Originally Posted by
missy
I think we are aiming for the same risk level in all airspace. What will vary is the surveillance, the communications, the procedures but surely the target level of safety should be the same. There may be some ATC equipment that is installed for efficiency, examples being PRM at Sydney, Ground Radar at Sydney (and Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth).
Missy is almost correct - we should be targeting the same level of
risk in all
scenarios but that will provide different levels of
safety in each class of airspace. The "cost of life" is the same irrespective of what airspace class you're in - what changes in the cost of providing enough safety such that enough lives will be saved to justify that cost.
A properly constituted risk framework would identify the hazards and their likelihoods & consequences (i.e. the risk) of each part of the country (and beyond) and apply the correct mitigations for each. The underlying risk level around YSSY is massively different to the underlying risk level at YSBK - mainly due to the number of people on each flight - despite the higher number of aircraft in closer proxmity at YSBK. Each control placed to mitigate the risk has a cost - and they can generally all be boiled down to a $$$ figure. That's why we don't have Class C (or B) at YSBK - the cost to industry would be huge - both in cost of additional controllers and costs to operators to operate and would achieve a reduction in risk to a level significantly less than existed at YSSY - which sounds wonderful but isn't warranted.
The objective is to consider the requirements to use airspace and all of the controls available - airspace type, procedures, technology (radar, ADSB receivers, ADSB-in, ADSB-out, TCAS, GPWS, EGPWS, CATI, CATIIIB) etc - and determine which combination provides 'about the same' residual risk as the next location. For practical reasons this is limited to a few different systems - generally we think of Oceanic, A, C, D, E & G in Oz but with special procedures in areas where an increase in procedure/cost to the next level up isn't justifiable but 'something' should be done - that's where an alternative airspace system may be used - CA/GRS or VFR LOEs.
It's all an exercise in managing risk - there should be a targeted level of acceptable risk (from collision into aircraft or terra-firma) for anyone/anywhere in the air in Australian airspace - and Airservices and the regulators should be using the tools at their disposal to level it out. In theory the level of residual risk at YSBK and YSSY should be about the same - and one might say that the occasional fatality at YSBK might take '00s of years to add up to the same number of facilities that would occur if 2 x 737s collided at YSSY - its just that we don't want that to ever happen but are conditioned (value of lives vs value of life) to accept that the occasional mid-air collision is ok. Given there is a non-zero chance of the 2 737's hitting I would argue that to a member of the general public, flying into YSBK is less risky than flying into YSSY.
Ol'mate in his 152 flying into eastern bumblef*ck should be exposed to the same level of risk as a passenger on a 787 arriving into Sydney. Until there is a risk framework that spells out what an acceptable level of risk is then we'll keep getting knee-jerk reactions like E to 1000' AGL or continue to 'accept' that unalerted see-and-avoid for VFR is a genuine control as opposed to a residual risk level.
And we can then do all of this without resorting to arguments around SFARP......
UTR