The Civil Aviation Authority's (CAA) hounding of a pilot over homicide-suicide risk fears has cost it almost half a million dollars.
Graham Lindsay, now retired and living in Coromandel, used to be a senior captain for an airline. Photo: Supplied
Graham Lindsay took CAA to court and won, after it grounded him as a threat to passengers in 2018 following an anonymous allegation that he was unstable.
Lindsay said the agency's costs offer of $210,000 covered about two-thirds of his legal costs.
The payout did not address "putting things right", either for him or for his then-employer Cathay Pacific. He said the Hong Kong company was "maligned" and there was still the issue of the outdated aviation medical surveillance system.
An OIA response has revealed CAA spent $208,000 on lawyers and a medical consultant, not including its own internal expenses in the five-year case.
"It's a horrendous amount of money to have spent on something that didn't need to get to get as far as it did," the pilot told RNZ.
Now retired in Coromandel, he said the CAA was right to look into the allegations, but then went overboard.
The courts found principal medical officer Dougal Watson and its director were "overzealous" in pursuing a misplaced and unsupported view that Lindsay was a narcissist and a possible stalker, and so might deliberately crash a plane.
"If you're not fit to fly, you're not fit to fly, and I have no issue with that," Lindsay said.
"But they can't pick and choose whose information they take, or how they receive that information."
Lindsay's lawyer told the CAA he would pursue his concerns over its erroneous processes separately and he was only accepting the costs offer because he wanted the authority to look at overhauling its medical unit and the wider surveillance system.
He said the unit "lacked objectivity" and had performed poorly.
Lindsay said the costs offer did not make a real difference.
"There's no indemnity, there's no damages, there's nothing in there with regards to putting things right.
"The [CAA] director has said that things have changed and things have moved on. I'm not convinced that that's the case at all."
Director Keith Manch had offered to meet him, and he hoped they would talk about reform, Lindsay said.
"You know, we can't have one person determining exactly what happens.
"They all went along with what they were presented. And they actually didn't do their jobs correctly."
The regulator in Hong Kong, where he was based at the time, was more careful, looking into the case at CAA's instigation. It cleared him and reinstated him promptly, and Lindsay said this was the type of regulator this country needed.
CAA said it did not make administrative decisions lightly, such as pursuing the Lindsay case and "is aware that when this gets challenged, it incurs external costs".
"In this instance it has been confirmed by the court that our approach was not appropriate. We have undertaken a review of our processes and are confident that it is unlikely we would follow the same course of action again in similar circumstances."
Airline Pilots' Association medical and welfare director Dave Church said they wanted a full review alongside CAA of the entire medical certification process "end to end" - from trainees doing their first medical right through to the appeal process when a certificate has been denied.
"This is a huge undertaking," Church said.
"We are hopeful that the outcomes will improve safety through allowing the medical reporting process to be more transparent and honest, rather than the current culture of keeping as quiet as possible for fear of consequences, and bring the aviation medical process into line with modern international medicine."
The regulation of the civil aviation sector is subject to overhaul in a bill that goes to a parliamentary select committee early next year.
The Airline Pilots' Association has lodged a 276-page submission on the bill, arguing for a move away from an internal regulatory process towards one overseen by an independent audit group at "arms-length" from doctors, system participants and the CAA.
In complex cases, CAA lacked specialists in-house and tended to "err on the side of caution in a way that, by limiting natural justice, undermines the confidence of the regulated", said the pilots' submission.
It should build up links with international specialists it could call on.
"It would also be helpful if CAA could demonstrate more transparency about the collection and analysis of data," the submission said.
"The information we have received also raises concerns about what CAA is doing to ensure medical professionals are sufficiently trained and audited to carry out their duties."