The Complexity Of The Accident Report!

[farri]

As an RA-Aus member, I receive ENews letters! This section of this news letter explains some of the complexities of the Accident Report!

 

Frank.

 

 

 

Staying Safe 5 May 2017

 

Welcome to the first 2017 safety ENews for RAAus.

 

In May 2016, RAAus produced its very first Safety ENews as a means of communicating safety trends and information. This information was well received by the membership and provided some great feedback on how to build on these bulletins in the future. These ENewsletters are published on a quarterly basis for our members and provide a dedicated means of communicating vital safety information.

 

The Complexity of the Accident Report

 

As our members would know, RAAus attends accident scenes were a member is involved in either a fatal or serious accident. What members probably don’t know is that we are invited to attend these scenes, and without an invitation from the local police, RAAus essentially has no jurisdiction.

 

Further to this fact is that when we are invited, usually as a subject matter expert, we are requested to provide a report.

 

The provision of a report is one step in our overall process, which is documented in our Emergency Response Plan (ERP). The ERP is a detailed internal RAAus document that governs every aspect of dealing with serious and fatal accidents.

 

This accident report component of the ERP is prepared by the staff member who leads our investigation, in conjunction with input from other senior managers, the National Safety Manager and the CEO. Generally it will take us between four and six months to finalise a report.

 

Our focus in preparing these reports centres on three key areas. We examine environmental factors, operational factors and technical factors.

 

Once complete, the report is provided to the police officer leading the investigation, compiled with the police report and supplied to the Coroner assigned to the matter. The ownership of the report lies with the police and Coroner, not RAAus.

 

This issue is a point of frustration for both RAAus management and our members. However Coronial laws require that the Coroner is the only person authorised to determine causal factors and as such RAAus is precluded from making statements about the cause of an accident. Further frustration comes from the fact that Coroners have up to 24 months to issue a final report.

 

In striving to get information to our members we issue regular updates and work with police and Coroners seeking approval to release critical information that has the potential to improve safety or that may have an immediate safety application.

 

We are continuing to explore ways to improve our communication to members and will soon attend a National Coroner’s Conference to meet with and present to Coroners and explore ways of improving how we communicate with members.

 

Our research shows that over 85% of our fatal and serious accidents are caused by human factors. This means quite simply causal factors such as poor pilot decision making, planning or management of emergency situations. Whether the pilot chooses to fly too low, flies into cloud as a result of poor planning, loses control on landing or take-off, gets an aircraft into an uncontrollable situation, or simply makes a mistake, the common cause of most accidents is the human element. We wrote an article on this very issue in the June 2015 Sport Pilot (page 44).

 

In summary, we will provide members with important safety related outcomes, subject to the considerations outlined above however we ask for your patience in these matters.

 

Useful links: Accident Report Summaries

 

 

[IBob]

That's a clear and interesting explanation...and I don't even live there!