Handbook

This course aims to provide students with an overview of the regulatory structure of civil aviation in Australia. Aviation and the law share some basic similarities. Both the aviation and legal professions are highly specialised and each require an extensive degree of training before one can be classed as a “professional” within the respective disciplines. Although aviation professionals are highly trained technicians or managers it does not follow that such training has necessarily included training in the law and legal systems.

The fact that the aviation industry is a highly regulated and legislated sector provides an even greater reason why today’s aviation professional should be conversant with, and knowledgeable of, the law as it applies to the aviation industry. In most sections of the aviation industry there are no formal requirements for training in the law or legal systems. Of course there is a myriad of rules and regulations in aviation that must be known but that does not equate to training in statutory interpretation or the like.

Aviation professionals, like their legal counterparts, spend a long time undertaking formal, structured training. Then there follows years of practical, on-the-job training. In fact the training never really ends. Both professions require ongoing professional training. Because of the extensive time taken to “learn the profession” quite often people working in the aviation sector enter at an early age. It is not usually a career in which one ‘switches’ to later in their working life.