Thanks.
A good pilot and a character of rememberance................but?
It's the carrying of a paying pax that I have issues with. If he flew himself into the Bay then that would have been his problem. If he had flown a friend into the Bay with him then you could assume they knew the risks.
In contrast, as a pilot you did all the right things before flying yourself or passengers because you're obviously a responsible person. I imagine that would have been hard, and I trust you're now enjoying your flying again.
What I find difficult with this is the continuance of commercial ops, despite advice to the contrary. Not flying for pleasure but flying customers. To me it displays cowardice; a lack of admission about physical shortcomings that compromised an undoubtedly great talent; an unwillingness to face up to factors beyond an individual's skill.
At the core we're all like that. We all like to think we can do what we did when we were twenty, fit and bullet proof.
However, when most of us undertake a risky activity (and sometimes end up limping into the doctor/physio trying to explain why jumping on a skateboard pissed for the first time in a decade was a great idea until someone chucked that damned bollard in the way
)...we didn't kill a paying customer. We didn't pretend to an outsider that our actions were safe and professional, and we didn't accept money to take them along for the ride. We only had ourselves to blame, unlike the unwitting passenger in this story. We didn't let our ego transcend our common sense and allow it to take risks with someone else's life.
This was a completely avoidable death. It didn't have to happen. Barry's death on its own would have been sad, but he knew what he was doing. His passenger didn't, and that's what makes me angry. So many early deaths are unpreventable, whether through illness or accident; this one wasn't.
''Looking back, it seems that we may have been able to prevent this. However, there were probably higher priorities at the time.''
If a regulator does not consider the prevention of death as its highest priority then it deserves to be damned. No doubt Lucifer had hindsight too. No doubt he expressed regret, but I'm not that familiar with Milton.
Live with your decision, fellahs. You carried the badge and the authority of the Commonwealth; with it, the unspoken promise to uphold its law and stop wrong doers before they caused harm or death. Maybe all you saw was the privileges that went with that authority, not the obligations. What were the higher priorities this time around? Someone not doing their paperwork right? Someone piss you off by not showing respect?
You
ed up, fellahs. Someone died on your watch while you were looking at the 'higher' priorities. That's probably a horrible feeling but not as horrible as being related to the deceased; being the person who spent considerable money to buy him a ticket for something fun he'd enjoy and talk about, only to see him die because apparently you, the regulator, couldn't stop a person from flying customers against the conditions you'd specified, despite knowing he'd been doing it previously.
Tell you something, fellahs; you're lucky it wasn't one of my family. If it were...seen Dirty Harry?
Of course that's not the solution. Doesn't fix anything. Apparently.
I ask again (as others have) where were the ATSB? Were they notified? Did they investigate? Why isn't this accident listed? Why was this even a CASA problem?
What is an immediately reportable matter? ANSWER:
An immediately reportable matter is a serious transport safety matter that covers occurrences such as accidents involving death, serious injury, destruction of, or serious damage to vehicles or property or when an accident nearly occurred. Under section 18 of the
TSI Act, immediately reportable matters must be reported to a nominated official by a responsible person as soon as is reasonably practical. The reason for such a requirement is the need for ATSB investigators to act as quickly as possible is often paramount in order to preserve valuable evidence and thus to determine the proximal and underlying factors that led to a serious occurrence.
The list of immediately reportable matters for each mode of transport is contained in the
TSI Regulations. Immediately reportable matters are the only transport safety matters that need to be reported for the marine and rail modes of transport. In aviation where the Commonwealth, and hence the ATSB, has more comprehensive responsibilities for the investigation of transport safety matters there is also a list of routine reportable matters.
Transport Safety Investigation Act 2003