Folks,
At the risk of repeating myself:
I continue to support the ICAO Risk Management approach to CNS/ATM resources allocation. For those of you who want to be the only soldier in the battalion in step, march to your own drum, or whatever, be my guest.
I have also said, time and again, that aviation regulatory reform in Australia (and that includes proper risk analysis) has been blunted and reversed time and again, by sectional pressure groups, with the results for all to see.
When was Australia last held up as a shining example of aviation regulatory efficiency. (And please don't quote TAAAAATS, after all, it is only a not very up to date version of Eurocat)
One thing Mick Toller (former CASA DAS/CEO) was right about, was his description of Australia as: "An aviation Galapagos, where all sorts of strange mutation have developed in splendid isolation".
Our rather poor safety record (compared to US), including near hits and collisions, rather does suggest that that such splendid isolation/isolationism doesn't produce the best safety outcomes. All it reflects is our isolationist inability to learn from other, often (ie: the US) with vastly greater ( might I even say: statistically significant) experience.
If any of you understood the background of the modern risk management approach to operation/technical issues you would understand; NOT using risk management analysis can, by definition, ONLY produce less than optimum results, and WILL result in both higher risk and economic waste.
Quite frankly, your continual assertions about "C must be safer than E", in risk analysis terms, are meaningless, if for no other reason than "Safe/Safer" are dimensionless terms, and to use an overworked expression, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it". It's not as simple as that, of course, but that will do for a start.
Once you have achieved a 5E-9 probability of collision, no additional resources/higher class of airspace is going to make the slightest difference to the likelihood of a collision.
I note that nobody had taken up the point that the design risk criteria for instrument procedure design and losing an aircraft due to CFIT during the departure/approach is several orders of magnitude greater than the probability of a collision, ie: the separation assurance standard.
How many aircraft/lives have we lost, in Australia, during departure or approach phases of flight??
Interesting piece of psychology, that those of you with a window seat happily accept this (much higher) risk, but become as unhinged as the media about a midair.
Why am I not surprised that you don't want to take that one up?? You do understand the (statistical) reasons for the shapes of the current obstacle clearance envelopes in instrument procedure design (compared with the previous shape), don't you ???
Damn, there I go on again about statistics.
Tootle pip!!
Incidentally, the design risk for an unknown volcano pipe destroying a high level nuclear waste repository, with the widespread threat to life and health that would entail, is only 1E-8.
I wonder what that tells us about hysterical media/aviation pressure groups, where aviation is concerned. That a mid air, although tragic for all concerned, should be regarded as more important (ie: greater protection measures must be taken) than for an event likely to cause widespread nuclear fallout.
Ref: <http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004AGUSM.V14A..06C>
Last edited by LeadSled; 19th Apr 2010 at 03:06.