Airtex, the Jury is out.
The Airtex AAT clock stopped on Friday afternoon last week, all submissions in. Senior Member Mr. Ergon Fyce now has the unenviable task of making a ruling, which will not only affect Airtex and it's employees; but will impact on the entire aviation industry. The final submissions of this landmark hearing provided over 150 pages (combined). They make interesting reading.
It is not the hearing in it's self which concerns me. I am however deeply concerned about the how's and why's of this episode, the probity of the entire action and the lack of any tangible safety related outcome which may be of benefit to all. If there were 'real' safety related issues, they should be examined, cured 'on site', in real time and published for the industry to adopt. I believe, if the Authority is allowed to continue in an unconstrained manner, enforcing 'policy' which confounds or contradicts not only the law, but the spirit and intent of the law, without a realistic system for the industry to effectively hold individual officers properly accountable and responsible for their actions, the Authority's already marginal credibility will be destroyed. Not only at the coal face, but internationally, where we are already considerably embarrassed.
The question is how would a jury of reasonable men (or expert panel) view the case?; we cannot presume that this form of democratic process is generally and easily available to us, as an industry. Nor would it be proper for we, the industry to make any judgement on the case.
However, as the primary funding base, major client and the end user of the safety product, we are allowed to examine the actions, methods, motive, probity and cost effectiveness of any safety based action which impacts on our daily lives. Think of the realities of this action if you were involved; before being proven guilty of any wrongdoing, suspension and cancellation. The cost involved to a company or an individual precludes all but a select few from effectively defending themselves or obtaining justice against penalty for an act not proven to have been done. Even then, you serve your time before the guilty verdict.
I believe this case is as much about the regulations being a mess, about the way those rules may be misused, misinterpreted and misconstrued to make an argument which even highly qualified legal counsel struggle to untangle, as it is about 'real' safety issues. It is about speed with which an RCA response can be summarily dismissed and become show cause, resulting in an issue which needs a court to sort out. On first reading it appears, reasonably, that most, if not all of the issues presented could have been readily addressed, provided a good safety result and had a positive operational effect without the need for a record length hearing.
The extracts below are from the publicly available transcripts of the final submission for the defence. I find it hard to comprehend that allegations of this nature could ever be made of, or associated with the Public Servants charged with the oversight of air safety.
From the transcripts:-
Aspects of the respondent’s evidence
The respondent’s abandonment of the evidence of Dubois.
Chambers…………………………….………………….
Pilots………………………………………………………
Failure to call Hood……………………………………
The respondent in opposing Avtex’s application relies on allegations which by and large are unsupported by evidence. The respondent also relies on characterisation of what it considers to be the cumulative effect of its largely unsubstantiated allegations in terms such as ‘systemic deficiency’, ‘adverse safety’ culture and the like.
Chambers in his statement dated 20 August 2010 at paragraphs 47-50, under the heading ‘Nose wheel collapse, repeats only 3 of the NLG matters which preceded the collapse on 18 July 2010, interestingly omitting the one relevant one which was when the rod ends were replaced some weeks before the actual failure. The notice of cancellation of the Avtex AOC at paragraph 69 (d) states that the NLG failure “involves a maintenance issue,” and that the NLG failure was caused or contributed to by insufficient resourcing and inappropriate attitude to safety compliance. This bald assertion is entirely unsubstantiated in that document, and in evidence at this hearing.
One difficulty in the matter is that CASA officers such as Mr Chambers, and below him Mr Du Bois, with no formal professional ethical obligation to impede willingness to make allegations of the most serious kind, were subjected to the apparent need to treat consideration of action against the Applicant as of unprecedented importance. That is the clear implication arising from the fact that the CEO of CASA became involved in discussion of the nature of the action to be taken, something never previously experienced by Mr Chambers.
Recent conduct of CASA in hastily initiating the mid-hearing audit alleged to be in relation to an incident on 16 August 2010 in relation to an aircraft which for many years has not been maintained by Avtex is an unusual episode. It is of course not the case the CASA must abandon its statutory obligations against an applicant during any hearing in the AAT to which it is a respondent. But CASA cannot use its powers in that context where it is the purpose or a purpose of such action to create evidence it hopes will be advantageous to it during the completion of the hearing.