APPENDIX 21
Memorandum submitted by the Royal Aero
Club
We are pleased to present the views of the Royal
Aero Club of the United Kingdom on this matter. The views in this
submission complement those of several member associations of
the RAeC and also of the GA Alliance, of which the RAeC is a member.
This submission focuses on one or two particular
strategic issues, in relation to the role of the CAA, for the
future of recreational and sporting aviation in the UK.
THE ROYAL
AERO CLUB
OF THE
UNITED KINGDOM
(RAEC)
Founded in 1901, the RAeC is the overarching
body in the United Kingdom in all matters of aviation sport. Its
12 full member associations have a combined individual membership
of some 72,000 representing the UK at the highest level in every
aspect of sports and recreational aviation. The RAeC is the UK
member of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), the
World governing body of sport flying, and the UK member of Europe
Air Sports (EAS), which co-ordinates responses to legislation
and regulation affecting recreational flying within the European
Union. Representatives of the RAeC and its member associations
are to be found in senior positions in these two international
organisations and the influence of the RAeC in their thinking
and activities is significant.
BACKGROUND
The RAeC and its member associations have always
had an excellent relationship with the CAA. There is little doubt
that in this regard the National Aero Clubs of many other countries
envy UK sports aviation its regulator. However, the World and,
more specifically, Europe have changed much in recent years, as
has the environment in which General Aviation (GA) operates. The
Transport Committee inquiry into the remit and work of the CAA
provides the RAeC with a timely opportunity to suggest overdue
changes in the way its members' activities are regulated. These
changes offer the possibility of eliminating the avoidable cost
of sports aviation to the taxpayer without detriment to safety,
generally accepted to be the most important criterion when considering
aviation. At the same time, such changes would remove an outdated
and somewhat bureaucratic burden that is not only hampering the
development of sports in which Britain excels, but is also stifling
the growth of sports aviation as an important economic and social
sector.
ROLE OF
THE CAA IN
RELATION TO
RECREATIONAL AND
SPORTING AVIATION
The RAeC's major criticism of the role and remit
of the CAA is that, whilst a peripheral part of its task involves
the active regulation and supervision of sports aviation, it bears
no responsibility for safeguarding the future of this activity.
Furthermore, there is within the CAA an understandable desire
to justify its existence by retaining work that a more commercial
organisation would long ago have eliminated or delegated, even
when such work is of little or no value. The evidence of this
is to be found in box-ticking and paper-shuffling for which the
RAeC's members must pay, even when this work duplicates their
own activities and introduces long delays into their own systems.
A typical example of this is the partial verification of pilot
licence information, which is already verified far more completely
by the issuing sports aviation organisations, which have better
access to the necessary information. In summary, the CAA has in
many respects operated with a long screwdriver", at considerable
cost, when in reality there has been no case to do so in many
aspects of recreational and sports aviation.
ALTERNATIVE REGULATORY
MODELS
That there is another way is beyond question.
One has only to look at the role of the Deutscher Aero Club (DAeC),
a members' self-funding organisation directly responsible to the
German Bundesministerium für Verkehr, Bau- und Wohnungswesen
(Ministry of Transport) for the design, airworthiness, licensing
and operations of German sports aviation. In Germany much of the
work with regard to sports aviation—which in the UK is undertaken
by the CAA—is the responsibility of the DAeC. Similarly,
the Letecká Amatérská Asociace CR (LAA) is
directly responsible to the Czech Ministry of Transport for many
aspects of the supervision of sports aviation in the Czech Republic,
a country which, free from the burden of a slow, restrictive and
retentive civil aviation authority, now has a light aircraft industry
that is the envy of other nations, producing new and innovative
aircraft that are exported worldwide. The decline of the UK's
light aviation industry is evidence of the inadequacies of the
British system. The problem has been, in part, the prohibitive
costs of certification but, to a far greater extent, the result
of bureaucratic delays, which have been introduced by a CAA under-resourced
for the work it believes it must do in a particular way, because
it always has, and to justify its existence.
