General Aviation Workplan

CASA has developed a workplan to reduce regulatory burden on general aviation.

The General Aviation Workplan is a high priority for CASA.

Overview of the workplan

Consistent with the principles of best practice regulation, CASA continues to monitor regulatory impacts. In close collaboration with industry, we work to identify opportunities to refine the safety framework to keep the community safe while reducing costs wherever possible.

The General Aviation Workplan clearly sets out how and when CASA will optimise the regulatory framework for the general aviation sector. This will provide advice to stakeholders when regulatory changes impacting general aviation will likely occur among the range of other priority safety initiatives for government and industry.

Ensuring regulation is proportionate to risk and responsive to implementation challenges identified by industry helps to maximise flexibility for the sector and support commercial sustainability, while maintaining an appropriate level of safety.

CASA also recognises safety regulations, including the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations (CASR), need to be compatible with the role of general aviation in the broader industry. This is particularly relevant with regard to the challenges faced in regional and remote Australia as well as the sport and recreational sector.

Priorities for general aviation

Our approach complements the Government’s Aviation Recovery Framework which details the Government’s strategic priorities for general aviation and the roadmap to revitalise general aviation. The regulatory priorities set out in the General Aviation Workplan will:

• improve the pilot licensing rules
• streamline the arrangements which ensure aircraft are airworthy and properly maintained
• simplify the arrangements which make sure pilots are healthy and alert
• facilitate greater operational opportunities for sport and recreational activities when safe to do so
• finalise some outstanding standards for certain flight operations.

Work is already underway to implement some initiatives. Other proposals require further work to determine how to deliver the changes without unintended consequences for industry or the community and in a way that is aligned to our safety objectives. Ongoing engagement with industry, including through their constructive participation in our Technical Working Groups (TWG), will be critical to the success of the workplan.

In preparing the General Aviation Workplan, we have taken an expansive and flexible approach to considering what is ‘general aviation’, noting many of the measures will have broader benefits across the wider aviation sector.

Proposals and timelines

In the following sections we will provide a summary of the initiatives we are considering and our timeline for progressing them. We will continue to update the workplan as we make progress and as we identify further opportunities for red-tape reduction. We will also clearly explain the cause of any implementation delays and our rationale where we decide against implementing a proposal. This will provide transparency to the industry.

We will support these regulatory priorities with a range of non-regulatory initiatives which will ensure CASA’s broader operations more effectively support the expectations of the general aviation sector.