turboplanner

For those of you wanting to come up with an alternative, these things are relevant:

1. CASA either applied a $60,000 sanction or threatened to apply a $60,000 sanction because, over a number of years RAA has resisted setting up an SMS and employing an SMS Manager as it is required to do under the deed of agreement.

So those of you suggesting I'm misquoting or who don't know what "ensure" means, should note that you are not really arguing with someone on an internet, you are arguing with CASA. Certainly the CASA documents don't say "please yourself" and the ICAO document doesn't say "if you feel like it">

Not only that, you have put yourselves in the precarious position of arguing against a safety item in defiance of a Safety Authority.

I think we can safely say, that for CASA to have applied a sanction stating a specific requirement, THEY know whether they called up the ICAO clause and or issued instructions doe their organization to employ a specific person or not.

You can argue with CASA, but I'd suggest that would finish up costing around a quarter of a million dollars, and at the end of it you could still be facing a series of very quick audits with the final helper of being grounded until you did comply with their directive.

2. If RAA, through it's President responded to CASA's action by agreeing to set up an SMS and employ an SMS Manager immediately, that would constitute a contract. (You can argue whether he had the power to do so if you like) So the discussion now is leaning towards a breach of contract.

The outcome of that is either a contractual problem, if the President, as I maintain, had the power to make that decision, or back to square one, if he didn't. i.e. CASA would be likely to apply a $60,000 sanction as the first of a series of warnings leading to groundings unless RAA complied with what the have specified which is (a) an operating SMS and (b) an SMS Manager.

So you need to think that through and come to your own conclusions.

You can certainly condemn the current board members for continuing the veil of secrecy about the CASA meeting which, if published would have sent a message out to all FTF's and pilots everywhere to smarten up their attitude to safety, but what you are facing with CASA's demands has to be met one way or another.

Jim, for what you were suggesting, if a contract exists, and I think it does, you could go to CASA and tell them you believe you could get a better result by setting up the system first by and agreed date,and then employing the manager to go straight into an operations role by an agreed date.

They may then amend their demands and that would form an amendment to the contract, but being an organization in a high risk business which has resisted compliance for years, it may be too late for alternative paths - the directive may have come from higher up.

I'll put it another way then. If you decide to watch the show, and you are gobsmacked again and again and again there's a place you can look to verify what you've just been told.

If the partner is suing doctors it almost seems a final admission that CASA had done their duty to their utmost.

SpriteAH and Rhysmcc - I provided the linkage in the form of CASA's RAA board member duties, CASA's ICAO call up and the ICAO document and the Job Specification.

If you want to make your own interpretations you have to live with them.

What is hanging over all of us is that RAA does not have a safety system in place, does not have the people on the ground auditing compliance and guiding participants, and every fatality which occurs is a potential major risk. That's the overriding urgency, but CASA are correct in what they are demanding.

R

It was my understanding ICAO don't require a SMS Manager as such, but a manager responsible for SMS, it isn't required to be a stand alone position, and in fact the aviation company I work for with 3000 plus employees it is a General Manager (not to be confused with the CEO or Executive Manager) who oversees a range of systems/issues.It sounds like the what Jim is suggesting (and the board looking at) is a much more sound option for an organisation such as RA-AUS and something the GM or manager delegated could oversee. Just another example on why this issue should have been dealt with by the board rather then by 'executive' decision, explore all the options and have a democratic process as per the associations constitution.

Several suggestions have been put to the board and what's left of the Executive to consider a consultancy group who have experience with aviation SMS implementation and have done so with CASA support for similar organisations as ours. On the surface it would appear to be significantly cheaper using this method (a proven method) than to implement a person into a role who might or might not be able to create a quality SMS system. The consultancy course will be much quicker as they have all the basis ready to go and amend to RAA.

You could do what you are suggesting in addition to the Manager, and given the amount of work which has to be done to set the system up, and which will disappear immediately it has been bedded down, that would not be a bad idea.

But if a major incident occurred (or even a minor one), without the prescribed Manager, RAA would be legally non-compliant, and that could be very costly indeed.

Where the need for the dedicated person really kicks in, is ensuring and managing ongoing compliance and auditing teams and FTF's, and that's not a part time job.

