Ten fatalities in 9 weeks?
 

In the latest Flight Safety Australia digest (Issue 129, Autumn 2020) on page 56 it lists the Australian accidents and incidents between 6 October and 16 December 2019.

A quick glance shows that there were 10 fatalities in the 9 weeks. This seems a staggering amount.

At that rate, with 15 times the traffic, the USA would have had 150 fatalities whereas the opposite page shows a total of 23 over 11 weeks (i.e. the equivalent of 18 fatalities over 9 weeks).

In the last 9 weeks appears there have been another 11 fatalities in Australia.

What’s going on?

If the rate of 10 fatalities in 9 weeks remains the same for a 12 month period, the total number of fatalities would be 58. It is absolutely staggering.

Hey Dick.

This is more on topic for the mid air over MNG but I have a little solution for inbound ADSB I am using right now. Its an RTL dongle, a raspberry pi and a screen. It runs gnuradio (built for ARM) and an HMI written in in python/tkinter. Obviously integrating a thing like that into an aircraft would not be completely simple but you could run it on a laptop and get good results.

One thing which I wish ADSB had is the frequencies being monitored by the aircraft. You could put that in the track label and know immediately how to make contact.

There is a wealth of information in ADSB but we are not really using it at the moment.

There's an even easier solution. iPad apps like Ozrunways shows ADSB traffic as long as you have a data connection. Perhaps we should be looking at ways to have a data connection in the vicinity of busy aerodromes?

Ozrunways has saved my a$$ on several occasions, the worst being out the back of Bourke with crossing traffic at the wrong hemispheric level, and a constant bearing. Without it, I never would have seen it it time, there was no requirement for either of us to be broadcasting our radio position, both VFR OCTA. It was just that we were both using Ozrunways, both had mobile reception and both had traffic on that prevented a conflict. It’s a big sky out there until it isn’t. Another plane I fly has a raspberry pi ADSB receiver that shows traffic even without Ozrunways on my iPad. Best $100 ever spent.

Clearly Australia needs more aviation safety regulations.

I also suspect CVD may have been a factor in these accidents, along with other medical conditions. It is to be hoped that AVMED will redouble its efforts to trap and cull these dangerous people.

The dataset is too limited


From 2008-2017 the fatality rate in GA in Australia was 11.9/million hours flown


In 2018 the fatality rate in GA in the USA was 10.2/million hours flown

Ideally we'd compare 2008-2017 in the USA data as well but etherway the numbers seem pretty comparable.

NB:PPRUNE won't let me post the reference links due to my low number of posts.

Irony.

Which appears to have been lost on you....

Data is not the solution and should not be relied upon or used as a guide to safe air navigation - don’t be disillusioned on that as it is unreliable when used in the way that you have described.

You need to use an ADSB receiver (starting at $300, such as the “Ping” unit), which will interface with OZRunways and Avplan. They are a separate 3rd party box.

Arguably if either of these aircraft had one of these with Avplan or OZRunways, they would have been able to see the other aircraft’s position.

A data based system as in 4g would not necessarily have signal and would not give the same results as the above set-up.

Do yourself a favour and protect yourself with 4G and ADSB-in as a bare minimum.

And what do you consider will be the most likely response to the number of GA fatalities in the last 12 or so months? The ways in which each of us tries to make the same points over and over again are matters for each of us.

You call it smart arse. I call it prediction.

LB: From experience, when complex systems fail, they don't do it gracefully. The damage may only appear very late in the process of failure when the structure of the system starts falling apart. One way of describing this is "hollowing out" from the inside, gradually the termites eat out the foundations and structural timbers of a house, then one day a gust of wind and the whole thing collapses. I would contend that maybe the entire aviation regulation and control system is starting to fail the same way.

A practical example was provided by the demise of Ansett Airlines. Its there if you ready between the lines of the special ATSB report. The owners cut too deep. They removed (fired) at least one layer of the maintenance planning staff, the guys who used to be led by Capt. Doug Kelynack, all old LAMES in grey cardigans who had encyclopedic aircraft knowledge and managed the process of assembling work packages, scheduling AD's, etc, etc. for individual aircraft. They may have also got rid of Les Hesses merry men, the maintenance schedulers. They grey men went, and with them the irreplaceable knowledge.

