This appeared on the ABC news, Posted: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 0:20 AEST
QUOTE
CASA to investigate light plane recorders after 'ghost flight'
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) says it will investigate the feasibility of installing flight recorders in all small aircraft in Australia.
It follows recommendations from the Western Australian coroner investigating a plane crash, which killed seven mine workers and a pilot.
The plane, heading for the Goldfields town of Leonora, flew across the country on autopilot before crashing on a remote Queensland property.
Coroner Alastair Hope says if there had been some sort of inflight recording device, many answers about the crash could have been available.
CASA spokesman Peter Gibson says fitting all light aircraft with the devices would be expensive.
"Currently these small aircraft are not built with flight recorders in them," Mr Gibson said. ..."
UNQUOTE
The stage is now set for CASA to "suddenly discover" that video recorders are not expensive at all - they are fitted to many Sydney Taxis already.
This proposal combines in a very sinister way with the Transport Safety Investigation Bill, which is to be debated in the House next Wednesday, 18th September. That Bill robs cockpit recordings of the protection they should have and will allow tremendous abuse.
Why do we Australians allow ourselves to be assaulted like this? It's one thing to play a recording tyo find out what happened after all aboard are dead. It is quite another to empower a bureaucrat to seize a tape after a completely uneventful flight on the basis of an anonymous, malicious, and false phone call.
Airliners have voice recorders which only record the last 30 minutes of conversation. What we private owners are looking at here is video recorders which record the entire flight (because the Coroner found everyone died during the first 20 minutes, but the plane flew on for many hours, so a 30-minute voice recorder would have captured nothing at all).
I urge every Australian pilot to oppose the Transport Safety Investigation Bill. Fax or e-mail AIR SAFETY AUSTRALIA and we'll tell you how to do so effectively.
Boyd Munro
AIR SAFETY AUSTRALIA
Phone:08 8357 9596 Fax:02 9225 9127 E-mail: [email protected]
