December 2019 | www.sayer.com
74
A
VIATION safety and the
development of aviation
are two things that are
mostly at loggerheads with
each other: a terric safety
record can be achieved by banning aviation
outright, or simply effectively regulating it
out of existence. On the other hand, little
or no regulation or oversight will result
in unfettered development and growth of
ideas, technologies and procedures – but
at greater risk of accidents as new concepts
are implemented and tested.
International law mandates that the
safety of paying passengers on commercial
ights is paramount. Trying out even small
new ideas and technologies which may
place paying passengers at risk can result
in disaster, as Boeing recently rediscovered
with the tragic Indonesian and Ethiopian 737
Max accidents.
This makes non-commercial general
aviation (GA) the incubator for most of
the new ideas in aviation. Those same
international laws and standards that force
regulators to consider paying passengers
to be the holiest of holies, do not apply the
same standards to GA pilots and aircraft.
Indeed, regulators are not at all required to
provide a duty of care towards GA pilots,
their non-paying passengers or aircraft.
Regulators need only take steps to protect
third parties: people on the ground and in
other aircraft.
Nanny states like Australia do not see
things that way. People must be protected
against themselves and their own actions at
all costs. But this is always at the price of
innovation.
Sadly, our own Civil Aviation Authority
has been confused about these concepts for
more than a decade.
GENERAL AVIATION SECURITY?
An important aspect is that aviation
security is largely irrelevant to GA. Aviation
security deals primarily with that holy of
holies, the paying passenger, who must at all
times be protected against terrorist attacks,
hijackings and other malicious interference
with commercial ights. This kind of
interference is unheard of in GA ights.
Nevertheless, many years ago, prior to
the 2010 Soccer World Cup held in South
Africa, and under the tenures of Civil
Aviation Commissioners Trevor Abrahams
and Colin Jordaan, there was a gross
misunderstanding that aviation security was
some form of national security which could
be used to oppress those who y privately.
There were major efforts to have the police
and CAA inspectors conduct warrantless
searches of private aircraft and private
properties which may have an airstrip.
The rationale was that these aircraft
and properties were hotbeds of smuggling,
terrorism and other nefarious activities. This
culminated in Jordaan’s pious contentions
that helicopters were being widely used to
poach rhinos.
Despite frantic efforts and a great deal
of cooperation from the GA community,
RUDDERLESS
AOPA BRIEFING
CHRIS MARTINUS
Aviation authorities the world over have the responsibility of overseeing aviation safety
and security as well as developing the aviation industries in their countries.
www.sayer.com | December 2019
75
there have never been any instances of
such criminal or hostile activities. However,
there were many efforts by the SANDF and
SAPS to create ‘roadblocks in the sky’ and
to ransack private homes, businesses and
aircraft in the name of national security. It
did not occur to CAA that it had no business
being crime-ghting super-heroes or
defenders of our national integrity.
This culminated in a successful lawsuit
brought against CAA and the Minister of
Police shortly before the 2010 Soccer
World Cup. Not only were draconian ight
restrictions already in place, but we sat
slack-jawed listening to SAAF generals
telling us that if a student pilot were to take off
and erroneously turn in the wrong direction,
the Air Force would assume that this was a
terrorist attack and immediately shoot down
the hapless student.
For this reason, they contended, all
ights including training ights would have to
be grounded nationwide for the duration of
the soccer matches. Fortunately this insanity
was averted.
THOSE HATED PRIVATE AIRFIELDS
But the abuse of South African aviation
law continued unabated and CAA attempted
to achieve their political masters’ ends by
trying to establish regulations forcing the
licensing or ‘registration’ of any and all places
where an aircraft may land or take off.
AOPA South Africa was deeply
suspicious of these proposed regulations
and resisted them at every turn. Our
suspicions were vindicated when a GA
aireld in the Gauteng area was proposed.
This was to be a public-use aireld catering
mostly for light aircraft and as such, AOPA
agreed and supported that it should indeed
be licensed. This was also the view resulting
from considerable discussion by experts at
the National Airspace Committee.
However, an application to licence the
aireld was atly refused by then Acting
Director for Civil Aviation, Ms Poppy Khoza,
on the basis that it was “unsafe”. A request
for reasons elicited no cogent response, so
her decision was reviewed and overturned
by the Civil Aviation Appeals Committee. The
CAAC patiently allowed Khoza plenty of time
to make her safety case, but she was unable
to come up with anything even vaguely
relevant to her purported viewpoint.
This conrmed our suspicions: CAA
had been mandated to force licensing and
registration upon all smaller airelds – and
then refuse to licence or “register” them. It
became quite apparent that CAA’s actions
once again had nothing to do with their safety
and security mandate, but more to do with
political paranoia and desire for control from
higher up.
Bizarrely, CAA applied to the High
Court much later for permission to pursue
an appeal against the decision of the CAAC
nearly two years after their judgement.
AOPA appealed to its members and other
interested parties to assist by contributing
towards the legal costs of opposing this new
move. The response was overwhelming.
After more years of wrangling and
obfuscation by the CAA, the Court refused
CAA’s application and awarded attorney and
client costs against CAA on the basis that
their application was frivolous, vexatious and
an abuse of court. The taxation and recovery
of those costs was again characterised
by delay and obfuscation, but I’m pleased
to advise that CAA paid up and as of this
writing, their money is now safely in AOPA’s
account.
Our treasurer is now working on returning
those funds to contributors or, if they prefer,
leaving those funds in our litigation account
for continuing to protect GA from these
ongoing vagaries.
CAA FIGHTS DIRTY
CAA seldom sees success in the
courts. This was apparent in the shameful
grounding of CemAir airline for nine months
– even though the courts and CAAC again
overturned Ms Khoza’s decisions. There
are ongoing similar scandalous groundings
related to SAA Technical, Comair and some
state airlines.
Khoza and CAA also embarked on a
campaign to try to denigrate AOPA South
Africa and its directors some years ago. Her
accusations are a witches’ brew of racism,
dishonesty and immorality against our
representatives for having had the temerity to
criticize her and the CAA for their excesses
and general incompetence.
She has put a lot of effort into coercing
and intimidating a number of her colleagues
and other non-CAA persons and entities into
her campaign of disinformation and hate
speech.
The time has now come for AOPA to
rectify this.
RAASA AND NTCA
AOPA took a decision to remain silent to
give CAA and the various “governing bodies”
six months to properly manage the future of
non type-certied aircraft, their owners and
pilots since the dissolution of RAASA at the
end of March 2019.
It seems at the time of this writing that the
whole process is rudderless and in danger of
crashing and burning. It is now time for AOPA
to intervene to protect the owners and pilots
of NTCA.
COLUMNS
Basic airstrips are an essential
part of general aviation - yet the
CAA seems deeply suspicious
of them and appears to want to
regulate them out of existence.
j
