Well done that man.
A good, valuable innings, nicely played. You’d have to take your hat off to man like Bristow and wish him well to enjoy his retirement.
“Mr Bristow set up a remarkable system of linking health professional registrations and referrals between all large city hospitals, to outback clinics, remote area nurses and specialist institutions, as well as a network of essential skilled volunteer pilots and drivers. All services are free and at no cost to any person needing medical attention or to the government.”
No small achievement, a remarkable one when you consider the work, determination and effort involved stringing all the diverse elements into a cohesive, working system – all voluntary. The energy and dedication required phenomenal.
I wonder what his thoughts must be on the ATSB report into Mt Gambier event and the CASA response to that report? A fellah with the amount of drive, intelligence and determination to set up and run Angel Flight would have to be a little taken aback by it; probably with good reason.
One could understand a reasonable man’s disappointment with a punitive regulatory philosophy. Take the two ‘fatal’ events involving Angel Flight ‘missions’ (I do wish they’d call ‘em something else): both essentially pilot error. Errors made by pilots trained, qualified and licenced under the current system. Both persisted into weather conditions which they were neither trained nor qualified to be operating in; deadly mistakes, made by the pilots; not Angel Flight.
Yet rather than address the ‘core’ issues, CASA prefer to bring in a new rule set, which punishes the many and changes nothing. Why can’t some of the alleged CASA ‘experts’ be sent to work with AF, help draft up some guidelines for the aircrew involved? Simple stuff like weather forecast analysis training; promoting early awareness leading to early notice that it may not be possible to carry out the assigned flight. Or, even a ‘checklist’ in the style of Flight Safety’s CFIT checklist system; which encompasses fatigue, weather, destination and in flight awareness of potential high risk elements. There are lots of things which could be done to foster, promote and reduce potential risk. The ‘rules’ CASA dreamed up do nothing to promote a real safety culture; they just punish those remaining ‘law abiding’ citizens who have not – as yet – made the wrong decision. I call that unfair, unreasonable and counter productive.
Only my opinion of course; but I say a lot of time, money, effort and aggravation has been expended to produce a negative outcome, which will not prevent another Loss of Control (LoC) in instrument only conditions. It will however force underground open reporting and determined addressing of an accident series which has been around for a long, long time. But I digress.
Enjoy your retirement Bill; well done. There may just be a few out in Bush who would second my best wishes. Cheers. (Cue round of applause).....
Toot – toot.
A good, valuable innings, nicely played. You’d have to take your hat off to man like Bristow and wish him well to enjoy his retirement.
“Mr Bristow set up a remarkable system of linking health professional registrations and referrals between all large city hospitals, to outback clinics, remote area nurses and specialist institutions, as well as a network of essential skilled volunteer pilots and drivers. All services are free and at no cost to any person needing medical attention or to the government.”
No small achievement, a remarkable one when you consider the work, determination and effort involved stringing all the diverse elements into a cohesive, working system – all voluntary. The energy and dedication required phenomenal.
I wonder what his thoughts must be on the ATSB report into Mt Gambier event and the CASA response to that report? A fellah with the amount of drive, intelligence and determination to set up and run Angel Flight would have to be a little taken aback by it; probably with good reason.
One could understand a reasonable man’s disappointment with a punitive regulatory philosophy. Take the two ‘fatal’ events involving Angel Flight ‘missions’ (I do wish they’d call ‘em something else): both essentially pilot error. Errors made by pilots trained, qualified and licenced under the current system. Both persisted into weather conditions which they were neither trained nor qualified to be operating in; deadly mistakes, made by the pilots; not Angel Flight.
Yet rather than address the ‘core’ issues, CASA prefer to bring in a new rule set, which punishes the many and changes nothing. Why can’t some of the alleged CASA ‘experts’ be sent to work with AF, help draft up some guidelines for the aircrew involved? Simple stuff like weather forecast analysis training; promoting early awareness leading to early notice that it may not be possible to carry out the assigned flight. Or, even a ‘checklist’ in the style of Flight Safety’s CFIT checklist system; which encompasses fatigue, weather, destination and in flight awareness of potential high risk elements. There are lots of things which could be done to foster, promote and reduce potential risk. The ‘rules’ CASA dreamed up do nothing to promote a real safety culture; they just punish those remaining ‘law abiding’ citizens who have not – as yet – made the wrong decision. I call that unfair, unreasonable and counter productive.
Only my opinion of course; but I say a lot of time, money, effort and aggravation has been expended to produce a negative outcome, which will not prevent another Loss of Control (LoC) in instrument only conditions. It will however force underground open reporting and determined addressing of an accident series which has been around for a long, long time. But I digress.
Enjoy your retirement Bill; well done. There may just be a few out in Bush who would second my best wishes. Cheers. (Cue round of applause).....
Toot – toot.