Going down the path you are suggesting is also similar to the shortcut of just signing off the registrations.

Major, I'd suggest you read the very long thread of pprune from people who knew him well.

It's by far the most appalling story I've ever read about aviation.

Just about all the safety checks and balances failed, either through negligence of authorities or him outsmarting them over and over again.

When you see what his condition was after the hangar door accident, there's no doubt as to what should have been done.

You should also read the Senate Inquiry which has been going on.

I don't doubt this has made CASA step up their activity because this case alone virtually questions whether CASA is an appropriate authority to manage aviation.

It's spine chilling stuff.

And no, by reasonable comparison with other dangerous sports we are way ave where we should be, which is maybe 1.

Keith I agree there is an agenda from one group of people, you only have to read through this thread to see it. The President has been accused of Nepotism without any evidence to back up that claim. He has been accused of "Jobs for the boys" without any evidence of that claim. I have been branded with "associating" without any answer as to who with.

All in all it's a pretty disgusting, attacking threat, very short in facts to back up the attack.

However, we've come to where we've come, and I've done some thinking overnight:

John G, is this a fair summary of what we were talking about last night?

AR to Keith Page

While you are digging into Myles's employment history you might let us know how long he had been out of work before accepting the gift of the STCC role from Ed.

Turbo to AR

Whether he is in work or out of it is none of your business, so back off.

JG to Turbo

On the contrary Turbs it is our business when Myles claimed in his Email to the Board that he had resigned his normal "day" job to take up the appointment; when in fact he had been unemployed for a number of weeks before convincing Ed to give him the job.

Turbo

How about the hard evidence of the unemployment?

JG

I'll leave that up to the folks making the statement; however it shouldn't be too hard to prove, either he was employed or he wasn't.

If so, I agree, it is Alfa Romeo's responsibility to come up with the facts or apologise.

In thinking this over, firstly in my view this would be one of those issues I would discuss in camera within the board.

He had to do two things to get started on this function: Resign from the board, because we know he was a board member, and be free of any other employment.

He would need to confirm that he was no longer a board member, and that he was free to work.

I'm cautious enough to want to see the exact words in the email before deciding whether any statement was significant.

Aerochute Kev, and Kaz

That at this stage is poor speculation. The job availability would not stand up unless CASA had made it an imperative.

I'll leave that up to the folks making the statement; however it shouldn't be too hard to prove, either he was employed or he wasn't.

Unless I've missed a post or two somewhere, that would be you at the moment; I haven't seen anyone else say that.

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, just that the man should be given natural justice.

How about the hard evidence of the unemployment?

If that is true, yes I take it back and apologise.

However, if it is not true, a person's private life has been hung out to dry in front of Association members, other recreational flyers, I'd guess at at least a dozen CASA staff including ones directly responsible for RAA's future, and at least one Ministerial adviser. Not a nice thing to do.

Sorry to interrupt FH but I've just found out you've got Trevor Dance as the Palmer Party Candidate in McEwen. Don't know how the party will poll but Trevor's one tough cookie.

M61A1, I'd agree with that, I've watched myself very carefully and realised that some of my precision was going off.

However it is a small amount vs just not recognising instant action is required.

I'd say this is why zero blood alcohol is required for youths, bus drivers and truck drivers. It would be interesting to check the truck statistics before the zero rule before the Fatigue Management regulations, and after to see if there are any bumps there.

Keith, it is always good to work from the facts and thanks for bringing the info on Myles's experience to light. Also, I have not heard anyone argue that RA-Aus does not need a an SMS. As you would be aware, every place in Australia where work is undertaken must, by law, have a safe system of work. While you are digging into Myles's employment history you might let us know how long he had been out of work before accepting the gift of the STCC role from Ed.

Flyvulcan has given some indication of the massive job Myles has to do.

As posted in another thread about Gavin's Resignation, the following is an extract from a very recent email from Steve Runciman:"The SMS . . . is in existence in RA-Aus now and it was accepted by the board at the Sep 11 board meeting and since that board meeting it has been gathering dust, despite the best efforts of some of us to get this thing moving!"

 

Is that sufficient evidence for you to now accept my many, many, many times assertion of this fact?

 

Steve's memory is correct. I've checked the Board Minutes for Sep 2011 and it is all there.

