This was in the latest IAOPA newsletter. Sounds promising . . .
** GA strategy – rolling back the EASA burden**
IAOPA has responded to European moves towards a general aviation safety strategy with a series of suggestions aimed at improving EASA regulation of GA and reducing unnecessary burdens on the industry. The Association is continuing its push for a redefinition of ‘commercial’ aviation which moves away from the all-encompassing EASA notion that virtually anything where money changes hands is commercial – including cost-sharing by private pilots, business-related flights, and group ownership of aircraft. It also believes that such pursuits as air racing and charity flights should not be considered commercial.
IAOPA also wants EASA to accelerate work on Phase 2 of the reconsideration of the Part M maintenance requirements to relieve some of the cost and bureaucracy burdens that have been improves with no improvement in safety. Some of the mistakes made with Part M are being repeated with EASA’s moves towards creating Approved Training Organisations, which face greatly increased bureaucratic requirements and costs with no apparent safety goal. IAOPA says many small flight training organisations will be unable to cope with the additional administration requirements and wants costly and burdensome changes to be revisited before they are forced on the industry. There are also concerns over instructor and examiner requirements
IAOPA is also seeking to simplify the Agency’s stance on GPS approaches at GA fields, reconsider inflexible laws on oxygen installation, and step back from its determination to kill of the UK’s Instrument Meteorological Conditions rating, allowing it at least to continue in the UK, where it has saved many lives in its 40 years of operation. It seeks an interpretation of the ICAO language proficiency requirements to restrict them to airspace and aerodromes where an air traffic control service is required and a change to medical requirements to exclude fewer private pilots unnecessarily from the industry. Third country registration issues, it says, should be dealt with through a validation system, and STCs from ICAO-contracting states should be acceptable to all. There should be no need for EASA to approve minor modifications
In conclusion, IAOPA says the EASA requirement to achieve “a high, uniform level of safety” is too amorphous, and in suggesting that safety levels for airliners should be identical to those for paragliders or small helicopters it places too great a burden on GA. The Basic Regulation governing EASA’s work should be modified to reflect this.
IAOPA’s full submission will be made available when it is finalised.
You say it sounds promising until you look at likely time scales. Nothing is likely to happen before 2014 and by then most of the damage will have been done.
If IAOPA had expressed these views back in 1992 we wouldn't be in the current mess. At that point the embryonic JAA had no intention of including the PPL; there was no need to. If the JAA had not done it, EASA would not have copied it!
One might call it the snowball effect, an organisation starts the ball rolling largely for its own gain then looses control and finally finishes up trying to stop the unstopable.
“a high, uniform level of safety” is too amorphous
No, its quite straight forward, its the Lowest Common Denominator, the bottom line. The Regulator has always set the bottom line. As EASA has no relevant experience or expertise it has set it ridiculously high in areas where its of no consequence and miserably low in areas where safety is a concern, which explains the CAAs attempts to gold plate it.
The best thing of course is that IAOPA are actually making an issue and the best of luck to them, the great problem is getting people to listen; the idiots that run the EU couldn't give a monkies!
