CASA caught out? Again!
Thread Starter
CASA caught out? Again!
In case you missed it...........
Page 7 of The Australian today:
Page 7 of The Australian today:
CASA admits US ground staff have safety role at airports
The Australian
June 04, 2015 12:00AM
Ean Higgins
The aviation watchdog has been forced to admit that, unlike in Australia, fire-and-rescue officers and other ground staff at US airports without control towers give local air traffic information to pilots to enhance air safety.
The backdown, which follows revelations in The Weekend Australian, marks a major victory for businessman and aviator Dick Smith, who said for 15 years the Civil Aviation Safety Authority had denied that American ground staff perform the service.
Mr Smith yesterday welcomed CASA’s admission, and claimed CASA’s stance on the matter at first represented “a mistake”, but later amounted to “a lie” to protect the organisation, after he presented evidenc*e to back up his stance includin*g to the Deputy Prime Minister, Warren Truss, who holds responsibility for aviation.
The developments come as pressure mounts on CASA and Airservices Australia over calls from pilots, and families of crash victims, to adopt the air traffic control system used in the US.
As reported in The Weekend Australian, large tracts of Australian airspace — including many airports with substantial passenger traffic, such as Ballina in northern NSW — are under radar coverage but declared uncontrolled airspace, with air traffic controllers banned from directing aircraft flying at less than 8500 feet, even though they may still be on their screens.
In the US, all commercial aircraft are essentially always direct*ed by air traffic controllers, even where radar is not available, in which case they ensure separation through procedural methods. At smaller US airports without air traffic control towers, ground staff, often fire fighters, observe local air traffic and relay information to pilots through the Unicom radio system.
Last week, CASA spokesman Peter Gibson told The Weekend Australian: “Unicom services in the US do not provide traffic information services.”
But after being confronted by evidence to the contrary from two pilots who had flown in the US, the manager of an airport in Colorado, and Mr Smith, Mr Gibson admitted yesterday that US ground staff do provide such services. “Thus we don’t dispute what Dick is saying,” he said.
Airservices Australia recently put in a $13.5 million fire-and-rescue station at Ballina airport, with a staff of 17, but it has no license*d Certified Air/Ground Radio Operator to provide local air traffic information to pilots, who have to rely on talking to each other to avoid collisions.
Only licensed air traffic controllers and CA/GROs, who must have held an air traffic controllers’ licence in the past 10 years, are allowed to provide detailed information.
While Mr Gibson said Australian ground staff without such qualifications can still provide some air traffic inform*ation, aviation regulations restrict this to “unscheduled landings by aircraft”, and in practice such staff do not provide the service undertaken by their US counterparts.
The Australian
June 04, 2015 12:00AM
Ean Higgins
The aviation watchdog has been forced to admit that, unlike in Australia, fire-and-rescue officers and other ground staff at US airports without control towers give local air traffic information to pilots to enhance air safety.
The backdown, which follows revelations in The Weekend Australian, marks a major victory for businessman and aviator Dick Smith, who said for 15 years the Civil Aviation Safety Authority had denied that American ground staff perform the service.
Mr Smith yesterday welcomed CASA’s admission, and claimed CASA’s stance on the matter at first represented “a mistake”, but later amounted to “a lie” to protect the organisation, after he presented evidenc*e to back up his stance includin*g to the Deputy Prime Minister, Warren Truss, who holds responsibility for aviation.
The developments come as pressure mounts on CASA and Airservices Australia over calls from pilots, and families of crash victims, to adopt the air traffic control system used in the US.
As reported in The Weekend Australian, large tracts of Australian airspace — including many airports with substantial passenger traffic, such as Ballina in northern NSW — are under radar coverage but declared uncontrolled airspace, with air traffic controllers banned from directing aircraft flying at less than 8500 feet, even though they may still be on their screens.
In the US, all commercial aircraft are essentially always direct*ed by air traffic controllers, even where radar is not available, in which case they ensure separation through procedural methods. At smaller US airports without air traffic control towers, ground staff, often fire fighters, observe local air traffic and relay information to pilots through the Unicom radio system.
