turboplanner

For those who are not aware, trishok is Michael's mother.

 

She very bravely came on here on the July 2010 thread "Drifter double fatality near Lismore" with some down to earth posts.

 

Her contribution this time puts another dimension on this crash.

 

From memory she was as interested as we were in trying to get right to the bottom of the sequences which occurred to ensure the same thing couldn't happen again.

 

Thanks Trish, ADHD gives us something more to think about.

 

 

worms which he quickly handballed to....

 

 

The birds are going to be scared that weekend

 

 

Everyone was assuming it was a Pawnee Louis, so that's where the fuse tank comments were coming from.

 

 

Well they certainly seem to be operating in cloud at the moment.

 

 

Plus charge you $300.00 for taking the phone call where you asked why the bill was so high.

 

Come to think of it, it's quite possible Darky now has a Being 707 parked outside the Condo like John Travolta.

 

 

With all the toing and froing, we still don't know what happened, why it happened or how it happened. I am amazed that something about which we have so little information has generated so much comment. How about some facts people. Hearsay and innuendo do nothing to advance the cause of recreational flyers anywhere. At the moment Raa-Aus is our certifying body. Lets get some facts and debate it with all the information at hand. We don't need to make stuff up and infer "facts" just for arguments sake. This does nothing to advance the cause and makes us look like a bunch of reactionary d...k heads.

You can get a simple non-public answer to your concerns by phoning your local representative. This is the sort of thing he was elected for.

 

 

The last few posts bear out my views. People are saying the wrong thing is being done, but won't state what. I am not saying that they are acting incorrectly, but before i can agree to what they are calling for I want to know the facts. If they are facts, bringing them out into the open should not make them legally liable.

I actually gave you some good advice on where you can get facts a few posts back.

 

 

Ozzie, if you read a bit more you'd know where the problem is; it's certainly not 50 50. Motz is trying to address a very serious issue.

 

 

I want to know what are the terrible things which have been done by board members. Over quite a long period of time I have read that terrible things have been done, but nobody has ever explained what thos things are. Just recently I read that a couple of board members must resign, but no explaination as to why. A while back a similar thing occured and I wa told to ring someone to get the lowdown on what was wrong. My opinion is that if board members have so seriously transgressed, the people who are accusing them must publish their facts.

Try making a phone call to your local member.

 

 

This safety factor is out of our hands

Not if you take up a passenger.

 

What is the manufacturer's duty of care to the owner and operator?

 

What is the instructor's duty of care to the student?

 

What is the pilot's duty of care to the passenger?

 

 

Consider also the nature of a lot of those who only members so that they can fly, and generally have no interest in the politics...

If you need a Pilot Certificate and/or registered RA aircraft to fly you better get interested in politics fast if you want to keep flying.

 

How on earth do you think you are able to fly?

 

You're SELF Administered!

 

Are you still going to show disinterest if your pilot certificate lapses - it's not being issued by the Government but by you, or more precisely your proxy......and you don't care who that is? or what he/she is doing with your money?

 

 

Your logic is odd, pilots can and will make mistakes. Unlike companies, who can change their direction and address safety issues.

We're not talking about my logic here.

 

The precedent Case that Public Liability suits are based on is all about a duty of care being owed to someone even if you make a mistake.

 

So it follows that your best ongoing defence is to have policies in place which minimise mistakes, and you certainly are not going to do something you know you shouldn't do (like take a passenger up for a 6 minute circuit 5 minutes before last light.

 

 

Absolutely Tubz.See, what I find difficult to understand, and im also referring here to Davids post above, is this. If a pilot prangs or has an issue which 'could' have lead to a bad prang (a jump pilot I know of who ran out of fuel 3 times in as many months) or indeed actually prangs and kills someone, he is innocent until proven guilty etc, someone has to take up the issue and 'prove' negligence or inibility etc. BUT, if the same pilot gets a skin cancer on his hand, or has any number of mild medical conditions, his medical is immediately suspended until some time frame is waited out. His Licence is therefor GONE until further notice. Could it not be argued that a significant "human" factor problem be actionable just as swiftly and totally as a medical issue? Something amiss with the 'human' is something wrong with the human, be it a bad ticker or a bad attitude...

 

I hope im making sense here.. Medicals are pulled every day, careers suspended or gone completely, all on the evidence of a blood test or a scan, and often misdiagnosed..(DJP could provide an example there). In some cases, pilots actually cause the deaths of pax and are up flying again in no time, pending some lengthy legal outcome.

