Two Years in the Aviation Hall of Doom, Pt Ill

In Australia, this was so too, until about ten years ago. Nowadays VFR aircraft are directed around control zones like Jumbo jets. This quite often means that an extremely busy air traffic controller, instead of concentrating on 350-tonne 400-passenger Jumbo jets, will simultaneously be attempting to concentrate on keeping two TV helicopters or other small aircraft apart. It also means that aircraft are held circling over built-up areas, which is not only economically damaging to the operators but it also substantially reduces safety,

When I started investigating this issue it soon became obvious that the situation was caused by ah internal dispute that the senior bureaucrats of the Department were incapable of solving.

Also obvious was the lack of real interest these bureaucrats had in solving the issue because they had allowed it to drift on for ten years. Of course, it did not affect their pay packets one cent.

A small digression will help here.

A few years ago it was well reported in the media that an industrial dispute had prevented the ABC from changing over from film to electronic equipment. In fact, all of its expensive new equipment had been sitting there for years, gathering dust, unused, because of this industrial dispute. The management at the commercial stations had solved their union disputes on this new technology in about ten minutes flat.

But the old ABC management was so bereft of any sense of financial accountability, that the deadlock continued unresolved for years. It became a national scandal.

Eventually, following the Dix inquiry, people were shuffled aside, competent management came in, and an agreement was duly reached with the union.

In this situation the principal group who were adversely affected by managerial incompetence were the ABC viewers – and there were not many of those.

However, in this ‘see and be seen’ issue, the viability of a whole industry was affected.

Back to the story.

When I became involved, in November 1982, I found that both the departmental bureaucrats and the ATC union executive agreed that the existing situation was reducing safety. Both wanted a return to the ‘see and be seen’ rules. However, they both believed ii was the bloody-mindedness of the other side that was preventing this from happening.

November 1982 sounds a long time ago; but I was to find that many affected people in the industry had been desperately campaigning on this issue for years before then.

I had meetings with both sides – the union executive and the senior bureaucrats. It soon became obvious that the problem could be easily solved. The union simply wanted a change in the regulations so that air traffic controllers could not be held legally responsible tot the separation of aircraft that had been instructed to operate under ‘see and be seen’ rules.

This seemed a pretty reasonable request.

Nevertheless, the departmental bureaucrats maintained that no change was necessary. Their interpretation of the existing rules was that air traffic controllers were adequately protected. It is difficult to follow their logic. If their legal interpretation was correct, and if the controllers were protected, then why on earth could the bureaucrats not agree, by a simple stroke of the pen, to remove all doubt?

Now, on meeting this impasse which had persisted for years, any moderately capable executive would simply have made the changes and resolved it.

But there was no way the bureaucrats were going lo make the obvious move, even if their obstructiveness meant, just as it had in the ABC, that all common sense would be thrown out of the window. As far as they were concerned their inefficiency and lethargy cost them no loss of salary; it didn’t matter how many aircraft were needlessly held orbiting, or who was being forced into bankruptcy. They pretended it was not their problem, even though it was a major safety issue.

I persisted, feeling that surely I could spoon-feed them and solve this one. Letters went backward and forward, dozens of phone calls, 40 or 50 hours of my time over the next six months.

Seven long months had gone by when I received this letter from the then deputy secretary, Jim Schofield. It said –

Dear Dick, We are currently pressing ahead with our negotiations for changes in relation to VFR traffic in control zones. These considerations are close to finality, possibly another month will see them concluded.

With great enthusiasm, I told the air traffic controllers and everyone in the industry that it would only be a month before everything would be solved. I admit I was almost jumping with joy that at last I had got somewhere.

It is now over two years since that original letter arid nothing has changed.

Not that I gave up; I kept writing, chasing, phoning, and adding almost daily to my already enormous file.

The senior bureaucrats still would not clarify the regulations as the air traffic controllers had requested. Instead, they decided to issue a document that would prescribe ‘see arid be seen’ separation.

This would force the union to accept, they reckoned.

A crazy way to keep employees on side, I thought – but better than nothing. So I kept chasing, phoning, writing.

Here is a typical letter to show what I was going through, addressed to the Secretary –

Dear Mr Freeland, See and be seen VFR procedures. On Tuesday 16 August 1983 Jim Adams told me that there would be a delay. This was to allow time for the Department to notify the industry of the proposed changes and await comment.

He appeared confident that the required notifications would be posted within one week.

Now, over 8 weeks later, it appears that they have not been sent out because he is awaiting comment from the Flight Standards Division. It is now 12 months since I brought this issue forward in Mr Schofield’s office and I understand from discussions on that day that your officers had been working on the matter for many years before that.

