I have never thought that safety was hard. After all, I never met a pilot who thought that they wanted to kill themselves or an engineer that knowingly pushed an aircraft to the line knowing that it had a catastrophic fault. I have known operators who would push their pilots to perform acts that were dangerous and I have known pilots who managed to kill themselves by being utter tools. However, generally most pilots wanted to arrive at their destination alive and by so doing so would their passengers.

I no longer fly, gave it up several years ago and have not missed the experience one iota. That is thanks to CASA but that is irrelevant as are they. What I did notice was that as pilots would gain experience they would begin to cut corners. Not literally but in safety margins. I human factors it is referred to as the "normalisation of deviance". The operational safety margins would get shaved and that new margin would become the new standard. Then that standard gets cut and so on and so forth until one day it ends in tears. My last few years before retirement were spent as safety manager for the last company I had flown for. That erosion of safety standards was my single biggest prevention issue.

In private operations we have an ageing GA population (several years ago in the USA the average age in GA was 59 I think) and with increasing expense of flying maintaining standards gets more expensive and easier to put off. I flew for 6 months in outback SA and was appalled at the safety levels I saw among some of the private flights coming through. In many cases a total lack of preparedness for outback flying. "I have a GPS - don't need maps" approach was common. What I read of many crashes makes me think that a degree of caution was not applied to the flight. Whether this was due to ignorance or allowing a deterioration in standards I don't know (leaving aside the Mangalore mid-air - that may far more complex) but ultimately safety is in the pilots hands and decision making.

p.s. The Ansett demise started way before the change of ownership. It has its roots back in the 2 airline policy days.

Slightly off topic but referring to Ozrunways, was IFR Archerfield to Tamworth a few days ago and needing Ozrunways front and centre. In cloud, if you put down the screen brightness a bit too much ( fat fingers and turbulence ) the damn thing goes black screen and you cant see the icons to restore. The thing about ozrunways dimmed and bright white cloud around the cockpit is that you just can't seen the screen. No way.
A bad day, but a blown tire inner tube on landing then off the runway put the rest into perspective.

Don't know what is going on exactly but re GA I have concerns re future recurring issues with some GA ( esp training ) aircraft having some bad slow speed habits ref Bristel, Aquila, Liberty, Diamond and many others that look o so sexy and glossy but are not up to slow speed safety. I mean, some of these AC when slow flip a wing down, then the nose down before you can blink and then if you are low, goodnight. The reports are out there.
Contrast this with the Jabiru that CASA tried to force off the map, which has full control authority thru the stall. I think C172s etc also are relatively safe.

I think CASA should spend more of their resources talking to prospective flying schools re suitable aircraft.

In that case you can pull out your torch and shine it at the screen to find the slider button.

Liberty! Lol, ugly brother from another mother :-) I owned one and even then I didn’t like it!

I got rid of mine due to the “finger” brakes. I had bad tennis elbow at the time of owning it, with no end to the condition in sight and they wanted around $12k to upgrade to the traditional toe brakes, so I moved it on.

There is a difference between something that meets the airworthiness requirements and what many would consider to be a suitable trainer.

CASA didn't even bother doing that when they introduced Part 61 with the suite of incipient spinning exercises and CASA knew that only types approved for intentional spinning could do them.

That is exactly what I did.
Still hard to see but that is what worked.
Rumaging down the back while IFR in cloud for the torch was character building.
I emailed ozrunways following day, not a lot of sympathy, they cited the need to dim down at night.

Wow, that is a gen Z problem.
Ozruways and Avplan are the greatest safety advance in general aviation in the last 30 tears.

I am not Gen Z.
More likely Gen steam

2 more north east of CBR . RIP .

Replying to my own post and probably no one is going to read this but...
the solution to over dimming Ozrunways (and not being able to get it back again ) while in IFR in bright sunlight, cloud etc is to put a white paint dot (eg whiteout typing paint ) on your iPad metal surround that is just adjacent to the brightness icon position, then if you cannot see the dimmed icon you place your finger just next to the paint dot and then move the slider to the right ( which you still can't see but it will be there )