CAA funding review seminars

[Peter Lewis]

From Des Lines at the General Aviation Advocacy Group of New Zealand:

Fellow aviators

Many of you will have already received an email notification of the proposed CAA funding review seminars at a limited number of locations around NZ, and starting at an inconvenient time and day.

We have sent the attached letter to the Director. It suggests that a fairer and less discriminatory approach would be to use the same locations, venues and timing that have previously been used for AvKiwi seminars.

We will be posting this information, and our view of the CAA's action, on the GAA website.

If you wish to express an opinion on how this first stage of consultation is being handled by the CAA, please first check the Authority's announcement at

www.caa.govt.nz/funding/index.html

and then either email your feedback to GAA or to the CAA Director, GraemeHarris, at

[e-mail]

If we are to influence how matters proceed, it is essential that we all actquickly to oppose the Authority's plan.

Kind regards

Des Lines and Brian Mackie




Letter:

July 8 2014

Dear Graeme

Funding review seminars

The published schedule of funding review seminars has been received with astonishment by aviators around New Zealand.

This schedule is discriminatory and unfair to a great number of interested parties.

If it was intended to be the beginning of meaningful consultation by the CAA, the Authority has fallen at the first hurdle.

The chosen venues and times are contrived to allow for minimum attendance by GA pilots and organisations. To make a 9.30am start at, for example, Palmerston North, a participant from Wairoa would either have to leave home at about 5.30am, or pay for overnight accommodation.

The location of this limited number of venues seriously disadvantages those living far from them.

Furthermore, attendance for many will incur the loss of at least one entire day's earnings.

There was ample time for this schedule to have been better constructed, working with representative GA organisations. Why was this not done?

When the CAA promotes its annual series of evening AvKiwi safety seminars, they are designed to reach the maximum number of participants in GA, and the record shows that they do. This is in stark contrast to the funding review seminar programme.

I remind you of the Court of Appeal Decision 1992 regarding “Consultation”

Wellington International Airport Limited and others v Air New Zealand [1993] 1 NZLR 671, at p. 675. Judgment of the Court of Appeal delivered by McKay J quoting McGechan J in the High Court in Air New Zealand and others v Wellington International Airport Limited and others, HC, Wellington, CP 403-91, Jan 6, 1992:

"Consultation must allow sufficient time, and a genuine effort must be made. It is a reality, not a charade. The concept is grasped most clearly by an approach in principle. To 'consult' is not merely to 'tell' or 'present'.”

We request that you immediately withdraw this current schedule and instead work on a programme including the locations, venues and times that have previously been used for AvKiwi seminars.

Starting from the north and working down the country, AvKiwi seminars were held, for example, in:

Kerikeri (Bay of Islands Aero Club)

Whangarei (Recreational Flying Club)

North Shore (North Shore Aero Club)

Ardmore (Auckland Aero Club)

Hamilton (CTC Aviation Training)

Feilding (Flight Training Manawatu)

Hastings (Aerial Mapping Hangar)

New Plymouth (New Plymouth Aero Club)

Palmerston North (Massey University Campus)

Paraparaumu (Otaihanga Boating Club)

Masterton (ATC Building Hood Aerodrome)

Taupo (Suncourt Hotel and Conference Centre)

Gisborne (Gisborne Aero Club)

Tauranga (Tauranga Aero Club)

In the South Island, AvKiwi seminars were held in:

Motueka (Nelson Aviation College)

Nelson Aerodrome (Nelson Aero Club)

Omaka Aerodrome (Marlborough Aero Club)

Hokitika Aerodrome (Hokitika Aero Club)

Christchurch Aerodrome (International Aviation Academy)

Franz Josef Aerodrome (Air Safaris Terminal Building)

Ashburton Aerodrome ( Mid-Canterbury Aero Club)

Wanaka (St John Ambulance Centre)

Queenstown (St John Ambulance Centre)

Invercargill Aerodrome (Southland Aero Club)

Dunedin (Mercure Dunedin Leisure Lodge Hotel)

Oamaru Aerodrome (North Otago Aero Club)

Timaru Aerodrome (South Canterbury Aero Club)

Start times were scheduled at 7pm and this resulted in good attendances - which is what the CAA should be aiming for, if this round of consultations is not to look like a charade. The majority of GA aviators are in employment and they cannot attend daytime meetings during workdays without incurring a financial loss. Also affected are organisations, which have their daytime businesses to attend to - again precluding them from attending during a working day.

The president of one significant North Island aero club has already told us:

"Yes I had noted the CAA review locations. I had already decided not to go. Just too far and a day off work."

You might also consider either shortening the seminar period to between 90 minutes and 2 hours (while providing comprehensive background documentation for later study and distribution to non-attendees) or bringing forward the start time to 6pm, to allow participants enough time to return home at a reasonable hour.