Last week, CASA spokesman Peter Gibson told The Weekend Australian: “Unicom services in the US do not provide traffic information services.”
But after being confronted by evidence to the contrary from two pilots who had flown in the US, the manager of an airport in Colorado, and Mr Smith, Mr Gibson admitted yesterday that US ground staff do provide such services. “Thus we don’t dispute what Dick is saying,” he said.
Airservices Australia recently put in a $13.5 million fire-and-rescue station at Ballina airport, with a staff of 17, but it has no license*d Certified Air/Ground Radio Operator to provide local air traffic information to pilots, who have to rely on talking to each other to avoid collisions.
Only licensed air traffic controllers and CA/GROs, who must have held an air traffic controllers’ licence in the past 10 years, are allowed to provide detailed information.
While Mr Gibson said Australian ground staff without such qualifications can still provide some air traffic inform*ation, aviation regulations restrict this to “unscheduled landings by aircraft”, and in practice such staff do not provide the service undertaken by their US counterparts.
Thread Starter
The earlier article, front page of The Weekend Australian last Saturday:
And: Alan Jones - Dick Smith | 2GB
Pilots, victims’ families call for change as planes fly blind
The Australian
May 30, 2015 12:00AM
Cruising at 400 knots in private jet luxury at 37,000 feet in his “pocket rocket”, an elegant Cessna Cita*tion, businessman and aviator Dick Smith receives the comforting voice and instructions of air traffic control in Brisbane, directing his every move and keeping him and his three charges on board out of danger.
But passing down through 8500 feet on the way to Ballina on the NSW north coast, air traffic control leaves the plane to its fate. The rules dictate air traffic control can no longer direct it below that altitude. The aircraft and its four souls are on their own in “uncontrolled airspace”.
There is no fully fledged radio operator at Ballina and, unlike in the US, firefighters on the ground at the airport are banned from providing air traffic information.
Smith changes radio frequencies so that a system he calls “the blind calling in the blind” comes into play: pilots of different aircraft talk to each other to try to work out their relative positions and maintain separation.
“If we’re in cloud and … on a heading to fly into a mountain, then the air traffic control system just says, ‘well, you’re just stupid’ — they won’t let you know, even though you’re still on their radar,” Smith says.
Smith’s friend and co-pilot on the flight to Ballina, former US Air Force F-16 fighter pilot and airline captain Richard Woodward, says the Australian system “drives me nuts”.
“You’ve got this very advanced national air traffic control system but, instead, you have pilot*s flying around in clouds saying to each other, ‘Hi, I’m here, where are you, let’s work out how not to crash into each other’,” Woodward says.
Benalla in Victoria is seared in the minds of aviators. It is where six people died when the plane they were flying in from Sydney crashed into a mountain in July 2004.
Sydney chipboard company executive Robert Henderson was one of those killed. His brother David says the accident could happen again because of the refusal of authorities to apply controlled airspace procedures wherever possible.
“It’s simple. I can’t see any reason why you should not have controlled airspace where there is radar coverage,” Henderson tells The Weekend Australian.
Robert Henderson died along with his daughter Jacquie, 33; her husband and Blackhawk pilot in the Army Aviation Corps Alan Stark, 37; friend Belinda Andrews, 33; Qantas jumbo jet pilot Geoff Brockie, 37; and pilot Kerry Endicott.
David Henderson, who chairs the family business, is himself an experienced pilot, having at one stage flown the company-owned Piper Cheyenne to Benalla, where the company has a plant, as often as once a week.“If we can prevent just one accident in the future, it’s worthwhile,” Henderson said.
Investigations found the GPS navigation system on the Cheyenne had a fault, taking the aircraft on a track about 30km to the east of the correct one, in rain and low cloud. The aircraft was on air traffic control radar screens, and on two occasions an automatic alert warning informed air traffic controllers it was off-course.
The air traffic controllers ignored* the warnings and did not inform the pilot — possibly, according* to an investigation report, because they wrongly assumed* the pilot was tracking to another navigation point.
Smith says he suspects the controllers knew that, once it flew below controlled airspace, they would have no authority to direct the aircraft anyway.
