CASA 94/21 — Training and Checking (CASR Part 138) Determination 2021

Who this affects

• Operators who conduct aerial work under Part 138, their training & checking manuals and systems, and the people who perform training or checks: flight crew members (FCMs), air crew members (ACMs) and crew members with duties analogous to ACMs (see definitions in section 3 and the persons listed in the Schedule).
• CASA (the regulator) and the CASA delegate who made the instrument (instrument header and signature).

Why it matters (official purpose and what it changes in practice)

• Officially this is a determination made for the purpose identified in section 4. Mechanically, it alters the moment at which the new Part 138 training/check requirements must be met by allowing prior CAO‑era events (or other named old events) to be treated as if the new events were done, for a limited transitional period (section 6 and the Schedule).

Claims and practical implications (tested against costs, incentives and implementation features)

• Claimed effect (implicit in the instrument): reduce immediate transition friction by recognising prior valid qualifications as meeting the new Part 138 requirements for a specified period (see section 6 and many Schedule items that refer to old events being valid immediately before 2 December 2021).

• Who pays / who bears cost: operators and individual crew bear the compliance and training costs in the medium term. The determination delays some immediate retraining costs for operators and crew by recognising old events for a limited time; but because most Schedule entries specify an expiry trigger (for example, the earlier of a recurrent check, expiry of the old qualification, or 2 December 2022/2024), operators and crew will face costs to meet the new requirements before or at those expiry triggers (section 6 and the Schedule table entries).

• Incentives created: the instrument creates an incentive to delay undertaking new‑style recurrent training/checks until the expiry trigger, because old events remain recognised until then (Schedule). That deferral reduces short‑term training cost but concentrates retraining demand around expiry triggers.

• Compliance burden and recordkeeping: the Schedule repeatedly requires that the old event was "valid immediately before 2 December 2021" (see many Schedule entries). That creates a concrete requirement for operators and individuals to be able to show records proving the old event and its validity date in order to rely on the transitional deeming (section 6; Schedule entries).

• Discretion and administrative risk: this instrument is a deterministic deeming instrument — it prescribes when an old event is taken as meeting a new requirement (section 6). It was made by a CASA delegate under the cited regulation (instrument heading and section 4). The text creates little operational discretion in the mechanics (the conditions are factual and temporal), but implementation relies on accurate record verification by operators and, if queried, CASA.

• Opportunity costs and safety/operational timing: by allowing older events to satisfy new requirements for a time, the instrument preserves immediate operational capability without immediate retraining. The trade‑off is that the new training/check standard will be fully required by the expiry triggers; operators must plan to deliver or fund that later. The Schedule defines those trade‑offs concretely (see the expiry columns and "earlier of" triggers).

• Effects on private enterprise and competition: mechanically the instrument reduces immediate regulatory cost for all operators who can show qualifying old events, so it temporarily lowers the short‑term compliance burden across the sector. It does not itself change underlying regulatory standards; it only postpones when the new standard must be met (section 6 and Schedule). It therefore affects timing of costs, not permanent differences in regulatory obligation. Conversion training entries with no expiry for the operator's conversion training (Schedule item 2 and similar notes) mean some conversion training outcomes remain valid without a calendar cliff, which reduces immediate administrative burden for that subset of training.

Key practical points to watch (concrete mechanisms in the text)

• Start date: 2 December 2021 (section 2).
• Applicability: to "relevant flights" under Part 138 (section 5 and definition in section 3).
• Deeming clause: new events are "taken to have happened" and requirements "taken to have been met" if the listed old event occurred before 2 December 2021 and the flight happens before the listed expiry (section 6(a)–(e)).
• Record cue: many old events must have been "valid immediately before 2 December 2021" — operators must be able to demonstrate that status from their records (Schedule entries).
• Expiry triggers: mixed — many entries use the earlier of a recurrent check or 2 December 2022; some life‑jacket/life‑raft/underwater escape checks are allowed up to 2 December 2024 or three years after the old emergency test (Schedule). Conversion training proficiency checks for operators in some entries have "no expiry date" (Schedule item 2 and parallel entries).

Bottom line (mechanical effect, not an evaluation)

This is a transitional, time‑limited deeming instrument. It temporarily recognises certain pre‑2 December 2021 training and checking events as satisfying specified new CASR Part 138 training and checking requirements for relevant flights, until the expiry triggers listed in the Schedule. The immediate effect is to postpone the need for many operators and crew to complete the new‑format training/checks; the medium‑term effect is to concentrate the need to complete new events at the expiry triggers and requires operators/crew to keep and produce records that demonstrate the old events were valid immediately before 2 December 2021 (see section 6 and the Schedule).