Now all that remains is to produce it, give CASA a good kick up the ding, and save members and FTF's hundreds of hours.

That's roughly what I've seen quoted for GA

Students are the safest, things are good just after the licence, then shortcuts are taken, then some pilots think they've learnt it all, but come up against wind shear for the first time etc, then recency is ignored.

It's handled very well in the book "The Killing Zone (Wow and why pilots die by Paul A. Craig) - available on amazon.com.

In my case I'd done all my navex's in calm conditions, stayed on course, arrived at check points to the minute, then screwed up a couple of times in cross winds, then started to show off doing steep turns, tiny circuits and every landing a short-field over the fence, then no time wasted doing circuits for landings at all and a few other tricks, and was lucky enough to survive the trend by learning from others who weren't so lucky.

Managing the pilot's behaviour is one of the keys at this stage. In the racing equivalent we have a Chief Steward who does this.

The petitions generally are an indicator to the Council that "this might not be a pushover", but are generally received with a serious face and filed.

If there is no petition, I've seen that raised in Council as a reason to sell the contentious land to their new friend.

Offering to manage the airfield under a written agreement is a great idea.

The Sting case was slightly abnormal, but if the RAA and CASA settled, that means that they decided not to go down the full path.

The structure is in place now for someone to sue anyone who had a duty of care in the matter they don't have to find a sneaky assed way, that's my point.

I think that the truth of this statement may just well be a significant part of the problem.It needs to be driven home that from the moment that you open the hangar door (or should that be the moment that you get out of bed),until the moment you close it, that you and only you, can ensure that you are as safe as you can be (and that includes keeping a lookout for others that could harm you), regardless of any regulation/system put in place to protect you.

A lot of agrees, winner etc like on this post.

Yes it does, and that's all that used to be done in the prescriptive legislation days of the 20th century.

Pay half an hours flying cost and go to a Public Liability lawyer, a specialist, with this question:

"I'm an instructor/Flying School Manager/Airfield Owner etc. I convert pedestrians into pilots/manage an airfield where x number of pilots fly/provide facilities for members of the public to enter, and pilots with passengers to fly, and I tell all the pilots THEY are responsible for being a competent pilot and for safety. Am I meeting my Duty of Care in this way?

That should be good for an hour or so's discussion about who's likely to own your house down the track.

I was involved in a very similar discussion to this with a major company. There was a new regulation which was non-prescriptive as many of the new regulations are, so no authority checked whether it was done; drivers were not responsible, but the people building the vehicle and putting it on the road were.

After decades of outsmarting the road authorities with illegal weights and measures they were trapped by duty of care but didn't know it. The dealers and body builder rebelled and the Managing Director sided with them saying they were professionals, had worked in the industry all their lives and knew what they were doing.

Someone decided to get a legal opinion, and a few days later the Managing Director sent out a bulletin to all dealers with the regulation attached and along with a form which the dealer was to sign, committing him to sign the form, comply with the new regulation, and keep records of every quote with the regulation calculations attached, with the condition that if this was not done the dealer would be immediately terminated.

So ignore me by all means, but get professional advice - you're still living by the standards which existed before the 1980's.

Turbs, I can appreciate the job you've done there with your whatever it is, and I congratulate you on your successfully figures. However...we cannot fit out our aircraft with steel roll cage protection, driver 4" wide restraint harnesses with heavy padding, fireproof driver suits , minimum capacity fuel tanks, and whatever else it is keeping your sportsmen/ women alive. As you know if we did that in the average UL it simply wouldn't get off the ground !.....so we are stuck with the fact that most aircraft are not designed or constructed to hit the ground at high rates of speed. So most who take to the air do so knowing the risks, and have accepted them forthwith. We tighten our seatbelts, make sure the fuel is on, hone our skills as best we can, and take to the sky's. Such is the sport of flying UL and other light recreational aircraft, in the year 2013. I've been listening to the masses telling us "your all going to kill yourselves" now for 30 years or so....... Enjoy it as it is ...or not , your choice entirely as I see it................Maj...

We are just chatting on an internet forum, rushing thought, rushing typing.

If we were in a serious safety discussion, we would be addressing factual data, and being very specific about the product.

