So in short nothing that actually addresses the causes of the Midair, just a bunch of map marks on visual charts and so on.

Yep. I also note that CASA are essentially working on Recommendation 1 already. Can you guess what the topic of the AvSafety Seminar at Lilydale last Wednesday was?!? "Non-controlled Aerodromes: Manage Your Risks" ..with a particular focus on the importance of precise and concise radio calls!

How convenient.

"When warranted", interesting wording. What changed on 29/6 and happens after 4/9?

I was reviewing the ATSB report AO-2020-012 Mid-air Collision involving Piper PA-44 180 Seminole, VH-JQF, and Beech D95A Travel Air, VH-AEM, 6 km south of Mangalore Airport, Victoria, on 19 February 2020
Final Report

The Safety Issue identified [AO-2020-012-SR-06]
I checked AIP ERSA to confirm the change however there are a number of other ERSA entries that are most likely applicable at other airports. Why is Mangalore special?
Mangalore ERSA

Quote:

---

FLIGHT PROCEDURES

---

If these procedures are valid then shouldn't they be applied nationally? National promulgation rather than special procedures at a specific location.

I acknowledge that this post is slightly off-topic but any occurrence should lead to a review of existing procedures, is there a better way?

My major concern is this report only took 3 years. How on earth has there been time to collect all the evidence. This is a joke, Shirley.

Absolute waste of time, getting pilots to quasi ATC. Making a Turning Base call, fine, calling out your sequence number when it's constantly changing in a busy environment, creates additional radio traffic and confusion in the circuit if one gets it wrong, leading to more radio traffic. I watched this go to ****e several times at Moorabbin when a large flying school implemented it. Sequencing is for ATC to decide, if you are flying a circuit follow the aircraft in front of you, if you stray outside a normal circuit make sure you add 'wide' to your position. I watched a Cessna cut off a turboprop after calling number two to it, because there was two turboprops on final.... "I'll follow the turboprop on final no 2" sighted the first, then cut in front of the second, the second TP thought the first TP had landed so didn't think it was a conflict. Ended up in a very close call and planes going all over the sky. If the Cessna had just said turning base, the 2nd TP would have informed them they were still on final, and possibly avoided the situation. PS adding 1000ft to approaches also just puts you in the way of Turbo-prop/jet traffic joining the circuit. Better to just coordinate your procedures to stay out of each others way.

Band-aid outcome. CTAF has a huge hole in the cheese when the wx is 100% IMC. Nobody has the balls to call it as it is. If everyone was on area four people would still be alive today.

Apparently the inquest will be Q1 2024.

Coroner's Court, Inquest re MNG
 

Missy is correct - as always.
RE: COR 2020 000976 - Peter Phillips (lead case)
This grouped investigation is listed for Inquest which is to be held from 25-28 March 2024.
Inquests are held at the Coroner’s Court of Victoria, 65 Kavanagh Street, Southbank VIC 3006 .

Advance,

Thank you! If you posted a link (underlined), I could not access it. May be my ongoing and increasing dementia. :)

However the coroner’s office has been very helpful and I believe there is a weblink available for people not able to attend in person. One can watch it just like Senate Estimates, not that I’ll be using it and it does raise some issues…

I’ve been assured the inquest is open to the general public, not that I have a “seat” at the table, it will be a case of quiet observation whilst there and reflection after each day.

Just like Global Warming, I am not optimistic about this inquest but I still have hope, if only for the relatives of the four pilots and also for the air traffic controller. My analysis would indicate those desires are not mutually exclusive…

I expect that hope to be extinguished after the inquest. I expect it to be another VH-TNP / Benalla.

The ATSB report in my opinion is full of omissions and misinformation. I am not suggesting a conspiracy, merely (like a lot of things in Australia) severely flawed by a combination of seeming incompetence, mediocrity and self interest. I cannot see any other reason for the strange content and simplistic conclusions.

The only good news is that the inquest has been given the varsity i.e. Justice John Cain, the Chief Coroner of Victoria.

