turboplanner

The original CASA list of 40 in flight engine failures came from an unedited list of incidents supplied by RA-Aus. When this was checked and in fact several more were added to make the total 46, all the incidents relating to fuel pump & oil leaks plus running out of fuel etc were removed to end up with 12 in flight engine failures resulting in forced landings. This was in 93,000 flights and 43,000 flying hours. When the 12 forced landings incidents were fully analysed, most were in flying schools and corrective measures had been in place for almost all of the 12 which had been implemented since 2011. There were no fatalities or serious injuries suffered as a result of the 12 forced landings.

Another interesting point is that the ATSB report showed that the Jabiru engine failure rate dropped after 2012 while the Rotax engine failure rate increased in the same period.

Which list are you referring to?

 

(a) The data obtained by CASA employees who visited RAA facilities and collected it?

 

(b) The list supplied by a person within RAA some months later, which contained items such as fuel exhaustions, which clearly were not engine failures, and was quoted publicly by the CASA Public Relations officer?

 

 

This is a particularly sad event. But it must make the instructor who taught her, wonder what went wrong in his training of her, and whether he should have concentrated more on her weaknesses in navigation, or concentration, or general flying skills.

To run into cumulogranitus just 100M below the peak of the mountain range is the most basic and most unforgiveable flying error you can get.

 

I was under the impression that you are always taught to ensure that there's lots of air between you and the highest known points of terra firma along your route.

 

In every case I have read about, where a CFIT into high ground occurred, there were serious deficiencies in the PIC's navigation and flying skills that were never addressed - or their training was deficient.

 

I understand the flying conditions were more than likely pretty atrocious, and mountain rotor turbulence could have played a substantial part in the reason or reasons for this crash.

 

However, one would expect, it would have been hammered into her, to be particularly alert to the phenomenon - even more so, in the area she was flying into, which is well known for some of the worst types of these events.

 

The sobering part is, if she had had a full complement of pax, we could have been looking at possibly Australias worst air disaster since Lockhart River.

 

I trust the investigators find something of value in the wreckage, to determine the reasons behind this tragedy - but by the sound of it, they are going to be struggling to find any mechanical evidence of any value.

 

ATSB - Mountain Wave turbulence

In the IFR flight planning the LSALT path is much wider, providing a greater safety margin for being blown off course, but there are quite a few historic cases where disasters have occurred after ad hoc mid-flight  changes have been made due to icing, weather etc. and it's exponentially harder to notice the odd peak sticking up above the others in a bouncing cockpit compared to sitting at a desk with a ruler and WAC Chart,, so even if that wasn't the cause, it's a worthwhile revision subject.

 

 

“this decision” is not “this draft”

 

 

Turbo,

I would accept that drafts get written all the time within companies for proposals and were that the case I would understand ... however the best we can see from this is that it is a draft final communication for post agreement communication and it is evident on the face of his words as they appear in the magazine they know how unpopular this will be  - not a draft of a possible but a draft of post execution with complete clear expectation of unhappiness.

 

And yes, I was one very vocal opponent to the structure change in RAAus for pretty much every reason that has appeared to be an issue over the past years since the change.

Yes, you were the one who saw it first and most clearly. I hope it wasn’t as you say, because I doubt that would be a legal draft.

 

 

Well I did get a written response from Mr Monk to my two direct questions of date of agreement with AAA and when was data first shared.  It was not marked private or confidential so here it is:

"At this stage RAAus has not made a formal comment or officially published anything to members on this matter.

 

We continue to work with the AAA on this matter.

 

The article you read was a draft and was not intended for publication.  It has since been removed.

 

At this stage no information has been shared.

 

Thanks

 

Michael"

 

draw your own conclusions/speculate as to how the member response has gone down with the board.

We'll, to be fair, if it is a draft, it wouldn't be the first time that someone bugled a draft to the world as fact.

 

A draft is a draft is a draft, and has no consequence.

 

It was produced within a company, so would not be expected to be even mentioned to shareholders. Company employees produce hundreds of thousands of drafts a day that never go anywhere.

