Rack News 05 Feb

The Rack™ - Battle continues

by Bevan Thomas

The CAA last week conducted what equates to a kangaroo court where reports were written and investigations conducted specifically to find supposedly unsafe situations with The Rack™. All this under the pretence of establishing what The Rack™ actually was. I had a laugh about that, for all these years they've been spouting off about how unsafe The Rack™ was and now I'm operating it they get together at meeting and realise none of them know anything about The Rack™ operation (The Senior management of the NZ CAA that is) anyway so they found some stuff they assume may be seen as potentially unsafe and are invoking Section 43 and 44 of the CA Act regarding causing unnecessary danger to persons or property. Ha! what a crock of rubbish that is, the Project steering group is the problem, an arrogant little group in the CAA that makes all key decisions and have no accountability for those decisions, no procedures, no minutes either, real secret stuff for a supposedly transparent organisation eh.? I came across them when I was working there reviewing Part 135, every decision they made short circuited consultation and was politically oriented.

Friday 5^th Feb 1999

I received a letter faxed today from Kevin (CAA Director ) invoking sections 43 and 44 of the CA Act, claiming I am causing unnecessary endangerment to public by operating human sling loads here in Taupo. The events leading up to this action were predetermined where findings were made to fit the desired action.

Naturally we declined to accept the offer to surrender our equipment and carried on operating safely and legally.

The Rack™ operation continues.

They say they are going to prosecute but what on.? As an ex CAA rule writer I know the rules specify human sling operational requirements which are considered to be acceptably safe by the CAA, we comply with all of these and go considerably further in the safety back-up department than the rules so how can we be endangering anyone????

I'm very annoyed about it.