turboplanner

Guess 9,200 members = $27.35 each per year

One way or the other, it's pretty disgraceful that the official figures are not available.

If you asked all 9200 members whether they wanted to continue spending the $25 to $50 per year or wanted to drop it, I suspect more people would respond than currently vote, particularly the ones who "only want to go flying"

However, if they don't object to it and don't vote, and those members who do vote are happy to spend that cost (which even at $50 is lower than many industry magazines), there's no real issue.

I'm just saying, get the real costs, keep an eye on the circulation, and also keep an eye on what's happening in the electronic world because that's where we are going.

We were told human factors was the answer to pilots making bad decisions resulting in accidents, I think that would be now be shown to be not the case. Now we have the SMS about to be imposed on us it and it remains to be seen what effect that will have but I think learning from accident reports would be far more beneficial that the HF and SMS put together.If the Police reports are no good for legal reasons why are they appropriate for the Coroner? Surely there is way we can have accident reports?

 

I can't help thinking if the same energy was put into getting accident reports as has been applied to Human Factors and now the SMS we would now have accident reports.

You may have been told that, but I remember it slightly differently - that in a large number of incidents, injury accidents and fatal accidents the primary cause was human factors (or putting it more realistically someone making a mistake) In other words they had been trained for a procedure, might have been successfully doing it for 2000 hours, but screwed up.

From this came a decision which gravitated to CASA and to RAA, that some focus on HF could prevent most of these.

At that point it turned into a ridiculous farce, with some industry booksellers concocting their version of training, and in general a quite irrelevent syllabus. I'm still to read about a pilot who grabbed a few crays thirty feet down, threw them in the Cessna and immediately climbed to 15,000 feet whereupon his eyeballs blew out.

Even if the cases where HF was a factor were written in simple language and posted on the ATSB website, and pilots were examined from material on that website would be better. You'd have to keep the exam in because as we know a percentage of GA and RA pilots have a healthy disregard for any safety training.

The SMS has been EXTREMELY badly explained in both GA and RA. I'm not sure of the statistics in GA, but if, as someone posted, there has been no reduction in injuries and fatalities, CASA needs to start again, and RAA needs to ensure that its system is not just a ritual "we've done it" series of books along the lines of what we've seen so far.

A safety management system is a complete culture of formalising what safe people are already doing. So it's targeted at the unsafe, sloppy, and detail challenged people who for example allow their aircraft to fall out of the sky when the engine stops instead of making a forced landing with perhaps a few broken bones. Reaching those people, in some cases removing them from the industry, and on other cases retraining requires a culture change in both the good and the bad. Right now for example, a lot of the safe pilots consider that the fatality issue is nothing to do with them, but the unsafe ones don't think they are unsafe and are not going to fix themselves.

Safety management is just that - managing for safety - so coming back to Safety Management Systems, you certainly will see some that haven't worked, and when you look at them you'll quickly see the people who built them didn't really know their business. However. other companies and organizations who have tuned in their management system to manage key safety points for their business or organization, WILL be able to show a big improvement, and that's what we need to be striving for because the current trend is taking too many people.

I for one don't have time to sit and read a magazine on-line. Isn't it the advertisements that cover the cost (or the greatest percentage of it) of the mag.Because of the 'sport pilot' mag. being passed around at work after I've finished it has caused a fair amount of interest among the crew, two of them have become members and gone on to achieve their pilot certificate. This would not have happened without the magazine being in print.

Just my opinion.

 

Cheers Davo.

Dazza also made a point about liking to read paper magazines, and proved his point by posting in the wrong thread, but we know what he means.

We are at the beginning of electronic media. the two main newspaper chains in Australia have made major changes to the numbers of staff and type of staff they employ, and are winding down print media fast and ramping up their electronic versions just as fast (I'm not impressed that they seem to think they can get the same subscription rates for electronic as they got employing hundreds of people and big print and distribution infrastructure.)

I like hunting each day while on camping trips, but these days either I can't do it in many areas, or need four licences up in the mountain wilderness - time moves on.

What you are thinking of is just an electronic version of the print magazine.

Instead, think of a structure where you click on and see the President talking to you about an issue. He explains that several options are available at varying costs and the screen goes to a full size spreadsheet with graph, and you can instantly see the result when he changes the input. He provides a series of bullet point screens, and wraps up the discussion by asking you to vote on the attached poll, or write some feedback on the issue. For the next couple of weeks you can see what others think and how they are voting. You click on another news item and see an actual video with the Technical Manager showing you how to identify and issue and how to fix it. You can also post comments on this news item of your own fixes.

You click on an advertisement, and there's a video of the aircraft for sale and a dozen colour photos.

Electronics are taking us to a new world of communication and you can already see this interaction I spoke of on the two Media Majors' websites.

