17 February 2021
Grant Shapps has told anyone who’ll listen that he wants the UK to be the best place in the world for General Aviation. He said it when he was an MP, he said it when he headed up the All Party Parliamentary Group for General Aviation, he said it when he was Aviation Minister – and he’s said it more than once now that he’s the Secretary of State for Transport. I’ve heard a couple of long-gone aviation ministers say it, and the current Minister for Aviation, Robert Courts, said it only last week in Parliament. Yes, I know that it’s a ridiculously unachievable goal, but it’s one that I fully support. There are so many things we can do easily, cheaply and quickly. I can only imagine how much work the Minister has on his plate, so I thought I’d lean into the project and lend a hand…
Forgive the bluntness, it’s not personal, but there’s important work to do and we need to be clear. Then CAA needs more transparency and more accountability. Before Christmas I sent in a Freedom of Information request to the CAA relating to its Electronic Conspicuity policy. There’s something going on that just doesn’t add up. There are EASY safety measures that could have been enacted months ago, but that have inexplicably stalled (yes, I am talking about SDA and CAP1391). I have no idea where the blockage exists, or why it is there, but I’d like to find out.
“We might not be able to be the best, but we can make GA a lot better…”
I’ve had an email back from the CAA basically saying it has my package, but it requires consideration by a ‘qualified person’, in this case a specified member of the CAA board, to see if some of the information collected can be exempted by section 36 of the Freedom of Information Act (that section is titled Prejudice to Effective Conduct of Public Affairs). Come on CAA, release the information, tell us why you are blocking an easy, potentially lifesaving safety win, and tell us who is responsible. Then bloody fix it PDQ. Incidentally, I also made a Freedom of Information request of the DfT which took a ridiculously long time to provide next to nothing. Were I a cynic I’d think the CAA and DfT had something to hide…
Another quick win… the CAA also needs to fix the current licensing mess. I know that a large part of that mess has been caused by exemptions issued to keep people flying. But they’re exemptions from the EASA system that we no longer need to exempt ourselves from. It’s a bit mad to have a UK-issued lifetime licence that does not allow you to fly the very aircraft that you trained for that licence on, so let’s get ourselves a simple ICAO compliant system with some sub ICAO licences too. Take the (frankly best in the world) PMD system and make it work (‘cos you recently screwed it up).
Then there’s the comms. Something else I’ve moaned about. I like the way the CAA emails out important information to those who have requested it. I accept that a bunch of stuff the CAA has to issue needs to be in a specific legal language and format, I just don’t get why it is incapable of also issuing a plain English explanation. It’s not big, it’s not clever and it’s not grown up. I think it’s fair to assume that you want people to understand, in which case, please try harder.
Airspace. Bit of a mixed bag, this. Well-reasoned arguments for rejecting Brize and Oxford. Not so well-reasoned arguments for approving Farnborough, but WTF is happening with the proliferation of drone TDAs? I know there’s no point in being all King Cnut about the drone thing and I know they’re a large part of the future, but let’s have a proper strategy, let’s work to make sure the ACPs are done properly (and yes, I am talking about piss poor consultation in some cases) – and let’s work together to make sure that we can all share Class G airspace safely. If we do it right we could all get quite a lot out of this, you know, ‘win win’ and all that.
While we’re on the airspace thing, the whole RNP approach thing deserves a mention. Any wish to be somewhere in the top ten places in the world for GA would see a lot more of these than we currently have. The costs are too high and the restrictions to approved proposals too restrictive. Carry on like this if you want, but at least be honest and change ‘best in the world’ to ‘not entirely third world all the time.’
There’s more, lots more, but I need to wrap up. We’ll never make the UK the best place in the world for General Aviation. There are just too many structural issues, too many privately owned airfields, too little funding, too many ANSPs etc. But we can make it a lot better than it is. We need to stop reinventing every single wheel, focusing instead on just replacing the rickety old square ones we’ve been patching up for so long. We need to look elsewhere for examples of excellence and we need to shamelessly plagiarise them. Sometimes, it’s about having the humility to accept that it’s possible (and this applies to people beyond the CAA and DfT) that others can sometimes do things better than we can.
Let’s leave the jingoistic boasting to others while quietly nicking and implementing all of the best practices we find.
