Malibuflyer wrote:
But on average the data simply and clearly shows, that more regulation in aviation actually increases safety
The world in general and human behaviour in particular are not linear: it is more second, third or higher order….the more you get away from a certain status quo, the less linear it is.
Saying something generic like “more regulation is safer” or the opposite needs some context or else it is meaningless. That is what we are aiming to do here.
Malibuflyer wrote:
So fully agree: A safety culture (and by that I mean a true safety culture and not the “you must not prosecute pilots for breaking the law” type of claims) would be great if we found a way to really foster it!
Thanks! That is what the “Just Culture” concept by prof Sidney Dekker promotes, and is the center of the APROCTA and Eurocontrol safety seminars that I mentioned earlier and that follow a similar train of thought as conveyed here.
I also agree that those that promote an infringent “unsafety culture” damage this concept and our community as a whole. This however frequently has some origin in less- than-perfect regulation fostering normalization of deviance.
gallois wrote:
As many of you know an unpopular regulation with a great many people in France which was at the same time popular also with a great many people was the 80kph limit on non dual carriageway + roads
Again this disproves the generalization that “less regulation is safer” .We are not trying to prove it.
There is no question that aviation safety has benefited enormously and mainly from all the regulatory implementations, including proceduralization. That is not the issue.
The issue is that there is has been and there is an increasing tendency to generalize that more procedures and more stringent regulation and more maintenance requirements imply more safety. That is as plainly wrong as saying the opposite: we need context. We need common sense. And that is what we are losing and cannot afford to lose, for the sake of safety.
More regulation is usually effective in reducing accidents but only via depression of activity.
Obviously not true in edge cases (to use Steve Jobs’ terminology) but once regulation is established at some basic level, going beyond that works only as above. GA in Europe is definitely now beyond that point.
Truth is – at least in Germany and im most other countries there is a process established by the national regulator to “certify” microlights as types and not like experimentals as individual airplanes.
But, this has nothing to do with certification as we know it for certified planes – nothing. It’s an approval of a factory built non certified aircraft by someone who feel that some approval is needed. “We got to have rules” kind of logic.
This is something completely different from a random third party certifying compliance to some standards.
It’s the very definition of a random third party proving compliance to a random standard.
In all industries (aviation, medicine, oil and gas, whatever) there are only two ways this is done.
If it’s not one of these two, then there is nothing “standard” about the product. There is nothing preventing “somebody” issuing a “certificate” however. But unless the one issuing the certificate is at least an independent, widely and officially approved “body”, like the CAA, the certificate is worth zero – nada. But I guess such “certificates” makes a lot of people all warm and fuzzy 
We got a similar “type approval” of ULs and experimentals in Norway. I have been through both. One for my own experimental aircraft and one for a microlight that I eventually decided not to go forward with. It’s an equally “interesting” process.
Either you have the producer to testify compliance, which for experimental aircraft means the kit producer and the builder, and for factory build microlights aircraft, the factory. Or you have EASA/CAA to oversee/test for compliance. The point is, it’s equally pointless because there is no standard for the aircraft to be in compliance with. What the CAA can do however, is to approve for airworthiness and safety etc regardless of industry standard. The CAA can do that, because at the end of the day, an aircraft is “fit” only because the CAA say it is. This is what is done, and there are several ways to do that. It’s just that this had nothing to do with certification whatsoever.
The fact that an airfield can operate successfully in Texas entirely unattended, 24/7/365, with a self-service fuel pump, shows that these impositions are pointless and obstructive.
AMEN
The Malibu vs the rest of the world case
I think we all think of regulations that could be lifted with negligible impact on safety and positive impact on practicality and cost.
Nobody here wants zero regulation. Most of us here would not lower our safety level but others would.
The French UL scene shows that promoting safety with very little firm regs is, ahem, a challenge.
The vast majority of us see FAA Part 91 as the best freedom vs safety balance today on this planet. I think numbers quite confirm this.
As Malibu says, some FAA rules are stricter than EASA ones, and that shows these are no free lunch.
All what Antonio and others say is that some shifting towards this model would be beneficial to everyone (even safety).
(Yes we know that model requires heavy subsidies (federal and state in the case of US) to work really well.)
About mandatory presence on an airport, could EASA just state that this ICAO recommendation is not in any case mandatory in Europe ?
Can a CAA can make something mandatory that EASA doesn’t ?
Then airfield managers might understand that this expense and the short hours induced cost them a lot (employement scheme excluded).
If EASA was 50 years old, Part 66 mechanics and all kinds of STCs plentiful, we wouldn’t be ashamed of our system.
But GA may die before EASA and CAAs realize what they did.
Jujupilote wrote:
About mandatory presence on an airport, could EASA just state that this ICAO recommendation is not in any case mandatory in Europe ?
That is an interesting question. Only states are ICAO members and states have ratified the respective treatment. Therefore I would assume, that EASA can not legally binding binding opt out of something where the individual member states have contractual agreements
Can a CAA can make something mandatory that EASA doesn’t ?
Most member states belief the answer to this question is yes. The GASCO courses in the UK, the reliability-check in Germany (and many other types of “non terrorist checks” in other countries that are not that transparent) are all not set as mandatory by EASA.
In addition to that, there will never be an EASA rule stating “member states must not define individual safety requirements and operating hour restrictions when certifying an airfield”
Jujupilote wrote:
The vast majority of us see FAA Part 91 as the best freedom vs safety balance today on this planet.
I would doubt that e.g. glider pilots see it the same way. It is not a coincidence, that glider flying is one of the very few sports where amongst the top 50 globally is only one American (on pos. 49) and only 2 amongst the top 100. (Ok, Sumo Wrestling might have even less US participation ;-).
As said before: Part 91 is without any doubt the best regulation for the structure of the US GA. Imposing it on European GA structure would fundamentally change the (European aviation) world we know today.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Part 91 is without any doubt the best regulation for the structure of the US GA. Imposing it on European GA structure would fundamentally change the (European aviation) world we know today.
You make it (making GA in Europe more like it is in the US) sound like a bad thing ;)
