Dear #Customer.FirstName#,

And so the shaking continues in Wellington. However repairs on Aviation House are progressing well and we’ve got used to the sounds of breaking glass and jack hammers working outside the window. For premises built post the 1932 earthquake we are in pretty good shape. One of the more interesting areas is the damage caused by the overhead panels in new buildings and the movement in furniture and fittings.  CAA have some pretty impressive pictures and we’re told one of their people working in the building on the Sunday evening when the quake struck was quite literally knocked off his feet.
 
When you go through a good shake its interesting how trivia becomes really important in terms of morale…so from the annals of trivia a true story thanks to a nameless power supply co in Auckland. Recently it sent a threatening disconnection notice for non payment. On investigating, the disconnection notice that was dropped into the nearest post box, the address was found to be inhabited by a fairly substantial lamp post. Assurance was gained that no persons resided inside. The Customer call centre was immediately contacted and the disconnection notice withdrawn with an apology to the “inhabitants’ !!!!.
 
So to serious stuff we’ve been working with a group who are advocating for the removal of Colour vision deficiency as an aeromedical event.  Not from the particular perspective that we seek removal of the present exclusion – although we understand fully this is their objective, but rather from the perspective that if we have general directions then such directions should be established in the context of a robust analysis of the facts. Moving to risk based regulation is very consistent with the direction aeromedical matters are taking which it “to show us the evidence”. 
 
We do however have a major concern regarding pilots who have student loans with a first class medical as a prerequisite and then  subsequently have had conditions placed on their certificates for pre-existing conditions.  The conditions make it extremely difficult for them to repay loans and remain working in New Zealand.
 
Again we would stress we are not questioning CAA’s right to put such conditions on medical certificates – they clearly have the power to do so.  What we are questioning is where is the risk when these pilots have been working in Australia flying commercial passengers without incident but can’t do so in New Zealand .
 
Through the investigatory efforts of the CVD group we now know:

• There are New Zealand pilots who have various forms of colour vision deficiency (CDV) operating in the New Zealand commercial environment.
• The policy environment has fluctuated from “restrictive ” “partly permissive” to “permissive”
• The tests have fluctuated over time
• There has been one reported potential accident involving a CVD co-pilot and misinterpretation of the PARPI.
• The US, Canada and Australia are more liberal in their application of the CVD medical standard than NZL with Australia the most liberal
• After 23 years of experience in Australia there has been no reported incident caused by CVD

 
This information makes you think and as we move more and more into a risked based regulatory environment some of the “givens” will be subject to intense evaluation. Before I get the advocates who support no change to CVD on my case the boots would make it very clear that our involvement is limited to getting the facts evaluated in a robust and transparent manner so that we all know what we’ve got and why. At the present time the situation is far from clear and we end up with a number of our young people with substantial student loans being unable to repay those loans because of conditions placed on a medical certificate in the context of a pre-exiting condition.
 
Apologies to those avid readers who are not pilots but the significance of all of this for you is that change is being driven by evidence and this is an integral part of the whole risk based thinking permeating modern regulatory practices.  Rule Part 12 and the reporting of information and its subsequent analysis assumes much great significance. In turn the protection of that information becomes more integral to our whole system of safety.    
 
We’ve been busy working on other stuff too and this is covered in more detail in further on in the newsletter.
 


 

Aviation is in our DNA Red Boots

Flying in formation the Growth Agenda

DoC 1080 RFT in Taranaki
DoC has issued a RFT, GETS reference 39757, for the aerial application of bait in 3 separate control operations in South Taranaki.  Bids close 12pm on 19 August with service to start on 2 September.

Taiwan Free Trade Agreement
The draft agreement is currently with the Parliamentary Select Committee. It goes further than any other FTA in improving the prospects of commercial success for aviation exporters. It should be of considerable assistance to aviation exporters to Taiwan. We are supporting the draft (as is Business NZ)

Just Thinking
A few years ago, if we’d looked forward to 2013, how many of us would have realised that by now, New Zealand would

• be a world leader in GPS track, tracing and communications equipment
• design and manufacture a key component in all Gulfstream aircraft cabin management systems, to control lighting, window shades, temperature, furniture and the entertainment system
• be a world leader in the design, manufacture, integration and support of a full range of industrial weighing, measurement, and control systems, for the airport and logistics industries
• be internationally recognised for our aircraft restoration and replica production skills

 
Or that we would have:

• developed the world’s first fully cloud based airline operation and management system 
• created a world first in designing the Economy Skycouch™ seat 
• developed software systems used by Boeing and the largest defence manufacturers in North America
• the only world wide licence to apply 3M product to aircraft as aircraft wraps (e.g. Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit/All Blacks) and be working on up to three aircraft around the world each week
• a world class aviation specialist painting facility

When you look at the way the international market is moving, and consider the research and development occurring in precision manufacturing, composites, titanium, security, software and business system development, and some of the other creative uses in which we use aviation in New Zealand, it makes you wonder just how much more the industry will be achieving in a few year’s time.
 
