LB:
You call it smart arse. I call it prediction.
From experience, when complex systems fail, they don't do it gracefully. The damage may only appear very late in the process of failure when the structure of the system starts falling apart. One way of describing this is "hollowing out" from the inside, gradually the termites eat out the foundations and structural timbers of a house, then one day a gust of wind and the whole thing collapses. I would contend that maybe the entire aviation regulation and control system is starting to fail the same way.
A practical example was provided by the demise of Ansett Airlines. Its there if you ready between the lines of the special ATSB report. The owners cut too deep. They removed (fired) at least one layer of the maintenance planning staff, the guys who used to be led by Capt. Doug Kelynack, all old LAMES in grey cardigans who had encyclopedic aircraft knowledge and managed the process of assembling work packages, scheduling AD's, etc, etc. for individual aircraft. They may have also got rid of Les Hesses merry men, the maintenance schedulers. They grey men went, and with them the irreplaceable knowledge.
Nothing happened for at least three years, but progressively things weren't done that needed to be done. One day it was discovered that a critical B767 AD had been missed and Boeing wasnt granting extensions and when ATSB and CASA looked further in a special audit, NOTHING could be guaranteed about the maintenance state of the entire fleet. CASA had to pull the AOC. Ansett collapsed.
I suspect we are starting to see the end game of Australian Aviation regulation. But that is based on what other people are saying. I have no personal experience. The telltale signs as Dick points out are a creeping increase in the accident rate. None of these accidents are necessarily related except that each contains an element of regulatory failure somewhere in the layers of swiss cheese.
Underlying causes:
- poor leadership internally and externally by the regulator.
- a culture of blame and retribution internally and externally.
- an inflexible, hopelessly complex set of regulations, capriciously enforced. Developed not from a safety perspective, but from a government liability perspective.
Failure manifests itself as:
- failure of national safety systems systems. (airservices, Ansett).
- "pilot error" as an accident cause where the real issue is poor training and training in things that don't matter.
- Regulatory "Accidents" eg: discovery of Bristell certification gaps.
- Accidents caused by mistakes in operation, maintenance and overhaul related to bad guidance.
IF we are in an end state, the accident rate will continue to increase.