Yes quite true captn, I was however thinking more local for me such as a flight from Adelaide to say Ceduna or beyond. 2 gulfs to cross enroute and a lot of nothing beyond. I have found over the years a flight note to be as good or better than any sartime providing you have a reliable person holding it such as your wife,son ,daughter etc. As they have a vested interest in your well being as well as knowledge who you are off to see,stay etc if the mobile doesn't work and know exactly who and when to call if concerned at all. Might not work for all but for me it does. Hand held epirbs best for immediate alarm and will pinpoint your whereabouts to meters. Never had them/allowed when I started flying only fixed elb's that found crash sites but rarely survivors. But ofcourse what would I know.As for radio coverage,if help needed call the overflying jet traffic on their frequency listed in ERSA. Only needed to once in 35years found them happy to forward ammended sartime for me.

For overwater legs like that you can nominate a SARTIME for completion of the crossing, depending on VHF coverage to cancel it at the other end of course.

A problem AMSA have sometimes with the flight note option is the level of knowledge of the reporting person re the specifics of the aircraft and/or details they hold e.g. type,colour, fuel and survival gear carried and the route to be flown etc. etc., hence they put out the advice here under "Lodge a flight note with someone responsible":

https://www.amsa.gov.au/safety-navig...escue/aviation

Must they?


In all but a very select few cases, the outcome would be a call to the pilots mobile phone number (nominated in the SARTIME notification) at which point the pilot apologizes and says "please cancel SARTIME for arrival at YXXX".


I would think the amount of time the operator spends making these phone calls, would be very similar to the amount of time the same operator spends when the pilot remembers to call within the nominated SARTIME for cancellation.


I would bet than less than 1% of those 9000 would require anything more than a simple phone call by CENSAR.

Yes absolutely nothing to see here. System works as is at little cost. SARTIME with skeds as required works well with I suspect little if any additional cost. Someone just stirring the pot again.

Hmmm - I remember advising CENSAR of the location of a certain Seneca many years ago when the pilot forgot to cancel SAR! ;)

DF.

do not ask for what you wish for or you just might get it.......mandatory SARTIME for all flights at a standard charge to a commercial provider.
plus a fine for not cancelling.

+ 30 day licence suspension and a 6 day mandatory education course - held in Tennant Creek Bi annually, before suspension can be lifted.

Payment in Bitcoin only - put in brown paper envelop and give in person to Rob on Horn Island at 3pm's on Saturdays.

Cancelling SARTIME through NAIPS is not sometimes a good idea. Especially at a flying school.

Sortie 1 goes out at 0700 for an 1100 return. Before then, the next student submits a plan for sortie 2 in the same aircraft.

Student from sortie 1 lands looks up VH-XXX on naips and cancels the sartime.

Result, wrong SARTIME is cancelled.

# 1 remains open and expires

# 2 departs but doesn't know his SARTIME and plan have disappeared from the system.

In NZ you are charged $36 for busting a SARTIME

Just like the 8,999 others, I have forgotten to cancel SAR on a couple of occasions over the years. Once I was about 45 minutes over and had left my mobile in the aircraft. By the time I got back to it something like 12 missed calls from CENSAR, AUSSAR, police and my wife. Felt like a right goose, gave a grovelling apology to the very nice lady at CENSAR who contained her laughter and said "we just want to be sure you're ok".

Who pays? The taxpayer, who presumably made a saving when the system was “rationalised” twenty years ago and CENSAR was created to save the money it apparently cost to allow pilots to cancel their VFR SARTIME with the relevant centre or tower unit on arrival at their destination. I guess this allowed the consolidation of a number of ATC desks as the workload of each controller reduced. Savings presumably were made and are still being made in spite of the number of SARTIMEs not cancelled.

Who cares? CASA and AIR NO Services have totally fu#ked Australian Aviation.
Dick didn't really help either, well intentioned though he may purport to be.
Let Malcolm Turncoat pay for it...He can afford it!

Aussie Bob said

"If these cancellation failures really exist, what is the cost when the staff who follow them up, staff from ASA to the cops, are already at work."

Which surely Dick must agree with as he believes that Firies, taxi drivers, newsagent staff at airports should be doing Unicom services at airports because they are already there and therefore are zero cost.

