Originally Posted by
Dick Smith
Beer Baron. My position is that I want the CASA act to tell the truth. Despite the fact that it states that safety must be the most important consideration there are many times that CASA clearly considers that cost is clearly more important than the safety improvement that can be made.
The Deputy Prime Minister is going down a risky path supporting “ the lie”
Safety is important, and should be the most important aspect, but it’s not the only factor. ALARP - as low as reasonably practical - is a concept that makes a lot of sense, IMHO.
Lets take MH370 as an example. Suppose the location was found. Isn’t there a chance the location could be ambiguous about whether a crew member was flying at the point of impact or not? For example, let’s say the location did not show a long glide had occurred from the last “ping”. That doesn’t mean a pilot wasn’t conscious. It just means, there was no human input. So, it would be ambiguous. Or, maybe the location is half way between the maximum gliding distance, and a “death spiral” impact point. What then? Location would mean nothing.
So, it’s possible, that as well as locating the point of impact, you also have to salvage the wreckage. Finding the CVR for the Lion Air Boeing 737 Max was a difficult activity, and they new exactly where that impacted, and it wasn’t in deep water.
But, even if you pay enough to locate the impact site, and then pay to find and recover the FDR, that still may not show anything. Won’t it just show the transponder lost power? It still will not indicate if it was turned off, or an open circuit occurred (say due to an exploding O2 bottle). So, you still will not know...?
So, we get back to the ALARP principal. Which, while usually applied for risk management prior to an event, can also be applied after the fact. Is it worth spending $X for a possible increase in safety of Y?. Since $’s are finite, they should be spent on the lowest hanging fruit. And, given the Swiss cheers model, do we really need to know exactly the cause? If there are a few possible causes, wouldn’t it be prudent to try and reduce or eliminate them all? I assume potential failures are not only eliminated retrospectively.
As a travelling member of the public, I’d much much rather pay $1 per ticket to help monitor pilot mental health, than $1 per ticket to fund looking for MH370.
Cheers....