Second coffee speculative.
“When Hansard do their thing we will take a closer look at just who is responsible for what; but CASA have made it clear they are, so far as they are concerned – off the hook.”
Can anyone spot the pattern emerging? The CASA has identified one of the very real causal chain links and are moving the spotlight away from that area. Senator Back (bless) has very nearly tumbled to it; close but, no cigar.
Carmody spells out the CASA concerns – the operational area approved, “the box”, was the amount of airspace allocated too restrictive? Now, to be fair we cannot blame the CASA for this; well not for all of it. Say you were flying the display aircraft and CASA gave you an area to work within – for crowd safety reason. You look at the sketch (map or whatever) and note that you only have room to turn onto a base leg which will place you on say (for sake of a number) on a half final; it’s far too tight. So you then negotiate an alternative; minimum height, speed and distance required for a ‘stable’ approach; CASA can make an exception to allow this. It is called command discretion, or operational control. I doubt that the CASA officer issuing the ‘permit’ knows the aircraft performance requirements, probably not even type rated; part of his job is to ensure crowd safety, which requires a ‘safety area’ to be defined and enforced. If the space is too small, ultimately it is the pilots responsibility to ensure an extension, exemption, or cancel if a suitable compromise cannot be achieved. I’d bet my hat this never happened.
But, it is fairly human to simply accept the boundaries imposed, particularly CASA enforced ones.. I am starting to think the Mallard accident was, very much, a Human Factors classic. You can see the picture; dead keen to participate; delays in approval, licence and rating hassles, organisers needing to do there thing; a hundred minor details to sort out; and the subconscious anxiety. To ‘stuff it up’ by getting outside the steel rules and loosing the hard won approval and, possibly, landing in hot water with CASA would weigh on the mind. Particularly for an ‘inexperienced’, newly fledged display pilot.
I wonder if the ATSB will examine how much ‘practice’ was done to ensure that the aircraft could be operated within the approved area? Normally, with any sort of medium weight multi engine aircraft a three mile final approach leg from 1500 feet is a ‘routine’ breeze; two miles from 1000 feet is a very acceptable stroll in the park; and a one mile final from500 feet is routinely doable- student pilots do it all day long; but much less distance than that is approaching the ‘risky’ if the aircraft is not configured and stable.
This all leaves us with a mosaic, a jigsaw puzzle to fit together. One piece which must be acknowledged is the ‘fear’ of CASA reprisal and punishment for getting ‘outside’ of the black and white law as specified. Perhaps CASA would not have penalised, punished or prosecuted had the aircraft strayed from the mandated area; the option to ‘go around’ and return for a second shot was always available – as was abandoning the exercise. Why did the pilot persist is the question we need answered, the answer to that question remains in the Swan. But if we can remove even one of the ‘causal chain’ elements perhaps this accident will not be repeated.
Aye, ‘tis a pretty puzzle; I’ll leave the closing remarks to the CASA - CEO/DAS.
Toot toot.
“When Hansard do their thing we will take a closer look at just who is responsible for what; but CASA have made it clear they are, so far as they are concerned – off the hook.”
Can anyone spot the pattern emerging? The CASA has identified one of the very real causal chain links and are moving the spotlight away from that area. Senator Back (bless) has very nearly tumbled to it; close but, no cigar.
Carmody spells out the CASA concerns – the operational area approved, “the box”, was the amount of airspace allocated too restrictive? Now, to be fair we cannot blame the CASA for this; well not for all of it. Say you were flying the display aircraft and CASA gave you an area to work within – for crowd safety reason. You look at the sketch (map or whatever) and note that you only have room to turn onto a base leg which will place you on say (for sake of a number) on a half final; it’s far too tight. So you then negotiate an alternative; minimum height, speed and distance required for a ‘stable’ approach; CASA can make an exception to allow this. It is called command discretion, or operational control. I doubt that the CASA officer issuing the ‘permit’ knows the aircraft performance requirements, probably not even type rated; part of his job is to ensure crowd safety, which requires a ‘safety area’ to be defined and enforced. If the space is too small, ultimately it is the pilots responsibility to ensure an extension, exemption, or cancel if a suitable compromise cannot be achieved. I’d bet my hat this never happened.
But, it is fairly human to simply accept the boundaries imposed, particularly CASA enforced ones.. I am starting to think the Mallard accident was, very much, a Human Factors classic. You can see the picture; dead keen to participate; delays in approval, licence and rating hassles, organisers needing to do there thing; a hundred minor details to sort out; and the subconscious anxiety. To ‘stuff it up’ by getting outside the steel rules and loosing the hard won approval and, possibly, landing in hot water with CASA would weigh on the mind. Particularly for an ‘inexperienced’, newly fledged display pilot.
I wonder if the ATSB will examine how much ‘practice’ was done to ensure that the aircraft could be operated within the approved area? Normally, with any sort of medium weight multi engine aircraft a three mile final approach leg from 1500 feet is a ‘routine’ breeze; two miles from 1000 feet is a very acceptable stroll in the park; and a one mile final from500 feet is routinely doable- student pilots do it all day long; but much less distance than that is approaching the ‘risky’ if the aircraft is not configured and stable.
This all leaves us with a mosaic, a jigsaw puzzle to fit together. One piece which must be acknowledged is the ‘fear’ of CASA reprisal and punishment for getting ‘outside’ of the black and white law as specified. Perhaps CASA would not have penalised, punished or prosecuted had the aircraft strayed from the mandated area; the option to ‘go around’ and return for a second shot was always available – as was abandoning the exercise. Why did the pilot persist is the question we need answered, the answer to that question remains in the Swan. But if we can remove even one of the ‘causal chain’ elements perhaps this accident will not be repeated.
Aye, ‘tis a pretty puzzle; I’ll leave the closing remarks to the CASA - CEO/DAS.
Toot toot.