One of the things Henderson and Smith are bitter about is that, at the inquest, Smith was not permitted to give evidence after barristers argued against it.
While aviation authorities say air traffic controllers were retrained following the accident and new procedures introduced, Smith claims the fundamental problem of “unnecessarily uncontrolled” airspace remains.
In the US and Canada, the system of uncontrolled airspace for commercial aircraft was done away with decades ago. Aircraft are, essentially, always under the direction of air-traffic control, even where radar is not available. Where it isn’t, procedural controls can still apply.
About a decade ago, the then Coalition government announced it would switch to the US system.
In April 2006, Nationals MP Warren Truss, now Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister with portfolio responsibility for aviation, wrote to a constituent with the reassurance that the *government’s airspace policy, the National Airspace System, was “designed to introduce the benefits of the US airspace model”.
Some airports such as Coffs Harbour, in northern NSW and with about 350,000 passenger movements, are under designated controlled airspace. Coffs has a control tower. Ballina, with about 430,000 passengers, does not.
A Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman says the agency is required to assess changes to airspace based on risk, “not hard triggers such as passenger numbers”.
A spokesman for Mr Truss says considerable improvements have been made to the air traffic control system over the past decade.
“The current Australian Airspace Policy Statement was last updated in 2012 and incorporates the features of the US and European systems which are appropriate to Australian flying conditions,” the spokesman says.
The CASA spokesman says that issues relating to the airspace system are not “regularly or repeatedly being identified as the cause of accidents or incidents.
One absurdity, according to Smith and Woodward, is that restrictive rules stop Australian airports from introducing a US system in which various service providers, such as fire and rescue officers, provide pilots flying in the area with local weather and traffic information.
At Yampa Valley Regional Airport in the US Rocky Mountains, the fire and rescue officers routinely enter radio contact with aircraft as they approach.
They provide the pilots with wind speed and direction as well as information from what they can observe, such as the height and look of the clouds. They can also say what is happening on the runway.
Yampa Valley airport manager Kevin Booth says the firefighters liked the role.
“They have to be there anyway, they are in a great position to see what’s going on, and it gives them great pride to provide the service,” Booth says.
Just months ago, Airservices Australia put in a $13.5 million fire station at Ballina that has a viewing area that looks like a control tower, manned by 17 firefighters operating in shifts. But there was, apparently, no money left over to provide a Certified Air/Ground Operator, or CA/GRO for the airport, who would be authorised to provide detailed weather inform*ation and local air traffic movements.
Civil aviation safety regulations state CA/GROs “must hold, or have held within the last 10 years, an ICAO recognised Air Traffic Controller licence or an Australian Flight Service Officer licence”.
The rules do not completely prevent other airport employees, such as firefighters, from talking to pilots* over the Unicom radio system, but restrict such conversations to the most basic of information. The rules ban any discussion of air traffic.
The Airservices spokesman says allowing the Ballina firefighters to provide local weather and traffic details to pilots “is not currently being considered”. He would not say why not.
The CASA spokesman says Unicom services in the US do not provide traffic information services, but this is directly contradicted by Booth, Smith and Woodward.
Smith says that if ground staff at the small Lockhart River airport in Cape York, who were not air traffic controllers, had been required to have standard radio contact with approaching aircraft, 15 people might not have died when a Fairfield Metroliner crashed into a mountain while approaching the airfield in bad weather in May 2005.
The manager of the airport, Manfred Kranabetter, who was at Lockhart River when the crash occurred, says that had the pilot contacted ground staff as part of a standard routine they could have told the pilot that a mountain on his intended approach was obscured by cloud.
“But I only provide information when I’m asked,” Kranabetter says.
Smith is incensed about the uncontrolled airspace and the radio operator restrictions. He has focused his ire on Truss. Yesterday, he wrote a letter calling on him to fulfil the Coalition’s commitment to introduce the US system — or resign.
In coming weeks the multi-*millionaire will hold public meetings in Ballina and Hervey Bay, in Truss’s southeast Queensland electorate of Wide Bay, which also has an airport designated to be in uncontrolled airspace.