Don't forget to add the cleaning lady Mr P.........

:cool:

Isnt part of the whole point of SARTIME logging to reduce staggering costs of searching a whole district looking for an aircraft been missing for a long time?
Less participation will result in increased risk of un logged prang.

The entire cost of the few uncancelled sartimes would be burnt in the first few monutes SAR flight looking for them

Education and technology could go a long way to reducing nuisence cancellation errors. Maybe system can send a “meeting request alarm on sartme placement?

Jetjr, your missing the point. The cost of actually having a search and rescue organisation Australia wide is staggering, but offset with corporate sponsorship and volunteers.

This organisation is already in place too, when it actually goes out and searches the cost is part of the existing infrastructure to a large extent. It really is great living in Australia.

Are you suggesting we should save by dismantling this organisation? You wouldn't get a cheque in the mail, the pollies would waste the funds elsewhere.

I feel for Barny, his ears must be bleeding freely by now.

The EFB software I use (AVPLAN) automatically puts the SARTIMES I lodge into the calendars in my iThings. A reminder to cancel pops up 10 minutes before the SARTIME. Saved me from embarrassment once. (Like YPJT, I’ve forgotten a couple of times over the last few decades - very embarrassing. I think the EFB will save me from further embarrassments.)

I’d be interested in understanding what the practical impediment is to SARTIMES being ‘automatically’ cancelled on arrival at a controlled aerodrome.

I’d also be interested in understanding what the practical impediment is to SARTIMES not going ‘live’ for a flight out of a controlled aerodrome if the flight never departs.

The latter question arises from something that happened to a colleague. He submitted a flight plan for departure from an aerodrome in C and included a SARTIME for arrival at his destination. He ended up not departing because of mechanical problems, and cancelled his plan by radio on the ground. Off home and to other activities. Later that day he received a call from AusSAR. Little did he know that his SARTIME had remained ‘active’ in the ‘system’.

And before anyone makes the obvious point: “That’s how the system works”, I’d note that that was not how the system used to work. For those of us who learnt to fly before the mid-90s, SARTIMES were canceled ‘automatically’ on arrival at a controlled aerodrome, and would not be ‘active’ for a flight departing a controlled aerodrome unless the flight actually departed. Further, the system now is counter-intuitive, and counter-intuitive systems encourage errors.

As I understand the situation, there is no interface between CENSAR (which operates on a standalone PC) and Eurocat (the ATC system).

To build such an interface with the associated software changes to both systems to activate and deactivate SARTIMEs would clearly cost money, and who would pay - us - the industry. And for what? The pilot is responsible for his/her SARTIME. To build in a system where SARTIMEs are automatically activated and cancelled could bring in its own risks.Did he inform the ATC that his plan had a SARTIME for arrival at Black Duck Creek i.e. "Cancel my plan and SARTIME for arrival at Black Duck Creek".

If he had said that, the ATC would have notified CENSAR. If the pilot just said to cancel his plan, the ATC most likely would not have been aware a SARTIME was involved, only holding flight details to exit CTA. The flight could have been NOSAR NO DETAILS for all the ATC knew.

Same applies to flights inbound to a TWR in CTA. The ATC is not to know if NOSAR or a SARTIME is involved. That is held by CENSAR, and the system leaves ATC to deal with traffic management.

It’s easy to spot the people who are part of the ‘machine’, CM!

The cost would be equivalent to the interest on the rounding errors on the travel and accommodation costs of the consultants involved in Project OneSky.

This is important information.

You see, the reason the system is counter-intuitive is that having submitted a flight plan and SARTIME to Airservices, the pilot naturally assumed that telling Airservices that the flight was not going to happen would logically result in the SARTIME not becoming ‘active’. The pilot doesn’t know that “there is no interface between CENSAR (which operates on a standalone PC) [in Airservices] and Eurocat (the ATC system) [in Airservices].

What you are saying is that all a pilot needed to say to ATC was: “Cancel my plan and SARTIME” and ATC would have done that. Is that correct?

It seems to follow, then, that if I complete a planned flight that ends at a controlled aerodrome, I can cancel my SARTIME by saying to ATC: “Cancel my SARTIME”. Is that correct?

How does one conduct a flight out of a controlled aerodrome “NO DETAILS”?