[Peetwo]

Angel Flight embuggerance update: 24 April '19

Courtesy LMH, via the Yaffa:

Angel Flight confirms Court Action
24 April 2019
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Angel Flight CEO Marjorie Pagani has confirmed the organisation will proceed with legal action against the Civil Aviation Safety Authority over the new community service flight (CSF) regulations.

The regulations, which came into force on 19 March, place new standards on private pilots and aeroplanes conducting CSF missions.

Angel Flight believes that CASA has no power to enforce such standards, and will proceed with legal action on the basis of ultra vires, which states that the regulator has exceeded the power of their authority.

In their submission to CASA following the release of the regulations, Angel Flight stated that they believed the regulator was trying to restrict the types of missions that private pilots were qualified to fly.

"Rather than seek to improve training, education or any other matter related to general aviation safety, prior to issuing licences, the authority seeks to arbitrarily and selectively restrict the use to which licences can be put.

"CASA is seeking, by administrative direction, to curtail the rights of pilots to fly pursuant to the licences which CASA has granted, and similarly, curtail the rights of aircraft owners to fly their machines in the private category depending upon the health and residential location of their passengers."

Australian Flying believes the basis of the ultra vires argument is that CASA has no power to tell private pilots who they can and can't carry as passengers if the flight is not commercial.

Pagani told Australian Flying that Angel Flight will also argue that CASA has denied the organisation natural justice.

Pleadings are thought to be finalised by 31 May.

In March, Angel Flight was unsuccessful in having the Federal Court stay the new regulations, and Motions of Disallowance in both the House of Representatives and the Senate expired when the 45th parliament was dissolved earlier this month.

Read more at http://www.australianflying.com.au/lates...JH5eveM.99

Addendum: 26/04/19
The White Rabbit tables Federal Court Angel Flight denied stay application...  

Mr Graeme M. Crawford, Acting Chief Executive Officer and Director of Aviation Safety, Civil Aviation Safety Authority
Response from CASA to Senator Patrick's request for a copy of the Federal Court judgement regarding an application from Angel Flight. - 11 April 2019 (PDF 4,444KB)

 
This is the bit that should raise the hackles of any bona fide IOS member and/or industry stakeholder:

Safety of air travel

34 I turn now to a further matter which self-evidently is of utmost significance to the balance of
convenience, namely the safety risk associated with any stay of the instrument. CASA is
charged with the responsibility of regulating air safety in Australia, stating its purpose
generally. Its objectives are set out in section 3A of the Act. That section provides:

3A Main object of this Act

The main object of this Act is to establish a regulatory framework for maintaining,

enhancing and promoting the safety of civil aviation, with particular emphasis on

preventing aviation accidents and incidents.

35 In section 9A, CASA’s function is described as follows:

9A Performance of functions
(1) In exercising its powers and performing its functions, CASA must regard the
safety of air navigation as the most important consideration.

 
Once again the mystique of aviation safety strikes - then ably backed up by this kind of weasel worded confection : 

36 The terms of the instrument recite CASA’s purpose as one directed to enhancing safety of air
travel. In the explanatory statement to the instrument, CASA states as follows, under the
heading Purpose:

[CASA] has assessed that community service flight operations have a higher risk of
an accident or incident due to the existence of risk factors that are not usually present
in baseline private operations. The purpose of the instrument is to mitigate this risk
by placing conditions on flight crew licence holders conducting such operations that
relate to requirements on the pilot (licence requirements, aeronautical experience,
recency and medical fitness), operational and notification requirements and aircraft
maintenance requirements.

37 The stated purpose of the instrument is repeated in the first affidavit of Mr Agnew in which

he deposes that he was informed by Mr Shane Patrick Carmody, the Chief Executive Officer
of CASA, that the instrument was a culmination of an initiative to raise safety standards in
the community service flight sector following fatal accidents in 2011 and 2017.

Then note the disconnection and distraction by firing up the 'he said she said' argument:

38 In her first affidavit, Ms Pagani confirmed these accidents had occurred, though states that
there is no statistically significant difference between the safety of Angel Flight co-ordinated
flights and private flights:

Systems are in place to ensure that all aspects of Angel Flight operations comply with
applicable CASA requirements. Angel Flight coordinated flights have been involved
in 2 accidents in approximately 46,000 flights over 16 years. Expert statistician
analysis carried out on behalf of Angel Flight concludes that there is no statistical
difference in the rate of serious accidents between flights coordinated by Angel
Flight and those of private flight, [sic] when data between 2005 and 2017 is analysed.
There was no digital data available for the period 2003-2005. However, there were
no coordinated volunteer flight accidents known to Angel Flight in those two years.