Race cars need steel roll cages, Simpson Harnesses which weight nearly as much as the driver because in his environment he and the car are being belted around at multiple g's all the time.

Some things, like correct frame triangulation, or correct FRP design, burstproof fuel tanks do translate .....to a degree, but I agree with you there's no point if all the machine can do is taxi. Most aircraft will never be involved in a deformation, it's just not a major part of the environment. Having said that, two things got me interested in Ultralights. One was when flying a Cherokee downwind for a landing at an airport in Las Vegas, and seeing a guy coming towards me sitting on a plastic chair on a piece of 2" pipe, making a slight deviation to the right as I did and missing me by maybe 50 metres. The other was a magazine report on an Ultralight a little bit like a single seat Drifter which had a progressive crumple frame and seat structure which protected the pilot up to double digit g's if he dropped the aircraft on to the ground.

What was instilled into me during GA training was that flying is very safe.....provided you don't make a mistake.

To give you an example of that from the car world where we have those extra protections our Chief machine Examiner was asked to fly to another State to assist the Coroner relating to a fatal crash of a standard saloon - probably the most docile of all classes.

The driver had been involved in a multiple collision, his car had hit the safety fence hard, knocking him unconscious with his foot on the throttle. The car had careered across the infield and hit the opposite safety fence head on in what should have been a survivable incident. The driver had multiple injuries and the floor pan was filled with blood, which was not something which could occur if his harness had been done up. Two peeople had failed that night - the driver, and the pit steward assigned to check every harness.

As far as "you're all going to kill yourselves" - In a serious approach, yes you aim for zero injuries and deaths the same as a shooter aims for a perfect score. If you argue that two a year is acceptable, you'll get four human nature being what it is. However if you want to do some good, you'll do research first, then go where that research tells you there are x issues which can be resolved with y action. No one works on a one solution fits all with the exception of road authorities with their "speed kills" theme, which doesn't work.

OK referred to the RBT success. This was based on research which showed that when blood was tested from deceased drivers, in 50% of cases the driver was drunk, and in the road toll decrease in Victoria the two massive drops which account for most of the reduction come from seat belts and RBT.

As I mentions, a byproduct of discovering RAA's responsibility as spelled out by CASA is the mandatory accident investigation. Once the politics of that are sorted out, then direct action can be fed in year by year to the SMS and result in corrective action. Safe pilots (as against those who think they have it under control) will notice virtually no difference to their operations.

I have an outlook which has done me well in sports administration.

I just count the total, rather than drill down to x per 10,000 people

The reason it works is with the statistic you tend to look at it and file it and do nothing about it.

A total figure represents individual people.

I got very focused on the truck portion of the road toll in Victoria a few years ago.

The total road toll had reduced from I think 1194 per year to about 300 per year, 47 of that trucks.

A truckie can thread a 26 metre B Double through the eye of a needle at 100 km/hr, yet drivers were rolling truck, and hitting trees and each other.

We knew there were negligible mechanical causes, and virtually no load shifts.

So a few of us started to look closer. The Police Highway Task force once counted 197 skid marks off the Hume Highway from drivers going to sleep.

From my research I found that of the 47, about 43 had died asleep at the wheel.

Others found the same, and some fatigue legislation was developed.

At Arcadia, near Shepparton a young mother in a Laser was taking her two children to school one morning and was stopped in a right turn land into the school with her indicator on. A semi hit her at 100 km/hr with no braking whatsoever and there was very little to pick up of the family in the Laser.

That galvanised people into action, and the legislation was fast tracked with the turning point coming at a Melbourne breakfast which is another story for another day.

Currently, with the new legislation in place the numbers are beginning to fall.

My point is the fixed number of 47 gave us something to focus on.

