SAFA Skysailor Magazine

32 SKY SAILOR March | April 2022 New CAOs: VHF, Airspace and Altimetry Iain Clarke, Safety Management Officer, with contributions from Tony Renshaw On 2 December 2021, CASA dropped a series of new, interim Civil Aviation Orders (CAOs) onto the landscape, without any consultation or opportunity for input. We in Ops first received word of this on 25 November 2021. Why has this happened? (If this bit does not interest you, skip to the ‘What’s different?’ section. But you really should read this bit…) The regulatory framework under which we are allowed to fly is in a state of transition, from the Civil Aviation Regulations (CARs) and associated Civil Aviation Orders (CAOs), to the new Civil Aviation Safety Regulations (CASRs). These regulations are split into a multitude of Parts (Figure 1). Safe flights use registered and certificated aircraft maintained by a qualified person flown by a qualified person in airspace controlled by a qualified person . Figure 1: The CASR Regulatory Structure Some explanation The overarching Part that governs aviation operations is Part 91. The Part dealing with licensing and qualifications of aircrew or pilots, is Part 61. These are the equivalent of the old CARs. Navigating Part 91 – the actual legislation document – verges on Mission Impossible. It is made up of five volumes, each running at 407, 509, 246, 357 and 389 pages respectively. The Manual of Standards weighs in at 139 pages. To assist in making sense of these, CASA have released a Plain English Guide – 199 pages. I’ll provide links to all of these documents at the end of this article. Operations of our aircraft now fall under the new CASR Part 103. This replaces the exemp- tions contained in the old CAOs: 95.8, 95.10 and 95.32. How sport aviation organisations themselves operate are dealt with in Part 149. The definitions of our aircraft and how they can be operated are dealt with in Part 103. Over the past year the Technical Working Group (TWG) for the Part 103 Manual of Stan- dards (MOS) or ‘the rules’ has been meeting in an attempt to thrash out that document. The TWG comprised CASA staff and representa- tives from the recreational and sport aviation organisations. The CAOs were scheduled to be repealed on 02/12/2021 and replaced with Part 103. That date was immutable. In late October 2021, the industry repre- sentatives of the TWG informed CASA that the draft MOS was ‘not fit for purpose’ and recommended that the MOS not be ‘made’ (enacted), and that the CAOs be remade and in force until such time as a workable Part 103 MOS was arrived at. CASA accepted these recommendations and a flurry of activity