35 deaths in 30 months

[facthunter]

The circumstances of a near miss may well be the same as a fatal but for a piece of luck. Definitely worth reporting if you are going to do this properly. Nev

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

... The only part of the whole investigation thing that is missing is the full and frank reporting to the membership and there are legal reasons why that can't be done...Andy

Despite the legal impediments, our Association has recently done a great job of getting safety warnings out to pilots. Common sense can win thru!

 

 

[Roundsounds]

There reporting system needs to encourage reporting of near misses. There are two obvious ways of effecting this:

 

1. Create an anonymous reporting system for near misses. Or

 

2. Guarantee no punitive action for reported near misses (provided they are not justifiable and deliberate breaches of reg's).

 

There seems to be a perception of big brother is watching and waiting to pounce on anyone who makes a genuine mistake. I'm not suggesting this to be the case, but it seems to be the perception talking to members and reading blogs etc. The option of anonymous or mon punitive action reporting may help change this perception.

 

 

[turboplanner]

This was DCA policy, and CAA policy for some time. I haven't looked through CASA's mountain of documents to see if it's still in force, but given the "strict liabilities" and ridiculous regulations we see today, I doubt it.

 

 

[facthunter]

If you self report the crime is usually not proscecuted in these sorts of circumstances, and that is the best way to do it. Nev

 

 

[kaz3g]

REPCON info is at https://www.atsb.gov.au/voluntary/repcon-aviation.aspx

 

BUT http://proaviation.com.au/advocacy/confidential-reporting/1097-2/

 

AND read the stuff on mandatory reporting of serious accidents and incidents

 

AND note

 

Why is there a penalty for disclosure of draft investigation reports?

 

ANSWER:

 

Section 26 of the TSI Act imposes a maximum penalty of 2 years imprisonment for a person who discloses the contents of a draft report to any other person or to a court. There is a maximum penalty of 20 penalty units for unauthorised copying of the whole or any part of a draft report. However, the penalty does not apply where copying or disclosure is necessary for the purpose of preparing a submission to the ATSB on a draft report or for taking steps to remedy safety deficiencies that are identified in the draft report. In practice a person who receives a copy of the draft report may wish to copy it and disclose its contents to technical experts, legal representatives etc for input into that persons submission to the ATSB on the draft report. It should be noted though, that anyone who receives a copy of the draft report is subject to the confidentiality requirements of the TSI Act.

 

The reason for the heavy penalties for unauthorised copying and disclosure of a draft report is that it may contain information that is subject to change as a result of internal and external review and consideration of further evidence. In its draft form, copying or disclosing the report may unjustly affect businesses and reputations. This in turn could potentially impede and discourage the crucial, future free-flow of safety information to the ATSB.

 

Kaz

 

 

[John Brandon]

John, thanks for the analysis. How accessible is the raw data you have extracted your stats from?

I don't have a lot of faith in the utility of statistics, which is why the opening section in http://www.recreationalflying.com/tutorials/safety/intro2.html is titled 'Lies, damned lies and statistics', a remark which was first published by some thinking person more than a century ago. Statistics do not reflect the reality of a fatal accident; i.e. the heart-broken person who has lost their life partner, the stunned child/grandchild whose parent/grandparent suddenly no longer exists in their life, the family adjustment to straitened circumstances and so on, for many years.

 

However, to answer your question.

 

Prior to about 2002 the number of hours flown in Sport Aviation were reported to the Aviation Statistics and Analysis Section of the Department of Transport and Regional Services by the AUF, GFA, HGFA, SAAA and ASRA. DTRS collated the raw data and published the results. I had a contact there who was unusually obliging and supplied me with tabular data pre-tagged with HTML. FYI I have placed this material on this website at http://www.recreationalflying.com/tutorials/safety/old_statistics.html. You can see that the data is quite extensive. Of course in those days there was not much pressure at all levels for tolerably accurate reporting of flight hours by aircraft owners, so they are probably incomplete.

 

The BITRE took over the aviation statistics function in 2002 and their hours data is available on their website, within their annual General Aviation Activity report. The report for 2012 (http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/ongoing/general_aviation_activity.aspx) was released earlier this year (they are always very slow in getting them out) and the RA-Aus activity is in section L Tables 34, 35 and 36 - starting at around page 52.