Lets say a jump pilot runs out of fuel in as many months, and he is employed by a Club. The club has a duty of care to ensure safe jump operations, and that extends to auditing, monitoring and training their pilot to meet their safety standards. They would be idiots not to have a written pre-flight checklist, and not to have a written policy, and for that policy to include regular check rides and for those check rides to ensure the pilot correctly went through every pre-flight check. They would then be well on the way to meeting their duty of care obligations, but the next step is to monitor adherence to those procedures. If someone comes in and says "he ran out of fuel" there should be an interview, with notes taken on how it happened, and what will be put in place to prevent it happening again, and a warning issued.

 

Three things here:

 

• I take it that these fuel exhaustions are not being addressed as I just mentioned.
   
   
  
• A professional person OHS person carrying out the safety function for a company will be blanching at my rough attempt to explain. In most companies now you don't get past reception without some form of training.
   
   
  
• Ditto for a lawyer - the posts on this thread are just an attempt to explain the basics - there's no way you could bypass several years of law studies and go away using these posts for live operations.
   
   
  

 

 

Public liability usually revolves around:

 

• A civil suit where as David says the claimant has to prove negligence - usually pretty easy with a broken body lying in the wreckage.
   
   
  
• Prosecution by Police from Culpable Negligence (where very broadly someone did something he knew was wrong)
   
   
  

 

 

The Coroner is usually wanting to find out what killed the deceased, not who was to blame, but his/her decision can have a huge bearing on a public liability case. (there was one I recall where a claimant's associate blamed the track promoter for an unsafe track, which most of us agreed with, but detailed investigation showed the injury was caused by the skull hitting the roll cage, which was not permitted to happen under the car rules, so the duty of care claim moved off the track promoter and on to the car builder and machine examiner.

 

Your example of CASA withdrawing licence privilege for illness in general would be the Government discharging its duty of care. Whether the decision basis was fair or not would relate to ongoing management of the decision criteria which is another subject. (The fact that CASA at times does this very badly also concerns me)

 

Human factors - I totally agree with you, and in the example regarding Chief Stewards I mentioned earlier they are there precisely for Human Factors - We actually on-hands MANAGE Human Factors. So, aggressive behaviour, dithering misjudgements, regular failure to follow safety regulations, alcohol consumption, operating with an incapacitating injury. The end result is a very safe operation of what many people perceive to be a risky sport. We would never leave Pilots to address their own Human Factors themselves - we are usually unaware of our shortcomings. So this is an area of opportunity for GA and RA in recreational flying).

 

If Human Factors was actually MANAGED rather than just lightly tested once, the example you gave of a pilot up and out and crashing again would occur much less frequently because immediate action would be taken against him in the field (a little like a Random Breath test where the keys are taken off a driver at the roadside). The legal process of his previous transgressions will still take years because the Law has to be meticulous, but at least this way he most likely won't have a licence to continue doing the wrong thing.

 

Sorry if I seem to be rambling on over several posts, but I think its worthwhile to get an understanding of the big picture and where our decision obligations lie.

 

 

To put it another way, if the R44 pilot has another problem and kills someone, say, a relative of mine. I know who ill be chasing in court, and it wont be him, it will be the organisation that failed to act IN TIME to prevent it.

I agree, the organization issuing the licence or certificate has a duty of care to ensure the person maintains a safe standard via their ongoing assessment system.

 

 

A safety catch...designed to stop colateral damage to onlookers..You still couldn't prevent the accident could you. And every driver in that race would accept the risk of crashing and understand its part of the sport.

As some people have said, you can't prevent accidents, but what is going on here is preventing injury and death, and yes my example related to the duty of care owed by a Promoter to the spectators.

 

In terms of duty of care to the drivers, the promoter has a duty of care to provide a safe track and barriers and to keep the area free of solid objects and people, the Machine Examiner has a duty of care to ground a car if there's a safety defect, the Chief Steward has a duty of care to manage the behaviour of the drivers, and so on. When it all comes together various people are all managing their specific area. When that occurs the risk is very very low - most States haven't been as lucky as Victoria, but there we haven't killed a speedway driver in over 45 years - that's ZERO fatalities for four decades. That might give you an indication why I jump on safety when I see a constant flow of preventable recreational aircraft crashes.