If your proposals are sufficiently detailed as to require a three-hour presentation that also allows for discussion, it follows that the series of seminars must also be redesigned to present them to the widest possible audience, with the minimum of cost and inconvenience to CAA clients. Your present plan does not meet these requirements. We therefore ask you to withdraw this plan and order it to be changed, and prepare a new set of venues that allows the CAA to present its ideas to a more representative audience. This also has consequences for your deadline for submissions.

Yours sincerely

Des Lines

[Peter Lewis]

July 19 2014

Fellow aviators

CAA and Avsec survey

We have just learned that Colmar Brunton is conducting a survey for the CAA and Avsec. It is  called “Perceptions of Safety” and is designed to help the CAA and Avsec make decisions about  the safe and secure operation of New Zealand’s civil aviation system.

It offers you the opportunity to rate how the CAA and Avsec perform from a safety perspective.

The link to the survey, which closes on Friday 8 August, is:

survey.colmarbrunton.co.nz/scripts/dubinterviewer.dll/frames?Quest=5302

It's easy to complete and offers plenty of space for you to express your views and experience.

Please spare a few minutes of your time to have your say.

CAA Funding consultation

Since our last supporters' update, the CAA has released three documents relating to the funding  review: the Funding Consultation, the Funding Response and the Funding Q & As.

The CAA asks you to answer 17 feedback questions.

One of them highlights an issue that has generated much discussion over the last two years:

Feedback Question 14 (Refer Paras 157 to 167)

• Should the CAA charge a single registration levy that incorporates the current Participation Levy  and the Aircraft Registration Fee?

• Should the CAA provide a mechanism to pay the registration levy, reserving the mark. that does  not incur a participation levy?

The feedback form offers three options. The last one allows for alternative suggestions. One that  you may wish to consider is the outsourcing of the CAA Aircraft Registration section.

In a letter to the Director, we ask:

1) What is the annual operating cost of the Aircraft Registration Section, including  overheads?

This must be easily obtainable because the CAA was able to state the cost of running its Medical Unit as justification for introducing the $313 medical application fee.

2) Has a study been made under the recommendations in paragraph 2.1 of the Treasury Guidelines for Setting Charges in the Public Sector 2002, to assess whether a more cost-efficient provider of services for Aircraft Registration is available elsewhere in the public  sector?

3) Is there scope and opportunity in this funding review to investigate outsourcing the work done by the CAA Aircraft Registration Section to the motor vehicle registration section of the Ministry of Transport?

It appears to us that, with the CAA’s standard hourly rate for all chargeable services now set at $284 per hour including GST, there may be a more cost-effective alternative for what are mainly simple clerical tasks.

Participation Levy

If you have an aircraft on the NZ Aircraft Register, you are an aviation operator participating in the New Zealand aviation system. You must pay this levy regardless of whether your aircraft has been withdrawn for a rebuild or long-term storage. CAA says that the participation levy funds:

• Safety investigation and analysis: Industry-wide accident and incident trends are developed. These trends steer the CAA’s safety initiatives.

• Safety education and information: The safety and information publication, Vector, is provided free to aviation community participants, as are booklets, posters, safety videos, seminars and the CAA web site. Four Aviation Safety Advisers provide face-to-face contact, advice and information.

• Random surveillance and spot checks: This safety service is carried out as required.

• Enforcement: Occasionally enforcement action is required to ensure safety compliance.

• Other information and advice


We are asking the Director:

1. How is it envisaged that all participants, including aircraft owners, will be levied to fund activities covered by the participation levy?

2. With around 29,000 CAA-identified members within the NZ civil aviation community, it would seem that they all derive some benefit from the participation levy, so would it not be a fairer and more equitable solution to levy all aviation document holders rather than just aircraft owners and domestic air operators paying passenger levies?

Trial Flights

Considerable doubt has arisen that trial flights or air experience flights are a permitted activity under Part 61. The CAA view appears to be that they now fall under Part 115 Adventure Aviation.

This has serious implications.

We have written to the Director to clarify the ruling on this as it could, for example, impact on initiatives aimed at introducing young people to recreational aviation or to pursue a flying career.

We'll keep you posted on this and other news as it happens.

Kind regards

Des Lines and Brian Mackie

[bounce]

Simply untrue regarding trial flights. The CAA's view is that flights that introduce a pilot to ab initio training can be operated under 61.

I find it hard to have sympathy for operators who conduct "trial" flights where the main purpose is aeros when other operators have spent the money to get a 115. A trial flight should be fun, but its to introduce, aeros can come later.

I applaud the work going into sticking up for GA (which badly needs it), but this feels like a pointless fight to me. For all the complaints about 115 it has allowed warbird rides, and has perhaps stopped govt from becoming even more paranoid about skydiving etc.