At an impromptu meeting at Ballina airport this week, Smith told Ballina Byron Gateway Airport manager Neil Weatherson: “I might frighten the hell out of the people who are going to be flying here.”
In his letter to Truss, Smith quotes a Virgin Airlines pilot who described on an anonymous pilots’ blog how on one occasion several aircraft at Ballina were flying around the airport in cloud and rain, jamming the radio waves as they frantically tried to work out where each other was and how to avoid colliding.
“It was an absolute mess in terms of the radio,” the pilot, who spoke to The Weekend Australian on condition of anonymity, says.
“Quite frankly, it was a significant safety-of-flight issue.
“I find it quite extraordinary that we have at Ballina a new fire-rescue service to deal with an accident, but we have no risk mitigation in place to stop it happening in the first place.”
The CASA spokesman says regulation requires aviation fire services to be installed at domestic aerodromes that have in excess of 350,000 passenger movements.
As manager of Ballina, Weatherson says he would be happy for the airport to be brought under controlled airspace, eager to set up a full radio operator service, and quite content for that to be handled by the fire-and-rescue team.
“I’d love to have a CA/GRO … the issue is who pays for it, and how to recover it,” he says.
The Australian
May 30, 2015 12:00AM
Cruising at 400 knots in private jet luxury at 37,000 feet in his “pocket rocket”, an elegant Cessna Cita*tion, businessman and aviator Dick Smith receives the comforting voice and instructions of air traffic control in Brisbane, directing his every move and keeping him and his three charges on board out of danger.
But passing down through 8500 feet on the way to Ballina on the NSW north coast, air traffic control leaves the plane to its fate. The rules dictate air traffic control can no longer direct it below that altitude. The aircraft and its four souls are on their own in “uncontrolled airspace”.
There is no fully fledged radio operator at Ballina and, unlike in the US, firefighters on the ground at the airport are banned from providing air traffic information.
Smith changes radio frequencies so that a system he calls “the blind calling in the blind” comes into play: pilots of different aircraft talk to each other to try to work out their relative positions and maintain separation.
“If we’re in cloud and … on a heading to fly into a mountain, then the air traffic control system just says, ‘well, you’re just stupid’ — they won’t let you know, even though you’re still on their radar,” Smith says.
Smith’s friend and co-pilot on the flight to Ballina, former US Air Force F-16 fighter pilot and airline captain Richard Woodward, says the Australian system “drives me nuts”.
“You’ve got this very advanced national air traffic control system but, instead, you have pilot*s flying around in clouds saying to each other, ‘Hi, I’m here, where are you, let’s work out how not to crash into each other’,” Woodward says.
Benalla in Victoria is seared in the minds of aviators. It is where six people died when the plane they were flying in from Sydney crashed into a mountain in July 2004.
Sydney chipboard company executive Robert Henderson was one of those killed. His brother David says the accident could happen again because of the refusal of authorities to apply controlled airspace procedures wherever possible.
“It’s simple. I can’t see any reason why you should not have controlled airspace where there is radar coverage,” Henderson tells The Weekend Australian.
Robert Henderson died along with his daughter Jacquie, 33; her husband and Blackhawk pilot in the Army Aviation Corps Alan Stark, 37; friend Belinda Andrews, 33; Qantas jumbo jet pilot Geoff Brockie, 37; and pilot Kerry Endicott.
David Henderson, who chairs the family business, is himself an experienced pilot, having at one stage flown the company-owned Piper Cheyenne to Benalla, where the company has a plant, as often as once a week.“If we can prevent just one accident in the future, it’s worthwhile,” Henderson said.
Investigations found the GPS navigation system on the Cheyenne had a fault, taking the aircraft on a track about 30km to the east of the correct one, in rain and low cloud. The aircraft was on air traffic control radar screens, and on two occasions an automatic alert warning informed air traffic controllers it was off-course.
The air traffic controllers ignored* the warnings and did not inform the pilot — possibly, according* to an investigation report, because they wrongly assumed* the pilot was tracking to another navigation point.
Smith says he suspects the controllers knew that, once it flew below controlled airspace, they would have no authority to direct the aircraft anyway.
