The old Aviation Safety Digests versus Flight Safety Australia Vive La Difference

[Centaurus]

Older Pprune readers will remember the Aviation Safety Digest magazine which was first published in 1951 and which became universally known as the Crash Comic. In 1964 Macarthur Job an air safety investigator took over the job as full time editor until he left DCA in 1978. I recently obtained almost a complete set of Aviation Safety Digests (ASD) and quickly noticed the marked contrast between the general content of the old ASD and the current crash comic Flight Safety Australia.

Each edition of ASD was packed with accident reports from Australian to overseas accidents.
The editorial work was superb and in many issues the editor condensed USA accident reports published by the National Transport Safety Board or NTSB as it is commonly known now, into a thoroughly informative well written narrative.

It is my view and those of close colleagues, that for many years the Flight Safety Australia magazine has been steadily sliding downhill since advertising was allowed and since graphic designers have been allowed full reign to show their undoubted technical skills. A whole new generation of pilots have never heard of or never seen a copies of the Aviation Safety Digests of old, and therefore don’t know what they have missed. Yet the type and cause of aircraft accidents has not changed. But the editorial content has changed beyond all recognition from the superb flight safety publication of the Fifties right through to the early Eighties.

Flight Safety Australia published in 2005 reveals over just two pages, five advertisements covering RMIT recruiting for managers, flying school ads selling training, other ads selling books and theory examinations, an ad for a National Aerospace Board inaugural meeting and another about obtaining ASIC cards. Flick through more pages of this “flight safety” magazine and see a half page ad for the flogging of Operations Manuals by a private company, a half page promotion ad for FSA “What went wrong” readers contributions, ads for dangerous goods courses, and four pages on airworthiness directives featuring such items as AD/CASA/26 Amdt 1-Steering System Hydraulic Installation and Boeing 747 AD/B747/130-aging aircraft Structural Inspection Programme Cancelled.

Hands up those who once eagerly devoured the pages of Aviation Safety Digest as soon as the postman delivered it to their doorstep. If it didn't arrive in time and your friends got theirs, you quickly got on the blower to DCA in Melbourne and complained bitterly your fix had not arrived on time.

Hands up now, those who look at the cover of Flight Safety Australia only when you get time to spare and flick quickly through the pages ignoring the plethora of glossy advertisements that are about as useful as a Target brochure and maybe go straight to the IFR quiz at the end. An occasional article may arise a passing interest. Where are the well written condensed NTSB accident reports that you could sit down and read and almost be in the captain’s seat as the 727 crashed short of the runway on a black night non-precision approach. Well, you certainly don’t see stuff like that anymore in FSA and more’s the pity.

The aviation internet is full of air safety reports if you have the mind to trawl through the NTSB and British AAIB web pages. But most pilots would prefer to read a dedicated flight safety magazine especially if free and interesting and delivered to your door, rather than spend the evening hunched over a computer screen.

It would be interesting to how many Pprune readers think the Flight Safety Australia magazine has lost the plot and needs a whole new approach. The first thing is to get rid of advertisements, self promotion, flashy meaningless graphic design artwork, letters to the editor, quizzes, aviation news that has appeared on the media months before, CASA hotline ads and so on.

When I obtained my set of old Aviation Safety Digests from my local Op shop I could not believe my luck. I would have willingly forked out ten times the amount of money I paid for them. They were gold to me. If someone offered for free the last ten years of Flight Safety Australia magazine I very much doubt I would be tempted to take them. The odd one maybe.