Surely something can be done about this matter, especially when you consider that both the industry and the Department are in favour.

Eventually, the ARP (Aviation Regulatory Proposal) was issued and sent around to the industry. I thought things must be getting close now.

In November 1983 I rang Collin Freeland, the Secretary, and pleaded with him, couldn’t he take charge and do something7 It was a safety issue and, as people were going broke, surely he must be concerned. I told him I was convinced it was simply the incompetence of his senior officers that was delaying everything.

Later in November 1983 he wrote to me and said that he regretted the delay. He said –

If there is general agreement with the proposals they will be introduced as soon as practicable in 1984.

Note that in May 1983 the Deputy Secretary had told me another month should be all that was required. Now seven months later I was being told by the Secretary (at least I was now at the top) it was to be as soon as practicable in the following year!

Nearly the whole of 1984 went by. Nothing I could do – and I strove as energetically as ever for some action – produced any concrete result. I felt that departmental stone-walling was impelling me into premature insanity.

At last,. on 26 October 1984, I received an impressive telex from the Secretary. The operative section read – Reversion to VFR separation standards (see and be seen) in primary control zones.

This proposal was circulated to industry as an ARP late in 1983 and final responses received in March. CAOOAA (the union) is implacably opposed to the proposition. Negotiation over recent months has led to softening of this attitude and I hope, with the agreement of staff associations, that new procedures can be promulgated and introduced without too much further delay.

I was frankly incredulous. Of course the union would be opposed. They had made it clear for ten years that they would accept nothing but an amendment clarifying the regulations.

In two long years I had got absolutely nowhere, no doubt like everyone else in the industry who had attempted to solve this issue. It had cost me a small fortune in lost time, trips to Canberra, letters and STD phone calls, all for nothing.

Meanwhile, those bureaucrats had been paid in full, for every letter, every delay.

What perplexed me above all was that this was an issue that everyone – the Department, the union, and the industry – wanted solved, as we were completely out of step with the rest of the world. Our practice was not only opposed to common sense: it resulted in a lower safety standard.

If, like the ABC, the Department of Aviation were completely restructured, and given efficient management, this ridiculous problem could be solved in ten minutes.

Meanwhile, if you wonder why a single-engined aircraft is circling endlessly over your home, you now know Why.

FOOTNOTE:

In December 1984, after the above chapter was written, a senior bureaucrat laid the blame for the issue not being solved on me! He claimed that my campaign had hardened the union’s resolve not to compromise.

Of course, it is difficult for me to answer such a subjective allegation. However, when the union president heard of it his answer was a straightforward ‘rubbish’.

WILL IT EVER CHANGE?

To return to the main theme of my story, I continued working ori the issues I had discussed at the original Schofield meeting. Everybody said something would happen shortly. Promises were made and broken. Letters went backward and forward, thousands of words passed, hours and hours, days and days, and nothing happened.

I am sure now that this was the wearing-down process that most people in the industry talked ab. out. I was spending nearly 50% of my time on letter writing, phone calls and trips to Canberra. If I had been running a business I would have given up. It was like swimming in a pool of porridge.

My main problem was with the Flight Standards Division. Whereas I could discuss anything with the Secretary or the Minister, the Flight Standards people, who were in charge of making any changes, would just not be in it. It became something of a battle of wits. There was just no way they would discuss anything with me or, It would appear, with anyone, even with their regional officers, as we have seen.

For two years I have been trying to persuade the helicopter specialists in Flight Standards to allow me to show them how helicopters were treated overseas one stage I wrote and said I would be prepared to come to their Central. Office _in Canberra and I would bring my slides. As there were important safety issues involved I felt sure they would be willing to listen to me. I had already given the same talk to air traffic controllers in Sydney who said it was Imperative that I give it to the people in the Central Office who were responsible for preventing the updating of outdated regulations.

Incredibly, the Central Office wrote back and said that as their officers regularly travelled overseas it would not be necessary to see me. However, they suggested I could talk to the people in the NSW Office if I wished. As I had already done this, and as they were Just as desperately trying to update the regulations, I had got nowhere.

I had been told they were not interested in safety; only in protecting themselves. For what other explanation could there be for not being prepared to listen to someone on suggestions that could increase safety? They seemed to fear meeting me in person, but they had no such fear about writing me letters. And they never stopped sending reams and reams of paper, Justifying archaic, nd1culous regulations.

I once wrote about an important safety issue, the dangerous rule that forced helicopters to fly the three legs of a fixed-wing circuit and approach the runway at an airport (thus mixing with Fokker Friendships, F28 jets and the like). I asked if this rule could be changed? I received a long reply with the extraordinary claim that helicopters actually do a smaller-sized circuit than fixed-wing aircraft and, seeing we have had such a system for 30 years without collision, it must be satisfactory.

