Again, I reiterate, we are not going to publish the numbers or who was involved on here until we get the IAA's version of events. Needless to say, we have all the information and will be comparing notes at that time.
NATS collated all the information and passed it to the CAA SRG and to the IAA. As aviation professionals you will know that the information involved will include time referenced radar plots, approach and tower frequency audio, atis, met observations and, most importantly, the IRVRs constantly logged and updated when vis falls below specified limits.
The IAA have been under a lot of criticism on here for being 'toothless'. With the UK agencies' role and UK airline involvement on the night, the opportunity is there for the CAA to present the results of their own investigation.
It is our hope, here at PPRuNe, that the investigations and reports issued will not just be a limited, dry technical analysis of the multiple approaches that breached safety regulations on the night in question. All the aviation professionals who use PPRuNe are concerned that the investigations will not only delve into the operational issues but, in particular, will highlight the cultural issues that are behind what appears to be the biggest breakdown in operational integrity and safety for many years here in the UK.
This is not just an issue for the IAA but one that relates to the oversight functions of all regulators, including the CAA, and will possibly highlight the differences in their authority with respect to the way they deal with pan-national basings by individual operators. The CAA does not have oversight responsibility for foreign registered aircraft based here in the UK. All they can do is ramp checks and we all know that is not the same thing.
Operating to the same set of safety regulations in itself is not the only criteria that should be looked at. It's the same old adage about accountants, they know the price of everything but the value of nothing. We here at PPRuNe are trying to highlight the effects that different corporate cultures can have in a safety critical industry. Does corporate culture and the fallibility of human factors have an influence on the amount of '
Risky shift' that is the result? Could it be that the regulators have different attitudes to it on either side of the Irish Sea?