Chopper crossess my runway nearly killed us

[Head in the clouds]

And we all wonder why people do not want to report an incidence that they are involved in.Hope our newbie to the skies can see through all the BS and armchair experts and accept that he did the right thing in the end and avoided the other aircraft, a miss is a miss.

It is up to the real experts to do the interviews, listen to the radio recordings if they exist and come down to what really matters and that is that it does not happen again. Our newbie has filed a report I wonder if the pilot of the helicopter has done the same? After all he is required to as well.

 

Let's just back off a bit, let newbie catch his breath, get a change of undies and let the due process take over.

Good points Ozzie, but we have a new pilot who sees fit to castigate other very respected and experienced branches of aviation and getting it wrong can and does reflect very badly on all of us. Some of us have discussed details about this off-forum that don't add up. And when you come across the following, as I just did, you tend to wonder how accurate the description of the event in the OP's filed Report is -

 

I might also ad that some of the pilots flying most regularly are the ones doing the dumb stuff. like the firefighting helicopter that took off straight across my runway this week and nearly killed us both. Obviously not looking or listeningAnd his two mates who did the same even after seeing us nearly kill each other

 

Great that these morons are not instructing as they are breaching every rule in the book every day

So it would appear that our friend isn't quite sure whether he nearly hit the first chopper or the second one but has been able to provide a very melodramatic and in each subsequent post increasingly detailed description of the event nonetheless. Or does the "his two mates" mean that there actually was the third chopper that the DrZ has loosely suggested might have been there 'unsighted'?

 

With holes like this in the story the report is going to look a little ridiculous I suspect.

 

Also if i had gone right and a third chopper unsighted had lifted off i would go straight thru him.

[dodo]

Oscar,

 

I disagree with your approach on this.

 

Worrying about media opinion distracts from the safety issue, and is incorrect for the following reasons.

 

The various regulations and regulators exist to ensure air safety and air services.

 

The system is set up to avoid right of way or right being a matter of someone being more important than another.

 

If fire-fighters or the RFDS or the RAAF, or anyone else needs priority, or exclusive access, they have a number of means to get this:

 

- Controlled airspace, restricted areas;

 

- NOTAMS (which are quite flexible - during the recent fires around the Sydney area, the NOTAM basically exluded non-emergency services from within 5miles /3000AGL of any observed fire. In other words, if you can see it, get away NOW)

 

- Immediate or individual requirements can be effected by use of Pan or Mayday calls. And anyone can use these, or break any rule (can't remember which CAR says this!), so long as they justify it afterwards. Use with care.

 

So the emergency services already have mechanisms to allow them to acquire priority as required.

 

If, in the doctor's scenario, there was a collision, the media would show prurient clips of grieving relatives and solemn uniformed funerals, and the coroner would come out with a cause of death and some good or bad recommendations. These would then be ignored (they usually are).

 

But the ATSB report would not be ignored. The ATSB investigation wouldn't put much emphasis on:

 

- the radio calls (radio assisted see and avoid is fallible and this is well known); or

 

the choice to turn left or right (superb judgement and ability should not be assumed available to rescue a situation that just should not have occurred)

 

but the ATSB would put a lot of weight on the systemic issues

 

- whether procedures in use were dangerous; and

 

- what mitigation measures were in place if the procedures had risks

 

So the ATSB report would:

 

-put shovelfuls of blame on BOTH pilots, as normal;

 

-cover platitudes about the need for pilots to keep a good lookout; and

 

-a minor comment at the end about the procedures.

 

The obvious conclusion would be that it is not feasible to close airfields for weeks at a time, so procedures must accommodate other aircraft. Then the real recommendation would be to CASA to avoid practices that are dangerous. And CASA would change procedures, because a further crash would make them look negligent. Either requiring a NOTAM, or exclusive access, or no crossing active runways.

 

my apologies for the thread drift, but I think over-concentration on media opinion detracts from safety.

