Survey aircraft crash, WA

[Gabilian]

The air up there,

My reference to the Chief Pilot and the pilot group having to battle with management is not in respect to compliance with the Regulations or Operations Manual requirements. In my experience this is typically an easy argument to win.

It is assessing the risk a particular project presents. I am assuming that the operations that were conducted offshore complied with the requirements of CAO 20.11 in the fact that life-jackets were worn and a life-raft carried. But that does not necessarily make the operation safe. It all comes down to acceptable risk. This is typically a very subjective matter and requires very good debating/negotiating/argumentative skills, relevant statistics (very hard to come by within the low level environment with any decent population size to be meaningful depending on the argument being discussed) and unity within the pilot group amongst others.

I have witnessed several occasions where management will ask other pilots within the company about their willingness to conduct a survey that others have knocked back due to that individuals level of acceptable risk. When other companies perform a survey in aircraft that a Chief Pilot has deemed an unacceptable risk for the given conditions there is the potential for management to apply pressure on that particular Chief Pilot to alter their perception of acceptable risk. That pressure is intensified when management are aware that pilots within the group are agreeable to conduct the operation.

Not arguing that it is only present in survey operations. The geographical, terrain, vegetation and climatic variations that survey operations are conducted in make it very hard to have well defined policies and procedures in place to cover every scenario.

Aileron 69,

Agreed, survey does present additional/different hazards not experienced in other types of flying, but the flying does not necessarily have to be all that much more dangerous then experienced in other aviation activities. It all comes down to the companies’ level of acceptable risk and their willingness to adopt sensible and meaningful control measures. Your comparison with agricultural flying although closely assimilates with that of survey flying still has significant differences that should be noted.

Your average survey aircraft is typically not built to the same crashworthiness standards as a lot of your agricultural aircraft are. Stall speeds are typically slower then those of survey aircraft. Agricultural flying is flown over a smaller area then a lot of survey areas therefore the retention of obstacle location, escape paths etc. is generally better and meteorological conditions do not change significantly throughout an agricultural area. Although agricultural can be flown over some difficult terrain in general vegetation is not such an issue as some survey areas.

I will agree on one point, I would prefer to fly survey offshore (appropriately equipped and a lot more then the regulations mandate) then 50 foot trees in a single piston but I do not even allow the company to put me in a position to have to make that decision.