However, if the right witnesses aren’t called and the right questions aren’t asked coupled with accurate physical evidence; it doesn’t matter how good the intentions are “…the road to hell is paved….” etc.

As far as I’m concerned were FS still in place the accident would not have happened. That in itself is a sad indictment of the “advancement” of policy in regard to aviation safety specifically to airspace in Australia below 10,000 ft since the early 1990s. Technology and surveillance are not always “an advancement” especially in the transition from humans to automation.

I am not sure having a front row seat was a good idea and was in fact really just a “poisoned” chalice.

Sigh!

Saying that 'X' control or other traffic monitoring would have prevented this accident is a big call. A good deal of collisions happen in controlled airspace in or near the circuit of towered airports. Having control or directed traffic advice in no way prevents collisions 100%, it just helps in certain scenarios. After all a JAL A350 landed on top of a Dash 8 recently at a world class controlled airport, and that was a simple runway incursion with lights, markings and everything else to prevent it happening as well as ATC.

As I discovered today, you can’t crash into another aircraft in CTA if they won’t let you in there in the first place!

Seems it was impossible to transit north to south within 40 miles either side of Melbourne today. Instead I had to fly down low amongst the rotors and 32 degrees of turbulence due to 2 airliners in the entire airline basin at the time.

Its the Government, stupid... or the stupid government.
 

ER_BN, No, I did not paste a link, it was formatted that way as emailed to me by the Court.

As for the reports etc - well can you imagine the Minister for Everything allowing ATSB to say, CASA has no power to force AsA to provide a best in class ATC system because we allow AsA to decide what services they will or won't provide?
And we do that in the knowledge that AsA do not have the technical skills to decide what is needed.
It's like the bus driver deciding the road rules, in fact it is more like allowing the bus passengers to decide the road rules; a nonsense and all under one Minister - talk of conflict of interest!@!!!!!~!

INQUEST
 

The inquest is next week in MEL.

My views are mainly in posts 571 and 615.

A prominent member of this forum once challenged me to "Put my money where my mouth is." after I sounded off about my dissatisfaction with something.

Well, I have again done so. I have made a submission to the Coroner.

OVER...............................

Hey Mr 'A',

Would 'Duty Of Care' have got a mention in your submission?

PLENTY of 'that' debate going around in 'FS Circles' in the many changes of 12/12/'91 and again in 11/11/'93......

n'est-ce-pas..??

And, to you Mr ER BN, I Thank you for your comment.

However, I feel that certain 'statisticians' amongst us might claim that in the 30 years or so, to have had 'only 'one' 'major incident' - where lived were lost re traffic info - then we 'have saved xx Trillion Dollars' / yy aircraft movements......so, THE SYSTEM WORKS....but at what cost REALLY??
Then the 'usual comments' re Road Trauma victims etc etc would follow,
no doubt...........ad infinitum................................................... ............................................................ ............................................................ ..............

Talking on the radio does not prevent all collisions, it's well proven. Paying somebody to monitor and provide traffic in every CTAF would be more expensive then mandating ACAS/TCAS be fitted to all IFR aircraft, which would actually be more effective. Going back to the Warrior vs ATR at Albury, which likely would have been a collision and the worst accident in Australian aviation history had the ATR not had TCAS. That was at a controlled airport, with a tower, both in radio contact and both aircraft in close visual range.

If you want a smart answer, and not something regressive and proven to be more expensive and less effective, then push for technology actually proven useful in preventing collisions.

as received.

Yeah Griffo, I reckon you've got the idea there.
But we're old fashioned folk - wonder what the woke world will think?

Duty of care? What's that?
Shut up and take my money.

It is regrettable that the same old arguments about FS versus ATC seem to be still with us.

We replaced procedural FS with an ATC based FS nearly 30 years ago, because it made industrial sense, PREI v Civil Air, it gave the provider of FS access to radar based information, and it theoretically provided more efficient processing of both IFR and VFR aircraft.

