And

*The sad thing is that the guys at my age are becoming less and less, and those young people aren't getting the experience from them*. (P\_8)

A loss of applied skills and knowledge was also being attributed as a by-product of the increase in professionalism, *"[* ... *] I think the downside to the professionalism is the loss of the knowledge how [sic] to fix things yourself"* (P\_3). Directly related to these issues was the perception of a high *sta*ff *turnover* of people within general safety roles, *"basically, there's just enough sta*ff *employed to do what's required, and that's it"* (P\_2), and a shortage of sta ff which meant that there not many apprentices in the industry and less opportunity to "pass the torch" onto younger people through *mentorship*:

*There's not many apprentices coming through [* ... *] I just loved working with older [engineers] because they could give me hints and guidance on where to go and what to do. I'm, me now as being one of those older people, don't have the opportunity to teach the young*. (P\_8)

These concerns were further complicated by a belief that when the opportunities were arising, apprentices were not being supervised or mentored e ffectively, creating a haphazard learning experience, and opportunity-cost considerations were impacting this:

*The apprentices are just having to learn by trial and error and on their own. They're coming out very insecure and very poorly trained [* ... *] As bigger companies try and keep costs down, those budgets that training apprentices, they don't have those budgets for extra people on the floor to mentor and to guide and to hand over those skills to the apprentices*. (P\_2)

Following on from the last point, the *financial burden* in the GA sector, and financial considerations in employment, was a final key practical and operational challenge. The organisational structure of GA was perceived to have changed in a way that disadvantaged small operators, and the new system was increasing cost with the *safety improvement increasing cost* and adding to the financial burden:

*Small operators are real disadvantaged. The days of having a small operator, be it a charter company or be it a maintenance organization with just the chief engineer, the owner, and a couple of LAMEs* ... *Those days are gone because you need so many senior persons now just to be able to meet requirements*; (P\_2)

*The main thing for me is money. That's the biggest negative at the moment is that you're always fighting it [* ... *] For some reason, the General Aviation industry, people think that everyone should* ... *We should be a bank for them. [* ... *] It's like, "well, we're a small business, we can't a*ff*ord to do that." In the same respect, it's* ... *Then [maintenance engineers] have problems paying our people and our suppliers and, by law, we're supposed to be able to a*ff*ord to operate*; (P\_9)
