This research was designed to measure perceptions of the CAA’s strategic performance and the quality of the CAA’s stakeholder relationships with a view of delivering insights to enhance stakeholder relationships and help guide the CAA’s strategic decision-making on regulatory, service delivery, and communications fronts.
The survey was conducted by Kantar Public between 10 March and 24 April 2022:
Online survey
1,992 stakeholders completed an 8 minute online survey. These stakeholders included representatives from the following sectors: air transport, agricultural aviation, other commercial and flight training, private and recreational, maintenance, RPAS, and aviation infrastructure.
The survey covered four key areas:
- Being safe and feeling safe
- The CAA’s leadership and influence
- Active regulatory stewardship
- Professional regulatory practice.
Qualitative research
Fourteen in-depth interviews were carried out with key stakeholders who were nominated by the CAA. These stakeholders included representatives from both commercial and recreational aviation, existing and emerging technologies, and a range of industry sectors. This enabled researchers to explore in-depth key issues and opportunities.
The qualitative research explored:
- Stakeholder interactions and relationships
- Perceptions of the CAA’s role and activity, including:
- active regulatory stewardship
- risk response
- the CAA as a leader and influencer
- the CAA as an enabler for new technology and innovation.
Summary of findings
- Most stakeholders feel safe operating within the New Zealand aviation system. Around 80% feel and believe the system is safe compared around 5% who don’t.
- Stakeholders feel that the CAA’s senior leadership is committed to working with the sector. This is the open, collaborative, partnership approach that stakeholders are seeking.
- Stakeholders see partnership as one of the four cornerstones of efficient and effective regulation. The other three are: clarity, practicality, and stringency. They think describing the intent of a regulation goes a long way to achieving clarity and practicality –as it provides context for the interpretation of the regulation.
- The CAA’s training and communications (Vector magazine, Advisory Circulars, and general information sharing) are held in high regard by stakeholders.
- Stakeholders experiences with the CAA’s ‘on-the-ground’ staff are mixed. Some very positive experiences and some very negative experiences. The negative experiences were often associated with an ‘officious’ manner and inconsistent decision making. Consistency of advice/decision making is one of the areas where stakeholders would most like to see improvement.
- Being ‘open and accountable for its actions’ was the lowest rating aspect of the CAA’s performance and hence a priority for improvement. This seems to be tied to the consistency of decisions and being able to explain them.
- The CAA’s resourcing is a concern to stakeholders. Resource shortages are causing two issues for stakeholders: (1) delays in administrative processes which are costing stakeholders’ opportunities, and (2) diverting resource away from future-focused projects (particularly technology related), which slows the pace of change within CAA.
- Stakeholders think the CAA is to slow to embrace new safety and aviation technology. They would like to see the CAA do three things to speed up adoption: (1) use current resources more efficiently (including borrowing ideas from overseas regulators), (2) engaging with experts to understand opportunities and risks, and (3) appropriately resource the area.
- Stakeholders would like to see the regulatory framework update so that it is fit for modern aviation. They would like the CAA to lead a collaborative effort to do the update.
We appreciate the breadth of engagement in the research, and have been using, and will continue to use, the information gleaned from the survey in our work to make certain we operate as a modern aviation safety and security regulator.
Kantar Public Stakeholder Research 2022 [PDF 2 MB]
Kantar Public Stakeholder Research 2022 - Executive summary [PDF 609 KB]
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