Swansea Airport loses license amid safety concerns
The CAA has halted Swansea Airport (EGFH)’s operating licence citing a “systematic failure of safety management”. Following an unannounced audit in which “a series of safety concerns” were found, the aerodrome’s status as a licensed facility was revoked on 15 February. A spokesperson for the CAA told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the provisional license suspension was the result of ineffective safety management,...
Talk no longer cheap?
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has updated regulations for air-ground radio operators following an incident at a UK airfield when two aircraft collided on landing. The accident report reveals that both the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) and the CAA consider that a lack of traffic information provided by the air-ground radio operator contributed to the accident and that regulations for the provision of an Air Ground...
What a Performance! – The CAA exam with a 95% failure rate
Following the introduction of a new Question Bank (QB), between January and April 2021 the UK ATPL theoretical knowledge exam ‘Flight Performance and Planning – Performance (A)’ dropped from a previous 88% average pass rate to just 5%, marking a new low for the subject and indicating that all is not well with the current UK exam system for commercial pilot cadets. Prior to Brexit, the UK CAA had ‘acquired’ ATPL exam database...
The PPL exam lottery
A growing number of flying schools, instructors, examiners and student pilots are expressing exasperation over the new UK PPL ground exams, after witnessing unprecedented numbers of students failing their exams in recent months. The problem has become so bad that instructors and students alike are describing some of the exam questions as ‘exotic and unrelated to the course content’, with one well-respected instructor/examiner publicly...
CAA rejects airspace change proposals from London Oxford Airport and RAF Brize Norton
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has confirmed today that it has rejected applications for new complex bocks of airspace surrounding both London Oxford Airport (LOA) and RAF Brize Norton. According to the CAA, LOA’s Airspace Change Proposal (ACP) has been rejected on a number of grounds, including a lack of a compelling case for the creation of a Transponder Mandatory Zone (TMZ), which the CAA says was compounded by a...
