ATSB protracted investigation process. Flight safety lessons lost in time.
The Weekend Australian newspaper January 2-3, 2021, under the Business Section, published a story called “Dream to fly leaves student with $77k debt and no licence.” It concerns the demise of Soar Aviation at Moorabbin. The journalist David Ross has put together an excellent article.
The student pilot interviewed for the story related his concern about safety and teaching standard at Soar after witnessing a dangerous crash that almost claimed the life of a fellow student in 2019.
According to the article, a Soar student pilot was left trapped after being involved in a serious crash at Moorabbin Airport on December 12, 2019 that saw his plane flip and crash. A Finding into the crash is yet to be handed down by the ATSB.
I have often wondered why an accident of this sort involving one person and a light sports aircraft, has taken over one year to investigate with still no result. If anyone in ATSB reads Pprune, and I am sure they do, perhaps they could explain why a seemingly simple straight forward accident such as the Soar accident in December 2019, can take such an inordinate length of time to produce a Finding.
Despite the availability of ever increasing sophistication of technical resources to make the investigation process more efficient and faster, delays of this nature are nothing new for ATSB; Why is this so? Any lessons from this accident become lost in time.