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Ironsider, via the Oz:

Seventh crash extends horror run, pressure on investigators

ROBYN IRONSIDE
AVIATION WRITER
@ironsider

5:06PM MARCH 12, 2020


ATSB transport safety investigators examine the wreckage of a Piper Seminole near Mangaolore Airport, Victoria last month. Picture: ATSB

The crash of a charter flight at Lockhart River this week, killing all five men on board, was Australia’s seventh fatal plane crash this year.

Just 10 weeks into 2020, 18 people have lost their lives in aviation incidents, compared with 21 deaths for the whole of 2019.

Wednesday’s crash followed on from last month’s mid-air collision at Mangalore in Victoria that killed four people, including two flight training instructors and two student pilots, and the January 23 tragedy involving a C-130 bomber that claimed the lives of three Americans.

Two brothers died in the crash of a Wittman Tailwind in Tooloom National Park on January 12, and a Brisbane couple lost their lives when a Cessna 182 crashed in Moreton Bay on January 22. There have also been two single fatality crashes involving sports aircraft.

The tragic spate of accidents has not only raised concerns about safety standards within the aviation industry but placed significant pressure on the agency responsible for crash investigations, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

As well as examining five of the fatal plane crashes, the ATSB has another 145 “active” investigations under way, the bulk of which are aviation incidents, along with 41 marine and rail accidents.

An ATSB spokesman said the higher than typical number of incidents this year had placed an increased load on their 60 transport safety investigators, but they were managing.

“The agency will work to prioritise its investigatory workload within its current staffing and budgetary resourcing,” he said.

“The ATSB has not sought additional resources from government at this time, nor does it anticipate doing so.”

But former Civil Aviation Safety Authority chairman and veteran pilot Dick Smith said the amount of time being taken to complete each investigation was not helping to improve safety.

“They take so long to come out with their answers instead of very urgently within the first two weeks saying ‘here is the problem, we want it addressed’,” Mr Smith said.

“What they do is they don’t address it. They’ll take two years to bring out a report and by that time it’s forgotten by the media.”

With a worrying number of crashes involving “collisions with terrain” often in bad weather, it seemed imperative to look at ways of increasing instrument-rated pilots, he said.

“CASA and the ATSB tell pilots ‘don’t fly into cloud’ instead of saying ‘let’s get more pilots instrument-rated’,” Mr Smith said.

“Unfortunately CASA has made it so difficult and so expensive for a private pilot to gain an instrument rating, people don’t get one.”

He said as few as 18 per cent of private pilots were instrument rated in Australia, compared to 70 per cent in the US.

“As a result, most people fly around without an instrument rating and then fly into a mountain,” said Mr Smith.

“But the ATSB and CASA tell us the fatalities are just an unfortunate anomaly even though we’ve got less people flying then before.”

A CASA spokesman confirmed the number of crashes in the year to date was higher than the trend for the previous five years.

But he said there was “no obvious correlation between the seven fatal accidents as they covered a variety of different activities and aviation sectors, including charter air transport, aerial firefighting, flight training, private training and sport aviation”.

“In line with normal procedures, CASA is reviewing all safety and regulatory matters regarding the Victorian midair collision, the NSW firefighting collision with terrain and Wednesday’s Cessna 404 accident in Lockhart River,” the spokesman said.

The ATSB spokesman said they were confident the identification and communication of critical safety issues was not being delayed due to the workload.

“The ATSB stresses that raising awareness of safety issues is not dependent on the publication of an investigation’s final report,” he said.

The last time the ATSB sought additional funding from the government was in 2016-17.

MTF...P2