 

Similarly, there's nothing to stop an employee, or director chewing the fat over any issue with anyone as long as it doesn't imply an approval.

 

So it looks like a storm in a teacup.

 

However,

 

How much better would it look if a President said to the Members, "We're looking at disclosing your private details to airfields on request for x reason; what are your thoughts please?"

 

Remember, you voted (or didn't vote) for that structure to be abandoned.

 

 

Thinking about this current situation of RAAus handing over our privacy with our consent.

I  am wonder what others are thinking - to me the members are too quiet or have they given up?

 

The other important issue - I am wondering are all audit results released?

 

It is an important governance issue that members get a hear about the results of the audits.

 

Being honest and transparent I think would cover the thoughts.

 

We have all heard, "All done in secret". Could still be the case.

 

KP

What audits are you talking about?

 

 

Fuel Taxes are collected by the Federal Government and are supposed to be shared back to Airport Owners/Operators to help in maintaining their Airports.  

That's what should happen, but the taxes just go into general revenue.

 

 

Avgas taxes are not collected by airport owners and have nothing to do with airport owners.

 

 

Sorry,you miss my point,we have already paid.

I did, how have you paid an airfield owner for his finance, improvements and upkeep when you land on his property?

 

 

Just for interest,where does all the GST,Fuel Levies and Fuel Excise on Avgas get spent.I submit that we pay our way.

Last I heard it went into general revenue, and we certainly are reamed out on fuel in Australia, but this thread is about airfield operators charging landing fees, using radio to identify the aircraft landing, which then identifies the owner's name and address if the aircraft is registered VH, and in this thread specifically the decision of RAA to release the names and addresses of owners of RA registered aircraft, so what we pay in fuel taxes is not related to what we pay an individual organisation for using their airfield.

 

 

It'd be good to have a read of the Deed of Agreement.  Might be best to check its last amendment date beforehand.

It's an annual agreement; the deeds are updated each year and there should be a few on this site that you could search for.

 

 

My point is this - RAAus is a company - when does variation of the rights of an individual member become a fraud on a minority? Similarly, the GFA's policies do not meet the requirements of the Victorian Association law - nor do the respective policies mirror the CASA MOS for enforcement.

These corporate structures were not designed for this purpose.

No, a corporate structure is not the way to go when you primarily want the low cost available from many volunteers carrying the load. In RAA there were two people in particular who exhaustively sold the fallacy of RAA having outgrown a "cricket club" style. They disappeared as soon as the company was formed

 

Governments of all types deals with public liability in the ordinary course of business. For example, your local council does not stop people playing football on a council oval just because someone may be hurt.

Governments do carry public liability in many areas. However, the areas which concern RAA members are where governments have off-loaded public liability through self-regulation, thus allowing things like sporting activities to continue. This extends down to sausage sizzles and fund raising events.

 

The CASR's specifically take CASA of the hook in respect of experimental aircraft (CASR 201.003) -

 

Neither the Commonwealth nor CASA is liable in negligence or otherwise for any loss or damage incurred by anyone because of, or arising out of, the design, construction, restoration, repair, maintenance or operation of a limited category aircraft or an experimental aircraft, or any act or omission of CASA done or made in good faith in relation to any of those things.

 

Solution is make every RAAus aircraft an experimental aircraft!

The current SAO system is a great way to allow RAA members to operate at the grass roots level at minimal cost. It just has to manage its safety levels to the point where government taxpayers don't have the burden when things go wrong. So far the insurance has been able to cover the accidents and with a few exceptions the aircraft have operated away from heavy traffic and large urban areas. As far as can see the same simple self-administration model would allow SAAA to practically operate.

 

There's no reason for RAA aircraft to become experimental aircraft, unless the SAO system collapses, and that's unlikely to happen while the taxpayer isn't exposed to accident costs.

 

Telling me to come to grips with an administrative position is not how democracy works - just watch how GetUp and Greenpeace work and the public/politician response.

