[Peetwo]

Dear Angus, 

Extract from Dick Smith’s letter. Source: TheAustralian  For 60 years, Clive Wilson has helped pilots land on Lord Howe Island — one of the trickiest airports under the Australian flag — by providing them with critical weather information on the radio. 

In the first 50 or so of those years, aviation authorities, airlines, the RAAF and air ambulance services did everything they could to train, aid and encourage him to continue such a valuable service at the remote Pacific Ocean territory.But in more recent times, Mr Wilson said, the civil aviation watchdog and air services ¬bureaucracy have done everything to discourage him, including dropping his contact details from the pilots’ “bible” of airports, and demanding he meet new conditions so difficult and expensive on one of his licences that he could not afford to renew it.

According to businessman and aviator Dick Smith, it reflects an aviation bureaucracy so absorbed with rules and process that enforcing the letter of them has taken precedent over safety. Mr Smith said one of the figures who bears responsibility is Angus Houston, who as air force chief more than a decade ago was one of the strongest advocates for introducing a US-style system of air traffic control. Unlike in Australia, US airports which do not have control towers allow ground staff stationed there who are not air traffic controllers, such as firefighters, to use the Unicom radio service to provide pilots with basic local weather and air traffic information .But Mr Smith said Sir Angus, as chairman of Airservices Australia, the government-owned but industry-funded body that runs the nation’s air traffic control system and employs the firefighters stationed at airports, had failed to implement key aspects of the US system.  “He should be out there showing leadership and insisting we have a radio operator at every airport for safety,” Mr Smith said. 

While Mr Wilson did not make any adverse comments about Sir Angus, the issue is poignant because for many years the two met regularly. “He used to come over and visit me occasionally because I represented the air force as a liaison officer,” Mr Wilson told The Weekend Australian. “He was on the aircraft many times when I was talking, providing weather information to his crew.” 

Before a runway was built at Lord Howe Island in 1974, Mr Wilson acted as a relief radio operator on a launch, advising incoming flying boat pilots of weather conditions and guiding them into the mooring in the lagoon. For some years after the runway was built, the airport had a flight services officer performing the radio role, but in the mid-1980s the officer was withdrawn on cost considerations, and aviation authorities approached Mr Wilson to take over the job in an unpaid, volunteer capacity. For some time the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and Airservices Australia supported Mr Wilson, including giving him his own radio frequency. But, he said, in recent years he had encountered opposition and local jealousies. First, Airservices stopped listing his contact details in its En Route Supplement, which an Airservices spokesman said followed requests from airport management. Then, last year, CASA would not renew what is known as his CAR 120 licence, which allowed him to provide detailed weather observations to pilots in a more proactive fashion, unless he took a $20,000 meteorological training course. Mr Wilson still speaks to pilots on the Unicom radio for which he retains a licence, but the rules sharply restrict the weather information he is lawfully allowed to provide, and CASA has written to him spelling that out.  

One of the regular flyers to Lord Howe Island was a senior, now retired RAAF officer, Air Vice-Marshal Greg Evans, who said Mr Wilson’s weather reports were excellent, accurate and invaluable when he was flying C-130s into what he described as a “diabolical” airport that had a short runway between towering peaks and often severe winds in which rain and water off the sea bubbled around. He often used those flights to train pilots in night landings for air ambulance services. “On a dark, stormy, rainy night with a person with compound fractures on the ground, I didn’t give a rat’s back crack about the rules, and Clive was wonderful,” Air Vice-Marshal Evans said. 
Of aviation authorities’ efforts to smother Mr Wilson, Air Vice-Marshal Evans said: “It’s a great safety enhancement that isn’t part of the official safety environment, so the bureaucracy tries to kill it.” 

An Airservices spokesman said Sir Angus was not available for comment.

       

Ben's (PlaneTalking) response to this article... :

Air traffic control absurdities highlighted by Dick Smith

Ben Sandilands | Jun 13, 2015 11:51AM |
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Angus Houston chairman of AirServices Australia in an explanatory moment

Dick Smith has driven a long series of disclosures in recent weeks in The Australian of absurdities in the administration of air services and safety in this country, and this morning’s installment concerning Lord Howe Island air traffic issues is by far the most telling.

However it is behind a paywall, although there is no doubt it is being read by its targets, the inefficient and often parasitical bureaucracy that brings no value, and certainly doesn’t enhance safety, when it comes to general and regional aviation activity in Australia.

Inexplicably, Angus Houston, who prefers just to be called Angus without all this knights and dames nonsense, has chosen to remain silent over the issues in AirServices Australia,  where he is the chairman.

Angus is a distinguished figure in public life, and a person of great integrity, and his silence and apparent inaction, is a puzzle.

No one expects him to respond here, but it would be appropriate, if he could defend or explain why this lunacy in Air Services Australia is tolerated, even if for the sole edification of readers behind the paywall.

This is a Federal Government that has made much about reducing red tape and pointless counter productive regulation. Why is it so weak on reforming AirServices Australia, the industry funded air navigation service, as well as CASA the safety regulator and the embarrassing and compromised mess that its the safety investigation, the ATSB, given its shameful handling of the Pel-Air incident?

Is this another just another example of phony do-nothing-of-substance bravado by the Federal Government, which seems incapable of escaping from the grip of its bureaucrats, who keep telling it everything is just fine in aviation, like they did in the case of Pel-Air, or does it have the fortitude to pursue and deliver reforms, starting with a long overdue round of terminations of those who stand in its way?

Inefficient or self serving practices in public administration are similar to club like behavior over bank fees. They are a burden on the economy, and unjust impositions on enterprise. And in the case of air safety practices in Australia, often manifestly contrary to the pursuit of safer skies.

..tick..tick..tick..tick...



MTF...P2