[Peetwo]

Aviation Safety: All roads (should) lead to Montreal -

 As I read the Ferryman SR - which IMO summarised quite nicely Australia's 'Nanny State' conundrum where governments of all persuasions seemingly have this endless love affair with layers & layers of bollocks rules, regulations & red tape - my 1st thought was has P9 lost his marbles posting in a thread dealing with international aviation safety standards and Australia's indifference (non-harmonisation) to those standards???

But then the penny dropped; it is actually more to do with how our convoluted, voluminous & hugely prescriptive regulations and aviation safety standards are totally out of step with the performance based regulation and aviation safety standards philosophy set by ICAO and being enthusiastically adopted by rest of the 'sane' aviation world.    

The following will hopefully shine a light on the huge impediments being inflicted on our aviation industry, by an out of control aviation safety bureaucracy, which is increasingly out of sync and merely paying lip-service to ICAO accepted standards. 

Most of the ICAO signatory states, including those who have been red-flagged, are proactively seeking to adopt a philosophy on aviation safety standards that is based on 'performance based regulation' and a strong adherence to the ICAO SARPs (Annexures).

The following is an extract from the AP 'international accidents' thread:

ICAO: Nepalese State AAI no improvement in 3 years.

According to ICAO Nepal is literally the most dangerous place to fly and since the last 2013 ICAO audit the Nepalese AAI (Annex 13) standards are not improving...

Nepal’s aviation on a wing and a prayer
ICAO says no improvement in air accident investigation in the past three years
Published: September 08, 2016 6:01 am
Rajan Pokhrel

Now here is a 'heads up' for Chester, Murky & his minions:

"..According to him, the key takeaway from the Tokyo meeting was the independence of the investigation process. He added that to ensure total objectivity and impartiality, ICAO had stipulated that the investigation authority should not report to the same minister responsible for the regulation and/or safety oversight of civil aviation, a practice that is not being followed by Nepal..."

Such a damning indictment of the Nepalese AAI standards compared to the acceptable standards, as outlined in ICAO Annex 13, got me thinking on how bad their investigations and final reports could possibly be compared to our much internationally maligned ATSB..

Air Kasthamandap crash caused by engine failure: Probe report
- SANGAM PRASAIN, Kathmandu




Sep 18, 2016

The crash of an Air Kasthamandap plane at Chilkhaya in Kalikot last February was caused by engine failure, a probe report has revealed. Both pilots were killed while the nine passengers on the charter flight survived...

...The report said that engine failure was not the sole reason behind the crash. “Although single-engine aircraft can glide a fair distance after losing power to execute a safe force landing, the route lacks proper landing spots,” said Hari Bahadur Khadka, member-secretary of the commission.

The crew had flown for nearly 15 km searching for a suitable landing spot after the engine shut down. “There should be a force landing spot for every three minutes of flying distance, but no such spots were designated,” said Khadka, adding that the civil aviation regulator had also not followed up on this issue.  

P2 - Note the part in bold. This suggests to me that the Nepal CAA has some form of adaption of the ASETPA rules. However the only reference I can find is in a 2009 version of the Nepalese regulations - see HERE.

 5.3 Additional requirements for operations of single-engine turbine-powered aeroplanes at night and/or in Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC)

5.3.1 Operation by single-engine turbine-powered aeroplanes at night and/or in
IMC, an Operator shall ensure that the airworthiness certification of the
aeroplane is appropriate and that the overall level of safety intended by the
provisions of:

a) the reliability of the turbine engine;
b) the operator’s maintenance procedures, operating practices, flight
dispatch procedures and crew training programmes; and
c) equipment and other requirements provided in accordance with
Appendix 3 (insert reference).

The report said that the accident "could also be the result of the financial health of the airline”. Khadka said, “Due to the deteriorating financial condition of the company, it was unable to conduct proper monitoring of the operation. It had not been able to retain technical manpower due to financial stress.”