Nothing happened for at least three years, but progressively things weren't done that needed to be done. One day it was discovered that a critical B767 AD had been missed and Boeing wasnt granting extensions and when ATSB and CASA looked further in a special audit, NOTHING could be guaranteed about the maintenance state of the entire fleet. CASA had to pull the AOC. Ansett collapsed.

I suspect we are starting to see the end game of Australian Aviation regulation. But that is based on what other people are saying. I have no personal experience. The telltale signs as Dick points out are a creeping increase in the accident rate. None of these accidents are necessarily related except that each contains an element of regulatory failure somewhere in the layers of swiss cheese.

Underlying causes:
- poor leadership internally and externally by the regulator.

- a culture of blame and retribution internally and externally.

- an inflexible, hopelessly complex set of regulations, capriciously enforced. Developed not from a safety perspective, but from a government liability perspective.

Failure manifests itself as:

- failure of national safety systems systems. (airservices, Ansett).

- "pilot error" as an accident cause where the real issue is poor training and training in things that don't matter.

- Regulatory "Accidents" eg: discovery of Bristell certification gaps.

- Accidents caused by mistakes in operation, maintenance and overhaul related to bad guidance.

IF we are in an end state, the accident rate will continue to increase.

Not irony:

So Ansett failed because of an AD on a 767? Interesting.

+1 for Sunny's post. When the ship is running too well the bimbo management types will take it over and eventually produce the results you now see.

Big organisations need a Telstra veggie patch or ASA crisper to keep these people away from interfering with things that actually work.

I’d be grateful for some more info...I’m hopelessly non-technical and not sure if I understand what the Ping website is telling me. Is the $300 enough to cover everything. Can a mug install it?

thanks

kaz

In fairness to Lead Balloon, I am taking back my smart arse comment. I read what you wrote differently today (shouldn't rush to post at work), and just took it as you being a smart arse and throwing other issues into the fix for ****s and giggles. But I just re-read it tonight and get your point... let's add more regulation, that is all that will fix it. Hi Ho Hi Ho here comes Casa to save the show ;)

Sorry, I get it now, should have read twice before posting :ok:

Well, yes.

Your predilection with nailing Sunfish on anything he says is blocking your critical thinking. There were two shutdowns at two critical revenue travel periods. It is quite easy to see the affect this had on the airline. Of course there were other factors involved. But the handling of these events indirectly led to the collapse.

No worries and no need at all to apologise, GC. I'm not exactly "Mr Diplomatic".

I'm just a grumpy old fart trying as many ways as I can - sometimes confronting - to make some points about what's busted in aviation regulation in Australia.

AVIATION SAFETY INVESTIGATION BS/20010005
Investigation into Ansett Australia maintenance safety deficiencies and the control of continuing airworthiness of Class A aircraft

Page 10 of pdf, marked page ix:
Deficiencies in the Ansett engineering and maintenance organisation
The ATSB investigation found that similar deficiencies within the Ansett engineering
and maintenance organisation led to the withdrawal from service of the B767 aircraft
in December 2000 and April 2001. Those deficiencies were related to:
• organisational structure and change management
• systems for managing work processes and tasks
• resource allocation and workload.
...
The Ansett fleet was diverse and the point had been reached where some essential
aircraft support programs were largely dependent on one or two people. Hence it was
possible for an error or omission by a particular specialist to go undetected for a
number of years.
...
People and robust systems are two of the prime defences against error. Therefore, a
combination of poor systems and inadequate resources has the potential to
compromise safety. If a failure by one or two individuals can result in a failure of the
system as a whole, then the underlying problem is a deficient system, not simply
human fallibility.

To put some perspective on this, how many have died in the same period from industrial/mining accidents, car crashes, train derailments, ambulance ramping, golden staph, meningococcal, domestic violence, suicide, drug overdose, medical errors, silicosis, asbestosis, drowning, sharks and the list goes on.
All are preventable and very unfortunate, however the country does not have unlimited resources to make us 100% safe 100% of the time.

