Use this forum to flag up examples of red tape and gold plate
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By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1354033
That reminds me of the BT thing. They made a big dog's breakfast of all their tariffs and charging. People asked them to "simplify" their schemes. They said "We listened, we're simplifying things!" - and took away their cheapest tariff and some of the discounts.

Sometimes it's good to have an extra bit of complication if it works around an onerous or illogical situation.
By Joff
#1354074
Dave - if you're referring to the marking exemptions its not new - been around for over 20 years - bit that changed after red tape was removing the need to renew them
#1355186
Joff, I think my point is that we seem to be identifying weaknesses in extant regulations and writing additional 'rules' to exploit these weaknesses. Deliverables to date, whilst most appreciated, haven't been earth shattering and I suspect this is because UK PLC is finding that there is little wriggle room. Whilst I welcome anything that eases the burden for even the smallest number of GA pilots, I would hope that Tony Rapson and his team are making far more significant headway in influencing European GA (de)-regulation.
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By Keef
#1355226
Amen to that!

I look at Dave W's "How to keep your licence valid" thread and the excellent page he's developed, and weep. The US equivalent says "Do BFR with instructor. The end."
The EASA version is so complex that nobody understands it apart from Cookie, Irv and Nick - and the rules change often enough for them to need to go back and update regularly, or tell us to "wait for the new stuff that's coming, some day soon, date not determined".

I don't even know if I should be talking about "renewing", "revalidating", "reconfirming", "extending" or what when it's time to do something every year or two (but not one minute longer, or else!) to keep my licence or various bits "live". There are apparently similar words where you have to know the correct one to use in each case, or it all goes to rats.

Some bits tend to migrate to a different page in the licence, and need more faff to get them back into currency. I'm not sure what that does for air safety (which is the excuse we were given when EASA was invented and before it became the bureaucracy it now is). Clearly, Flying Instructors and Examiners are competent to judge a pilot's flying ability, but the bureaucracy is far too complex for them, so it all has to go back to EASA (or the CAA, the local EASA branch office) for ratification.

The hunter has lost sight of the rabbit, and is shooting everything in sight, just to be on the "safe" side. There are some sensible people in the CAA who must be frustrated beyond measure.

Why not dump the whole EASA bandwagon and palaver, and say "As of 1 Jan 2016, the FARs will apply and all the EASA stuff is obsolete"? Issue us with credit-card style licenses like the FAA ones, and get rid of the placcy wallets with A4 divided into micro-pages printed with microdots.
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By SteveN
#1355240
Is there a EU state that is not a EASA signatory?
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By GrahamB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1355252
SteveN wrote:Is there a EU state that is not a EASA signatory?

I don't think such a thing can exist, as the EU regulations which EASA administrates are directly binding on all states.

There are some countries which are not EU which have signed up to EASA though - Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein - and presumably they have to pass local laws (or have done so) to implement those EU regulations into their own legal structure.

I may be wrong on both counts though.