Recent RA-Aus fatal accident history

[winsor68]

accidents these forms of machinery causes.

I know it is just one line in a large post... but I think it is not so much the idea that accidents can be reduced to ZERO... rather it is essential to safety that the out of date idea that it is a machine that causes an accident is stamped out. 99.99% of all accidents (which really aren't accidental at all) are caused by human factors... the idea that a certain percentage is acceptable is a big part of the cause it seems.

 

 

[Guest Crezzi]

I guess students and others all see the instructors as the frontline RA-Aus operation managers, but as you suggest not all instructors understand their responsibilities in this regard and may fail to inform the CFI that his/her grounding options for pilots and aircraft allowed by the ops manual section 4.01 para. 6 should be exercised. By the way that para has existed for at least 19 years but I have not seen any elucidation of it.John

Is there not a contradiction (at least implied) with Section 1.05 (Duties & responsibilities of CFI) which doesn't mention any authority (or even a requirement) to ground pilots ?

 

As a contrast to this ambiguity, the ASRA relatively recently introduced a by-law which spells exactly what instructors can and must do for numerous listed offences and the penalties which can be applied. See http://www.asra.org.au/documents/2010-01_ASRA_ByLaw.pdf

 

Cheers

 

John

 

PS any ASRA members care to comment on how this is working out in practice ?

 

 

[Yenn]

If you roll up to a Sporting Shooters day and the range officer isn't there nothing happens, if you roll up to a speedway and the Chief Steward isn't there, nothing happens. If you roll up to an airfield it's a free for all

Roll up at our airfield and there is no CFI no instructor and often no other pilot. So what is wrong with it being a free for all. I believe that pilots operating dangerously should be talked to, no matter how difficult it is and I have been there and taken the abuse. but eventually it blows over and with luck there is improved behaviour.As far as safety in other industries goes, I have seen all the bullshit with OH&S and still hauled men out of harms way when they thought the site was safe. I spent years in a dangerous industry and it gave me a chance to look for danger. That has been superseeded by people thinking nothing can happen to them.

When I started flying it was drummed into me that I had to be aware of the dangers. Now we do a course, pass and think we are safe.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Nope, I pull not your leg. I wish I was..:(

I have seen a fair cross-section of types during my training- a dozen different instructors over the years. (Yes, a slow learner, with lessons spread over years as funds allowed.) Age and experience may be desirable, but personality type is crucial. It's probably human nature to want to show off sometimes, but a good instructor buries that impulse deep. The good habits I learned from great teachers like the late Tony Hayes were over-ruled by one young instructor, who seemed more driven by ego than common sense.

 

 

[M61A1]

So, the only statistic that sport and recreational aviation should be striving for is 'zero'; no fatal accidents and no crippling injuries.

As admirable as the goal is, I think that the only way we will ever get close to zero, is when this is a personal goal, rather than expecting someone else to make you safe. How to do that I'm not sure.What I am sure of is that there are some people that will never be responsible for their own safety, and inevitably some of these will also be in the group that run out of luck.

 

 

[M61A1]

When the spotlight is turned on to an RAA crash, and the victims want to know who was responsible, then who else do you point to?

In a RAA crash, (unless it's blatant structural failure, not pilot induced) the person responsible should be the one at the controls, or the one controlling the one at the controls. Not someone they visit every 2 years. Anyone can put on their best behaviour when the need to, then do as they please as soon as they're out the door.

[nong]

Instructors and CFIs as cops? No way, brothers!

 

We are teachers, mentors and sounding boards. If we were cops, members would loose the ability to approach us for friendly advise.

 

 

[nomadpete]

Instructors and CFIs as cops? No way, brothers!We are teachers, mentors and sounding boards. If we were cops, members would loose the ability to approach us for friendly advise.

But who else has the respect of the scurvey crew? Surely a rebuke from me would not be taken as seriously as a comment from my respected instructor or mentor? There has to be some form of acceptable correction for those of us (well, not ME of course) who do things that are to risky to keep doing?

 

 

[turboplanner]

Instructors and CFIs as cops? No way, brothers!We are teachers, mentors and sounding boards. If we were cops, members would loose the ability to approach us for friendly advise.

Right now you are, whether you squeal about it or not. If you don't want to be better get an audit management level in RAA.

 

 

[poteroo]

Right now you are, whether you squeal about it or not. If you don't want to be better get an audit management level in RAA.

