HC and his Safety Culture...
 

So this could be topic of which some of you have a number of opinions.... As one of his recommendations Haddon-Cave tabled the idea of a Safety Culture within military aviation and the defence industry that would be developed and monitored by the MAA. The MAA have been with us for a number of years now I wondered if we were feeling their influence in this area or is this one part of HC's report they are still developing....:)

Good first post!

I am, if it's any consolation.

...and posting from the West Country too! I wonder where CM works?
Though I left working with the military about three years ago there was a drive to start this off and I think it was going well in the Hangars...driven by a well known company, and dragging a well know force with it, where it touched. But I don't know about the Line and Squadrons.

The latest MAA Strategy document (https://www.gov.uk/government/upload..._2015_2020.pdf) has STRATEGIC OUTCOME 3, "To develop a UK DAE with a demonstrably strong and enduring Air Safety culture exemplified by associated behaviours", as one of their 5 top targets. There's a page of text about what they mean which might help put context into the question.

EAP

Strategic Outcome 3 all sounds like the right stuff, but is it funded and fully resourced? Safety costs money, and the MoD have proven consistently and repeatedly that budgets have a higher priority than lives. Spending within "targets" gets you a more noteworthy performance report that simply not killing people.

I knew the whole process had failed when the argument became 'well, we are flying it so it must be ALARP'.

The post-HC era has, under the ever-looking-the-other-way leviathan of the MAA, ushered in an aircraft that does not meet any recognisable airworthiness standards, has no type certificate and a vacuous Release To Service and a note to the Secretary Of State.

We may have been safer carrying on as we were, as at least we were not burdened by the new process.

All rather disappointing.

Yes - but, apart from the MAA who ignored the results of the very first Military ARC failing the very first question...Is a safety culture in the RAF working?

Thank you for your post, I appreciate you time. The next question.... has industry embraced the HC safety culture view or is this something left to the military world..

Rigga - I earned my money in somerset, very close to the other helicopter guys...

If HC wanted to remove the Byzantine complexity of air safety management then we have failed miserably - the amount of staff-work in generating ASMPs at every level has created 'paper-safety' where everything must be safe because it is on a list or in a matrix.

It looks like a gigantic a*se-covering exercise which, although it does hold senior officers responsible, doesn't actually make anything safer in the cockpit.

The amount of guff that has to be waded through in order to provide 'assurance' gets in the way of decent pre-flight planning and 'mission-bubbles' especially when everything is computer driven so no-one has any books in their ops rooms when the IT goes phut!

The latest thing to address the MAC RtL is FLARM - a computer database for glider activity which only shows those gliders that have it fitted and is, by its nature, historic and out of date as soon as you leave the ops room.

The only thing more pointless is bow-ties - who on earth thought that made anything safer????

Point of Order: FLARM isn't a database to be accessed on the ground; it's a live system similar to a (basic!) TCAS that gives you real time info in the air.

Granted, only for those aircraft (yes, mostly but not solely gliders) that have it fitted, but that's a fair proportion these days - and hey: Every little helps, no?

PowerFLARM shows up Mode A/C/S transponders and ADS-B, too.

Agree with much of your 'paper-safety' thoughts, though.

We are required to include it as part of an outbrief by accessing the website - therefore not valid by the time you get airborne.

It might help gliders 'see' each other but it doesn't help a conventional TCAS equipped aircraft see the gliders.

The technology must exist to have smaller and lighter transponders in light aircraft which would be compatible with TCAS users.

Well then, I agree - didn't realise that. That is simply daft. And apparently an example of "Something Must Be Done. That's Something; let's do that"

No, but FLARM wasn't designed to do that. It was designed to stop gliders - deliberately flying close in thermals - from bumping into one another, as an affordable, technically achievable and proportionate solution to that particular hazard.

ADS-B OUT is probably that solution, but (civil) legislation in EASA land militates against it due to significant cost and hassle with limited direct benefit to those with a limited budget. It's different in US (as ever) due to the direct user benefits of ADS-B IN live in-flight weather/NOTAMs etc.

But we're getting away from H-C now. So responses to first para only probably relevant.