No, like seriously... I find it interesting that an AD led to the demise of Ansett. Many of us weren’t in the industry back or even paxing back then. I would have assumed that a somewhat diverse fleet would have carried them through but as above, seems it didn’t.

Simply because Sunfish has a habit of hijacking threads away from operational discussions into non-operational areas because he wants everyone to think he is the smartest person in the room. I'm not a fan of Dick Smith either but the thread title was about the number of fatalities in 9 weeks which has sweet FA to do with the demise of Ansett. I could rant on at length about the issues that led to the demise of Ansett but that would just be following the white rabbit down his useless rabbit hole.

Back to the thread topic, 4 of those fatalities were a result of the one accident and I am assuming DS is including the Herc accident which was 3 fatalities in a single accident so that leaves 2. If I recall correctly they were a result of a VFR into IFR accident which is entirely preventable and a recurring problem. The Herc accident was the result of high risk operations where the margins of safety are reduced during an intense bushfire season. The Mangalore accident seems to be more of a case of when rather than if given the airspace and its use for navaid training. So is the whole system failing or is it a statistical aberration? Is it possible to get the GA accident rate to zero? I don't think it is.

I don't see why OZRunways can't have an arrangement with something like FlightRadar24 to display their traffic as an overlay. OZRunways own traffic system is hopeless as it won't show anyone who isn't using the same app.

I know it would still rely in a data connection but in reality, 4G data is pretty good around most busy class G and not having to switch apps to Flight Radar 24 to get a quick glimpse of the traffic situation would be a godsend to situational awareness.

A low cost receiver unit is better because it uses a direct signal from the other aircraft’s ADSB unit. Relying on the EFB via 4G needs so many other holes in the Swiss cheese to line up.

The pilot needs the EFB, they need a 4G iPad, a 4G connection and they need to turn on the feature in the app and actively CHOOSE to broadcast their position. Even then it may not show the correct call sign or be within range.

ADSB receivers on the other hand, are displaying in real time the ADSB location and signal direct from the other aircraft with no third parties involved.

Therefore, arguably the most cost effective and potentially safest solution based on current standards and industry situation, is for everyone to have ADSB out and an ADSB receiver.

You fail to take a global view of the situation. What I said was that the accident rate MAY (my capitals) be due to systemic failure of Australian Aviation Regulation. I then explained what "systemic failure" of complex systems looks like and gave Ansett as a classic aviation example, which it certainly is.

You then immediately went into the details of the individual accidents and unsurprisingly, found no common thread. My argument is that there will eventually be found a common thread by those who are prepared to take a global view - regulatory incompetence affecting every dimension of Aviation.

IF I am right, and nothing is done, we will see more and more accidents, all no doubt individually attributable to pilot or engineering error but are COLLECTIVELY the result of a failed system of regulation that does not and cannot provide effective leadership of the industry.

You can blame all accidents on some form of regulatory failure. What I said is that the recent increase in the fatalities is attributable to 3 accidents. Hardly Dick wasn't asking for the global view he was looking at a specific time period. You were the only one who thought that the global view was necessary and proceeded to state the bleeding obvious that systemic issues are present when complex systems fail.

The assumption behind this thread is wrong. There is no statistical significance in single event that contributes such a large fraction of the sample.
Events like these are stochastic until proven otherwise. Random speculation contributes nothing. Unless you’re pushing a band wagon?

Look left, I used capitals because I was speculating (IF....MAY). I am well aware that we are referring to three accidents and agree with Mr. Glass that they are unrelated coincidences.

What I am stating is that a meltdown of the regulatory system will look exactly like an ever increasing random series of unrelated accidents or incidents- all individually explainable on their own, until one day we have the proverbial big smoking hole and a subsequent analysis determines that there are multiple failures everywhere in the system to the point where it no longer has any integrity.

To put that another way, the damage to the system is slow, random and consists of many small failures...but it’s cumulative.

That may be stating the bleeding obvious to some of you. I challenged Twoomey on ABC talkback radio about the significance of the Ansett B767 grounding and got a flat out abusive denial. Five days later they were out of business.

