CASA has issued a raft of amendments to the new CASR Part 61 regulations that cover pilot licensing.
The amendments come after the CASR Part 61 start date was postponed from 4 December 2013 to 1 September 2014, claiming the industry needed more time to prepare for the changes.
Among the amendments CASA released on 8 January this year are:
- The student pilot licence no longer exists. The removal of the SPL results in the same level of safety but with less red tape and expense for students and flying schools. Flying schools and flight instructors will continue to be responsible for flights conducted by student pilots. The general requirements still apply to student pilots conducting solo flights such as age, general English language proficiency and medicals.
- The requirement for a pilot to have a photographic licence has been dropped in favour of pilots carrying an acceptable identification document. This will reduce regulatory compliance costs and administration. CASA will be issuing a list of acceptable documents in the future.
- Applicants for the air transport pilot licence (ATPL) will no longer need a recommendation from a Part 141 or Part 142 operator to attempt the ATPL flight test.
- CPL holders will be able to act as the pilot in command of an aeroplane certified for single-pilot operations and a maximum take-off weight less than 5,700 kg in a regular public transport operation.
- Multi-crew pilot licence (MPL) holders will only be able to fly with an operator that has a training and checking organisation.
- The original regulations required IFR pilots to have demonstrated their competency to use a specific instrument approach procedure to an instructor or examiner before conducting such an operation. The amendment regulations limit this to flight examiners.
- Examiner and Instructor rating proficiency checks have been simplified to permit a single proficiency check to exercise the privileges of the rating. Separate checks for each training endorsement are no longer required.
- The privileges of an Examiner rating may only be exercised in an aircraft if the flight test for the endorsement(s) has been conducted in an aircraft.
- Under the original regulations, pilots completing an integrated CPL(A) course could not start a flight instructor rating course until they acquired 200 hours. The amendment package allows the pilot to commence the course once they have completed the integrated course of training and satisfied the requirements for the grant of a CPL.
- Provisions for the Modified Austroads medical standards have been moved into Part 67 and amended to align with the existing medical exemption relating to wearing corrective lenses. Under the original regulations, pilots would have been excluded if the only reason they didn’t meet the unconditional licence standard was because they needed to wear corrective lenses.
- Type ratings to be granted if the pilot has completed training and a flight test conducted under the authority of a recognised foreign authority. This provision allows more time for transition and ends on 31 August 2018.
- The amendment introduces requirements for an operator to provide a description of how the operator supervises instructors and student pilots.
- Under the amended regulations, decisions made by examiners, instructors or authorised persons will be subject to the requirements of 11.055 and reviewable by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
Most contentiously, CASA is pushing ahead with the removal of Air Test Officers (ATOs), to be substituted with the examiner rating. Under these circumstances, Examiners will not be covered by the commonwealth insurance and will have to arrange their own protection.
At the time or writing, CASA is working with the insurance industry to establish a package to cover flight examiners as nothing currently exists.
The full set of amendments is available on the CASA website.