39 During the hearing on 15 March, I asked senior counsel for Angel Flight whether there was
any report from the expert statistician referred to in the extract above. As a result, after the
luncheon adjournment, a third affidavit was provided by Ms Pagani, sworn 15 March, in
which she explains the expert was Ms Miranda Mortlock, an accredited statistician, and states
further that:

I nominated Dr Owen Crees, PhD in Chemistry, including analytics, and long-serving
volunteer pilot with Angel Flight, volunteering in excess of 400 flights, to be the
point of contact with the expert in order to assist in preparation of the report. For that
purpose, he has collated accident data from publicly available sources, including the
Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Dr Crees regularly updates me on the progress
of the report. On or about 9 March 2019, Dr Crees called me to advise that he had
received the following information from Ms Mortlock:

(a) The report would conclude that there is no indication that Angel
Flight is more unsafe compared with other flights in the private
category.
(b) On a per-flight basis, there was no statistically significant difference

between Angel Flight flights and other flights in the private category.
© The report is not yet finalised because there is ongoing research
being undertaken in relation to minor incidences or occurrences and
a comparison of Angel Flight statistics in that regard with other
flights in the private category.

We expect to receive the written report when all the relevant data has been obtained
and analysed and the above matters have been attended to. I am expecting to receive
the written report within a month.

40 This evidence is in stark contrast to the evidence of CASA concerning the incidence of

accidents involved in the community service flight sector. In his first affidavit, Mr Agnew
says that he is informed by Mr Carmody that:

As Australia’s aviation safety regulator, CASA has conducted its own safety analysis
into safety trends within the community service flight sector. CASA drew on data
from Australia’s multi-modal accident investigation organisation, the Australian
Transport Safety Bureau and the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional
Economics for the period 2008 to 2017. CASA compared data from
private/business/sport aviation (excluding gliding) with the accident and fatal
accident rates for community service flights.

Before signing the instrument, [Mr Carmody] was satisfied that the incident and
accident rates within the community service flight sector were significantly higher
than the private flying sector. CASA’s analysis of the data reveals the following
accident and fatal accident rates:

(a) the fatal accident rate per 10,000 hours is approximately five times higher for
community service sector flights than it is for private/business/sport flights.
(b) the annual average [Australian Transport Safety Bureau] fatal accident rate
per million hours is 112.7 for community service flights and 20.86 for
private/business/sport flights.

41 It is not feasible in the context of an urgent interlocutory application, brought only a few days
before the instrument comes into effect, to resolve in any meaningful way the contest on the
evidence concerning the relative incidence of accidents involving aircraft engaged in the
community service flight sector, on the one hand, and the private/business/sport sector, on the
other. As I understand it, the community service flight sector is a subset of what might be
described as the broader private sector. Having regard to CASA’s evidence concerning the
incidence of serious or fatal accidents involving aircraft engaged in the community service
sector, as well as the stated impetus for CASA’s introduction of the instrument, and that
CASA is the body charged with responsibility for supervising and regulating the safety of air
travel in Australia, in my opinion, the court cannot in the context of this application prefer the
evidence of Angel Flight to that of CASA in respect of this important issue.

 
Hmm...no comment required, I'll leave that to Marcus Hone off the Yaffa - 

Martin Hone  Jacko Powers • 7 days ago

Given CASA's misinterpretation of the stats, I cannot see how anyone could agree with it. There was no problem to fix. so what was CASA thinking ?

http://disq.us/p/2193373

All this bogus crap about the safety of Angel Flight and yet there the DFO still sits...

Ref - https://auntypru.com/forum/showthread.ph...5#pid10225 & https://www.theage.com.au/national/victo...uhi6j.html

..Helen van den Berg was spokeswoman for a campaign to close Essendon Airport for 13 years – but the group wound itself up two years ago after realising the fight was pointless.

"Why argue when nobody will act? You saw today, the premier shut down the argument about closing so quickly because commerce takes precedence over people," she said.

Labor's 1996 federal election campaign promised to shut the airport and turn it into film studios.

Ms van den Berg, who lives in Niddrie, said air safety bureaucrats had warned at that time that Essendon needed a far bigger buffer around its runways...

...Ms van den Berg said the aircraft in Tuesday's accident might have had more chance of reducing the crash severity if there had been open space around it.

"If I buy a ticket for Tullamarine, I know there is a buffer of green space around it. At Essendon, there's nothing."

...But Essendon Fields residents on Tuesday voiced their concerns about the height of buildings close to the airport.

Stephen Moore saw the aftermath of the plane crashing into the shopping centre. He was surprised "a building of that height that close to an airport" had been allowed...


...Brian, who did not want to give his last name, called the height of the apartments "ridiculous". The 55-year-old has lived most of his life in Essendon and said if the plane had missed the DFO, it would have hit the apartments.

"I don't know how they got away with building it that high that close to the airport. It's silly. When I was a kid, we were told off for flying kites."

---

Ref - https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/essendon-airport-dfo-plans-call-safety-planning-into-question-20190115-p50re4.html

MTF...P2