One of the things Henderson and Smith are bitter about is that, at the inquest, Smith was not permitted to give evidence after barristers argued against it.
While aviation authorities say air traffic controllers were retrained following the accident and new procedures introduced, Smith claims the fundamental problem of “unnecessarily uncontrolled” airspace remains.
In the US and Canada, the system of uncontrolled airspace for commercial aircraft was done away with decades ago. Aircraft are, essentially, always under the direction of air-traffic control, even where radar is not available. Where it isn’t, procedural controls can still apply.
About a decade ago, the then Coalition government announced it would switch to the US system.
In April 2006, Nationals MP Warren Truss, now Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister with portfolio responsibility for aviation, wrote to a constituent with the reassurance that the *government’s airspace policy, the National Airspace System, was “designed to introduce the benefits of the US airspace model”.
Some airports such as Coffs Harbour, in northern NSW and with about 350,000 passenger movements, are under designated controlled airspace. Coffs has a control tower. Ballina, with about 430,000 passengers, does not.
A Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman says the agency is required to assess changes to airspace based on risk, “not hard triggers such as passenger numbers”.
A spokesman for Mr Truss says considerable improvements have been made to the air traffic control system over the past decade.
“The current Australian Airspace Policy Statement was last updated in 2012 and incorporates the features of the US and European systems which are appropriate to Australian flying conditions,” the spokesman says.
The CASA spokesman says that issues relating to the airspace system are not “regularly or repeatedly being identified as the cause of accidents or incidents.
One absurdity, according to Smith and Woodward, is that restrictive rules stop Australian airports from introducing a US system in which various service providers, such as fire and rescue officers, provide pilots flying in the area with local weather and traffic information.
At Yampa Valley Regional Airport in the US Rocky Mountains, the fire and rescue officers routinely enter radio contact with aircraft as they approach.
They provide the pilots with wind speed and direction as well as information from what they can observe, such as the height and look of the clouds. They can also say what is happening on the runway.
Yampa Valley airport manager Kevin Booth says the firefighters liked the role.
“They have to be there anyway, they are in a great position to see what’s going on, and it gives them great pride to provide the service,” Booth says.
Just months ago, Airservices Australia put in a $13.5 million fire station at Ballina that has a viewing area that looks like a control tower, manned by 17 firefighters operating in shifts. But there was, apparently, no money left over to provide a Certified Air/Ground Operator, or CA/GRO for the airport, who would be authorised to provide detailed weather inform*ation and local air traffic movements.
Civil aviation safety regulations state CA/GROs “must hold, or have held within the last 10 years, an ICAO recognised Air Traffic Controller licence or an Australian Flight Service Officer licence”.
The rules do not completely prevent other airport employees, such as firefighters, from talking to pilots* over the Unicom radio system, but restrict such conversations to the most basic of information. The rules ban any discussion of air traffic.
The Airservices spokesman says allowing the Ballina firefighters to provide local weather and traffic details to pilots “is not currently being considered”. He would not say why not.
The CASA spokesman says Unicom services in the US do not provide traffic information services, but this is directly contradicted by Booth, Smith and Woodward.
Smith says that if ground staff at the small Lockhart River airport in Cape York, who were not air traffic controllers, had been required to have standard radio contact with approaching aircraft, 15 people might not have died when a Fairfield Metroliner crashed into a mountain while approaching the airfield in bad weather in May 2005.
The manager of the airport, Manfred Kranabetter, who was at Lockhart River when the crash occurred, says that had the pilot contacted ground staff as part of a standard routine they could have told the pilot that a mountain on his intended approach was obscured by cloud.
“But I only provide information when I’m asked,” Kranabetter says.
Smith is incensed about the uncontrolled airspace and the radio operator restrictions. He has focused his ire on Truss. Yesterday, he wrote a letter calling on him to fulfil the Coalition’s commitment to introduce the US system — or resign.
In coming weeks the multi-*millionaire will hold public meetings in Ballina and Hervey Bay, in Truss’s southeast Queensland electorate of Wide Bay, which also has an airport designated to be in uncontrolled airspace.