 

dodo

 

Above and beyond (no pun intended) the specifics of the whole thing, can I point out the potential here for an extremely harmful outcome for recreational aviation had there in fact been a collision? I am talking about the public perception of us as reasonable and responsible users of airspace.I suggest that the general public perception had there been a collision and probably considerable loss of life would have been very negative indeed. On the one hand, there is (presumably) an on-going fire-fighting operation which by definition is aimed at the preservation of life and property and usually involves volunteer fire-fighting resources (RFS members in addition to the professional aircrew). On the other, there is a lone pilot engaged in a purely recreational activity occupying the same patch of airspace. Two aircraft - one engaged on a mission that most would consider to be of great public value, the other flying purely for his own purposes (aka enjoyment) without any discernible public value.

 

Now, add to that the fact that the recreational pilot by his own admission executed a non-standard avoidance manouever. Whether or not that was in fact the only realistic option (and again, by his own admission 'perhaps he should have turned right'), so I think we can conclude that it was NOT the only available option.

 

What is going to come out in the Coronial investigation? A situation of contested airspace between a high-public-value operation and an (apparently) selfish private operator who failed to execute an avoidance manuoever in accordance with the rules. The death(s) of selfless volunteers, highly skilled and relatively scarce professional aircrew and the destruction of vital and highly-valuable fire-fighting infrastructure (these emotive terms are not injected by me for effect but I believe an accurate reflection of the likely public reaction).

 

You can see where this could be headed. Immediate restriction of access to airspace where emergency operations are taking place. Public resentment of recreational aviation. Reinforcement in the public perception that RAA pilots are pointless and dangerous hoons in the air who couldn't give a damn about the general public good.

 

The umbrage exhibited by this pilot about the incident conveys an attitude of selfish entitlement that does none of us any good. There is nothing in the regulations (yet) that explicitly state that emergency operations have a blanket precedence over normal operations (at least, I don't think there are) but common sense and common decency say to me that if emergency operations are taking place, one should suspend shooting circuits for one's own enjoyment and get the hell out of the way. If indeed there is a fire-fighting emergency situation under way, you have no idea whether a specific flight is 'routine', in which case it is reasonable to expect the fire-fighting aircraft to observe normal airfield conventions, or a response to a call for immediate assistance to say a fire-crew trapped in a life-threatening situation where response-time minutes can make the difference between life and death.

 

The general public would applaud any action taken to limit the possibility of an accident between an RAA aircraft and a emergency-response aircraft - even if they did not understand the rules and conventions of the actual situation and who was 'in the wrong'. We would lose out again, somewhere in the equation.

 

Whether we like it or not, and whether the 'rules' say we have acted properly, we still need to be conscious of our public image if we are to gain / hold onto our relative freedom to use airspace. Getting tangled up with emergency services operations is a really, really bad idea.

[facthunter]

The emotion has nothing to do with anything at an inquiry. Sometimes it will be a witch hunt. ie What rules were broken and how much blame can be assigned to any perceived rule breakage or inattention etc. Ideally the emphasis would be on preventing a similar incident. At worst it will be an exercise to be seen to be responding but I hope that wouldn't happen. That sort of reaction is more likely to be applied by an employer trying to get in early and penalise a pilot, and not have the Regulator look for other issues. If there had been a collision there would have been loss of lives most likely and there would have been an investigation and coroner's inquest for sure. Nev

 

 

[Oscar]

Dodo, while I agree with most of what you have said - in particular, with the comment that the systems are set up with safety as the objective, not public relations - we as a group cannot afford to rely on 'right' as a defence against being effectively in the wrong place at the wrong time, especially where lives could be lost while undertaking emergency services operations in support of the general community.

 

While I am amazed at the skill of a low-time RAA pilot who can pull off a 60-degree climbing turn at lift-off speed within 200 feet of the ground, I maintain that a more responsive attitude towards the airfield use at the time should have dictated prudence in continuing to pound the circuit area when emergency operations were being undertaken.

 

 

[dodo]

I understand and agree..mostly. My comment related to media opinion vs real safety, and to the importance of cooperative use of airspace, rather than a pecking order of importance.

 

dodo