TurbsI don't think we are that far apart....... and Im certainly not out looking for your scalp (and hopefully neither the reverse)

 

I believe that the points of difference are:-

 

1) It was an emergency and Ed was entitled to act as he did.......I Don't agree and history has shown that I'm right. We aren't grounded today nor have we lost CASA funding today, yet the plan Ed set in motion HAS NOT DELIVERED because people are concerned not over what the plan intends but how it came into being. The plan was set in motion around the 5th of June its the 19th today and anyone who says that Ed was unable to get the board to meet and discuss and for Ed to arrange for delivery of the "Get your sh!t together letter from CASA" so that a clear determination of the direction forward in 14 days is wrong. We know the board is aware of the urgency (less than KeithPage suggested, but not no urgency)

 

2) Whether we did or didn't have all or some of an SMS in place is to me irrelevant. CASA tells us that we aren't meeting our obligations to them and they alone are the arbiter of whether we are or aren't then that point becomes moot.....we must do what is needed to get to the point that CASA says what is required is done (which is what your documentation shows)

 

3) was it the fault of just the current board, or those that were in place last year or the year before that and so on again is moot......get on with the issue today. That the board didn't deliver would suggest that the board was dysfunctional.......no...surely not that's a revelation !!!

 

4) The constitution is badly written......Yep, we knew that and that is why there was a CRC set up ages ago...but dissolved by SR and then re-established....but stood down while the organisation review that is moving forward at the pace closely approximating a snail... takes place. There will be delivery at some point in time and until then we have to work with what we have (AND THE MODEL RULES because if there's confusion you can be sure they will be a point of reference for anyone trying to establish what should happen if ours are confusing as written)

 

5) Ed is a Can do person, and we need can do people. Correct but never at the expense of the constitution and our established controls (financial delegations in this case) . I'm guessing that those who are most at ease with the approach Ed took will be small to medium business owners or seniors who work everyday to do what the business needs to survive and prosper. I'll equally guess those with the most discomfort operate in larger organisations where the "how you did it" is every bit as important as the "what you did" and never of secondary relevance.... Not to say that is right or wrong...just how I suspect it is.

 

I wont comment further because I think our differences are much less than our similarities......

 

At the end of the day I think we both agree that a plan that CASA accepts as moving towards resolving our obligation shortfalls and the actions needed to put it in place and maintain it are of significant importance...

I assume, from the combination of rhetoric and silence that the board managers have confirmed the President's decision, CASA have gone back to a careful watch up to the deadline and Miles is operating at top speed. [don't jump to any conclusions, what I've written is what I've written]

That would then give the Association a less contentious but very difficult goal to achieve in a very short time, so that's where the focus should shift to.

As we know all board members have the onus to be involved in this with Myles the Co-Ordinator, and so far there is a deafening silence which MUST change urgently, or we will be talking about one more fail in September and certain penalties. You don't want to go there.

So Andy about your points:

1. I think head In the Clouds provided a very feasible explanation, the board members don't seem to have bothered publishing their version, and I'm not going to waste my time on the minutae

2. I had an interesting talk tonight with a former board member who was no shown the CASA job requirements for a board member and it goes back a long time. New and Incumbent Presidents dropped a gigantic ball.

Hopefully all board members have now printed off the Sport Pilot Self Administration Handbook 2010, and will have a lot more to attend to than they previously thought. It is a very powerful document, well written and concise

3. The board will change quite a bit soon, but dogmatic, procrastinating behaviour with the present major issues needs to be stamped out.

4. The Constitution needs a touch up - we are already working with the CRC result I think. I would delete the Executive entirely and that would reduce the number of cliques and clashes, however I would only update the Constitution a section at a time as issues crop up; it has produced enviable success compared to GA, so I'd be careful about breaking it. The recent problems have been more about people not doing their job and collecting into camps, or an employee bluffing the board members than any major framework issues.

5. This is where we differ. A Constitution which covered every eventuality would be bigger than the bible, not even large company procedure manuals do. So within the framework there has to be some give and take for extraordinary issues.

I don't want anyone going for the heart pills - extraordinary means what it says, and the person making the decision needs to justify it and the decision needs to be one which a majority of the members would have made.

Clearly this is not acceptable with RAA members now who have been beaten up by behind the scenes deals, jobs for the boys, secrecy and so on.

However, if there had been a decade of stability, if the board members were trusted, and if somehow a CASA imperative has slipped everyone's mind, no one would turn a hair if the President announced to everyone, "I had to do that, because of this, and this is what I've done.

We aren't charged with making RAA policy on this site, this is just a forum, and the members may reject what I'm saying, but I believe you need this safety valve now and again.