 

 

So if this guy augers in again and kills someone else, who's breached their duty of care? Surely the administration or governing body would have a case to answer?? I'm sure Casa are as aware of litigation as you and I. He's still flying, still has a licence. How does that work??? I was in shock when I heard his voice on the radio.

This one's a little clouded - you said he made grave errors of judgement, so it could have been accidental, but let's look at a different scenario where a pilot deliberately opts not to keep up with his recency/skills and exhibits a standard well below acceptable at a BFR, but the Instructor gives him the benefit of the doubt, then I'd suggest the Instructor has breached his Duty of Care. The key here is that public liability is all about go/no go decisions - you have to take the emotion out of it. Even in a tough financial environment you have to take the emotion out of it because the alternative is the scenario you pointed to.

 

 

Is it time to call in ASIC or similar?

No, there is no public evidence of anything at this stage; all the players are busy not saying anything.

 

 

Turbo. While I understand and agree with much of what you say, people have to accept that risk is part of life.

Not these days. There is certainly risk management, for example I was involved in setting the heights of safety and catch fences, but these were set above the known history of cars flying through the air; we didn't say "well motor racing is dangerous so we can let the odd one fly over the top because its too expensive to cover everything. When people do knowingly allow a risk level, what usually happens is that a mate accepts that risk, but when he's living with permanent injuries he's talked into a lawsuit and you're gone.

 

The only way to be 100% safe is by not partaking in life. Sit inside wearing a faraday suit hoping that a jumbo doesn't land in your lounge room. The threat of litigation is everywhere.

What usually happens is that the PL Insurance premiums where regular injuries occur usually force an end to that activity - fund raising BBQ's for example.

 

Can you point us to any documented evidence where a raa pilot has served 6 years or one day due to a post accident litigation? I'm not saying it's not been done just I'm not aware of it. There's a bloke flying around in a a new r44 in this area, a little over 1 year since he made grave errors in judgment and had an accident which killed his wife.

The documented evidence usually comes in the form of a newspaper report with details of the multi million dollar payout and/or sentence (for the media challenged, the facts can then be researched)

 

I haven't seen one relating to a pilot or aircraft/components supplier yet, however after being asked the same question in the Transport Industry, I kept track of newspaper reports and after a period of about three years I was able to quote five names - so a bit over one a year.

 

One, some of you may remember, occurred during construction of a major Melbourne road where a driver reported a piece of road making equipment had defective brakes. The owner of the Company told him to drive the machine but be careful. He rolled down a slope, the machine rolled on top of him and from memory the owner got five years.

 

Many people, including myself would have argued that it was safe to drive a tractor without brakes because all you had to do was leave it in gear and change gear/park it on level ground.

 

One I remember very clearly was two young guys who failed to ensure that a tow rope capacity exceeded the weight of a towed vehicle - they each got 6 1/2 years for their technical decision.

 

Re the R44 a year ago, firstly someone has to decide to sue, or lay criminal charges. Many potential cases are never activated, but when they do is usually takes about 7 years to get to Court, so I would be expecting today's newspapers to be reporting on incidents which occurred around 2005.

 

 

damkia, sorry to take so long to add to the research you did way back on post #23.

 

It is as you point out, very easy for Members to get rid of board members and make changes considered necessary.

 

RAA is similar to many other Associations in that respect.

 

Since you don't want little cliques forming and using those clauses to turf out good representatives and put their cronies in, there is usually a clause which requires a substantial number of Members to support that action.

 

In the case of the RAA, board members are not likely to call a General Meeting if they think their future will be affected.

 

That leaves the mechanism of the Members calling a General Meeting to do the things you outlined.

 

The weakness in the RAA system is that the membership is not like a local Club where everyone gets to know what a problem is and it's not hard to get a two thirds majority on the floor at a meeting.

 

Firstly RAA Members have to request a General Meeting, and that requires writing a letter, or making individual contact.

 

Secondly, Rule 23 (ii) says:

 

"The Board shall, on the requisition of not less than 5% of the total number of members, convene a general meeting of the Association"

 

Now, with around 10,000 members, that would be around 500 people who would have to specifically write a letter, pick up the phone, send an email etc.

 

Since it isn't possible to get anyhere near that number to even VOTE, you can see the problem.

 

And that's why, when concerns were raised 18 months ago it was realised that there was no point jumping up and down when there was a vocal opposition who wanted to keep things quiet, stifling any chance of reaching 10,000 members with enough force to get them off their seats, and so the best action was to get good people to campaign election by election, which was always of course going to take 4 to 6 years.