At an impromptu meeting at Ballina airport this week, Smith told Ballina Byron Gateway Airport manager Neil Weatherson: “I might frighten the hell out of the people who are going to be flying here.”
In his letter to Truss, Smith quotes a Virgin Airlines pilot who described on an anonymous pilots’ blog how on one occasion several aircraft at Ballina were flying around the airport in cloud and rain, jamming the radio waves as they frantically tried to work out where each other was and how to avoid colliding.
“It was an absolute mess in terms of the radio,” the pilot, who spoke to The Weekend Australian on condition of anonymity, says.
“Quite frankly, it was a significant safety-of-flight issue.
“I find it quite extraordinary that we have at Ballina a new fire-rescue service to deal with an accident, but we have no risk mitigation in place to stop it happening in the first place.”
The CASA spokesman says regulation requires aviation fire services to be installed at domestic aerodromes that have in excess of 350,000 passenger movements.
As manager of Ballina, Weatherson says he would be happy for the airport to be brought under controlled airspace, eager to set up a full radio operator service, and quite content for that to be handled by the fire-and-rescue team.
“I’d love to have a CA/GRO … the issue is who pays for it, and how to recover it,” he says.
27 May is when I posted this one AB:
DS was pushing for turboprops with 6 seats or more to have TAWS which might have avoided the Benalla accident.
Quote:
If self separation using radio in IMC is so good why do we need ATC?
Are you suggesting Dick that in the interests of safety that Ballina should have a Tower? Have you noticed the brand new fire station there? It seems that they are getting ready for when "See and Avoid" as a separation standard is proved to be flawed.
Of course self-separation is not as good as ATC. ATC do the best job they can with the resources given them as do the pilots. The moron who designed the current CTAF procedures considered that the highest performance aircraft operating into CTAF's was going to be an RPT turboprop.
If self separation using radio in IMC is so good why do we need ATC?
Are you suggesting Dick that in the interests of safety that Ballina should have a Tower? Have you noticed the brand new fire station there? It seems that they are getting ready for when "See and Avoid" as a separation standard is proved to be flawed.
Of course self-separation is not as good as ATC. ATC do the best job they can with the resources given them as do the pilots. The moron who designed the current CTAF procedures considered that the highest performance aircraft operating into CTAF's was going to be an RPT turboprop.
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But passing down through 8500 feet on the way to Ballina on the NSW north coast, air traffic control leaves the plane to its fate. The rules dictate air traffic control can no longer direct it below that altitude.
Give the ATC the tools and they will use them. Continue down the road of no surveillance and there's nothing they can do. Unless you want a procedural approach service. 1 in, 1 out.
If you provide radar or ADSB coverage to the ground, appropriately sized sectors and the staffing required, ATC will be more than happy to 'approach service' you to the ground.
Read the above paragraph and understand you will NEVER get the above service in Australia. NEVER. Aviation is Australia is not seen as infrastructure or indirect investment in the economy. It's seen as either a rich boys play thing or a pain in the arse.
And in a related development, Follow Me signs and flashing pink lights will be added to the Fire chief's vehicle, complete with grab rail, so that those requesting it (and willing to pay) will be able to get a "skimpy" follow-me service to the terminal... 
So if they were/are such a good idea, why didn't the operator/s fit them anyway? Or should we use the billion-dollar AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL system to provide the TAWS service?
I hope somebody rang Alan Jones and set him straight on this nonsense...
DS was pushing for turboprops with 6 seats or more to have TAWS which might have avoided the Benalla accident.
Smith says that if ground staff at the small Lockhart River airport in Cape York, who were not air traffic controllers, had been required to have standard radio contact with approaching aircraft, 15 people might not have died when a Fairfield Metroliner crashed into a mountain while approaching the airfield in bad weather in May 2005.
The manager of the airport, Manfred Kranabetter, who was at Lockhart River when the crash occurred, says that had the pilot contacted ground staff as part of a standard routine they could have told the pilot that a mountain on his intended approach was obscured by cloud.
“But I only provide information when I’m asked,” Kranabetter says.