While you may have experienced large companies which did everything by the book, I have been blessed with some of the world's biggest, which at times let me commit millions of dollars based on my own assessments and decisions. Of course I would have been fired if any of them had failed, but through their trust they made hundreds of millions of dollars. So some of them also have this safety link.

Right now I would hope we're about to move into a lot of discussion and action setting up the RAA SMS system, and this will involve a huge requirement for assistance to FTF's, a network of volunteer safety compliance and enforcement people.

The good news is that if these systems are well written, and if you already have a safe environment, you'll find very little difference, it's just the setup and subsequent adjustments that are the pain in the bum.

I've lost track of the growth factor but it would have about 10500 competitors now who get faster every year without a corresponding increase in injury producing accidents.

It is much easier to manage though because, say in Victoria, all competitors for the weekend are coming in to five tracks and getting there early enough to be checked before any activity takes place, and a few get sidelined before anything starts.

You can't have that degree of control with about the same number of pilots deciding at any time to go for a fly from any field or even their home paddock, so controls have to be more audit based.

The cars are all checked for basic build compliance once a year before the start of each season, and often several times during the build though, by volunteer trained machine examiners.

That's Existing Use Rights.

You'd need to look up the State Planning Schemes, but usually you qualify if you have owned a property for x amount of years, and you have been doing X, say sawmilling, and the area is rezoned Residential, then all the other people can only build homes but you retain Existing Rights Use as industrial, and you get to stay if you want to.

Existing Use Rights stay with the property if they meet the planning scheme definition.

Whoever buys the property can give away Existing Rights, so it's of no use to you unless you own the property, or get a fly friendly owner.

What I would recommend you do is count up the people flying, find out now before the developer gets his claws in how much the Council wants for the property, see what it would cost you per month for a bank loan of 40, 45, 50 years, divide that up among the flyers, and you might be pleasantly surprised if the airfield is not right in the town.

As owners you get the existing rights, you also get income from rentals, hangars, landing fees, you get a Capital Gain, so that if in 20 years development has crept up to the airfield, you will be selling subdivision land, not just a paddock, which will pay for another more upmarket airfield further out.

The interest/total price is secondary to x number of members controlling their own field, but you can still do fund raisers, fly-ins, etc to reduce the interest.

Loved Wondai, the people down at the service station are great and that big tree looks magnificent in flower.

Very romantic but it's a fact that most people don't know what they want and it takes a decisive stronger person to lead, take command and take responsibilty for making the hard decisions - all the while being savaged by his peers.

You've actually quoted what it does mean; I think the wording of the saying is 19th century.

As a leader you have keep momentum rolling to get things done despite the complexity, while all those doing nothing to help loudly criticise you. It can be devastating at times if you've worked extremely hard and had a success only to have people why you haven't achieved next week's goal. the good ones just get it all done with a smile.

Can't be too damn dangerous if you've never had a fatality in 50 years Turbs !...........And thirty over all adventure aviation sports would include the two recent powered parasail deaths, plus hangglider deaths, plus non RAA Trike deaths, plus Gyro deaths etc..etc...so how many does that leave for us in RAA ?......Granted one is way too many, but we don't by far, have the worst accident rate in Australia. That is, and has been for some years unfortunatly Gyrocopters.In past years CASA wanted RAAus to take the gyro administration under our wing, as they wereen't doing a real flash job themselves. This was rejected by the RAAus because it would have ruined our good safety record over the years. And my apoligies to Gyro pilots, but facts are facts.....So turbs , could you do me, and all other RAAus pilots a big favor, and don't quote the 30 number in future RAAus discussions please................... Maj...

That's Victoria; and that's a strict track inspection/machine inspection before each use/Chief Steward managing behaviour plus a lot more - some of the other States don't have too much to boast about.

The RAA figures I would say are about 10; virtually all of them mentioned on this site, although it takes a bit of trawling and you can miss threads titled "Oh No", "Horsham" etc

John Gardon also has figures.

Agree with you on Gyrocopters but we started climbing I think about three years ago and haven't gone down.

Yes I shouldn't have quoted 30 without referring it back to the CASA statement, which you should look at because it appears to be at the bottom of the current high speed push by CASA for RAA compliance and an SMS asap. I normally do quote just the ones I find which are mentioned on here.