Angel Flight founder Bill Bristow, AM, has sent an e-mail to the organisation's pilots condemning CASA's Discussion Paper released yesterday.
CASA released DP1317 suggesting that passengers on community service flights need the protection of regulation, and that their preferred option would be for the co-ordinating organisation to take on responsibility of ensuring safe operation.
"We have previously made personal representations to Minister Truss's senior advisers on this matter," Bristow says in the e-mail.
"We take the position that the intervention of CASA is unnecessary, unwarranted, and unreasonable. In short, there is nothing about our charity’s operation that needs addressing.
"There has been no demonstrated safety issue arising out of Angel Flight’s already greater than 16,500 missions and therefore the 'safety authority' appears to be introducing, in the circumstances, bureaucratic intervention which does not appear to us to have any foundation."
Angel Flight does not own or operate any aircraft itself, but is a co-ordinating charity that introduces people who need to travel for medical reasons to pilots who donate their time and aircraft costs. The flights are generally classified as private.
The discussion paper can be downloaded from the CASA website, and responses need to be sent to CASA no later than 10 October 2014.