I know I am overreacting having spent the day introducing a Five year old to the joys of skiing. I also should add that I am NOT an Angel Flight pilot nor associated with them in any way.
I am simply pissed off at first of all CASA, who senses that Angel Flight is an organisation with credentials that make it a threat to CASA domination, so they have, like many others, to be destroyed, then with CASA's lapdog, the ATSB who have produced a turd of an analysis in an attempt to justify its masters position. Then along come players and axe grinders who want to stroke their own ego by sinking the slipper into Angel Flight.
Of course it was "getthereitis"! I can't think of any other reason either. However two incidents of it in 10,000 odd Angel Flight over ten years are statistically insignificant. By that I mean rigorous statistical testing of the hypothesis "Angelflight pilots flights are more likely than the rest of the pilot population to suffer from gethereitis" will draw a big ******* blank at the 99.999% confidence level or ATSB would have shouted it from the roof tops by now.
So since that fails, ATSB then invents a convoluted pseudo scientific analysis claiming Angel Flights are seven times more dangerous than ordinary private flying! I looked in vain for the causal link in that steaming pile of **** for the link between runway incursions and gethereitis but haven't found it.
So CASA and ATSB would have the general public believe that Angel Flight is populated by weak minded emotionally unstable pilots with sub human flying skills to boot - the very dregs of the private pilot population! That is the exact conclusion and the obvious corollary is that Angel Flight should be destroyed as a danger to the man in the street, just like a dangerous dog. Nice one CASA, protecting us all the time. At least Angel Flight was able to kick CASA in the balls over that one -you licenced those pilots CASA, didn't you?
And the ATSB, now in full Marie Antionette mode, ruffles its corsets and tells Angel Flight customers not to use Angel Flight but instead to use Regular Public Transport to hospital - Rex, Qantas, Virgin or Jetstar! What are they smoking in Canberra?????
....And then people, come here to PPRuNe and solemnly nit pick and criticize Angel Flight - for trying to help people??? CASA and ATSB make the pre revolutionary French aristocracy look grounded and in touch with the common man by comparison, they are the problem.
There is a cure to this madness and it doesn't involve ******* over Angel Flight. Maybe we need our own form of French revolution in Canberra.
*The asterisked word involved is a synonym for intercourse with the suffix -ing.
I hate CASA as much as the next gender neutral pilot. But if you can’t read your own rant above and understand your view is greatly warped because you have an axe to grind with aviation oversight, then no amount of me or others pointing it out will make one iota of difference. I can’t imagine any ATSB report being produced at the moment where you don’t throw your hands up in the air dramatically and wander off muttering CASA this and CASA that.
As for commercial pressures, I think you’re struggling to grasp the concept. A 200 hour pilot with a CPL and a pushy boss - they have 3x the experience under their belt, they have currency, they have more IF training, they have better theory and human factors awareness. Does that mean they won’t make a mistake? No. But they are better equipped to resist pressures of people and schedules - absolutely.
In my mind, AngelFlight involves private operations where the the possibility of get-there-itis is placed into the shoulders of pilots who don’t normally and who haven’t been trained to recognise and resist those forces. AngelFlight can throw their hands up in the air Helen Lovejoy style about statistics and ATSB has gone to the dogs blah blah blah... or they can suck it up, and invest that energy in training and awareness for their pilots about how to recognise and avoid these things in the future.