Hi All,

OK I'm getting over myself with my first ever fail, but I am just trying to get another angle on a few areas in the Air Law Exam.

Basically CAO 29.5.3 says "Dropping shall not be carried out within a control zone, within an aircraft lane of entry, or within 5 miles of a Government or Licenced aerodrome, without the approval of CASA.

So my question would be "would you need CASA's permissions to drop items within a CTAF (as per one of the air law exam, or am I mixing up the definition CTAF with Aerodrome, whether Licenced or Unlicenced?

Any thoughts

Brook

Hi Brook,

Bad news on the Air Law exam - sorry to hear it. Good to see you going at it like a pit bull though and not letting it beat you.

As for the regs on dropping, what kind of dropping were they talking about?

Basically, CAR 150 applies:

There are exceptions and these are listed in CAR 150 (2):
CAO 29.5.3 says you need explicit CASA permission if you are dropping anything "within a control zone, within an aircraft lane of entry, or within 5 miles of a Government or licensed aerodrome". So permission, "Yes" if you are in the control zone or want to drop flour bombs within 5 nm of a licensed aerodrome.

On another point, a CTAF is a Common Traffic Advisory Frequency and not an airspace definition. It is a wide area around uncontrolled aerodromes where certain radio procedures should be observed. Dropping in a CTAF is really dropping in uncontrolled airspace where there is a CTAF frequency available for operations at one or more airfields in the area.

So, without knowing the exact wording of the question (and we all know how important THAT is in Air Law), for my money, I'd say you do not need CASA permission to drop because:

(a) you won't be dropping anyway and
(b) if you were, you would be doing one of those things in CAR 150 (2) which don't require permission.

I assume the question made some inference in the wording to let you work out if you were affected by CAO 29.5.3 or not. If you were, then you'd need permission. Otherwise I'd say no.

Just my 2 cents worth on this one

Cheers,

Rich

Thanks Richard,

That is fantastic. Yep the question did say a CTAF, so may have mistakenly made a mental association with a licences aerodrome in that case.

Appreciate that. The CAAP was interesting too, but still, I have no idea about the LOWEST level of permission amongst those able to sign a maintenance release. To me, they all have the same permission to sign off on a MR.

Its interesting to see the differences between batches of questions you can get!

Onwards and upwards!

Brook

Hi Richard,

Meant to add the dropping questions related to dropping under 500 ft.

Brook