Postby hand in pants » Sun Dec 29 2019, 06:05
A lot about the way the fire fighting side of our industry’s run is a joke. A joke because decisions on minimums and qualifications and requirements are made by clowns who don’t know anything about aviation, helicopters or pilots. And this includes the morons at CAA. The fire fighting rating under part 61 is one of the biggest laughs out of it all. How many years did we operate with and external load endorsement. Haven’t seen a reduction in accidents/incidents since the new rating has come in. Just s#!t. Then you have to have done a fire fighting flight review every two years, even though you do it for a living and on top of an obvious flight check with the chief pilot. More garbage.
The requirement to wear a life jacket while bucketing. Again crap. Nice to add something else to wear in a cramped cockpit. Nice and comfortable, another way to increase the work load of the pilot who is already flying in close proximity to other aircraft, reduced visibility and rough conditions. How many pilots have used their life jacket to save themselves since that came in???
Hours on the fire ground. Another load of crap. It’s flying, we do it for a living. Do we need hours of experience doing lift work, joyflights, media, charter, no.
Flight and duty times. Working under a companies fatigue management system on fires you can be tasked for 10 days plus strait. That’s not managing fatigue, that’s causing it.
RFS has always seemed to be a bit more than stupid when it comes to aviation. Tasking of aircraft has always been a mess, too many “favourites” for those handing out the tasks. Lots of empire building at fire bases.
I’m not saying that the old days were perfect but the job got done efficiently as it does today although it doesn’t seem to be that efficient at all. Not near enough pilots involved in the decision making or running of aviation in the fire fighting side of things. Way too many running it because “he’s been doing it for years, he must know what he’s doing”. Again crap.
And yes I have done it and stopped doing it because it just got so overloaded with crap requirements it wasn’t worth it anymore.
Hand in Pants, I'm thinking, my god, that IS huge!!!!!!!!