Commercial pilots have been caught cheating on essential safety exams because the regulator has not changed the tests for 20 years.
Pilots have been emailing and printing out the answers to the exams and secretly pasting them into textbooks allowed into the mandatory tests.
The rort came to light in the prosecution of a Queensland-based pilot who was banned from flying after the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority (CASA) found he had emailed the answers to another pilot.
The ban was overturned on appeal but the allegations made by prosecutors raise fears of widespread cheating because the watchdog failed to regularly change the exam questions, making it easy for pilots to take "coded" answers into open book exams.
Last year a whistleblower tipped off CASA, revealing four cheat sheet pages with answers to 33 questions hidden inside a Boeing 727 handbook allowed into exam rooms.
The whistleblower claimed it was "common knowledge'' that candidates for the highest grade pilot's license examination, Air Transport Pilot License, used cheat sheets.
AAT Deputy President Philip Hack SC said the description seemed "entirely accurate''.
"The conclusion is inescapable that the four pages were designed to be taken into an examination room and to provide an improper advantage to any candidate using them,'' Mr Hack said.
"Any such use was plainly gross and flagrant cheating.''
However, on Thursday Mr Hack cleared Queensland commercial pilot Kyle Marsh of cheating, overturning CASA's decision to suspend his licenses for six months.
Last year CASA was given information suggesting Mr Marsh may have cheated in the October 2011 ATPL flight planning exam, the Administrative Appeal tribunal heard.
Mr Marsh strongly denied cheating in his exam, but admitted that in July last year he emailed the four pages of coded answers to some of the questions to another person.
The man who was sent the coded answers had passed the exam the year before.
The tribunal heard that at least by 2011 numerous documents with answers to many of the exam questions were circulating widely among students.
Mr Hack said "someone'' had incorporated four pages of coded answers into pages from the Boeing 727 handbook allowed in exam rooms. A CASA investigator found Mr Marsh's exam answers were consistent with the "compromised'' answers in the cheat sheet.
Mr Hack said he was satisfied Mr Marsh, a man with a "passion for aviation'', who understood the need for integrity in dealing with CASA, did not cheat.
He also found that no one could have received an unfair advantage in the exam, because Mr Marsh did not email the four pages until July last year.
Mr Hack set aside CASA's decisions and license suspensions.
A spokesman for CASA said it was considering its position.
"CASA will consider appealing to the Federal Court," he said. "Once CASA became aware, it changed the test."
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Source: http://www.news.com.au
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