David, the point I was making about the costs is we don't know; have a look at the Annual Report and you'll have no idea whether the price should go up or down, the ad prices should go up or down, or the whole thing should be dropped like a hot rock as a costly boat anchor.

Good point you made about other people reading the magazine and converting them to members - that's what magazines do, no disagreement from me there. However electronics do it even better. My wife has some road train videos on You Tube, and one which shows a road train de-coupling and splitting up into semis has had 26,000 views. All it really is is two operators walking around doing their days work.

One critical issue before tossing around the idea of continuing to print a magazine, might be to find out exactly what it costs members. We've recently seen some member objecting strenuously to around $20 subscription increase for the cost of an SMS Manager, but what if the magazine costs $80 of each subscription?

Making sure of what not only the magazine, but Natfly costs per year should be a priority for any prudent management.

The argument that pilots don't own or can't use computers, if true, would be a red flag for CASA to do more ramp checks, since more and more data is web based.

It's a stretch to say that a pilot can do a flight plan, get a weather report, obtain NAIPS data, but can't use a computer these days.

God never meant humans to fly. Thats why he invented CASA and the RAAus

If you care to read the recent threads, I pointed out a perfect opportunity, with you specifically in mind, to make use of the SMS development to set safety layers of aircraft groups, which could lead to your double whippersnipper balloon getting back in the air, but you'll have to read for a while.

"--- --------- ------------------------------------ -- -" and so the NES showed the rest of them how to behave when posting, especially......

......- - --- --- --------- -------- -------- --------- (sorry, Turbo only has a dash key in his new micro computer, but it was about Captain)

I've spent 40 years dealing with 8 sets of road transport regulations multiplied by 2 - an imperial and a metric system multiplied by a few more regional regulations, such as Queensland's novel; Pi$$ing regulation where an extra 3 tonnes of cattle could be loaded on to a truck on the grounds that they would pi$$ the weight on top the road as the truck went along.

So to design truck for a national fleet was a very complex matter in terms of suspension design, power and driveline.

This is because the States were always influenced by greedy operator and the States would agree with each other, and on top of that there were interpretations, so for example in Albury/Wodonga, one metropolis one Wodonga operator would pull out for Melbourne with one tonne more than one Albury operator, and another Albury operator would pull out with half a tonne less than the first Albury operator, and all these trucks had to be designed dynamically stable.

The federal Government doesn't have the power to set a national standard, so we are on the way to achieving one by the States agreeing that one of them, Queensland, would be designated the "lead state" for regulations, it would legislate for Queensland, and when it did the other States would all mirror the legislation. To discuss and co-ordinate the regulations they set up a National heavy Vehicle Regulator, which already has around 300 staff, based in Brisbane.

It would become very interesting if Australians passed a resolution to become a republic, because six Heads of State would be sitting in their Government Houses fuming, and I'd exp[ect at least one or two States to jack up. I don't think the republicans have fully thought through the politics there.

No Major, you sure your breakfast wasn't loaded with pepper this morning?

There are a few like that Gibbo, one in Victoria used to attend our transport association meetings and give us excerpts from some of his cases. One I remember was a guy who stood between his van and its hydraulic tailgate, and the stop cable on the remote control had pulled out. He was able to get the manufacturer to redesign the handpiece.

Well Major, you're free to actually look at the legislation, that would be a good idea.

Andy was just presenting facts; they might have seemed complicated, but we do consist of six Countries each with a Head of State and two territories who all agreed, after 50 years of debate to be members of a Commonwealth. It does get frustrating when you post facts and people ignore them.

All deadlines passed without delivery.No milestones met.

SMS education/assisted introduction - zero.

 

The report card is not good!

 

It will be interesting to see what milestones and deadlines will be set in the next Deed.

 

RAAus is not in a good negotiating position.

 

At least we (the members) will now be aware of what RAAus is expected to achieve - and when.

 

DWF

I notice no announcements of new Executive positions or the SMS either. It's beginning to look like all the noise was just to do a hatchet job on Ed and Myles.

Major, we are behind you in wanting good quality investigations and reports, but getting there is legally complicated - too complicated for the 5 second exchanges so far in this thread, where people clearly do not understand the limitations of the jurisdictions and what would be required to set something up.

If you want to pursue this, I'd suggest that you start by reading the ACT applicable to the ATSB to see what powers and protections would be required, and then taking it up in formal RAA meetings where, for example a contributor could present an hour's powerpoint presentation based on sourced facts, rather than a two second reference to something that might sound like a good idea, but which would be shot down by existing legislation.

