[Peetwo]

Sandy Reith - 'FLYING TRAINING IN AUSTRALIA 2026'

Courtesy the AP emails:

FLYING TRAINING IN AUSTRALIA 2026

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s extreme over regulation of flying training has contributed to a far less than optimum training environment. Over regulation, combined with the split in the whole system by separating off the low weight category of the semi-autonomous body Recreation Aviation Australia (RAAUS), has reduced the overall standard, and in part frozen the natural improvements one could expect in a more flexible regulatory framework.

For example in the USA there is no compulsory syllabus but there is comprehensive licence testing. A newly qualified USA instructor may commence training without a compulsory, and very expensive ($50,000+?) and time consuming CASA approved Part 141/142 organisation, unlike the case here in Australia.

The latter factor has been the main reason we have lost hundreds of flying schools all over Australia. See the disgraceful case of Glen Buckley and how CASA destroyed his umbrella system of a centralised oversight and compliance model for small schools to cope with CASA’s extreme over regulation of flying training.

With the loss of flying schools also comes the loss of experienced instructors.

CASA, after some years, belatedly came to recognise the impracticality of its extreme requirements it had imposed, in order to establish a flying school, by allowing a single instructor to instruct with a special dispensation.

However this system denies the single instructor, as a flying school business proprietor, to employ another instructor and therefore this creates a severe curtailment to establish or grow a viable business.

Contrast to the former no cost Australian system or the USA where many schools without Part 141/142 approval operate as businesses with numbers of instructors. In the USA Part 141/142 approval allows some lowering of total hours required for some ‘straight through’ special courses to higher licence qualifications.

On top of the in-built additional expenses, delays and Part 141/142 organisational fees, plus CASA’s heavy ‘tick a box’ requirements, is the fact of having migrated all the regulations into the criminal code instead of being treated as misdemeanours, inline with the norms of standard British justice.

This creates a debilitating background of fear, a fear of inadvertently crossing one of the innumerable ‘criminal’ acts as per the CASA book of incredibly complex and sometimes contradictory regulations. This is against balanced decision making and causes aversion to any form of improvement through innovation. The Australian ‘crime’ of not filling out one’s log book is a case in point. In the USA for a private pilot this omission may be no transgression in any way, though may be needed to show recency etc.

Only by a concerted effort to bring notice into the political arena will we have any hope of rectifying the very poor realities of flying training in Australia. Flying training is the backbone of any aviation activity. The Nation will benefit greatly from a healthy aviation industry. With increased training comes demand for aircraft, therefore manufacturing, airports, maintenance and a variety of specialist services, all benefit.

Towards strength in aviation bears not only on our prosperity, but also on our defence posture in a more uncertain world. Media and direct MP engagement is necessary.

Sandy Reith, former Chief Pilot & Chief Flying Instructor Phillip Island Air Services/ Philip Island Air Charter established 1969.

MTF...P2