Where a government cuts you adrift, and no longer prescribes what you do, you're on your own; you're FREE! There's no point in continuing on as if nothing has changed, no point in going to the government wanting it to intervene, no point wanting it to "fix" something, no point in waiting for it to spend taxpayer money on your sport; the old days are over. The downside we have is that we have to pay for our accidents, so we have to minimise the accidents, which, as an example, is why the ladies on the sausage sizzle and cake stall need to go and do a course on food handling and take out insurance. What makes the principle hard to understand in flying is that there are several bodies, like CASA and Airservices involved which require a certain level of performance to ensure safety, and we have a mix of self administration and prescription. GetUp works to produce electoral outcomes, Greenpeace works to produce environmental outcomes. What we've just seen is AOPA working to get the same medical standard as RAA, even though they operate in CTA; CASA has re-assumed public liability in quite a few areas. What would normally happen is that a government would not get involved in the medical standard specification of a self administering body; that would be the decision of the body which is paying for its own accident liabilities. For example, when Department of Labour and Industry, the department which used to have hundreds of inspectors visiting factories, testing safety equipment and signing tickets and thus taking legal liability for the equipment failures, was closed down, the regulations applying to speedway track safety fences, crowd separation etc were cancelled, and we had to establish our own - which were much easier to understand and much more effective btw. If the government had come back in and laid down some new specifications, it would have re-incurred public liability for its actions. CASA has not made a clean break, so in all sorts of messy areas it still wants a say, but it will be there beside you in the court room as a defendant. So I'll admit the situation is complex, but there's no point in harking back to the good old prescriptive days when the taxpayer paid for any negligence; it's not coming back.

 

Turbs, I know your are hung up on liability but when was the last incident involving a member of the public who was not in the RAAus aircraft?

 

As you will know courts have determined that if you get into a glider or RAAus aircraft you know that you are undertaking a potentially dangerous activity and no one else is to blame but you if it all goes pear shaped.

Public liability is not limited to dropping out of the sky and hitting someone on the ground. I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but as soon as you start going your pre-flight you're in the PL envelope. If you get distracted and leave the oil filler cap sitting on top of the engine, if you didn't notice your aileron hinge rod was hanging out, and they fall on the ground as evidence and you take off and crash, injuring or killing someone, you'll most likely pay. If an aircraft is on short final in plain sight and you enter the runway, if you fail to make the take off and hit a shipping container or a restaurant next to the Airfield, that will usually be on you. If you forgot to check the fuel, or the engine stops and you fail to make a successful forced landing, for which you have been trained, If you decide you'll ignore the regulations and do oval circuits and hit someone, if you are flying along and decide to fly down below 500 feet and hit a power line, the beach, a radio mast, a building, if you decide to do some aerobatics and snap a wing off the Skyfox, or you come in to land and have an excursion, or if you mess up your shut down checks, or if you leave the aircraft in an unsafe place; these are just a few of the examples where if someone is injured or killed, lawyers may be able to sue you or your estate and prove negligence. Insurance take the pain away from being caught out in one of a million innocent mistakes.

 

Going back to your original question, I can't remember, but the RAA records will almost certainly include some injuries. One advantage RAA pilots have had is operating at outlying and country airfields remote from lots of spectators and urban structures. What does come to mind though is the Dove crash at Essendon which killed Sam Gulle's family, the King Air which hit the Essendon DFO,  a C152 which  drilled a shed in the Moorabbin circuit, a forced landing in, from memory Aspendale, where a pilot missed the South East Green Wedge right beside him and demolished part of a street., and for public opinion which resulted in transponders being fitted in CTA, the Cerritos crash in 1986 where 82 were killed including 15 on the ground after a Piper Archer hit a DC9, and one last week in the US where a light aircraft tried to land on a freeway killing two on board and two or three on the ground. While RAA stays as it is now.

 

OR, if your question was related to the last line, that's certainly not the sole area where you'll be exposed to lawsuits for negligence.

 

I get the impression you're from the gliding world, and if so you've missed about ten years of discussions, which are still on this site in relation to liability.

