CEO THOUGHTS

Corporate memory

By Steve Slater

In the early days, the ‘halls of power’ at the CAA were blessed with practical people who understood the grass roots of aviation, and who administered the rules and laws with some understanding of ‘our type of flying’. The current situation is not quite so comfortable.”

“Many such officials have retired or moved on to other things, leaving gaps that cannot easily be filled. This situation is not necessarily a reflection on the current personnel but one of the harsh facts of life. The new staff may have not seen the inside of a workshop or flown a light aeroplane. Our task therefore, is to use all the means at our disposal to seek a level of contact that will continue the traditional service of ‘officialdom’ enjoyed in the past. (PS. This isn’t a Mayday call... just a position report).”

Those aren’t my words, they’re of a predecessor, David

Faulkner-Bryant, writing in 1984.

He once said to me not long after I was appointed, “What goes around comes around. There’s little you’ll have to handle that hasn’t come up before.”

How right he was.

Today we face a similar challenge. From its highest levels the

CAA has had a plethora of new recruits. Many have little experience of the GA environment, leading to ignorance of past processes and, perhaps inevitably, to attempts to ‘reinvent the wheel’. As D F-B rightly commented, it isn’t down to the individuals involved, they are hard-working and committed, but with such wholesale shifts in personnel as the CAA has recently experienced, gaps inevitably appear.

Review

One concern is a CAA decision to review the A8-26 approvals by which the CAA regulates the whole airworthiness oversight processes of both the BMAA and LAA. Both organisations queried the need for this but were merely told ‘it’s in the programme’.

We’re expecting to see their proposals at the end of this month, and we can expect it to consume much-needed staff resources, just as we are starting to handle a bow-wave of deferred permit renewals.

It’s hard to speculate until we have seen the CAA proposals, but recent comments indicate a wish by the CAA to audit us by processes drawn from EASA regulation (didn’t we just leave them?), rather than our current system of oversight based on the decades of amassed experience with almost 500 different types of aircraft.

These changes will be presented in a public consultation, to which we will all be invited to contribute.

Watch out for more on this when we get a chance to see the proposals and offer our comments in next month’s Light Aviation magazine. CAA contacts

There have also been some well-publicised issues recently with initial post-EASA licencing and Pilot Medical Declaration announcements raising concerns, but I’m glad to say we do have a good level of contact with the senior CAA appointees in the GA Unit today, and there is a genuine commitment to address the challenges. So, for now at least, this isn’t, in DF-B’s words (yet) a Mayday. But it is definitely a Pan Pan Pan call!

For many though, a more immediate priority is our release from Covid lockdown and our return to flying. By the time you read this you might already have been airborne, with official sanction for flights, ‘solo or with members of one’s family bubble’ from 21 March. Or, you might be waiting till 12 April for flight instruction or mentoring.

As you might imagine, the LAA, BMAA, AOPA and the many other ‘alphabet organisations’ have been working hard behind the scenes, advising those in the CAA and Department for Transport as to the safest, most effective ways to return to flight.

Regaining pilot currency, both in physical terms and in decision making, is a clear concern.

Every week that passes has seen the risk to rusty pilots increase, while the Covid risk is, we hope, now curving permanently downwards.

Take heed

In this month’s Light Aviation, you’ll find plenty of advice on both making sure your pre-flight planning ensures both you and your aircraft are in the best possible shape to safely resume flying. Please take a look at these pages and consider their advice.

Many will have the embedded skills and experience to safely resume flying solo if they wish. If not though, and you feel a little nervous about launching forth, there is good wisdom for waiting those few more weeks to take a flight with an LAA Coach or an Instructor. There’s no rush. We have I hope, a whole flying summer ahead of us! One additional thing to perhaps bear in mind, if you are flying from a grass airfield, is a thorough check of the runway condition. After the very wet weather of the past weeks, there may only be a thin layer of dryer soil covering still very soft mud. Breaking through this crust can put a significant load on the undercarriage …or worse.

We’ve already seen one accident this year when, after hitting soft ground on the landing roll, an aircraft was flipped onto its back. This incident also highlighted another issue for those flying in isolation from private strips. The pilot was left hanging in his straps until help arrived. Thankfully it was eventually forthcoming, and the pilot emerged unhurt.

What might you need to do to summon help if a similar incident were to occur? Food for thought! ■