 

Those statistics are supplied to BITRE annually or perhaps semi-annually by RA-Aus for aircraft type, CAO classification and State. However a problem seems to have arisen in that the 195.2k hours reported by BITRE for 2012 does not agree with the office figures. Michael Linke informed me that the annual hours figure for 2012 is only 140k (which I have used in place of the BITRE figure) but there is no obvious reason how such an extreme variance could occur. The BITRE figures do not include the HGFA trikes. Michael also supplied the 150k hours I used for 2013 and 192k hours used for 2014.

 

In regard to the accident statistics, there is no accessible data on any website except for those statistics published by the ATSB; however these are so incomplete they are of limited value and the same applies to extracting data from their occurrence database.

 

The number of accidents for the 1985-2000 years was provided to me, probably about 15 years ago, by Rod Hewitt-Cooke. As you may recall Rod was an enthusiastic archiver of historical data and an enthusiastic desktop computer user so he had quite a bit of material stored digitally. I also had access to the accident investigators' reports, many of which I published on the AUF/RA-Aus website. During the 11 year period I was looking after the website the office staff provided me with the fatal accident data as a matter of course. Since then I have been keeping my own record but the recent statistics published have been confirmed by Katie Jenkins.

 

cheers

 

John

 

 

[John Brandon]

REPCON info is at https://www.atsb.gov.au/voluntary/repcon-aviation.aspx

Section 26 of the TSI Act imposes a maximum penalty of 2 years imprisonment for a person who discloses the contents of a draft report to any other person or to a court. There is a maximum penalty of 20 penalty units for unauthorised copying of the whole or any part of a draft report. However, the penalty does not apply where copying or disclosure is necessary for the purpose of preparing a submission to the ATSB on a draft report or for taking steps to remedy safety deficiencies that are identified in the draft report. In practice a person who receives a copy of the draft report may wish to copy it and disclose its contents to technical experts, legal representatives etc for input into that persons submission to the ATSB on the draft report. It should be noted though, that anyone who receives a copy of the draft report is subject to the confidentiality requirements of the TSI Act.

 

The reason for the heavy penalties for unauthorised copying and disclosure of a draft report is that it may contain information that is subject to change as a result of internal and external review and consideration of further evidence. In its draft form, copying or disclosing the report may unjustly affect businesses and reputations. This in turn could potentially impede and discourage the crucial, future free-flow of safety information to the ATSB.

 

Kaz

Perhaps it should be mentioned that 'draft report' refers to an ATSB draft report and not to any RA-Aus accident investigation report. RA-Aus is not a certified agent of the ATSB.

 

John

 

 

[slb]

4. April 11, 2015 - the pilot and passenger died in an HGFA trike powerline on take-off from a private airstrip at Dundee near Glen Innes NSW.

John

 

This is incorrect as the Trike was not on take-off, nor did it hit a powerline.

 

 

[rick-p]

I'm sorry people I don't fully agree with you. The only part of the whole investigation thing that is missing is the full and frank reporting to the membership and there are legal reasons why that can't be done. RAAus in general is a trusted advisor to the state police and has a good rapport with each.Don't get hung up on the whole investigation and reporting thing, we know as absolute fact that the vast majority of fatal accidents involve poor human decision making, and far less aircraft malfunction.

 

So focus on decision making and human factors.....if that can be influenced or reduced then the focus will come off the stats.

 

Andy

Andy that is a total crock of shit!

 

RAA are at times a thorn in the side of the police adding nothing to their investigations.

 

Making unsubstantiated statements as to the incident based on nothing more than supposition.

 

Get it right.

 

Don't force me to give some recent examples that could be more than severely embarrassing to the RAA.

 

How about we get some professionalism into the system and really give some serious forensic examination of these fatalities and not some arm chair guess'

 

We need professionalism in respect of our conduct into these incidents and to achieve this we need qualified people educated in the field of accident investigation.

 

In saying this I don't mean people that have done a 5 day course into slip and fall incidents.

 

 

[slb]

3. April 10, 2015 - an HGFA trike struck a powerline on take-off from a private airstrip at Walshpool near Jamestown SA. Pilot sole occupant.

