there is not a large spread of flying activity outside of such aerodromes. Therefore the percentage of MACs per year would be artificially higher than say, in a country with the same number of aircraft and flying hours ... but with a much wider spread of aviation activity outside such aerodromes.
I have pointed this out to Dick on numerous occasions, conveniently ignored, of course. We may have 1/20th of the flying that the US has but we also have 90% of our continent where almost NO flying occurs at all. In contrast, a quick look at a flying activity map of the US shows that flying goes on all over the US, thereby diluting the apparent "rate" of flying in any one spot. To say they have 20 times the traffic and so must be safer because their MAC rate is the same or less is plain nonsense.
As for Leadsled's:
One of the problems we have here, is the belief that Australia has the world's best air safety record, a severe case of "rose coloured glasses". We are fond of quoting "jet fatalities", and can't even get that right, we have had one, wiped out most of the Mareeba Council, but we confine ourselves to "RPT" jet, and pat ourselves on the back. Selectively narrow down the definitions enough, and the record will always be perfect
Rose coloured glasses? Rubbish. Most people in my part of the industry don't "pat each other on the back" over our allegedly fantastic safety record. And anybody who seriously includes the Mareeba prang in our "jet" record really is pushing the credibility boundary.
