[Peetwo]

P. 17 and Coffee beyond.

I’ve posted the following on the MNC thread as it adds fuel to the small, but active fire under the vexed question of Australia’s lip service to ICAO compliance; across the spectrum.

The quotes below pretty much sum up the ‘guts’ of the Coffee report; which begins on page 17. The opening pages present the counter argument; I’ve tried to save the reader some time by ‘cherry-picking’ some statements which – IMO – summarise the ARFF position. However, the real gubbins is presented from page 13; there the real research and analysis begins.

I, or one of many would like to know how the ‘Coffee report’ was kept out of the light since 2016. I know ploughing through ‘reports’ is tedious and time consuming, but in this case, I believe that time is well spent. Our Senators could do well to read it through – then perhaps they may be able to ask the right questions from a position of knowing the answers; well all bar O’ Sofullofit who repeatedly tells us that ‘he’ knows those already. For those of us not gifted with such overwhelming precognitive talent – grab a coffee and start at page 14.

Coffee P7 - 3.2.1 The ICAO standards.

The ICAO standard is that a certified aerodrome should have an appropriate rescue firefighting service, determined by the dimensions of the aeroplanes normally using the airport adjusted for their frequency of operations.

The standard specifies the minimum amount of extinguishing agent that an ARFF service needs to be capable of applying (in litres), and the rate it must be able to do so (litres per minute). This then implies the size and number of firefighting appliances that must be available to attend a crashed / burning aircraft.

They must be applying at least half the required extinguishing agent in 2 minutes of being told of the crash, with an absolute maximum of 3 minutes. This means services must be located at the airport.

The Australian civil aviation system is considerably at variance with the international standard. Australia gave an undertaking to review its non-compliance following an audit in 2008, yet the current review proposes to widen the extent of our non-compliance.

Empirical studies demonstrate better national aviation safety performance is associated with better compliance to ICAO standards.

Coffee P8/9 – Sect. 4. DIRD.

The report’s key proposal is to alter the threshold indicators for establishing ARFF services. It proposes to raise the current threshold of 350,000 passenger movements over the previous financial year to 500,000 per annum on a rolling month basis.

It also proposes a softening of this and the international flights criterion, so that neither automatically necessitates establishing ARFF services, but triggers a risk assessment process by CASA to determine the need for them.

P 11. Conclusion

The DIRD proposals constitute an intention to further diminish our compliance with ICAO standards, and lower aviation safety standards in Australia, rather than raise them as should be the function of aviation safety regulatory reform.

We cannot assume that aviation accidents will not happen nor ignore the consequences that will arise when they do.

We should value the safety legacy of the pioneers of our modern aviation services, and invest in protecting it, to preserve our international reputation for safe aviation.

In order to do this we need to make a clear determination to prioritise the safety of air passengers as so many industry spokespeople claim they do, and accept a degree of redundant resource provision, as there is no way to otherwise prepare for a rare catastrophic event. If we are not going to install ARFF protection throughout Australia’s 190 certified airports, we should mandate that the travelling public are made clearly aware of their absence.

Aye. Dry as sticks - but typifying the DIRD approach and CASA execution of their version of ICAO compliance. Why don't we just not bother paying to belong to ICAO - that expense alone would buy us all the fire engines we could possibly need - and change.

Toot - toot.

P2 addition to the 'CofFEE report and beyond': 

For mine one of the more disturbing passages of the UNSW CofFEE reports starts from bottom of pg 24:

The divergence between the ICAO standards and those prescribed by Australia’s Civil
Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), are very clear. While criteria for establishing and
disestablishing ARFF services in Australia pay no heed to the size of aircraft accessing
Australia’s airports, the provisioning of ARFF capability at those airports where services are
established (according to passenger movement or international service criteria) do largely
apply the ICAO system of determining airport categories. They clearly indicate that airport
categories 1 - 5 are completely disregarded by the Australian regulatory authorities in relation
to ARFF provision.
 
In certifying 190 airports and requiring less than 15% of them to have an appropriate rescue
and firefighting capability that accords with Annexe 14 of the Chicago Convention, the
Australian civil aviation system is considerably at variance with the international standard.
The DIRD discussion paper asserts that there is nothing remarkable about this and that
Australia meets its compliance obligations by lodging a notification of ‘difference’ with the
standard.
 
Were this so acceptable, the finding of non-compliance in the 2008 ICAO Universal Safety
Oversight Audit Programme (USOAP) that the CASA rules for ARFF establishment /
disestablishment does not cover all the aerodromes that have to be certified need not have
elicited this response from the Australian government:
 
Australia has filed a difference with ICAO which reflects the current regulatory
situation. However Australia is reviewing the regulatory requirements relating to RFF
as contained in Part 139H. Corrective action proposed: this issue will be considered as
part of the review of part 139H and any regulatory amendments necessary will be
implemented through the standard Australian regulatory process. Action office:
CASA. Estimated implementation date: By 31 December 2010 (ICAO, 2008:
Appendix 3.8.6).
 
The discussion paper offered by the government to frame the review that is currently being
undertaken, is not proposing to rectify Australia’s non-compliance but to exacerbate it. It is
relying on the fact that:

Ultimately ICAO has a significant lack of authority to enforce its own policies. It
relies on the assumption that the individual member states will do everything they can
to maintain the system the way it is designed (Spence et al., 2015: 3).
 
The government’s willingness to brazenly flout international standards in this important
international sphere is one thing, but we need to be clear that it is not just our international
reputation that is at stake. A recent empirical study into the relationship between a nation’s
compliance with ICAO standards and safety concluded:

Despite the size of a state, the wealth of a state, the number of commercial aviation
operations, or the number of total fatalities in a given period of time, the more
compliant a particular state is with international standards coincides with a reduction
in commercial airline fatalities. ICAO member states need to be informed of this
research and understand what the findings suggest. The member states should make
their best effort to ensure compliance with the international standards set forth by
ICAO because an associated improvement in safety should result in a reduction in
number of fatalities (Spence, et al., 2015: 7).
 
So while we have been fortunate in the low civil aviation accident rate in this country, it is a
dangerous expression of hubris among regulators to suggest that this justifies being less
compliant with the ICAO standard than we already are.

MTF? - Yes much...P2