Authorisation holders can suspend their certificate, authorisation, or both when they are not active. Holders may also suspend if they are not meeting regulatory requirements in relation to their operation.
Requesting a voluntary suspension to a certificate or authorisation
You can apply to CASA in writing to temporarily suspend your authorisation.
You must be a person or corporation holding an authorisation covered by section 11.130 of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998 (CASR).
This does not apply to air operator’s certificates (AOCs).
You can only request a suspension of an AOC under section 28BA of the Civil Aviation Act 1988.
Under section 28BA, you can only request to suspend an AOC if you are not compliant with the aviation legislation. For example, you have no key personnel.
Length of the suspension
You can specify the period of your suspension. We cannot suspend an authorisation beyond its expiry date.
If you don’t specify a timeframe, we will suspend the authorisation for 12 months.
Sending a suspension request
You can request to suspend an authorisation or certificate using our form. In the form you must include:
- authorisation holder’s name
- aviation reference numbers (ARN)
- certificate number
- requested suspension period.
You don’t need to include reasons for requesting a voluntary suspension.
You do need to include a reason for AOC suspensions. This includes written details of the justification for the suspension. This usually relates to an inability to comply with the regulatory requirements.
Process of voluntary suspension
We will review any request for voluntary suspension. Once we have reviewed the request we will send our decision in writing.
We will contact you before the suspension end date to confirm if you want to continue or come out of the voluntary suspension.
Providing information to come out of a suspension
We may require more information from you to come out of your suspension. This depends on the reasons for the suspension.
As the authorisation holder, you can select the period of the suspension and will end when you specify.
If there are compliance issues, you will need to work with us through our standard processes. This may include:
- verification of open Safety Findings raised from previous surveillance events
- providing updated manuals to make sure you are compliant with legislative requirements.
We may conduct a surveillance event before we lift your suspension. You need to be compliant before we lift the suspension.