hy does
Mark
Skidmore want
to be the Director
of Aviation Safety
and what will he
bring to the role?
I’m passionate about aviation and
aviation safety, and I saw it as an
opportunity to be part of that. I want
to support the organisation through
leadership, bringing together teams
to be able to get out there and be
effective in achieving the objectives
of CASA. My experience in the air
force has given me the opportunity to
see diverse organisations and see how
they operate, and what we can do to
pull together to achieve great things,
and I’d like to bring that to CASA.
I believe I have honesty and
integrity, that I can develop and forge
relationships. I like working with
people to make things happen, and
that’s what I am going to focus on
more than anything else.What is his vision for CASA
under his leadership?
My vision for CASA is to have an
organisation at the end of the five
years that if people were asked
“do you trust that CASA is doing
everything it can to ensure the safety
of aviation in our skies?” they’d
say “yes”. It’s going to be a big job.
You’ve just got to look at everything
people are saying out there aboutCASA. There’s some good things
going on, there’s some areas of
concern by people out there. That’s
part of my role: to get out and be
able to talk to people and listen to
people and get an understanding of
what’s concerning them, so we can
look at how we can make sure the
regulations are not only doing what
they need to do to ensure safety
but also are supporting the aviation
community out there.Will the aviation industry or
the general public be the priority
stakeholder for CASA?
The people of Australia are the
primary stakeholders for everything
we do, and that includes the aviation
community. At the end of it all you’re
trying to ensure everything you can
for the safety of those people who are
traveling not only in the aircraft, but
also those underneath the aircraft
as well. When you think about it,
it’s not only a case of what happens
to those that are in the air. It could
be a situation where things occur on
the ground because of an incident
or accident. So you’ve got to take
everyone into account in regards to
that, and the operators are part of
that. I would want the operators to
be operating safely and doing the
right things, because if they’re not,
their business isn’t going to thrive
and survive. No-one is going to want
to go with them! I want to look afterthe public and the operators at the
same time to ensure we can have a
good, safe, healthy aviation industry.Did Australia have to have the
Aviation Safety Regulation Review?
You should be reviewing what you
do on a regular basis, so you can
look at ways to improve everything
you’re doing. I suspect in my time
there will be an opportunity to
go and do a review and see how
well we’re doing. I would think
about a three to four year cycle is
reasonable to allow you to bed in
change, and then go back and have
a look at it and see whether that
change has been effective or not.
It’s always good to get a bit of
a snapshot from overseas of what
we’re doing. It’s kind of a peer review
assessment, and that’s something
I think we should be looking at
and I know it has happened in the
past that CASA’s done that; talk
to the FAA and the CAA to get an
understanding of how they’re doing
it. We shouldn’t be drinking our
own bath water, we should be quite
prepared to have someone come in
and do an external audit.What about industry calls to
adopt regulations from overseas
authorities?
I don’t think we should be afraid
of looking at what other people are
doing overseas, but I also think that
if you look at our history and our
record we’ve actually done quite well
in Australia from an aviation safety
perspective, so we should also be
prepared to go back overseas and
tell people what we’re doing and be
damned proud of what we’ve done.
Mark Skidmore’s view: in flying
and operating, I don’t see why we
have to adopt some other country’s
holus-bolus policy and regulations.
We’re Australia, we’re not America,
we’re not New Zealand; we’re not
300 million people or 4.5 million
people, we’re 23-odd million people
operating in a country the size of
America and we’ve got to understand
how to conduct aviation operations
safely in our own country. We
should be looking to other NRAs
to get an understanding how they
do it, and if it makes sense to take
those regulations and implement
them in Australia, then do so. We
should also be looking to standardiseThe World
According to Mark
CASA’s new Director of Aviation Safety,
Air Vice-Marshal (Ret’d) Mark Skidmore
was a week away from starting in the
role when he gave Australian Flying the
chance to air some of general aviation’s
concerns with the regulator. This is what
he had to say.
AUSTRALIAN FLYING January - February 201574 Mark Skidmore Interview STEVE HITCHEN