[bigal]

Yeap, had spotted that survey....

The link to the survey, which closes on Friday 8 August, is:

survey.colmarbrunton.co.nz/scripts/dubinterviewer.dll/frames?Quest=5302

It's easy to complete and offers plenty of space for you to express your views and experience.

Please spare a few minutes of your time to have your say.


Unfortunately only had time for a "flake of snow on the tip of the iceberg" response:



Thinking about all of the activities that CAA undertake, how confident are you in the management of CAA to provide effective safety and security measures for the aviation industry in New Zealand?
not at all confident in the management of the CAA.

CAA have consistently demonstrated for the 20+years that I have been a pilot that contrary to their stated aims of improving safety, in reality CAA are about covering their own backsides, expanding and growing their own operation and feathering their own nests at the expense of aviators, all those involved in the aviation industry, the aviation industry and associated industries, the travelling public, and the NZ taxpayer.

There have been numerous incidents over the years that demonstrate this, that demonstrate that for CAA safety is an extremely low priority compared with looking after themselves. I have not forgotten the role CAA played in the Icarus incident reporting scheme being closed down, that seemed to be a good safety initiative , in what way was the closure of that scheme positive? This is a situation that has got worse, not better in recent years.

Recent examples of the activity I refer to is the decision to charge for Aviation weather which is completely counter-productive to safety, and the decision to lease a penthouse (no doubt complete with Jacuzzi for the Director)that is the complete top floor and half the floor below it, overlooking the Beehive.

From what I have seen and heard when incidents are reported in good faith for safety reasons, CAA are more interested in crucifying those reporting the incidents and covering their own behinds by throwing a requirement for more bureaucracy back at industry, rather than spread the word in the interests of safety. CAA also seems more interested in looking to prosecute whenever possible then in safety, none of that encourages the reporting of incidents.

It is my opinion that CAA’s ruthless implementation of bureaucracy and micro-management to the nth degree has led to an overall reduction in safety and loss of skills from industry. Paperwork (or computer based) systems are put in place that seem designed to prevent the most bungling nincompoop of a student pilot imaginable from getting in an aeroplane and these systems and ever increasing demands and paperwork requirements are applied to everyone.

There are stories of retired airline captains trying to put something back in to flight training industry and of salty old A-cat instructors leaving the industry out of despair at this, that they are of course unable to pass on any useful skills, knowledge and experience because of the micromanagement that they are subjected to. Meanwhile this system of course falls because there is always someone who is a bigger nincompoop, and does something dumber than anyone imaged, which of course leads to more red tape. When this system finally reaches its conclusion we will have the dumbest most inept instructors imaginable teaching the dumbest most inept students imaginable all wrapped-up in a big ball of red safety tape. Nearly everyone else will have given up and left the industry in despair and where is that going to leave the airlines looking for new pilots?

As a country we have a reputation for producing good pilots but unfortunately nothing is static, that could well change. Given the track CAA have us on how long is it going to be before kiwi trained pilots are involved in an Asiana type accident? Sadly that is how I see this ending if CAA are allowed to continue in there lucrative (for them) money grabbing and destructive ways.

When I learnt to fly I was (after a dual check of course) let loose in the circuit to complete my solo consolidation in a 10 to 15knot cross-wind, would not consider myself to be any different to anyone else, nor of above average ability and there were no problems, yet now 100’s of hours and cross-wind landings later, I am suddenly supposed to care if there is 5, 10 or 15 knots crosswind.

How many cycles of instructors will the industry go thru before it is normalised for instructors to regard more than 10 to 15 knots cross wind as then end of the world?, these are tomorrows airline pilots, how long before asiana with kiwi pilots at the yoke falls off the side of the runway in a cross-wind? Never mind NZCAA are still making good money thru their audits and growing their organisation.

Too sum up, I have absolutely no confidence in CAA whatsoever, quite the contrary, its supposed to be about safety.

I see major issues there due to CAA and further then that I believe CAA make the TV comedies Yes Minister and Gliding On look more like documentaries about CAA.

CAA are a bunch of incompetent, inept thieving, money grabbing crooks and bully-boys, plain and simple, and it’s the complete incompetence of successive government ministers (including current ones) that has allowed this situation to grow and thrive.

[Peter Lewis]

From Des Lines at the General Aviation Advocacy Group of New Zealand:

Fellow aviators

Funding Framework for the CAA 2015 -18

It has been a while since my last update, which was at the time of the publication of the  CAA consultation seminar schedule. GAA requested that seminars be held in the same  venues and locations as used for AvKiwi seminars. Our request was denied on the  grounds that the cost would be prohibitive. It would seem that in the view of the CAA, a  triennial funding review which affects all CAA clients has less significance or importance  than an AvKiwi seminar, which has a much narrower interest base.

