Irrespective of what ATSB continues to do to ensure its trashed reputation remains trashed, there should be:
1. More effective safety education, including more effective human factors education, not mere words parroting lessons already learned and not mere seminars and videos the equivalent of “drugs are bad”. They don’t count as “comprehensive safety education and training programs” in terms of CASA’s functions.
2. Less complicated (and therefore less expensive) paths to highly experienced private pilots to become instructors of key airmanship issues. Private VFR pilots with thousands of hours in their logbooks have a better insight into the practicalities and risks of VFR flight and human factors risks and, more importantly, more experience in how to mitigate them in the real world, than a freshly minted CPL Grade 3 instructor or an ATPL with 20,000 hours at 35,000’. Any idiot can say: “just don’t fly VFR when the weather’s IMC”. That’s not how to effectively mitigate the risks of ‘getthereitis’.
3. Less complicated (and therefore less expensive) paths to IFR ratings. PIFR has been stuffed by the complicators. (Yes I know that some theorise that the conditions at Mount Gambier in this case were not conducive even to IFR flight. That merely reinforces the other points.)