 

Some others came to the same conclusion as you on those cases, and there's material on the site which goes into the cases in detail and explains the critical parts of what the courts said, in one case very specifically that the pilot was not negligent,(and not that he had a sign on the dash which protected him). We also discussed a case I was involved in, which we lost, where we have to protect ourselves by adding the statement "Motor Racing is Dangerous and you enter at your own risk", then losing another case and having to add the words, "but you have the right to sue if the promoter has been negligent".

 

 

About as accurate as most media stories about aviation. Completely wrong. 

I remember seeing video of the crash; what was the correct story?

 

 

Where do you rate the Brit Government at the moment Phil????  ( Nev )

Lower than Whale $hit Nev,. . . .but not for reasons of Aviation Safety.   I won't start on Democracy here, wrong place.

 

As I've mentioned before on this subject, the Long time Regulations are being seriously relaxed with regard to Private Aviation.   Medicals especially, allowing Type 1 diabetics to fly as P1, after completing a short flight with an examiner to show that they can self inject safely whilst flying the aeroplane,.  and allowing pilots with other ailments such as Angina to fly. ( Under certain circumstances)  'Permits to Fly' being abrogated to 'User certification' with no oversight for Single seat types. . .ie, No Roadworthy at all, responsibility for safe operation being delegated to the aircraft owner.   Anyone can see that this cannot be regarded as sensible, knowing the varied spectrum of the various characters we have all known and met in this regard. . . OK, there's no passenger risk, but how 'bout the poor innocents on the ground if someone gets it wrong whilst flying a poorly maintained crapheap ? At our airfield, we have already had to expell at least seven owners for 1) flying like Twots and 2) Flying aircraft out of permit with Obvious problems, either mechanical or paperwork / license related. 

 

The insurance industry has already kicked back over this, unsurprisingly.   We shall see how it develops. It's hard not to be pessimistic though.

Is the relaxation applying just to Recreational Aircraft Phil, or is it extending to what we'd call GA; Piper Ti Pacer, Cessna 150/152, C172 etc?

 

Interesting that you're self administering and sanctioning the laggers at local fields which is sould be happening here.

 

Given that the Donoghue V Stevenson case is a key component in the tort of negligence, similar to here, just as the participants get relaxed they start to realise they are the ones paying for their mistakes, and there can be a short period where insurance companies dump certain industries which are making too many claims, but as risk management kicks in affordable insurance comes back.

 

 

As usual Turbs you missed the point

I don't doubt that there's a point there that would have been a game changer in 1980, but there's no point discussing the finer points of draught horses once tractors take over.

 

One way or another you have to come to grips with the changes which have occurred to understand what is happening now.

 

 

Depends whether you want to buy an aircraft or hire.

 

Hiring is cheaper for most people.

 

Hiring in GA is cheaper than hiring in RA if you include hours from your first flight, and with a PPL you can take three passengers and access touring aircraft.

 

 

The problem with the whole Part 149 thing is that at no stage has the legal capacity of the SAO's to play the role that CASA and some of the SAO's want to play ever been properly examined, particularly in respect of modification of members rights, either individually or as a group by the organisation concerned.

BTW from April 1 next year the South African CAA will have absorbed the South African equivalent of RAAus back into its structure and within its absolute control.

Jim to get any traction at all, you need to address the implications of government exposure to public liability claims, and the general public's political attitude to paying part of their income tax to prop up sports. That's the starting point. Then you have to understand what triggered the decision by Federal and State Ministers to adopt "user pays" wherever possible, then the initiatives by sporting, volunteer and certain industries to control their own destinies by self administering and self insuring, then how those groups adopted policies such as audit policies to ensure that the members enjoying the benefit also took the liability. That's a minute explanation of what's been happening, and it had generally been a great success, the flow of taxpayer funds down compared to where they would have been.

 

When you then take that system as a base, and have an RA aircraft built under the supervision of RAA sitting in a paddock, you would have the same happy situation.