The consultation document was written in daunting bureaucratic style and this was  compounded by deficiencies that we uncovered in the CAA’s electronic document  format. Computers running earlier versions of MS Word were unable to input answers to the funding questions and it took some insistence from us before the CAA took remedial action.

A summary of issues raised in feedback responses has now been published; it is available on the CAA website and on our GAA website. My colleague Brian Mackie has written a two-part  commentary on the CAA responses to the funding feedback and this is available on our website at:

www.caa.gen.nz/the-caa-funding-review-stage-1-faze-1/

and

www.caa.gen.nz/caa-funding-fuel-levy-ticks-boxes-marked-too-hard/

In August 2014, at the time of the funding review consultations, we attempted to  discover what efficiency gains the CAA has achieved since the Martin Jenkins Value for Money Review of 28 February 2011.

Our letter was deftly treated as an Official Information Act request and the CAA replied:

“Pursuant to section 15(1)(a) of the Act, the CAA may charge for the supply of official information. Because of the scope of the information covered by your request, it will be necessary to impose a charge for making the information available to you.

The CAA charges are consistent with the Ministry of Justice’s Charging Guidelines for Official Information Act 1982 Requests.

We estimate that it will take 40 hours to process your request. The standard charge imposed for Official Information requests by the CAA, in accordance with the Ministry’s Charging Guidelines is $76.00 per hour; this puts the total estimated amount to be charged at $3,040.00.

Under section 15(3) of the Act, the CAA requires 50% of the estimated charge to be paid in advance, with the balance payable on invoice once the final charge has been calculated.”

I have attached, as a separate PDF, the questions that we asked. I leave it to you to judge the relevance of these questions in the context of the funding review and the Martin Jenkins report, which recommended efficiency gains that could be made by the CAA.

Fuel excise duty refunds

GAA began a dialogue with Minister Brownlee back in June 2013. We reminded him of his oft-stated political stance that cross-subsidisation is neither appropriate nor fair and Treasury guidelines state that, to deal equitably with the taxpayer, determination should be made as to who benefits from the output, and/or those whose actions give rise to it.

The Minister eventually agreed to refer the matter to his officials in the MoT.

The wheels of the Transport Ministry turn so slowly, it’s almost imperceptible.

After several follow-up letters and emails, and a year later, we were advised by the Ministry that it planned to consult with a selected group of stakeholders on the content of the refund regulations in December 2014, in advance of consultation on ACC regulations. This means that the government won’t be in a position to consider any changes to the refund regulations until after the official ACC consultation in late 2015.

We are now into December and although we advised the Ministry that we were a stakeholder and wanted to be included in any discussions, nothing has been heard.

Meanwhile the fuel excise duty continues to be syphoned off from our pilots running Mogas-powered aircraft and diverted for use in constructing roads. Cross-subsidation?

Yes. Appropriate or fair? No. There is a deafening silence from Treasury, which shows how selectively its policies are applied.

RPL issues

CVD (colour vision deficiency) testing as applicable to the RPL for those pilots wishing to operate within a control zone became an issue when a holder of a CPL wanted to renew his RPL BFR and was denied the flight test because he wasn’t able to provide the instructor with evidence that he had passed a colour vision test that was acceptable to the Director. CAA has admitted that the RPL needs some “tidying up” and to this end we have submitted a proposal for a more practical colour vision assessment for the purposes of the RPL. I have attached a copy of our proposal.

Also being considered in the current review of Part 61, which is due for completion in the first quarter of 2015 are:

• Solo on a LTSA medical, ie being able to do first solo under the RPL regime.

• Removing restrictions on aerobatic flight. This has been raised as a petition so will be on a high priority list.

• Glider aerotowing on a RPL for private operations.

• Extending the RPL to helicopters.

The Part 61 review extends back to 2011 and GAA gathered support in a submission against proposed changes to the D Cat instructor rating in February 2012! Airways Corp survey

Back in May of this year, Airways ran a client satisfaction survey. At the time, we encouraged our readers to participate and give Airways some feedback. On 17 November, we emailed Airways to ask if the results of the survey have been published, and if it has been published what the collated responses were so that we could in turn, pass the information on to those who took part in it. We are still awaiting a response from the person tasked with answering our email.

Negotiating with the bureaucracy of the CAA, the MoT and Airways is frustratingly difficult and progress is painfully slow. It has required a greater degree of tenacity than I would have ever imagined when I first embarked on this journey. However, I am minded of the old Chinese proverb – “Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid only of standing still”.

To quote an analogy that a good friend of mine uses when demonstrating the effect of controls to a new pupil, if we keep our wings level and do not change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed. If on the other hand, our wings are not level, we find ourselves going someplace else. It’s as simple as that.

Kind regards, and the Season’s Greetings

Des and Brian