bore no relationship to the rest of us (I would like to think I am just in the rest of us group!).

I suspect most of the people at the CAA are like those in my analogy. In short, removed from reality.
By cockney steve
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1799447
Isn't "airspace -design experts" somewhat of an oxymoron? The fact we have the current , complete "Harry Halls" of a labyrinthine ,complex, oversized mish-mash of controlled airspace (more-so in the South-eastern areas), makes it self-evident that these are self-professed pen-pushing "experts" divorced from the reality of the interaction of massively differing air-conveyances in 21st. Century Britain. :evil:
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By James Chan
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1799448
I did one time suggest Gasco should create a safety course that all airspace designers must attend as part of their continued professional development. :twisted:
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