The Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority Sri Lanka (CAASL) has gone.

Now, will the CAASL be like a headless chicken? To prevent that happening,

it is imperative that as his replacement a reliable and steadfast Leader -

with a capital ‘L’ - is appointed, not another yes man, to provide direction and progress to civil aviation in this country.

A good leader must have knowledge and experience in the areas of his/her responsibility and, equally importantly, should ‘set the tone’ for his/her subordinates. As recent experience has shown, a good civil servant or a lawyer as the head of CAASL is not necessarily the answer. They would be rigidly bound to the Administrative and Financial Regulations and would not possess first-hand working knowledge and experience in the field of aviation. It may be argued that the Director-General (DG) could provide assist the Chairman by providing sound technical input. But unfortunately in Sri Lanka the DG is an ex-Air Traffic Control Officer (ATCO) who has exposure to only a limited area of the aviation industry.

The ideal candidate to the job must be a serving or retired airline captain who has a balanced view of the aviation industry. He/she should have worked in all parts of the world, observing and learning ‘best practice’ methods, techniques, and procedures, and capable of providing the ministerial authorities with a true picture of how things are in Sri Lankan civil aviation - not merely what they want to hear. Bitter as the pill may be to swallow, the powers-that-be must be given the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so that political decisions related to aviation are based on sound technical advice - hitherto a rare practice in Sri Lanka.

In the early days of commercial aviation in Britain, Europe, the USA and elsewhere, the pilot was a ‘one man show’. He would maintain the aircraft, check in the passengers, prepare a flight plan, supervise the loading of the baggage, work under all kind of climatic conditions, clean the snow and ice off the wings, and finally get airborne. As airplanes became larger and more sophisticated, and duty times got longer, the captain and his flightdeck crew could no longer be expected to fulfil all those preparatory functions. So other specialists were trained and tasked with performing most of those duties.

But always they carried out their appointed tasks with the captain’s authority. When the captain arrived at the aircraft, he would take over the responsibility by signing the flight plan prepared by the dispatcher, and the load sheet prepared by the traffic agent. Even the maintenance engineer works on a specific aircraft designated for a particular flight on the authority granted by the captain. The captain will peruse the technical logbook to check that reported technical defects have been cleared by the maintenance engineer. The Captain will have the final say.

It must be understood that while ‘authority’ can be shared, ‘responsibility’ cannot. The authority to conduct a flight safely is vested in the captain by the airline and the civil aviation organisation to which it is beholden. A ‘chain of command’ must be strictly adhered to at all times. A relic of the days of the captain’s one-person show is the hat/cap, with the company logo on it, that he/she (and the supporting crew) still wears. It is regarded by many as the ultimate symbol of authority in the world of aviation.

As airlines also grew larger, more people got in on the act. Now there were officials with such titles and job functions as chairman, company accountant, human resource manager, engineering manager, passenger services manager, and even a company lawyer. They are all doing just about everything the ‘one man show’ did in the early days. However the responsibility for a safe and expeditious flight remains with the captain. He/she must be fully conversant with international regulations because he/she operates in regulated airspace all over the world. Today, the airline practices and principles learnt through the ages - mainly from bittersweet experience - are taught to new pilots through Command Courses/Training and Crew Resource

Management (CRM) Training. A Captain has to be a ‘jack of all trades and a master of all’ Today’s airline pilot is well equipped to solve problems in real time unlike civil servants and lawyers who could call for another cup of tea - with lots of sugar (what diabetes?!) - and put the decision off for another day.

A few years ago when the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) realised that the CAASL did not have qualified personnel with knowledge and experience, they brought in an international team to provide a ‘safety oversight’. Unfortunately, when they left most responsible posts were filled by graduate ATCOs who did not have a clue as to how airlines operated.

Consequently, these individuals had to depend entirely on ‘book knowledge’ and were thus unable to exercise good judgment based on those two vital and indispensable factors - knowledge and experience. Furthermore, they ended up over-regulating in many areas and aspects of civil aviation, for example the importation of aircraft, aircrew licensing, and pilot medical examinations.

One of the few pilots who was willing to join the CAASL concluded his job application by stating his belief that to act without fear or favour he should be paid as much or more than what he was earning as an airline pilot.

The reply by the then Chairman CAASL was that they couldn’t afford to employ him!

I believe that the CAASL should have leader like an airline captain who will provide the leadership and motivation. The appointee will also be able to achieve a mission within the framework of the law, something that he/she has been doing at the sharp end of multi-million dollar airliners for many years. After all, the management structure in CAASL is similar to that of an airliner, with its chain of command and various branches of expertise, be it flight operations, engineering, air traffic control, accounts or law.