Ok, so they are basing this on some Swiss law dating back originally to 1953 (SR 748.215.1).
In a EU country, that would not be permitted, but I don’t know if the EASA implementation in Switzerland allows this for Swiss registered aircraft.
This is indeed not permitted, except EASA and the EU commission would’ve approved a derogation under article 14 of the old Basic Regulation (which they have not, there is a list on the EASA website). I would contact the authority and ask them to provide the derogation. Of course such a derogation would never be approved by the EU and hopefully they would realize that these national regulations have been superseded by EU law. I know of many owner pilots who encountered such problems with these TMs… and I think this situation is unacceptable, not only for the owners but also for EASA/EU (Switzerland has a bilateral agreement for air law and within its scope, the laws are binding as if they would be part of the EU).
Airfield politics always trump the regulations. If e.g. your maintenance company owns your hangarage, and says you need such and such, then you need it.
A situation I am very familiar with… thankfully from years ago.
In this case it is not the MO, but the regulator.
ArcticChiller wrote:
I know of many owner pilots who encountered such problems with these TMs… and I think this situation is unacceptable, not only for the owners but also for EASA/EU (Switzerland has a bilateral agreement for air law and within its scope, the laws are binding as if they would be part of the EU).
The only way to attack something like that is to do so via the national aviation lobby which Switzerland lacks. The fear of retribution is much too omnipresent that individuals without a HUGE cash reserve for legal battles and the willingness to fight them would ever consider challenging the FOCA openly. In addition to that, in recent years the Swiss TSB has repeatedly and directly attacked EASA’s deregulation attempts such as allowing on condition operation rather than strict adherence to TBO and put considerable pressure on the FOCA to enforce TBO for non commercial operators. In this climate it is not really astonishing that the FOCA will use any means they have to cover their backside and part of this is mandating service bulletins as law or even only suggesting that “in case of cases the prosecution will have your hide” if you resist.
Which brings up the next problem: Any accident report as well as the ongoing TSB investigation in this country is completely open to the prosecutors who will sentence and fine any sort of aviation mishaps in total contradiction to Annex 13 and “just culture” and which make use of this vigorously, something the FOCA does not like but has no power over. But it certainly won’t encourage adaptation of deregulatory rulemaking.
Whether you can sue (or legally force) your national CAA depends on how involved they are on the ground.
In the UK it has been done many times. Usually they settle “on the court steps” because they don’t want a precedent to be created. A lot of people have walked into the CAA House with a lawyer… In France you can’t do it because the DGAC is deeply involved, all the way down to individual club level, and they will (in the words of one very well connected French pilot) stab you in the back (especially if you succeed) sometime later.
I bet a lot of stuff is done off the books…
Can you not be N-reg in Switzerland?
Peter wrote:
Can you not be N-reg in Switzerland?
For the moment you can, yes. But it depends what the future brings and what is actually better.
From my personal experience I have not had any reason to complain during my ownership, the FOCA inspectors were very helpful and gave us great advice during the upgrade of the airplane which saved us money. The only thing which has cost me money in that regad so far was that we had to overhaul the prop at calendar TBO as there is a McCauly Service Bulletin for my prop which my maintenance in accordance with the FOCA claims is binding (prior ELA1 however). But as the prop runs much nicer than before and it cost me €1500 to do it, I can live with that.
One needs to work with the maintenance organisation as well as the FOCA to figure out the best ways to deal with it. Post ELA1 now I am not sure if they can still force me to overhaul the prop again after 6 years but I don’t think so for private ops. This we will figure out when the time comes.
The best solution in my book would be if those “influencers” in these circles who would like to see GA regulated to financial death (and take antique airplanes out of circulation totally) by imposing commercial if not airline standards to everything flying could be put in their place and would stop coming up with over the top “safety recommendations” which will almost always trigger unwanted responses from the regulators. The current example which will have to be watched carefully is the aftermath of the Junkers crash, where the TSB is slamming their maintenance in obvious total ignorance how a 80 year old airplane must be maintained to be kept flying and instead dig out 80 year old manuals done by BMW at the time saying TBO to be 300 hours and only new cylinders may be used. Currently those engines had a 1500 hour TBO developed over the years and had no choice than to recondition cylinders as obviously BMW is not making new ones. Or the other example was the Super Constellation which almost was destroyed by FOCA mandated take off abort tests which had probably not been done since the original fight test program of the Connie some 60 years or more ago and with the prospect of having dozens more if they break one.
Seeing how the UK reaction to the Shoreham Hunter crash was (grounding) we still have people in our CAA who are a tad more level headed however…. And I vividly remember the grounding of Air Atlantique over issues which would have also killed the historical airplanes anywhere else.