The manager of the airport, Manfred Kranabetter, who was at Lockhart River when the crash occurred, says that had the pilot contacted ground staff as part of a standard routine they could have told the pilot that a mountain on his intended approach was obscured by cloud.
“But I only provide information when I’m asked,” Kranabetter says.
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The manager of the airport, Manfred Kranabetter, who was at Lockhart River when the crash occurred, says that had the pilot contacted ground staff as part of a standard routine they could have told the pilot that a mountain on his intended approach was obscured by cloud.
Last edited by The name is Porter; 5th Jun 2015 at 01:51.
A Unicom operator at the airport could have told the pilot that it was CAVOK to the east of the runway - as it was that day. The pilot may have decided not to shoot the approach over the only mountain in the way- so the pax were not put through the turbulence.
If that had happened the accident may have been prevented.
If that had happened the accident may have been prevented.
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"A Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman says the agency is required to assess changes to airspace based on risk, “not hard triggers...."
"The CASA spokesman says that issues relating to the airspace system are not “regularly or repeatedly being identified as the cause of accidents or incidents."
2 quotes from CASA that should be force-fed back to them whenever they embark on yet another non-evidence-based crusade to enforce unnecessary maintenance, or the downgrading of pilot privileges due to medical non-conditions (e.g. impaired colour vision), that are killing our industry!
"The CASA spokesman says that issues relating to the airspace system are not “regularly or repeatedly being identified as the cause of accidents or incidents."
2 quotes from CASA that should be force-fed back to them whenever they embark on yet another non-evidence-based crusade to enforce unnecessary maintenance, or the downgrading of pilot privileges due to medical non-conditions (e.g. impaired colour vision), that are killing our industry!
Folks,
Dontcha just love the front page of the Australian today, Friday --- not page 7 or the aviation section, front page nationally.
It will be a bit hard for the Minister to miss this one!!
Tootle pip!!
PS1: Bloggs,
Why don't you take a flying holiday in US, and find out how well it all works.
PS2: Wot happened to my original post on this development?
Dontcha just love the front page of the Australian today, Friday --- not page 7 or the aviation section, front page nationally.
It will be a bit hard for the Minister to miss this one!!
Tootle pip!!
PS1: Bloggs,
Why don't you take a flying holiday in US, and find out how well it all works.
PS2: Wot happened to my original post on this development?
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A Unicom operator at the airport could have told the pilot that it was CAVOK to the east of the runway - as it was that day. The pilot may have decided not to shoot the approach over the only mountain in the way- so the pax were not put through the turbulence.
If that had happened the accident may have been prevented.
If that had happened the accident may have been prevented.
Folks,
The Australian regulations are, unsurprisingly, Australian unique and really quite anal about who can say what about the weather to an aircraft.
Again, unsurprisingly, in Australia the penalties the pilot suffers by acting on "unapproved weather observations" are quite draconian.
Stupid as it sounds, as PIC, it is an offense to act on a report of, say, turbulence from another aircraft, unless the report of the turbulence (or any other met) is preceded by "airep special".
Is there such a word as regulationism?? If there isn't, there should be, this is out of control rampant regulationism.
Look back through previous pprune threads on the matter, this is not just theoretical.
I don't remember all the details, but CASA took action against both a pilot and an aero club instructor, when it was determined that the pilot had rung the club at his destination, asked about the weather, and departed as planned on the basis of the "illegal observation", ie; If the forecast morning fog hadn't cleared as forecast, he wasn't going.
Why make things easy, when you can make them bleeding impossible.
Tootle pip!!
The Australian regulations are, unsurprisingly, Australian unique and really quite anal about who can say what about the weather to an aircraft.
Again, unsurprisingly, in Australia the penalties the pilot suffers by acting on "unapproved weather observations" are quite draconian.
Stupid as it sounds, as PIC, it is an offense to act on a report of, say, turbulence from another aircraft, unless the report of the turbulence (or any other met) is preceded by "airep special".
Is there such a word as regulationism?? If there isn't, there should be, this is out of control rampant regulationism.
Look back through previous pprune threads on the matter, this is not just theoretical.