I believe there may be tell tale signs that we are in trouble and CASA is in unrecoverable decline. The regulatory actions and behaviors of CASA do not look anything like consistent nor part of a long term strategic plan for the good of the Australian economy. It’s nothing personal about CASA, I wish they were succeeding, but I don’t think they are. We need a forward thinking efficient and effective regulator, we all lose if we don’t have one.

AN AOC
 

Ansett DID NOT have its AOC withdrawn because of the 767 landing gear issue. CASA forced or AN withdrew the 767 from service while the gear issue was looked into and the company continued to operate. Along came 911 and the company decided to appoint voluntary administrators (the Two Marks), a shutdown of roughly 2 wks occurred and started operating again with just the A320s until the sale to Lew & Fox fell over when they realised they wouldn't not get hold of the retail shopping areas in ANs airport leases in SYD & MEL, some 4+ months later.

Despite saying I wasn't going down the rabbit hole a couple important facts need to be stated regarding Ansett. It was AirNZ who put Ansett into administration and that occurred on the Monday before 9-11 which was on Wednesday. Ansett stopped flying on the Friday. There were 2 767 groundings. One before Christmas 2000 and the other around Easter 2001. Thats why the joke was "How do you get Christmas and Easter off at Ansett? Fly the 767."

My memory is a bit unreliable too. A good article here, now back on topic, sorry for the drift.

https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/dlsweb/To...ets/ansett.pdf

Stay out of the rabbit hole!
 

No, I was overnighting in ADL the morning (SA time) the towers went down, I woke up and put the news on (very early morning am) to see the 2nd tower go down. We (the crew) gathered in the lobby as we checked out (ADL Hilton) and talked about it! I was crewing an AN A320 flt that morning, so I'm pretty bloody certain that we were still operating and that no one had forgotten to tell us! We did four sectors that day.

As to whether or not it was ANZ (they owned us) or AN management itself is really irrelevant, the AOC was not canned by CASA over the 767 landing gear. issue.

Edit: Wed was the 12th Sept (11th US time), Friday was the 8th (Oz time) and AN was still operating; sorry, but your memory is incorrect. My log book has me flying on the 11th (which was the night I o/n in ADL) and the 12th (the morning of 911 Oz time). Next flight was after the 2 Marks took over on the 13th of Oct.

If my memory is correct I believe the last day was 2 days after 911 (14th of Sept).

I always held the Aust Fed gov’t as a significant causal factor in the Ansett collapse. Allowing Air New Zealand (ANZ) to buy it was disgraceful (a bit like getting a loan for something you can’t afford because ANZ were not in a great financial position) because when times got tougher an iconic Ansett was allowed to fall by an overseas owner. Apologies for the thread drift...

Sorry Dick, I don't think it's appropriate to extrapolate accident stats like that.

It is perfectly OK if you’re Dick Smith & pushing an agenda (like he always is)...

I will type this slowly exfocx so you understand what I wrote. Monday the 10th Ansett was put into administration, it kept operating. Wednesday Sept 12 in Oz the twin towers were hit. Thursday Sept 13 Ansett was still operating (my logbook shows me flying on that day). My last call to crewing was on Thursday night and I quote, "Trevor Jensen said we were going to trade our way out of trouble". Friday Sept. 14 Ansett stops operating as the administrators (who was Price Waterhouse at that stage) realised that there was no future for an airline in need of a new owner. If you still have difficulty with accepting my timeline and PM me so that we don't take this thread any further down the rabbit hole.

Semantics
 

I would have thought this is an example of sarcasm or in this case sarCASAm / sarCAAsm ?

lololol Looks like we're both wrong.
 

Quote: "Quickly running out of both lines of credit and options, Air New Zealand on 12 September 2001 placed the Ansett group of companies into voluntary administration with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. On 14 September, the administrator determined that Ansett was not viable to continue operations (primarily due to the apparent lack of any funds to cover fuel, catering or employee wages) and grounded the fleets of Ansett and its subsidiaries Hazelton Airlines, Kendell, Skywest and Aeropelican. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansett_Australia

Wow, off topic by Post #2, and rarely back on. Is that a record?