ELT Saga Continues

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Australia (AOPA) remains locked in conflict with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) over the latter’s requirement that Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs) be fitted to civil aircraft, by June 30 1996. The only exemptions to the requirement, which is spelt out in CAR 252A, are high capacity RPT aircraft, balloons, airships and gliders, and aircraft operating within 25nm (46km) of the departure aerodrome. CASA has mandated that aircraft be fitted with C91a ELTs, which have a much greater crash resistance and better activation system than the earlier C91 ELT. This means there is a much better chance of the C91a surviving a crash and being activated as a result in addition to there being less likelihood of false activation. AOPA recommends that its members carry ELTs but maintains that personal, portable ELTs are a safer and less costly option than fixed types such as the C91a. This is apparently supported by its membership which in a poll to which 2241 members replied, 1723 or 77% declared that they would be in favour of compulsory carriage of an ELT on flights exceeding 50nm (92km), with the choice of ELT type being left to the pilot.

To support the case for the fitting of ELTs, (which AOPA estimates will cost in the order of $10,000,000), the then CAA sought a cost benefit study from the Bureau of Transport and Communications into the effect that the mandatory carriage of ELTs would have had on search costs and survival rates for a given year. The year chosen was 1993-94, in which the cost of searches was unusually high. The CAA estimated “that, of the searches undertaken in 1993/94, 40 were either assisted or would have been assisted by an ELT signal”. The CAA went on to state that “this is the only available estimate of the proportion of searches that would be assisted by an ELT, and so we will use it in our primary cost-benefit calculations to determine a relationship between GA hours flown and the number of searches likely to arise that would be assisted by an ELT signal”.

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