I don't remember all the details, but CASA took action against both a pilot and an aero club instructor, when it was determined that the pilot had rung the club at his destination, asked about the weather, and departed as planned on the basis of the "illegal observation", ie; If the forecast morning fog hadn't cleared as forecast, he wasn't going.
Why make things easy, when you can make them bleeding impossible.
Tootle pip!!
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Well, from what I understand it's Bloggs that is operating into these types of aerodromes everyday. It's he that has the most experience with the experiments conducted so far.
I don't think I'd like to be operating IFR in IMC conducting an approach in E to the ground. C'mon, I reckon we've all seen it. The local VFR hero departing in IMC with his self taught IFR skills (I can name one person on here who boasts about doing it
) You reckon he's going to pipe up on the radio? Dob himself in? You reckon he's gunna turn his transponder on? So what's the point in doing E unless it's going to be done properly? With radar or ADSB coverage
I still for the life of me can't understand why a Firestation has been built in Ballina but not a Control Tower? Why's there a Control Tower at Bankstown but no Firestation?
I don't think I'd like to be operating IFR in IMC conducting an approach in E to the ground. C'mon, I reckon we've all seen it. The local VFR hero departing in IMC with his self taught IFR skills (I can name one person on here who boasts about doing it
) You reckon he's going to pipe up on the radio? Dob himself in? You reckon he's gunna turn his transponder on? So what's the point in doing E unless it's going to be done properly? With radar or ADSB coverageI still for the life of me can't understand why a Firestation has been built in Ballina but not a Control Tower? Why's there a Control Tower at Bankstown but no Firestation?
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things
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Because Australia is a signatory to ICAO that states any airport with over 350k pax or international is required to have a fire service.
Bankstown doesn't, that is why it was removed. Ballina does, that is why they went in.
Dick you make me laugh. You never wanted fire service. Affordable safety. Now you want them to provide a ATC service for you.
Bankstown doesn't, that is why it was removed. Ballina does, that is why they went in.
Dick you make me laugh. You never wanted fire service. Affordable safety. Now you want them to provide a ATC service for you.
Only obligation re ICAO is to notify if we differ.
I have always said that resources should be allocated to a Unicom and a Tower before resources are allocated to RFFS. Just commonsense that you attempt to prevent the accident first.
Also the RFFS should be run by the airport owner- not from a giant in -efficient government monopoly. Then the staff can be multi skilled and we will get twice as many RFFS for the same money. Therefore lots more safety.
It was coalition policy . But under Mr Truss nothing happens.
I have always said that resources should be allocated to a Unicom and a Tower before resources are allocated to RFFS. Just commonsense that you attempt to prevent the accident first.
Also the RFFS should be run by the airport owner- not from a giant in -efficient government monopoly. Then the staff can be multi skilled and we will get twice as many RFFS for the same money. Therefore lots more safety.
It was coalition policy . But under Mr Truss nothing happens.
Folks,
Further to Dick's last post, the ARFF requirements ONLY apply to international airports --- and has been pointed out, only then if no difference is notified.
Australia has so many difference to ICAO, I don't think we even have an accurate count, last figure I saw was around 1800, so don't try and hang you hat on that one.
The adoption of ICAO SARPs for domestic operation is entirely up to each signatory nation.
One thing that ICAO SARPs are not good at is establishing priorities based on risk analysis and cost/benefit justification, because they are a very old fashioned (if well intentioned) prescriptive approach to safety management.
Of course Dick is right, prevent the accident in the first place, rather than put the fire out afterwards.
Tootle pip!!
Further to Dick's last post, the ARFF requirements ONLY apply to international airports --- and has been pointed out, only then if no difference is notified.
Australia has so many difference to ICAO, I don't think we even have an accurate count, last figure I saw was around 1800, so don't try and hang you hat on that one.
The adoption of ICAO SARPs for domestic operation is entirely up to each signatory nation.
One thing that ICAO SARPs are not good at is establishing priorities based on risk analysis and cost/benefit justification, because they are a very old fashioned (if well intentioned) prescriptive approach to safety management.
Of course Dick is right, prevent the accident in the first place, rather than put the fire out afterwards.
Tootle pip!!