Right now, I'd say the ability of a CFI to be the 'policeman' is very very ill defined. Even in GA, the CFI has no real powers - those sit with the CASA FOI. An ATO, despite being a CASA delegate - does not hold powers equivalent to the FOI. In RAAus - Section 1.06 (.06) mentions only 'removal' of endorsements - not Certificates. Section 1.06 (10) mentions a responsibility for reporting 'incidents' - presumably these include unsafe flying practices? It would be interesting to know just how many incidents have been 'reported' to the Ops Manager - and, more importantly, just how many of these were followed up, and the incident closed by way of real action against the 'offender'. If nothing happened, and the transgressing pilot went off with a smack from a feather duster - then why would a CFI bother with any reporting under this section?

 

Section 4.01 (02) is about a CFI's power to control and direct activities at a training field - how this fits with public airports seems grey. Section 4.01 (06) states that pilots should obey the CFI's directions, which may include 'grounding' of pilot and aircraft. This 'should' is clearly not a 'must' and it seems to me that the actual power invested in the CFI depends on this wording. I don't believe the CFI has any real power to do any grounding at all. There does not appear to be any real 'authority' here.

 

I'm very much with Merv here. The individual pilot is ultimately responsible. Whether RAAus wants,or can, to exert greater 'control' over recreational pilots seems debatable. If they do, then the Ops Manual wording needs to be tightened up, and CFI's and PE's need to have a more defined responsibility. I cannot see the RAAus rank and file agreeing to any increase in powers within the organisation. The 'freedom' to fly where, how, and when you like seems to remain more important than meeting current social expectations of safety.

 

happy days,

 

 

[turboplanner]

I'm convinced the public liability developments in Australia from the 1980's passed the aviation industry by - you don't make the rules about duty of care, you either have one or you do not. What you're talking about could possibly decide whether CASA or RAA or both were co-defendants but that's about all the relevance. As an instructor you were the one who put the person out there.

 

I've started to build on the "Public Liability" thread information about cases and how they work and who is responsible.

 

A foreman in a Mine Site reading what you've just written would probably be raising his eyebrows in disbelief; there's no hesitation in bringing a dozer to a stop, evacuating a sector, or removing an employee and sending him away for retraining if there's any evidence of a risk there.

 

 

[facthunter]

The real meat would be the penalties available under the relevant act. These include fines and imprisonment. There are also required notification procedures where any evidence of an 'unsafe" operation of anything associated with aircraft is observed. The "freedom" to fly how and when or where you like does NOT exist here, and I don't see how it ever could if a system where some assurances and standards must be maintained. Nev

 

 

[turboplanner]

The real meat would be the penalties available under the relevant act. These include fines and imprisonment. There are also required notification procedures where any evidence of an 'unsafe" operation of anything associated with aircraft is observed. The "freedom" to fly how and when or where you like does NOT exist here, and I don't see how it ever could if a system where some assurances and standards must be maintained. Nev

They are the prescriptive regulations FH, which still exist because Department of Infrastrucure, in my opinion mistakenly stepped back into the liability chain. Other Departments, like Victoria's Department of Labour and Industry which used to test all the chains and hooks and issue penalty notices ceased to exist.

 

The achilles heel of public liability is that you only ever face it if something goes wrong. So there is an element, an one has been letting himself loose on here who hate it and decide to reject it etc. This was occurring in the transport industry following the introduction of the Motor Car Act 1989, where we all became responsible for the compliance of vehicles we designed and put on the road. That Act was much stronger than the previous prescriptive legislation in that if you were one of the people who knew that what you were doing was wrong but did it anyway, you were prosecuted under the Crimes Act, usually for Manslaughter, with the usual penalty being 6 1/2 years. Still there were people who produced non-conforming vehicles, particularly citing a clause which started "For safety and stability, the following is recommended"

 

The backsliders read straight past the safety and stability and said the regulations "were only recommended", so in 1999 the States and Territories mandated compliance with the Act.

 

From that point on, if you put a non compliant vehicle on the road and you knew that what you were doing was wrong and that was the cause of a fatality, you got the six and a half years plus a $175.00 fine for not complying with the 1999 prescriptive regulation, so they can go side by side.