I should mention that in other countries the regulations specifically require helicopters to keep clear of the fixed-wing circuit area. For example, the American FAR 91. 87 (El states,

When operating to land at an airport each pilot of a helicopter shall avoid the flow of fixed-wing aircraft.

Readers may not know, and will probably find it difficult to believe, that on take-off at an airport a helicopter must also act as if it is a fixed-wing aeroplane and taxi to and depart from the runway. This extraordinary, unique to Australia, rule exists, not for any safety reason, but simply because there are no separate regulations for helicopters.

Despite constant letters and lobbying on this matter for over ten years the closest the industry has got to any changes to this potentially dangerous situation was given in a letter dated 5 October 1982 from the Department which states: Your comments on the apparent regulations are thorough review will be completed in due course. they ‘Inredue reflected course’ what- is surely accept anyone overseas e competent in about could change minute es, e not regulations ten years. At Sydney’s international airport you will see helicopters being constantly taxied unnecessarily past Jumbo Jets and other large. airliners in defiance of common sense and safety. Everyone knows that a taxying fixed wing aircraft is in its safest configuration, so why should a helicopter be an¥ d1fferent7 In. fact, a hover-taxying helicopter is in a potentially less safe s1tuat1on than one in the air because high power levels are required to hover-taxi and downwind hovering is always difficult. . . Overseas, helicopters are very rarely hover-taxied anywhere. They simply approach and depart the spot they wish to operate from.

CONCLUSION

What began two years ago as a simple exercise to get helicopter regulations updated started probably the two most frustrating years of. my life. . I was to learn that what seemed a narrow problem in one industry was Just a small part of a very much wider and more serious issue. .

I was to find that everyone, from Qantas to the smallest operator, was being affected by regulations that were . either years out of date, or brand new and created in a totally arbitrary and d1ctatonal way by bureaucrats who had little or no operational experience and were in no way accountable to the industry they were employed to serve. They were also in no way affected by. the economic damage they could do. And their decisions, or lack of them, quite often resulted in less safety.

I was to find that rather than update regulations they would, as a last resort, offer dispensations to ‘bend’ the rules. This, of course, meant that their enormous personal power base was maintained. In some cases everyone had a dispensation on a particular rule yet that rule was steadfastly kept in being.

I was to find evidence of the tremendous power to intimidate, rock the boat, or be outspoken, and dispensations would not be granted or simply withdrawn.

Everyone was affected. . . . . . . .

In the general aviation industry companies were in financial difficulties because they had arbitrary restrictions placed on them without real discussion, and because they were excluded from any open and impartial review.

Commuter operators, because. of arbitrary, were prevented from using more efficient and safer aircraft which Australian passengers could and did use in every other advanced country in the world. . .

Qantas had arbitrary restrictions placed on them which they did not agree with, which were unique in the world, and on which they could get no impartial review.

Even air traffic controllers were not listened to.

It must not for a second be thought that only people in the industry were ignored by the bureaucracy. The president of the air traffic controllers’ union, for example, put up a thoroughly prepared proposal that recommended a more modern ‘feeder stack’ procedure as used overseas to speed up operations at Australian airports. This would reduce needless holding and, therefore, increase safety.

The union has never been able to get any meaningful on this issue, let alone acceptance of the ideas. At one stage they even handed their submission to Qantas to see if they could make an approach to the Department. Qantas did but to no avail – they also had no luck.

Departmental employees capable enough to show any initiative or creativity, or who tried to make changes, were shunted aside or left behind in the promotion stakes, or they simply gave up and resigned. All the while the people who were in charge, who were in a position to make changes, would not. . . . .

They would give lip service to the people of cooperation with and accountability to the aviation industry. There would be countless meetings, discussions and seminars, aviation regulatory proposals, everything that gave a good superficial image; but rarely anything genuine where it was clear that all sides of an issue were being looked at fairly and objectively.

Every time a good case for change became obvious the bureaucrats would jump behind the Roman Wall of their outdated regulations and proclaim the same old dogma: We can’t change the safety standards.

To the bureaucratic mind it was irrelevant that any proposed change was common sense had economic benefit and probably increased safety.

People in aviation have lived with this for so long, fought against it for so long with so little result, that it is understandable that so many have given up.

Something can still be done, however.

With the support of my friends, I formed ACORP – ‘Aviation Committee of Review Proposal’ to press for the appointment of such a committee. It already has the support of hundreds of pilots, air traffic controllers, aircraft operators and departmental officials. Sooner or later we are going to get such an inquiry. I hope everyone who reads these articles and my book will become a supporter too.