UAV/UAS where are we at? Post discussions with the Regulator and another government agency its clear that some effort is going into developing a regulatory environment for the “new aircraft”. CAA has this as part of their statement of intent. It also makes a lot of sense because more UAV’s are coming on the market and there is a significant international market emerging with real export opportunities. AIA already has a UAV group but its been largely inactive as there’s been no catalyst but with the development of rules it makes a lot of sense to have this group more organized so that it can participate in discussions which are progressing on the likes of airspace and air navigation plans.   
 
 
SMS next steps – it’s a reasonably safe assumption based on the submissions we know CAA received that the proposed rule will fly. The question is what next?  We’re a strong advocate of voluntary compliance because its good business sense.  AIRCARE has a mentor in the form of John Sinclair and he will work with you and step you through the process. Further guidance material will also be published by the CAA’s safety education unit shortly.  And of course there are a number of excellent consultants around who can be engaged on this issue.      
 
 
Ag Sector risk profile – we understand this will be a focus of the next NZAAA executive meeting where matters such as steerage of the implementation strategy will be discussed. The risk profiling is highlighting the big question of what does an efficient operating framework look like for this group. The framework involves many more factors than simply the matter of regulation. Rules can be blunt instruments which no matter how efficiently enforced don’t drive the biggest safety gains. 
 
 
Pilot supply survey – how its going? We’ve covered about 10 organisations so far and will be back in full force next week. From our meeting with TEC/MoE earlier in the week its pretty clear the expectation is that :

• Numbers (existing and future demand ) plus clearly identified career pathways are critical to their consideration
• There is a desire to understand how many pilots there are who have student loans and are not in the workforce – this is a big ask but possibly SANITI can help
• They wish to know how many who trained last year are now in full time employment either as a pilot or doing something else
• They are unconvinced that there is a shortage actual or looming – evidence of that they claim was the massive out pouring from pilots last week who stated they didn’t have a job or we waiting to enter the Air NZ group.
• The information has to be substantial robust and be very clearly explained

The trends we outlined in last week’s letter are being reinforced in our interviews.
 
Health and Safety in Employment – we understand there is a second tranch of legislation being worked on by officials presently and that this will define the nature of the relationship between CAA and Workplace New Zealand.  An interesting fact discovered this week is that Maritime New Zealand get just short of $1m for work in the HSE area whereas Aviation is just short of  half that. This money comes from a levy all employers pay and with our high average salaries we are quite certain aviation is cross subsidizing other sectors. ACC have also been very helpful this week producing some good data on what they accidents and injuries are in the aviation workplace that result in claims.  We’ll have this data to you in the next week or two.   
 

Response to Minister Smith click here – we’ve taken our time to reflect on the Minister’s points. There is substantial agreement e.g. minimizing compliance costs; DoC is not an aviation regulator; focusing on noise sensitive areas of the DoC estate makes some but not total sense. So the reality is we’re talking “shades of gray” here – and no its not the book were talking about but rather when you isolate it down to it its all about the rules of engagement for concession holders.
 
We think the issue of degradation of amenity values (noise) is best treated through a comprehensive code of practice. This gives industry surety to invest in quieter equipment and surety over its future. When we last met with the Minister his view was that government knew best and government would continue to determine the terms of engagement. Essentially this is where we were in the pre the Hon. Chris Carter’s time i.e. mid 2000’s. 
 
We’ve made some further changes to the AIRCARE™ code of practice relating to noise abatement training recognising that students are already in high work load mode and adding this form of training is probably premature in their careers at this point.  While we think our trainees should be proficient in this area we’ve got to be pragmatic and say – possibly too early.
 
As AIRCARE™ evolves and grows we’ll be looking at other initiatives such as increasing recognition and reward to those in the scheme.     


AIRCARE™ ACCREDITATION process read here

AIRCARE™ accreditations Click here

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