[Peetwo]

ASRR submission 172 and 24 years of safe Torres Strait Aviation Ops!! -  

Read and reflect on this ASRR submission, courtesy of (legend) Rod Bencke...

Reference: 172 Mr Rodney Bencke PDF: 139 KB

Relevant extract: 

Any other safety related matters

I hope this is not too ‘in the weeds’ for such a high level panel. A little background. Australia is a very large country with a very small population, similar to Canada or Africa. While most of our legislation must be almost identical to that of the major ICAO nations there are areas where this will not hold true. One of those is legislation for air transport operations which are conducted predominantly in remote areas and in small aeroplanes. The proposed legislation that covers such operations is what I spent many years considering - Part 135. During that time I was also given the task of sorting out, with an airworthiness maintenance expert, the air transport operations in the Torres Strait and Far North Queensland. At the time all passenger carrying operations had been suspended by CASA, the year was 1999. The job took almost a year and during that time I devised and then actioned the process to convert 3 charter operators into RPT operators while they were permitted to restart and continue normal operations. We were also to more closely oversight all aviation activities in the area. What we found when we arrived there was almost unbelievable. During that year I learned a great deal about the problems of conducting safe air operations in the outback. By the time we left we had 3 RPT operators and one on the way, but with much still to accomplish. That year’s experiences would make an excellent book and TV series, although it may have a negative effect on the flying population! This experience reinforced in me the absolute belief that if flight operations are to be carried out in remote places, legislation must be devised that more closely balances the necessity of such transport with the types of safety rules required and the affordability of such a transport medium. It also needs more thought by Commonwealth and State governments in relation to infrastructure support, but this is outside the scope of your inquiry. Appropriate safety legislation for remote area operations which predominantly use small aeroplanes requires some thought outside the usually accepted square, but absolute safety outcomes need not be compromised as a result.

I know from personal experience how thorough RB's regulatory oversight and special implementation of the Torres LCRPT AOCs was. This included thorough flight tested diagrammatic normal and abnormal ops for all aircraft types on the Operator's AOC for each of the individual Torres Strait island airstrips (including Mabuiag and Darnley islands).

Yet here we are 24 years on, with now an exemplary record of thousands upon thousands of daily LCRPT movements into these airstrips and now those safety statistics are somehow totally irrelevant because the Bureaucrats under the bubble in Aviation Hearse have promulgated their strict liability 468 page CASR Part 139 MOS - FDS!   

MTF...P2