 

When that aircraft then rolls down the paddock, then at the time there was provable intent to take off, it starts to enter the prescriptive world, so things like external regulations and strict liability kick in, and as it rises and travels over the countryside it is travelling in the GA prescriptive world, where, it would appear quite often the pilot has not been trained for. When it approaches a GA operating airfield there can be another mix of self-administration and strict liability, and so on. Way too much to discuss with one liners on a forum.

 

 

The liability argument is an absolute furphy! CASA is not at arms length from government in legal liability terms. Any decent legal attack on CASA would prove that once and for all.

CASA is a complex body; it retains legal liability for the things it prescribes or proscribes, it has some joint liability where it is doing that in the SAOs

 

 

So when does the ATSB get involved and when don't they? 

It used to be easy; they got involved in all GA fatal crashes, and they didn't get involved in RA crashes.

 

Then probably under pressure to cut back on taxpayer funds, they stopped investigating the GA crashes with an obvious cause, such as some aerobatic crashes, where investigation wouldn't add any knowledge.

 

Then they they started to strategically choose some RA accidents to investigate.

 

Today, my take is that they strategically select which crashes to investigate based on potential learning, so the line is slightly blurred.

 

In my opinion ATSB is a very professional operation.

 

 

Exciting as the prospect of another pointless hair splitting exercise is, I'd point out were were specifically talking about CASA being closed down and re-establishing the Department of Civil Aviation.

 

It isn't going to happen, primarily for public liability reasons.

 

 

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I wonder if you want an organisation that is inexpensive and unbureaucratic, then this is the kind of thing that you might expect to get? I do have a question, which others might be able to answer. If an accident is investigated, could the results of the investigation not just be published? Is there a problem with confidentiality or defamation? Thanks!

If ATSB are involved there is a series of progress reports and a final report so you get a good idea of what happened; I miss the old days when Macarthur Job would go one step further and look into the pilot's background, and there would often be a section pointing out that the pilot had often bragged to friends about flying in cloud, or aerobatics down to zero etc. and this removed any doubt about what happened. However time and legal conventions move on.

 

Where ATSB are not involved, the normal procedure for any fatal accident applies; Police prepare a brief for the State Coroner of the day, and do not release any information to the public. People can attend the Coroner's hearing if they can work out when it is on, and they can read his/her opinion if they can find it in public records. Given that a number of years can pass before the Coroner will have made a decision, the timeline is almost impossible to follow, and the Coroner is usually looking for a cause of death rather than a cause of accident. Some reports aren't of much help to us; others can be very enlightening. Police frequently call in RAA for technical assistance, and RAA don't breach the police legal process.

 

One person in RAA tried a process where he issued a very broad safety report, not specific to a crash or location, and I thought that was very helpful. He was able to get a very strong message across for other pilots to do something without breaching the legal process, but I haven't seen one recently

 

I've often tried to think of ways we could tap into the Coroners process more reliably, and I have a meeting coming up where fatalities are not being optimally recorded in a particular road transport sector, where there might be an opportunity to raise the subject again.

 

 

No, but good luck trying.

 

 

II think that it is time for the proletariat to revolt. Overthrow the Empire of CASA and re-establish the Department of Civil Aviation physically connected to Parliament. Having the control of aviation by an Authority that is at arm's length from parliamentary control has flown us into the Cumulogranitis.

You can't put the genie back into the bottle; about the same small rump of pilots hated DCA too. The original Flying Doctor, Clyde Fenton was in continuous trouble with DCA.

 

 

Plain fact of the matter is that they (CASA) do not want more than one SAO for each rec aviation sector  - see discussion docs as part of Part 149 NPRM. This has been policy since about 2004. Watch the video of CASA at the RRaT hearing a few weeks ago and see how they proposed to suck AOPA into this vortex of doom.

HGFA and RAA are both handling some aircraft classes, so there would be no precedent there.

 

AOPA's actions could trigger some serious thought about where the borderline should be on medical and operations in controlled airspace and cross-country flights and number of passengers.

 

Pandora's box is now partly open thanks to AOPA, and there are pilots with opposing, and logical views on both side of each of those subjects