It was supposed to be the precursor to a US based airspace classification system where IFR aircraft would always be in controlled airspace and VFR aircraft were free to fly anywhere accept tightly defined Class D, C, B and A airspace. (In order of restrictedness) By tightly defined I mean Class D being an aerodrome control service, Class C requiring radar approach control; services, Class B services being confined to airports where all aircraft, VFR or IFR, need to be vectored to final approach, and of course Class A above FL (to be defined)

This never happened due to fightback from those who had never seen a "different" airspace model and were terrified of self-imposed duty of care threats in Class E, and at a higher level the costs associated with Class E IFR-IFR separation requirements.

So we have the mess we have now. Airservices requires (CASA to require) all VFR aircraft in Class E to have transponders, Class E not to extend below a level where Airservices can make a dollar (see Airservices Act Para 13g). Extensive Class C areas, where CASA is now changing regulations (CASR Part 172) to allow helicopters to operate using Class D provisions, but without changing the airspace classification. IFR aircraft unable to depart VFR because their FPL stated IFR, (the old IFR category with VFR procedures flight plan.) No Class B areas because Class C is so widespread.

It is a mess, and places like Mangalore suffer because of the mess. CASA OAR is a top-down regulator. It looks down on airspace, looks at statistics and because, in safety-terms, these are lagging indicators, it has to wait for things to go bad before it acts.

A better model would be to allow airports with ambitions to excel, and attract business, to provide their own air traffic services, and not have to wait for good old grandfather CASA to amass enough information to make a decision and the try to convince it's government partner Air Services, to do something about it.

Recently I reviewed a draft OAR report on the Pilbara area. This area provides 94% of WA's income and 46% of Australia's income. There are 11 certified aerodromes and 19 ALAs within 100 NM, with six new aerodromes planned by mining companies. Airservices, according to the report, is unable to provide services at lower levels, resulting in very high frequency congestion, cannot provide surveillance even at FL125, and leaves IFR aircraft to self-separate in an area with over-lapping instrument approaches and even reciprocal runway operations! Air Services provides the same service in the Pilbara as everywhere else in the country, two VHF outlets, two ADS-B receivers and HF as a back-up!

My view is that Air Services is not providing the services it is required to provide by CASR Part 172, and the Minister, her Department, the Air Services Board and every aircraft operator in Australia knows it.

Airservices has no chance at providing reliable ATC services outside of the main cities. Just like the rest of aviation in Australia they are clinging to a cost model that is unsustainable, that is pay and conditions that will never match the attrition rate. There is a pathological obsession in the Australian aviation sector to never pay staff more than CPI, less if they can, and lifestyle conditions and pension/health clauses are non existent. Combine this with an age where the romanticism of aviation jobs has faded away, no more lines of ex airforce pilots, short lines of dreaming youngsters. It's now seen for what it is, long, stressful hours away from family and friends, having to commute to airports and rebase to where work is, everything dependent on a medical and checks which could make you jobless in an instance of bad luck.

They have pushed the cost factor so low that even those that make the planes have all gone bust, and we're left with 1960s designs strapped with a few efficiency gains and modern avionics. Funny that trains have become faster while jets have slowed since the 70s in an effort to cost less. Airspace could easily be safer by the introduction of more technology, mandated ACAS/TCAS, ADSB with PFD cockpit displays of all traffic and it's GPS route path if interrogated/selected, with predictive analysis of conflict for a whole route, not just the immediate future. The technology has existed for years, yet we rely on airspace models and control flows from the 1940s. And more importantly a radio separation system where only one aircraft can transmit at once, so one conversation at a time, one separation situation resolved at a time.

Pay more, move forward, stay the same, stagnate and fail.

Just remember that the governments here are willing to blow billions of dollars on sporting events, but can't be bothered to spend a measly 1 billion on a critical runway upgrade at say Melbourne airport. So it's not a lack of cash or an affordability issue, it's a mindset.