In those days many said that our self separation when IFR was perfectly safe
I have some questions......
What, exactly do you (or they) mean by "perfectly safe"?
Does it mean no accidents, ever?
Does it mean 1 x 10-7 (1 accident 10 million movements)
Does it mean 1 x 10-8 (1 accident 100 million movements)
What if the Mangalore incident was the 1 accident for 10 million movements? ( or even the 100 million). Just because you have an accident, does not mean that the desired risk level has not been achieved.
The missing link in Australia is that we don't have established risk classifications for different operations in different airspace that are published and accepted by industry. So we don't know what target level of safety we are trying to achieve....but I will give you a hint........it cant be zero.......its statistically impossible.
That also means of the options I give you above....you also cannot pick zero......which means you must pick one of the other 2.......which means you must ponder the answer to the last question.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against considering changes to the airspace system. I am against assuming changes to the airspace system will fix the assumed problems. If it can be determined that Mangalore statistically fits the risk model for that operation in that airspace class, then do we actually need to change anything at all?
Alpha