I think we need accident reports and see no reason why the police report for the coroner can not be available to us. This has been covered in various different threads on here in the past and there is always those who come up with reasons why it can't be done. There has been dumb ass comments comparing rock fishing accidents with flying accidents and that sort of unhelpful negative stuff. I think you will find the police investigations go further than... the pilot died as a result of the fire after the crash, but how would we know when the results are kept secret?

Teckair, what has been said, over and over on threads here is that police will not release their briefs to the general public, or organizations, and have no obligation to, and in some cases very good legal reason not to.

It would be nice if we could get them, and when one is rarely made public, as in a bus crash in Queensland many years ago, the details were excellent.

But it's a closed story to us.

Turbo, the last thing we are is a simple 'mere third party'.....by that deed we can be authorised by Federal mandate to have access to those facts in a timely manner. It is part of our deed of agreement signed with the Federal government, and Federal beats State, last time I checked, especially in matters of aviation regulation........Maj....

A deed is just an agreement between two parties, in this case if it's a Deed for money - a very simple agreement which spells out that CASA will give X amount of money in return for RAA doing Y, and it's loose enough that it's changed every year because of the different amount of money given every year.

The current deed is technically not feasible, so there is an opportunity for CASA and RAA to find a solution.

As I mentioned above, Coroner investigations are not technical enough for us.

You've got the horse before the cart. Unless a State police force has a dedicated accident investigation team which would attend a serious/fatal Rec Flying incident, the local bloke would happily accept the assistance of an independent investigator, suitably certified by RAAus, to assist in preparing the necessary reports. If the incident involved a fatality, then the local Coroner would be wise to accept this assistance. For Coroners to automatically OK this independent assistance, all it needs is a Deed of Agreement between RAAus and each Chief State Coroner. Arranging the agreement could be initiated by RAAus.Also a fatality is the domain of a Coroner. It is the task of police, as agents of the Coroner, to investigate and prepare reports into the death. Therefore in the investigation into a death what the Coroner says, goes.

 

Any reports submitted to the Coroner are not usually available to the public until they are produced as information during the Inquest. However, I'm sure that in the interests of community safety, a clause could be included in any Deed of Agreement that matters having a significant effect on public safety could be published prior to the completion of the Inquest (probably on a 'no name, no pack drill' basis).

 

Old Man Emu

The Coroner has specific tasks to perform, one of which is to find out the cause of death (which might be that an aircraft crashed and he suffered serious burns and the burns killed him.

Our requirements are different, we need to know what caused the aircraft to crash, so we can learn lessons for the future, and that requires a different investigation.

The Coroner's work may be valuable input, and often their investigation and conclusions provide value input for us, but in other cases what they come up with, may not be even close to the issues we need to know about.

So while RAA specialists are currently called in from time to time to assist a Coroner under the present arrangements, we could not meet the requirement of the CASA deed of Arrangement under the legals of that arrangement, and nor would we want to.

Andy, The CASA deed does clearing recognise us as a member based organisation, and clearly requires the collection and reporting of accident /fatality details. It clearly needs to be shared with those most effected ...the membership...period. And it gives us the tools with which to do it. It needs to be done and it is a very safety related matter. There is the word 'safety' in CASAs name is there not...Don't complicate what is really a simple matter that has been recognised for many years (even by CASA ) as something that helps avoid future accidents........Maj....

At this stage is doesn't give us the powers needed, which were given to ATSB (and not CASA)

Major, we covered this in one of the previous threads.

As Andy alluded to the Police are not going to release their briefs to third parties full stop, so that avenue is closed.

For RAA to go to the extent of training dedicated investigators, obtaining forensic equipment etc. would be expensive, problematic, and as we have seen would meet a huge objection from the members not interested in safety. And it would required an Act or amendment to an Act of Parliament to give RAA the same powers as the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which given the current level of RAA non-compliance of RAA culd be seen by some Parliamentarians as irresponsible.

However, since CASA have specified something which RAA currently can't deliver, and ATSB recently said it was going to investigate all GA fatals, it is an ideal time to campaign for ATSB to investigate ALL aircraft fatals, including RAA, and the same basis as New Zealand.

Well I did say some threads can kill people but I was howled down. Not a good thing for a new learner to see, particularly if his/her instructor goes over the EFATO lesson quickly.

As this all unfolds, it might prove a lesson or two. When you know something is wrong, no one says you have to wait for an Authority to ground you these days. Might have been true in the Prescriptive days, but this one could have some surprises for a lot of people.

"....glaassair assair either unless it's....................."

....fairie logo on to his hot pink pants suit prior to attending the General Meeting they'd all forgotten to call.

"I wonder who isn't coming" said Salty, "I for one............."

Those who are not RAA members probably are, but spare a thought for the importer who's just signed a contract to deliver an aircraft in six months time, or a flying school which needs weekly income.

On this subject there's no need to argue, the statistical trend is on the record.