We have increased glider activity in Snowdonia right now. Most (but not all) of them have FLARM fitted. Whilst flying in an ACM sortie yesterday we met one of the few non-FLARM gliders at about 12000'. He clearly didn't show up on TCAS, wasn't visible to Swanwick and wouldn't have shown on the FLARM screen even if we'd been able to see it in cockpit.
Can someone please explain how this system is supposed to help us?!
BV

It doesn't - the risk of a mil ac hitting a glider is very real since they are all but invisible - they should be mandated to carry radar reflectors and a proper transponder.

Chuncky M

From what I understand about HC it dealt with failings within the MOD. The civilian airline sector, at least in the UK, is regulated by EASA. The point is that it is an external agency that is the regulator whereas the MOD was self regulating pre HC. Just my understanding of course and I'm sure there are lessons within the HC report that would read across.

Regarding gliders and mandatory transponders I'm not sure what the latest technology can offer but of course the open FIR is just that, open. Lookout, lookout, lookout!

After 32 years of mil flying without TCAS and now 2 years of flying with it, relying simply on lookout just doesn't cut the mustard and TCAS makes you realise how many aircraft you didn't see.

Back to HC - the MoD is still self-regulating under MAA since it is not a truly external agency. There are still games being played with airworthiness and ALARP as the OSD for platforms is used as an excuse for not upgrading systems. The risks appear on a risk matrix, have been pushed up the DH chain as far as possible and declared ALARP due to cost but none of this actually removes the risk to those in the cockpit.

It would be interesting to hear HC's views on the MAA process. Emperor's new clothes anyone?

That would be an RAFGSA expedition to Llanbedr:

https://members.gliding.co.uk/club-p...13-19-march-2/
NOTAM interpreted | NOTAM Info

You wouldn't have been able to tell whether it had FLARM fitted or not, unless your own aircraft were FLARM equipped. I believe that all the RAFGSA fleet are FLARM equipped.

As BossEyed explained, FLARM is a proprietary collision avoidance system originally developed by Flarm Technology GmbH for gliders, but now also fitted to many helicopters and light aircraft (such as the Tutor fleet, I believe). Call it TCAS-lite for gliders, if you like. A FLARM-equipped aircraft won't show up on TCAS.

FLARM Technology | The award-winning collision avoidance system for General Aviation

The website that [email protected] mentions is presumably Spot the gliders!, created by the Open Glider Network (OGN) project. OGN uses a network of ground receivers to track aircraft equipped with FLARM. I believe that OGN also provides a feed to other sites such as Flightradar24.com - Live flight tracker!. OGN is not supported by Flarm Technology GmbH, and in fact there has been animosity between the OGN project and Flarm Technology GmbH, mainly over privacy concerns.

According to List of OGN Receivers - Open Glider Network Project, there is no OGN ground receiver near Snowdonia, so a FLARM-equipped aircraft would not show up on OGN, but would be visible to other FLARM-equipped aircraft.

There does seem to be a plethora of point solutions at the moment - transponders, TCAS, FLARM, LPAT and PilotAware, to name just a few. Some aircraft are fitted with one solution, others with another, and not many of these solutions are inter-operable.

Indeed. At the time a review of progress was promised after 2 years, but that seems to have been an internal MAA/MoD backslapfest.

H-C would point to the fact he criticised implementation of regs, but the MAA/MoD openly disagrees with him and has set about re-writing the regs. The systemic failure to implement has not been addressed. However, given H-C knowingly named and blamed the wrong people, when in possession of the full facts, names, dates and relevant correspondence, he is unlikely to say anything. Actually, I may be partly wrong about full facts because, for some months after the Review started, his e-mail was intercepted by MoD (as the Review office was in an MoD building). It was only when the parents of one deceased crewman went to London and handed evidence to him personally that he saw it for the first time. And I'd still like to know if the MoD Secretariat provided to him offered evidence as a first hand witness to the "savings at the expense of safety". My feeling is he kept quiet, because otherwise he would surely have pointed out the biggest mistake in the report - the 1998 baseline was at least a decade out.

Good points Crab.

While HC may not have held his own review (difficult for a serving judge?), I believe the MAA has been reviewed/audited at least twice by independent teams of military regulators from various nations. I think the review criteria were the HC findings as distilled by the MAA in the early part of its existence. I haven't looked but I suspect that their reports may be found on the MAA's website.

EAP