 

 

This is how it is meant to work:

That might be a general theme, but an Incorporated Association has rules to which it must work (usually decided by volunteers when it is set up, so they can be very sloppy),

 

so in commenting about RAA, you need to make sure you read its Constitution first, then comment within thise confines.

 

In my opinion the constitution is one of the achilles heels of RAA.

 

 

It is up to Jabiru to address the serious issue, we can talk all we want but if the manufacturer has deaf ears, then we are a little limited as to what we can actually change to improve the engine particularly in a school invironment! Jabiru if you read these forums, time to act! Tom

The steps are:

 

What is the manufacturer's duty of care to the owner and operator?

 

What is the instructor's duty of care to the student?

 

What is the pilot's duty of care to the passenger?

 

 

The current system seems designed to isolate the management and board from the rank and file. Its unlikely you will see the management change anything in a hurry. The tell us they are doing a good job and who are we to question them.

Another FT exclusive.

 

Most of the rank and bloody file didn't even bother to VOTE!

 

Most of the rest didn't bother to even make basic phone calls do basic research.

 

It's very much self inflicted!

 

 

A lot of people have the misunderstanding that aviation's prime directive is 'safety'. While safety is obviously very important, it is NOT the most important thing as far as the industry is concerned. If it was, then aircraft would never fly, because for 100% garuntee a flight will be "safe" the aeroplane would never leave the ground. Thats the only way you could garuntee a safe outcome.

I wish you and Alf luck with that outlook.

 

The days of simply telling people to "be careful", or accepting inevitability of accidents are long gone.

 

You'll recognise the "be careful" category in the above comments about training for forced landings, and whistling past the graveyard statements like "I'm always prepared" and these don't carry much water where duty of care is required. The duty of care requirement is to address a known problem.

 

You could argue that if someone pulls out a carton of yoghurt and it drops on a supermarket floor, and someone comes along, slips and breaks their leg in the mess, that's it's the fault of the person who pulled the carton. They would certainly be a co-defendent, but the Cases quickly zeroed in on the supermarket owner's duty of care responsibility to provide safety, and just as quickly overrode reliance on 'slippery floor signs". Now it's unusual for a spill to be left for more than a couple of minutes before cleanup.

 

I used to stand on top of the hay as we loaded trucks and trailers and two people in the paddock would pitch the hay up to me for stacking up to 4 metres high.

 

A steady flow of farmers were killed in falls and we used to used virtually your words, and Alf's.

 

Try employing people to do the same thing today and if someone falls and is injured or killed you'll do prison time.

 

In fact the small square hay bale is virtually extinct.

 

Similarly, ever noticed how you see very few semi trailers with tarps any more? Same thing "safety wasn't the most important thing, if it was people couldn't get trucks loaded quickly, the main thing was to make sure drivers were careful" Well the Courts didn't buy that story, and quickly found that owners had a duty of care to make the driver's operation safe.

 

So those comments are very dangerous to put up on a public forum.

 

I'm pretty sure that only a few weeks ago I commented that most pilots don't seem to have a clue about their Public Liability obligations, and once again it sank like a stone without trace. It would be a pity for someone to be locked away from his family for six years because he couldn't be stuffed spending a hundred dollars or so to find out what his obligations were......and that particularly applies to the commentators who foiled discussions on the RAA subscription increase on the grounds that it is small change.

 

It's up to you whether you want to drift off and crack jokes about Mazda Rotaries or whatever; I'm as bad at drifting as anyone, but the start of this thread raised a very serious issue which has not been addressed.

 

 

99% of people I talk to don't like the CEO (nothing personal of course) so why is he still there, that's what I can't figure? We have 10,000+ members paying $190 something bucks a year and all we get in return is all this mess? Are we all trying to be to polite by not saying anything, and watching everything crumble down before our eyes, or are we going to do something?

The short answer is probably no.

 

If you recall 18 months ago there were prominent people on here putting a spoke in the wheel every time someone raised serious concerns - they've now got what they deserved.

 

How many people stood up and supported Don Ramsay, in what was obviously going to be an extremely difficult first term on a job that was going to take several terms?

 

Even at the most basic level of all, how many of you didn't even bother to vote and support the ones who wanted to clean things up?

 

If you're now looking for sympathy, it's in the dictionary between sh$t and Syph$llis.