 

 

[facthunter]

The important thing in our case is the limitation of potential liability by only carrying ONE pax who is classified to be "informed" that the aircraft is NOT operated to the normal civil aviation construction, maintenance and licencing standards. Other restrictions apply as to where it can be operated for the same reason. Road vehicles come into a different "category" of risk as there is no particular way of isolating risk away from other road users. I wonder just how much the two situations can be compared. Nev

 

 

[turboplanner]

The important thing in our case is the limitation of potential liability by only carrying ONE pax who is classified to be "informed" that the aircraft is NOT operated to the normal civil aviation construction, maintenance and licencing standards. Other restrictions apply as to where it can be operated for the same reason. Road vehicles come into a different "category" of risk as there is no particular way of isolating risk away from other road users. I wonder just how much the two situations can be compared. Nev

There might be a precedent set in relation to obligation to a passenger who reads the notice (refer another thread), but only in NSW, and only if the appeal fails, otherwise if you are negligent to the passenger there's not limit, and more importantly the NSW case would only exempt you from a specific case where injury occurred to a passenger who had read the notice, not to someone you chopped up with a prop, or dropped a wheel spat or a wheel on, or a thousand other things, so be careful about getting too excited.

 

Road and aviation do have their differences, but public liability is based on whether you have a duty of care, even if it's taking someone to buy a pie.

 

 

[facthunter]

I have no objection to a reasonable approach to the duty of care concept. I recall the virtual demise of general aviation for years in the USA because of liability issues and somebody who hit Armco on a Honda that had failed steering head bearings due lack of maintenance, but Honda still had to pay out some ridiculous sum as they built the bike. (many years before) Nev

 

 

[turboplanner]

In addition to public liability, they had a Product Liability obligation which I think was what caused Cessna and Piper to cease production.

 

They way it worked, if there was a different method of design, which would have avoided the death/injury you were at fault.

 

The case I remember was a husband and wife driving their Prime Mover home bobtail in the wet. They came round a corner too fast, slid across the road and squashed the fuel tank against a pole which started a fire which killed them. It was and still is normal procedure to hang the fuel tanks outside the chassis rails each side, but the prosecution showed that if the manufacturer had designed a complex tank which fitted between the chassis rails and around the prop shaft, the couple would still be alive and the judge awarded $10 million to the couple's estate, and fined Freightliner $11 million punitive damages.

 

Ralph Nader started a business out of Corvair crashes due to a defective rear suspension geometry, Ford paid out millions for fires in its Pinto in rear end crashes. General Motors started paying out on crashes due to split fuel tanks in Chevy Blazers.

 

Uncharacteristically for General Motors, who usually blandly paid out even when they didn't need to, someone got his hair in a knot and put an engineering/investigative team on g one of the crashes, which let's say occurred in California.

 

As was often the case, the Chevy has disappeared and this time they ignored the excuses and went USA-wide searching for it, finally finding the burnt out shell in a wreckers yard in some obscure place across the country like Boise, Idaho.

 

They cut the tank open, found the igniters, carried out metallurgy tests and found no fault in the tank design or construction, and then went after the perpetrators with criminal and civil proceedings with the full weight of the coporation. I haven't heard much more about product liability cases since then.

 

Australia has enacted Product Liability legislation, but it is just sitting there waiting for the first test case, expected to go all the way to the High Court.

 

I suspect the Honda case you're referring to FH, probably wouldn't happen over there today, and would have been based on the fact that they could have designed a lifetime greasing system (probably worth more than the bike).

 

 

[facthunter]

Why is this all so depressing? Nev

 

 

[turboplanner]

Because you and I can no longer come up with an idea, build it and operate it without a backup team the size of Dallas, and a $50 million test programe.

 

Lucky it didn't all happen in 1901 or we'd be driving around with Isinglas windscreens

 

 

[nomadpete]

Well, that argument spiralled down into a depressing hole

 

 

[turboplanner]

Probably not as depressing as post #1

 

It would be interesting to know who wrote that.

 

It give the impression the person is spinning around wringing his hands, not knowing where to start.

 

The first part would probably be to classify the fatalities, and then start working on obvious clusters, and I believe there are some clusters by type and clusters by location

 

You'd probably have to replace the present board and vote in some experienced people without agendas to live the high life, reinvent the wheel, but just to buckle down and set up some methodical systems and people.

 

 

[Aldo]

Very interesting to read the posts in this thread and find that very few people understand the actual logic behind safety & HF, anyone out there who thinks safety/HF is there to protect the worker/pilot has their head so far up their backside it isn't funny and you really need to take a look at what actually happens.

 

Neither safety nor HF is there to protect the worker/pilot it is there to protect the company/regulator this is why you sign/do the test/induction to say that you have understood/passed, the information that you have been presented with, from that point onwards it is your responsibility to comply with what was in those documents/exams. This doesn't prevent accidents it just covers the company/regulator when the accident happens (unless of course it is due to negligence on the part of the company/regulator)

 

I have worked in oil/gas for the last 25 years (flying for 30), onshore, offshore and construction and we don't have any fewer accidents now than we did 25 years ago, in fact we probably have more now than we did when I started, why (apart from the fact that there are more people working in the industry and flying than before)?

