Let us pray and make a sacrifice to the aviation safety gods
Those of us who’ve been around for a while will know the ritual incantation before the sacrifice: “It’s in the interests of the safety of air navigation and that’s the most important consideration in the exercise and performance of CASA’s powers and functions.” It’s a statement that means nearly everything and almost nothing, depending on your perspective.
Imagine if, tomorrow, CASA Avmed woke up and decided that homosexuality is a “potential aero-medically significant” condition, and decided to require all applicants for medical certificates to:
- undergo a homosexuality test in the form a questionnaire compiled by Avmed, for completion by the applicant and one friend and one immediate family member, and
- in the case of applicants considered by Avmed to be homosexual – undergo conversion therapy.
In this hypothetical set of circumstances, would there be any causally beneficial outcome for the safety of air navigation? Not one iota, if you accept the implications of the overwhelming evidence. The fact that Avmed’s opinion is to the contrary does not change that.
In this hypothetical set of circumstances, CASA could do a survey of passengers disembarking from commercial aircraft and ask them whether they had a safe flight and whether they consider the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to be doing a good job. Would the glowingly-positive survey results mean that Avmed’s ‘initiative’ on homosexuality was - to use a word that is sprinkled with monotonous regularity throughout just about everything CASA says these days - “appropriate”? Not if you accept the implications of the overwhelming evidence.
The only things that would be achieved by this Avmed ‘initiative’ are unnecessary costs, unnecessary disruptions, unnecessary stress and much worse.
We would all hope that in this set of hypothetical circumstances the Parliament would finally intervene rather than continue with the bi-partisan abdication of responsibility to the ‘experts’ in CASA, but hopefully we’ll never find out. We would also all hope that this set of hypothetical circumstances is completely ridiculous and would never happen. But…
It wasn’t that long ago – in this century - that a triumvirate of zealots was allowed to go on a trans-Tasman crusade to rid the skies of people with CVD from the pilot's seat of civilian commercial aircraft. Not for those zealots the overwhelming evidence of the 21st century and objective risk assessment and mitigation.
The zealots had some powerful weapons in addition to their positions in government authorities: The intuition and cognitive bias of ordinary people. A pilot with any kind of ‘vision deficiency’ must surely be a 30,000 foot death plunge waiting to happen. Save us! Precisely the kind of weapons used against homosexuals in times past.
The stresses caused, the costs imposed, the careers and career aspirations destroyed and the suicides caused by the CVD crusade were all “in the interests of the safety of air navigation”. It must have all been ‘OK’ because surveys say CASA's been doing a great job.
And having eventually been embarrassed into shutting the CVD zealots down, did anyone say: "Sorry for what we did." “Sorry for what we allowed to happen.”? Nope.
As noted earlier, in my most recent AAT matter Australia’s foremost expert in the area in question said the CASA Avmed doctor’s decision was based on “pseudoscience”. That’s the kind of ‘science’ on which conversion therapy is based and conversion therapy is still legal in some countries that would otherwise be considered ‘progressive’. So let’s all hope that nobody who subscribes to that dangerous nonsense is ever let loose in CASA Avmed.
Two epiphanies
I've been up to my elbows - literally - in aircraft, in flying and in other activities affected by the regulation of aviation for 45 years so far. I suppose there’s a ‘risk’ that I’ve been part of the ‘lunatic fringe’ for all that time. I’ll let others make their own judgments on that question.
One of the epiphanies I had along the way was the realisation of the extent to which civil aviation in Australia is regulated on the basis of emotion and cognitive bias. For all of the high-sounding rhetoric, so much turns on that emotional 'drive' to make aviation 'extra' safe. Some lucrative careers in CASA happen to have been built on it, too. And that's been very damaging particularly to general aviation in Australia where participants are often practically powerless in the face of a government authority on a safety crusade. It’s a result of ‘harmful overreactions’ to the objective risks.
