On 25 May, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association met with representatives of CASA and the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Developent (DIRD) to go through the merits of AOPA's Project Eureka and thrash out issues effecting the growth of general aviation.
Either CASA or DIRD responded to each issue raided by the Project Eureka team, and in many cases AOPA came away with action items to provide further information for the government to act on.
However, there are several issues that were dealt with on the spot, from which members of the general aviation community will be able to draw conclusions. The major points reflected in the minutes are:
- DIRD does not support changing the Civil Aviation Act to give CASA a role in promoting general aviaiton
- CASA is exploring ways to harmonise Australian regulation with those overseas, particularly where it comes to licensing
- CASA gave no indication that it was prepared to extend the ADS-B mandate from 2017 to 2021, but that exemptions could be issued depending on the circumstances
- According to CASA, the CASA Cessna SIDs program has proven valuable in detecting maintenance issues
- A number of issues to deal with the problems of flight training regulation have been released for industry comment or were being dealt with by the CASA task force
- Private independant flying instructors would be restored
- DIRD gave no indication it would do anything about the problems of security of tenure at federally-leased airports because its responsibilities do not extend to setting the commercial terms
- Neither CASA nor DIRD see that the Canadian model of a privatised air traffic service provider is a direct match for Australia because the Candian provider was already on that government's budget whereas in Australia Airservices is already fully-funded by industry.
- CASA is establishing a new Director's advisory panel to make a direct connection to industry people who represent all of the key industry sectors
- CASA DAS Mark Skidmore believes that some GA sectors were in good health according to the statistics.
Meeting Chairman Shane Carmody that DIRD intended to meet with other organisations, noting that much of what was contained in the Project Eureka papers had implications for other sectors.
Gary Beck, a member of the Project Eureka team, gave a presentation outlining general aviation concerns and how specific parts of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations or the Civil Aviation Act were having an impact.
The full meeting notes as AOPA distributed them are below.