Have you ever heard of the Dopeler Effect? No, not a typo and nothing to do with radar. The Dopeler Effect is defined as the tendency for stupid ideas to appear sensible when they come at you fast enough. I suspect that John McCormick might have been subjected to this phenomenon when he sent CASR Part 91.567 out for draft comment. It’s a bit wordy, so I will summarise.
Basically it says that pilots of aircraft that carry passengers on flights not in the air transport category must tell the passenger:
1. The plane will not be operated to the same safety standards as commercial passenger ops. 2. If the operator and pilot are insured for the passengers’ death or injury. 3. If the operator and pilot are insured for damage and loss to passengers’ property. 4. If the insurance of numbers two or three is voidable.
They are also demanding that if one of the passengers is a child, then the briefing needs to be given to any adult accompanying the child. This is redundant of course because the accompanying adult would have already been briefed as a passenger in their own right. Or does CASA want us to brief that person twice?
This bit of nonsense is insulting to pilots everywhere because it presumes that unless the operation is ATO then it is less safe and the passenger/s need to be warned that their life is about to be put in danger. I struggle to find words to parry this because I can’t believe that Australia’s aviation regulator is allowed by the Federal Government to get away with such destructive policy.
And as for the insurance … what the hell does it have to do with CASA? Their job is to do their best to make sure an accident doesn’t happen, not to get tangled in any litigation that results. What is most mind-blowing is that they regularly state that their primary responsibility is commercial operations, yet somewhere they have found the time and taxpayers’ money to meddle with insurance on what are basically private operations.
Are they, in some tenuous way, saying that unless a flight is properly insured then safety is compromised? In fact, CASA will have to make this statement, because unless the issue is one of safety then they are over-stepping their boundaries. Are they going to start setting premiums and minimum coverage as well?
If it is not an issue directly related to the safe operation of the aircraft then CASA has no right getting involved. I am pretty sure that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal would take a dim view of this issue, but it would take excessive amounts of taxpayers’ money to find that out.
Our hope is that John McCormick has his Dopeler detector switched on when comments from the draft CASR come in.
It’s okay to take your mates flying, provided you tell them how unsafe you are. (Steve Hitchen)