Another epiphany was the realisation that the primary solution was, and remains, simple (at least in principle): All CASA staff have to do is comply with the law. But that would entail them understanding and accepting it, first, rather than just paying lip service to it. As a matter of practicality, they don’t have to because any individual who wants to challenge them faces the formidable preliminary task of explaining, to a court or tribunal, what the complex and convoluted aviation safety regulatory regime is and actually means these days. And that’s the ‘easy’ bit! On the occasions on which I have no choice but to delve into and try to make sense of the current pile of regulatory paper I invariably end up shaking my head in despair.
Whatever the legalities and merits, individuals are going to suffer damage to their financial health and face risks to their physical and mental health if they take CASA on. I’m lucky because I can see through the smoke and mirrors and have the means by which to expose the reality. But CASA’s compliance with the law shouldn’t be down to luck.
A real risk to aviation safety – the yawning ‘trust gap’
A number of years ago I went with some colleagues to a session, run by an 'executive coach', arranged by the HR staff of the organisation within which I was then working. The ‘coach’ said the single best thing we could do for our performance was to have an afternoon nap each working day. All ‘backed up by science’ of course.
I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. When asked to elaborate on my response, I explained what the likes of (now erstwhile) CASA PMO Dr Navathe would do if he found out I had an afternoon nap at work each day. The ‘coach’ said that Dr Navathe’s response would be an overreaction. I said: “Quite so, but he doesn’t think so and he knows he’s right.”
It used to be that CASA Avmed relied primarily on the professionalism and judgments of the medical fraternity, including DAMEs and specialists with direct knowledge of and responsibility for the assessment of the fitness of individual pilots – a reasonable and available approach to administrative decision-making. Now CASA Avmed spends inordinate time second-guessing and dismissing the medical fraternity, demanding ‘management’ of ‘conditions’ in specific ways and requiring batteries of tests, contrary to what the individual is being advised is necessary, without CASA Avmed owing any clinical or professional duties to those individuals.
It used to be that we could choose whether to tick a consent box, on the medical certificate application form, for the information entered on the form to be used in research. That box is gone and the form now merely asserts that we consent by making the application. That’s not ‘consent’. That’s ‘duress’. My compliance or otherwise with the legislated medical standard is not affected by whether information about me is used in studies.
We’re all just a bunch of ‘conditions’ to be discovered and ‘managed’ after the solemn deliberations of a ‘complex case meeting’ in CASA Avmed. And given that CASA Avmed has identified a “large number of potential aero-medically significant conditions” – just “potential” mind you – the ‘extra careful’ response is obvious and pilots who want medical certificates are on the receiving end of it.
I describe us as ‘the guinea pig’ class. Organisms to be tested, studied and managed by CASA Avmed.
CASA Avmed will insouciantly demand that a pilot undergo tests that, for example, entail risks of stroke or death with probabilities many orders of magnitude higher than winning the lottery. After all, if we’re killed or disabled by the test, that’s a ‘good’ outcome for the safety of air navigation and another data point in a study.
Accordingly, I’m no longer surprised by the number of pilots who tell me they "tell Avmed nothing" (expletives deleted). That doesn't worry me, provided people are getting whatever medical services they need to deal with whatever medical issues they may have. There is, after all, no causal connection between CASA Avmed's state of knowledge or ignorance, or state of satisfy-edness or worried-ness, on the one hand, and the state of a person’s objective physical and mental fitness on the other.
Good luck in closing the yawning ‘trust gap’, Dr Manderson
What worries me most are the people who are now too scared to raise a potential medical issue with anyone in the first place, for fear that it will 'get back to Avmed'. There is a yawning ‘trust gap’ and CASA Avmed has become disintegrated from rather than being integral to the system of aviation safety. That's not in the objective interests of aviation safety.
I earnestly hope Dr Manderson reverses that situation, as I care very much about real safety in the real aviation world.
Safe flying, all, and good luck, Dr Manderson.
Last edited by Clinton McKenzie; 22nd Oct 2021 at 21:53.