Ministry of Forms

[John Brady]

Dear All,

You may have noticed that over recent years the CAA has been improving its interface with its customers by changing its application forms. I gather that this has been part of the move towards online applications but that is never going to happen for individual pilot applications because we need signatures by others and attachments so we have to print the forms and send them by post just as before.

But now we have large fields of colour and much larger forms, some of which have twice as many pages and have replaced the useful guidance material with warnings of imprisonment. All have disclaimers and statements seeming to make the applicant liable for loss and unspecified costs.

We (the GA community) have been invited to provide feedback and I have identified a conduit for that. If you would like to tell me what you think could be improved I will collate and send.

Please respond to a special email address [email protected] (not on the forum to avoid clutter) and provide only the following specific data (no ramble please)

Form no (if the comment covers many forms say so)
Section or Page Number
Comment (be specific)
What could be done to improve?

Feel free to copy this onto any other group list. By all means write about this here but send your actual inputs to the email address above and once we have enough I will post a summary of your views here.

For interest I am just applying to have a restriction removed from my instructor rating which requires me to complete and post 24 pages of forms and certified copies to get a single line change on my licence so I have an interest.

Thanks,

John

Some examples:

SRG1104 issue 9
Page 6 of 7
This just says PLEASE ENTER PAYMENT DETAILS ON FOLLOWING PAGE.
Why have what is just a blank page – remove it!

Or

SRG1133 issue 11 but also applies to all SRG licensing forms
Section 1
We have to manually fill in identical applicant details on every form including country and place of birth. You want us to type this but it is quicker to hand write it.
When dealing with a commercial organisation a customer would register so that data such as this are automatically completed after log in.

Or

All PLD forms
When using the “publication search” facility on the website, groups such as “examiners” have a link to relevant forms but they probably know what form number they need anyway. Individual pilots looking for a licensing form have to manually search every form and notice (ordered by number not subject).
A link should be provided to pilot licensing application forms that are commonly needed by individuals

[rodlittle]

Im trying to convert my PPLA to an easa PPL and most of the information required on the form SRG 1104 the CAA already have, why on earth cant they link their systems up properly so that this information is transferred ? instead of having to enter it all again.
rod little

[flightfantastic]

The office should check out Adobe Echosign (https://www.echosign.adobe.com/en/home.html) a digital signature application.

Electronic signatures collected with EchoSign are legally valid
EchoSign automatically records and stores the details of each document's history
EchoSign facilitates business-critical transactions keeping documents on the secure Adobe cloud platform

No real need for pen and ink signatures and snail-mail these days