Neddy
You and your fellow participants have now been lead into the trap and it now closes. Information you do not want to come out will now come out.
Readers will now fathom out why Airservices Australia are so desperately trying to keep the risk assessment process secret. By the way, I have never phoned a person at 10 at night, unless it was pre-arranged, nor have I harassed people with 5, 10 or 15 phone calls a day. I note you post anonymously and provide no evidence. Rational PPRuNe readers will know what credence they can put on such claims.
In relation to the risk assessment panel. It was well known around the industry that David Eyre, a very capable CFI of an aero club at Bundaberg, had been a participant in the risk assessment panel that looked at the risk of Class E above D. About a week ago, I phoned David and left a message on his mobile asking if I could talk about the risk assessment panel. He phoned me back the next day and said he would be delighted to explain what happened, as he believed in relation to aviation safety there should be no secrets. What he told me was extraordinary and I can well see why the people at Airservices are desperately trying to keep this information secret.
The Risk Assessment Panel which was held on 24 & 25 June at Brisbane Airport was to compile a study using the “Shang Process”, which is a modification of the “Delphi Method”. It is claimed that the Shang Process is used so that group opinion exerts less pressure on the final result, ie there is less bias.
In relation to the “Delphi Method” I quote the following from a paper about the “Delphi Method” which was written on 27 January 2000 by Professor Paloma Sanchez and Ms Carmen Gloria Escobar, which states:
“The main features of the technique are anonymity, numeric response and feedback.”
“The first feature, anonymity, refers to the fact that each expert is unaware of the opinions and individual responses of the rest of the group thereby avoiding biased answers.”
“ – ideas and proposals always respecting the anonymous feature of the procedure.”
Note: It is my underlining.
Voices of Reason and Creampuff will be interested to know that this most important point, ie anonymity to avoid bias, was not followed. David tells me there were about 16 members of the panel and most where airline pilots, many of whom had strong views about the E airspace above D.
David tells me that rather than following a system where the answers are confidentially written down on a piece of paper which are then keyed into a computer without any member knowing what the other member was voting, that the process was quite different. David says that after participants wrote down their answers they were then made to read them out publicly in front of the full panel and only then were the results keyed into the computer. He said that some of the airline pilots where very persuasive but they never persuaded him to change any of the numbers on the paper, however, he understands some other participants were persuaded to change their figures.
Most importantly, David tells me that some of the answers from the airline people in relation to the inability of private pilots to undertake certain tasks like selecting a transponder where so preposterous that he then adjusted his figures to “mitigate the problem” (David’s actual words).
Voices of Reason and others who know about due process would know that this is a complete corruption of the “Shang” and “Delphi” process. In other words, even though David was trying to “mitigate” his answers to compensate for the exaggeration of others, there were only possibly one or two people on the panel who had a “VFR view” whereas the vast majority of the data entered into the computer that came from the participants clearly had a very different view.
Because the participants knew beforehand that all of their answers had to be read out in front of everyone else, it is obvious that the confidential “Delphi” and “Shang” process was not followed. More importantly, I understand the facilitator is a person who posts under the pseudonym 4711 on this website. It is interesting that in an “Education Reporter” article (Nov1998) covering manipulation of the Delphi technique it states:
“First, a facilitator is hired. While his job is supposedly neutral and non-judgemental, the opposite is actually true. The facilitator is there to direct the meeting to a preset conclusion.”
Once again I point that David was delighted to talk to me about the process and about how he did everything he could to try and balance up what he considered to be completely over the top answers by others. He of course knew, he was in the minority. I should point out that David has no criticism of Airservices, in fact he is the recipient of a $15,000 ADSB unit from Airservices which improves the safety of his own aircraft and he is very pleased that he has been provided this by Airservices at no charge. .
So there you have it PPRuNe readers, the safety case for the roll back is most likely flawed. My suggestion, for those who are interested, they contact David and have a discussion about the quite extraordinary way the process was manipulated by Airservices Management to give a desired answer. His phone numbers are 0427 553 355 or 07 4155 3355.