Striking Gold with old DCA Aviation Safety Digests
The other day I saw an advertisement in the Melbourne Trading Post by someone selling off 137 original old DCA Aviation Safety Digests from 1957 onwards. Rushed out and got the lot for $100 and worth their weight in gold.
These journals are full of accident reports that have been superbly edited and that cover a wide range of Australian as well as overseas accidents. One typical two pages full of text report included for example a propeller overspeed in DC4 (I suspect Qantas) where both engines on one side were feathered by mistake while the captain was asleep, and the aircraft went into a spiral dive at night losing 5000 feet before recovery.
And still some airlines do not believe in unusual attitude recovery training in jet simulators...
The index in the March 1960 edition (No.20) include the following 21 eminently readable reports written in clear unambiguous style:
Viscount disintegrates in turbulence.
Experienced factory mechanic sucked into Jet.
Low approach at night.
A wake of destruction, Delaware USA.
Do you use reverse thrust for taxiing.
Stall during forced landing.
Kerosene of Gasoline.
Otter swings of strip.
Uncontrolled descent of Boeing 707 over Atlantic.
Fletcher FU24 fatal accident at Armidale.
Norseman trapped by weather.
Nitrogen carts.
Radioactive Cargoes.
DC3 emergencyl anding , Colorado.
Loss of control in Lockheed Hudson, Lae.
Propeller blade fails.
Bell 47-G crashes in Severe Turbulence.
Crossed controls in a glider, Canada.
Spin accident in a Holz der Teufel glider.
Glider Airworthiness Certificates.
Gravity is still with us.
All that in 30 fascinating pages of flight safety gems.
In marked contrast, the 2004 January-February edition of Flight Safety Australia has 62 pages covering letters to the editor, media coverage of Sydney GA airports sold, Virgin Blue floats, Qantas launches JetStar, Farewell Concorde, FAA approves RVSM, DreamLiner closer to reality, Boeing axes 757 production, Boeing 777 makes first 330 minutes ETOPS flight, Union blocks safety recommendation, ANZ wants new widebodies. And not forgetting a 7 page cover story all about a winning essay called Conquering the Southern Skies.
Now throw in page upon page of promotions extolling the virtues of ATSB, information blurb on an Aviation Safety Research Grants Programme 2004, four pages of an Airspace quiz and answers, a Bruce Byron message on safety enforcement rules including a handy little table showing penalties, fines and demerit points. Another Bruce Byron profile where he states he wants to put more objectivity into regulatory reform. Yeah - right...
And finally, a very professionally designed last page that exhorts pilots to order CASA Safety Products like CD-Roms, posters on wire strikes and dangerous goods,and Safety Management Systems Information Packs. There were also 79 pictures in the magazine that seemed to take up an awful lot of space.
And get this: There was only one page on a specific accident and that was a JetRanger that crashed into a dam and the pilot was rescued.
Is it any wonder that recipients of the Flight Safety Australia magazine just rip off the plastic cover, skim through the waffle and the pretty artwork for anything of specific interest, and then get rid of it?
I recall that it was suggested to producers of FSA that some pilots felt that there seemed little of real substance between its covers and that its main content was out-dated news gleaned from aviation media sources. What was needed was not instrument rating quizzes, advertisements, glossy photographs, CASA and Air Services promotions and mea culpa articles, but hard hitting real accident reports both local and international.
That is where the Aviation Safety Digest excelled. Among hundreds of other pilots I would eagerly await the arrival in the post of my crash comic -as the Digests was known, and sit down then and there to savour its contents. Today, I watch "The Bill" each week as a poor substitute for the Aviation Safety Digests of old.
There is certainly no shortage of overseas accident reports that are available from ICAO, UK CAA, NTSB and Internet sources. A good aviation editor could easily examine and edit these reports for FSA and valuable information passed down the line to readers.
Reading my treasure trove of Safety Digests while sipping a latte at the local shopping centre, it is evident that each one contains more well chosen accident and incident reports than 10 editions of Flight Safety Australia. If anyone from FSA reads this I hope the message gets across because there are many out there that feel the same way as I do about FSA.
So, if any Pprune readers have old copies of Aviation Safety Digest, then I suggest you hang on to them and treat them with care and respect, because within their pages is sheer gold in flying safety knowledge.