Posts about stuff relating to airports
Many Masters: CASA not the only Agency Responsible for Safety
Just a short post today* about a recent High Court of Australia decision on the topic of which safety agency should prosecute safety breaches involving an aviation organisation preparing for a flight. Quick answer: it could be an agency other than the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) depending on the circumstances of the breach.
* I don’t want to became an aviation law blog. Really, I don’t but I do enjoy ready this stuff.
Off the Hook: Kangaroo Collision Case Appeal Allowed
A little over a year ago, I wrote about a court case involving the owner of an aircraft claiming damages from an aerodrome operator after their aircraft collided with a kangaroo on landing. I was pretty proud of that post as I had exercised some newly developed court judgement reading skills. So, of course, the legal system would have to go an turn all that on its head and change its mind. It turns out that the aerodrome operator was not liable for the damage.
Let’s find out why and whether we agree with them…
Image credit: Altered photo by Scott Calleja
Missed Opportunities: We Should be Doing Better
Over the past year or so, I've written about a couple of topics that seem to have converged into this post. Airport professionalism, the application of aerodrome regulations (twice), runway strip standards and accidents were topics I recently explored and after doing so more research I stumbled across a couple of incident investigations in Australia that bring these previous articles together.
Wrong, but not as Wrong: Wellington RESA “Final” Decision
Earlier in 2017, the New Zealand Court of Appeal reversed an even earlier court decision and found that the NZ Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) Director had made an error in assessing the Runway End Safety Area (RESA) length requirement contain in Civil Aviation Rule Part 139 - I blogged about that decision here.
This week, the NZ Supreme Court handed down its judgement on the appeal made by the NZ CAA and Wellington Airport. Not a bad turnaround considered the length legal battles usually take.
And I guess, technically, the NZ CAA and Wellington International Airport Ltd (WIAL) lost. The appeal was dismissed and costs were awarded but the reasoning included in the judgement does provide the NZ CAA with at least a partial win.
Noun-based Regulation
The modern world is definitely in love with its noun-based activities. Each week, a paradigm-shifting approach to some human endeavour is announced with a title like value-based health care or outcome-based education. When I delve into the details, I am generally left either confused as to what they are selling or how they are different at all. Regulation is no different. Just plugging "based regulation" into Google yields, on the first page alone, principle-based, results-based, performance-based, outcomes-based and output-based regulatory approaches.