DE -CENTRALISED
APPROACH
UK sports aviation neither has nor desires the
centralised structure to be found in Germany. Nevertheless, within
the RAeC are associations that regulate much of their own activity
and which, with little significant change to their organisation
and structure, could take total responsibility for their sport,
directly accountable to the Department for Transport rather than
working under the participative and detailed supervision of the
CAA. It is, of course, in large part thanks to the contribution
of the CAA that these associations have reached this level of
competence. However, now that even the youngest of these associations,
the British Microlight Aircraft Association, has been managing
its own activities including training, examining, licensing, design,
airworthiness and operations for over 20 years, total delegation
is a natural next step. Other organisations, such as the Popular
Flying Association, which has for many years controlled the home
building of aircraft, and the British Gliding Association, which
has an enviable 57 year history in managing virtually all aspects
of gliding in the UK, have long since proved their capability
and responsible approach.
THE NEED
FOR CHANGE
It is unreasonable to create a regulator and
then to be surprised when this entity has a predisposition to
increase rather than reduce regulation. Furthermore, as the regulator
has the primary objective of safety, against which all other objectives
are secondary, it cannot be blamed for being biased in favour
of maintaining an excessive involvement in the detail of sports
aviation activities rather than risk being accused of being insufficiently
diligent in its work. Like any parent in relation to maturing
children, the CAA is reluctant to acknowledge the state of competence
and maturity of the sports aviation organisations it has helped
develop. Furthermore, the creation of the European Aviation Safety
Agency (EASA) has put many CAA employees in fear for their jobs.
Through EASA, the EU is progressively introducing pan-European
frameworks, regulations and rules that are now superseding national
rules. The CAA will still have a role but limited to overseeing
implementation of EU rules, not creating the regulations and rules.
For these reasons there is a visible tendency for the CAA to be
predisposed to retain control. Despite this, it is widely accepted
that the time has come for change.
THE CASE
FOR DELEGATION
The RAeC therefore recommends that all activities
currently undertaken by the CAA with regard to sports aviation
be reviewed with the objective of delegating them to those air
sports aviation organisations capable of undertaking the task.
In some cases this would mean such organisations continuing to
do what they have been doing successfully for many years in a
self-regulated environment, but in future, for some, in an EU
regulated framework. In this regard the imperative should be to
delegate all activity to competent bodies and justify retention
by the CAA rather than the reverse. In the event that the CAA
retains any direct involvement in sports aviation, safety objectives
should be balanced against commercial and financial objectives.
This will lead it to the constant review of its activities with
the aim of eliminating work if it becomes of no value.
It is probable that the RAeC is pushing at an
open door in these recommendations. Although it is rather too
early in the life of EASA to see how its plans will develop, all
the indications are that its inclination will be to transfer responsibility
for sports aviation to those bodies that can demonstrate their
competence and qualification. In fact, in the first stage of EU
Regulation (Reg 1592/2002), it was EASA's intention that national
air sports governing bodies (such as the BGA, BMAA, PFA etc) could
be designated the Competent Authority for their particular activities.
However, the regulation left it to Member States to decide this
and in the UK the Department for Transport appointed the CAA as
the Competent Authority for all civil aviation, probably without
consideration of the intention behind the EU Regulation. Furthermore,
a large proportion of UK sports aviation activity has been excluded
from the control of EASA thus far, by means of inclusion in Annex
II (the exemptions from regulation) to Regulation 1592/2002. It
is known that the intention of EASA, and hopefully the Commission
and in due course the European Parliament, as regards the next
stage of EU Regulation on Operations and Licensing, is to empower
air sports associations as assessment bodies".
For these reasons the RAeC believes it to be
entirely appropriate to make these recommendations considering
the changes coming from Europe.
CONCLUSION
The wider aviation world offers many examples
of the way in which sports aviation can be run in a more satisfactory
manner without reducing safety and at a significantly lower cost
to the taxpayer and the sports aviator. The RAeC would welcome
the opportunity to provide the Transport Committee with details
of these and, indeed, any further points it may require to assist
in its deliberations.
11 November 2005
|