Meanwhile, the investigation committee has concluded that the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal has not been able to oversee the use of different types of aircraft due to capacity constraints. This has affected efficient monitoring of the Nepali skies, it added...

Considering Nepal is one of the least developed and under resourced nations in the world, with huge topographical and infrastructure issues, IMO they have done remarkably well to address and improve on all but one (i.e. AAI) of the eight ICAO critical elements.

In an endeavour to track down where the 2016 figures, compared to the 2013/14 audit figures, were sourced from I made an interesting but somewhat perplexing and disturbing discovery.

The following is the ICAO reference webpage where those figures for Nepal are listed:

Safety Audit Information

Page Content

This information has been updated and relocated from the ICAO Flight Safety Information Exchange (FSIX) website. You can use the search box to find a State and then compare the result of its last USOAP CMA activity with the global average or any other State on the list. The Effective Implementation (EI) of each Audit Area is rated from 0% to 100%, with 0% being "Not Implemented" and 100% being "Fully Implemented". The EI score represents the percentage of satisfactory USOAP protocol questions applicable for a given State.

For developers, the EI scores can also be accessed via the iSTARS API Data Service.
 
Please note: A significant safety concern (SSC) does not necessarily indicate a particular safety deficiency in the air navigation service providers, airlines (air operators), aircraft or aerodrome; but, rather, indicates that the State is not providing sufficient safety oversight to ensure the effective implementation of applicable ICAO Standards. Full technical details of the ICAO findings have been made available to the State to guide rectification, as well as to all ICAO Member States to facilitate any actions that they may consider necessary to ensure safety. The State has undertaken to regularly report progress on this matter to ICAO. Read more
 
Other links related to USOAP CMA:
 

• Video on Youtube (2 min) on The Launch of CMA 
  
• CMA Interactive Presentations in all ICAO languages>
  
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on CMA
  
• CMA Forum
  

Now if you click on the link provided you will see that it is possible to review the current status for any signatory State on all of the 8 critical audit categories against the ICAO Global average.

It is also possible to compare individual signatory states against each other. For our purposes click on compare for Australia and then Nepal. Now go to the graph with the mouse pointer and hover it over the brown graph (Nepal) for accident investigation. You will see that the 20.41% 2016 figure (as above) is replicated.

Now go to the purple graph (Australia) for AI and you will see there is a totally UDB bollocks figure of 96.97% (3.03% percentile points off a 100% compliance... ).

But how can that be when we have, on the record, very damning recent evidence of very substantial failings of the effectiveness of the State AAI (i.e. the ATSB)? 

Examples:

• The TSBC peer review report.
  
• The Senate PelAir cover-up report.  
  
• The nearly 2 year PelAir re-investigation which has a IIC that has a proven conflict of interest with there being a fully independent, without fear nor favour final report being produced.
  
• The production of totally useless and seemingly Annex 13 conflicted final reports for several significant, potentially politically sensitive, serious incidents and/or accidents (e.g. Mildura Fog duck-up, ATR VARA birdstrike cover-up).
  

Basically our State AAI is a total basket case that is IMO in direct conflict (non-compliance) with the ICAO Annex 13 & 19...

Therefore one has to question the veracity of the ICAO (2016) figure of 96.97 percentile points of compliance, especially considering the last time the Australian aviation safety system was properly audited by ICAO was in 2008??

Digging a little deeper what I've been able to establish is that the figures, as listed for Australia, are based on what is fundamentally a desktop (ICAO CMA) questionnaire answered by Murky's department and the applicable agencies.

Therefore this is the equivalent of an ICAO tick-a-box survey, which basically asks for an individual State's perception of where they feel they sit on the 8 critical audit categories.

Now here is the rub, from what I have been able to establish the ICAO (CMA) questionnaire is the 'heads up' that there is an ICAO USOAP audit imminent...

Watch and absorb the following:

Hmm...miniscule DDD, Murky (& his minions), better get those ducks in a row....tick..tick..tick..tick - 




MTF...P2