I am not sure about this accident being HGFA. It is not mentioned in the HGFA accidents/incidents and I thought I had read somewhere that RAA Ops were on their way to SA to investigate, but can't find any reference to this.

 

 

[DonRamsay]

Is it just a timing thing or are there a Lightwing 2000 and a Super Petrel accidents missing from the stats. A single fatality (PIC) and injured pax in a ditching off North Curl Curl and the collision into Lake Jindabyne (?) with two fatalities.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Andy that is a total crock of ****!RAA are at times a thorn in the side of the police adding nothing to their investigations.

Making unsubstantiated statements as to the incident based on nothing more than supposition.

 

Get it right.

 

Don't force me to give some recent examples that could be more than severely embarrassing to the RAA.

 

How about we get some professionalism into the system and really give some serious forensic examination of these fatalities and not some arm chair guess'

 

We need professionalism in respect of our conduct into these incidents and to achieve this we need qualified people educated in the field of accident investigation.

 

In saying this I don't mean people that have done a 5 day course into slip and fall incidents.

Rick if that was true, and given that the police have primacy then why are we involved with every fatality investigation? If we really were a PITA to the state police then I would suspect that our subsequent invites would be thin on the ground???? yet that doesn't seem to be occurring.

 

With respect training, we have an arrangement with ATSB regarding training...its their investigation training so not sure of your point regarding slip/fall......

 

 

[Keith Page]

It's very difficult (impossible?) to form an accurate assessment as to whether there are any common causes in incidents involving RAAus aircraft and pilots. This is due to two main factors, firstly the lack of a functional incident recording and reporting database, secondly a reluctance to report near misses.Any new regulations or training are only hit and miss attempts to improve safety. This may be why the safety stat's don't seem to be improving, without the full picture some measures may in fact reduce safety. I understand there is a system being created, but it cannot come too soon and must be used correctly. New rules and threats of removing privileges rarely increase safety, proper education is the only effective way. Appointing a training officer is a good move, but they must have accurate data to work with or else they'll be shooting in the dark.

Hello Roundsounds,

Rules and threat just cause agrivation and generally develop more deviant behaviour.

 

As I have yelled and cooed before training which develop a "Good Culture" not rules, is the go.

 

Well developed good culture goes viral and is handed about free of charge.

 

Regards,

 

KP.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Hello Roundsounds,Rules and threat just cause agrivation and generally develop more deviant behaviour.

As I have yelled and cooed before training which develop a "Good Culture" not rules, is the go.

 

Well developed good culture goes viral and is handed about free of charge.

 

Regards,

 

KP.

For most of us fear of the authorities is outweighed by fear of doing the wrong thing and being ostracised by one's peers.

The best boss I ever worked under had a gift; he was such a decent bloke you didn't want to let him down.

 

 

[Keith Page]

Old Koreelah,

 

Part true ---- there are those who stick it to the authorities plus they know how far they can go before they are in deep trouble, well when that bunch are woken up it is hard work to control them as they will generate trouble in mass and they do not give up.

 

Hence it is better to generate a culture of which they want to be part of.

 

Regards

 

KP.

 

 

[John Brandon]

Is it just a timing thing or are there a Lightwing 2000 and a Super Petrel accidents missing from the stats. A single fatality (PIC) and injured pax in a ditching off North Curl Curl and the collision into Lake Jindabyne (?) with two fatalities.

The Super Petrel accident was June 2011 and LightWing Speed was September 2011, doesn't seem like four years ago, does it?

John

 

 

[John Brandon]

JohnThis is incorrect as the Trike was not on take-off, nor did it hit a powerline.

Sorry about that, some extraneous text got mixed in. I may not be able to correct it as I can't see how to edit an established post.

John

 

 

[John Brandon]

I am not sure about this accident being HGFA. It is not mentioned in the HGFA accidents/incidents and I thought I had read somewhere that RAA Ops were on their way to SA to investigate, but can't find any reference to this.

It wasn't on the 2015 list of RA-Aus accidents confirmed by Katie Jenkins but I'll run it past her again to confirm that the pilot was not an RA-Aus member and the aircraft was not registered with RA-Aus. If that is so and it is not an HGFA aeroplane then I guess I'll have to dig a bit deeper.

John