 

1. Common sense - no longer applicable (i.e. doesn't exist in many cases), no longer allowed to use the term in relation to safe operations.
    
    
   
2. JRA's, JHA's, step back 5 x 5, take 5's, SWMS, whatever you want to call them are a complete waste of time due to the fact that once completed the majority of people think they are safe and the unexpected is exactly that, they didn't even consider it as we covered all possible scenario's in the pre job meeting.
    
    
   
3. We now apply all situations to the dumbest person on site/in the air, this has the effect on the normal person to not fully partake in the assessments.
    
    
   

 

 

To get back to flying

 

Flying is a manulitative skill (i.e. the more we do the better we get) so we are at the mercy of what we learn, doing what we like.

 

I don't know anyone who wants to die, so why do we get ourselves into situations in which this is the most likely outcome - confidence/overconfidence & peer/passenger pressure.

 

To fly well we require confidence, to gain confidence we need to practice/fly in situations that are at the limit of our abilities - i.e. we improve, when we do, the next time we are presented with the same situation we know that we have done this before and therefore we continue, thinking this will be no worse than the last time (if we do this without first having an out we are heading for disaster).

 

The problem with this method is that sometimes we are not able to deal with the situation or are not able to make the decision to deal with the situation early enough that is at our limit or beyond and it ends in disaster, are we able to prevent this - yes & no - we need to understand when we are at the limit of our abilities and change our expected result - this is HF or airmanship.

 

Is the CFI, CASA or RAA responsible for our actions - NO, the only person responsible for our actions are ourselves, the sooner everyone understands this the safer all will be.

 

To put this into practice with a couple of examples.

 

I fly into and out of Toowoomba on almost a daily basis (approximately 50 minute flight each way)

 

• When am I most likely to run out of fuel on a flight?
  Ans. doing something I do every day i.e during my daily run in and out of Toowoomba. How do I reduce this risk - I will not do any more than two (2) return flights without refuelling (full tanks) even though I have enough for three (3) return flights including reserves and I also use 15% variable reserve - airmanship/HF.
   
   
  

 

 

[*]When am I most likely to encounter an inadvertant IMC situation?

 

• Ans. doing something I do every day i.e. during my daily run in and out of Toowoomba (Toowoomba is a crap place to fly into the weather changes very quickly and the wind shear can be a bitch) even though I complete a flight plan and submit it, get a weather report prior to leaving and call the AWIS service prior to take off, I know from experience if the cloud base is 400 feet or above and the active runway is 11 I can get in on a straight in approach from the west - go round is generally out of the question, so why do I persist - 3000 + landings (in all conditions) and the fact that I fly every day it is unlikely that I can't complete a safe landing - confidence. How do I reduce the risk - Oakey is 15 NM away on my inbound track and doesn't experience the same weather issues and I'm willing to divert if the conditions are worse than anticipated (this is part of my pre take off preperation and I have pre determined points at which I will divert) - airmanship/HF.
   
   
  

 

 

[*]Safety/HF is understanding the risk's associated with what you are doing and implementing strageties to deal with all situations expected and unexpected that arise during those activities - it is up to you.

 

The responsibility of safe flying rests entirely with the PIC the sooner everyone understands this the safer all will be. HF is there to alert you to the possible situations that you may not have considered previously but it will not stop you from killing yourself or others - only you can do that.

 

There will always be people who fly areoplanes, drive cars, operate machinery that should never be allowed to be anynear these pieces of equipment but if they are able to pass the exams & training we are not able to prevent this from happening - our best course of action is to try and educate them (subtly) on the dangers to themselves & others of their actions.

 

 

[facthunter]

The nut that holds the joystick is the biggest failure point. Still it's the legal liability issues that are impacting the RAAus. If it was folded and a new organisation formed perhaps these liabilities would follow the new organisation. CASA are co joined they MUST indemnify US. I feel they are legally required to as we act on their behalf. Nev

 

 

[djpacro]

I feel they are legally required to as we act on their behalf. Nev

does CAAP Admin-1 apply?

[facthunter]

Delegated responsibility doesn't contract you out of the need to ensure proper performance. In some ways the current situation indicates that situation existed. I imply no criticism of the RAAus in the incident mentioned. I don't know of others occurring or pending. Starting another body would not change this requirement. I have said from the beginning what I think CASA should do.