Big season prompts safety reminders

While the pathway to becoming an ag pilot can be long and include time as a loader-mixer getting the hang of the chemical side of the business, at least the work to drive the industry forward is now available after the long drought.

Aerial application is an enormously satisfying career where your skill can save a farmer’s crop, protect a family’s house from bushfire, or control a plague that threatens a whole district’s livelihood. You can actually make a difference and use your aviation qualifications in a very real way.

While the return to solid work has been very welcome, it is not without its challenges – including, in some limited cases, abuse from farmers wanting to get to the front of the queue.

Aerial application operators and pilots are professional enough to resist this sort of overt pressure – often with a humorous response that makes it quite clear that safety comes first and the complainant is now at the end of the queue.

However, the less obvious pressure of a ‘can-do’ culture driven by a genuine concern to help farmers protect their first decent crop in many years, coupled with long hours and a potential lack of ‘game fitness’, is a safety cocktail that must be managed.

AAAA has initiated a program of safety reminders to keep safe practices top-ofmind for application pilots. The AAAA Safety Alert program puts short safety messages onto the mobile phones of pilots via text messaging as well as making sure operators have simple safety reminders up on the noticeboard and in the crew room.

As most aerial application pilots have previously attended AAAA safety training courses that cover human factors, wire risk management and safety models, tools and principles, the reminders call up and reinforce key messages from previous training.

In addition, AAAA is close to launching another safety course focusing on safe aircraft handling and operation. Aerial application accidents can be characterised by the ‘big three’ – takeoffs, turns and powerlines, and the new AAAA course will address practical tools to each.

The new course will build on materials such as the Turn Smart video by Wayne Handley – former US airshow star and ag pilot – as well as introducing a range of new material that includes feedback from industry engineers on the common problems they are seeing in the workshop and suggested fixes.

The frontline of safety remains the skills and professionalism of our pilots, loadermixers, engineers, ops managers and business owners.

The day to day decision making in application operations fits comfortably within any number of safety models – risk management, James Reason’s ‘Swiss cheese’, Tony Kern’s airmanship redefined, TEM, quality assurance, to name a few that AAAA uses in its courses – but the bottom line is each member of the team asking the simple question “what can go wrong”, and then safely managing the honest answer.

There are plenty of tools available to the professional pilot to help them guide their safety management. But the fundamental issue is one of culture – of the pilot constantly thinking safety. No-one else can make this mental shift for you – it always comes back to the pilot being a critical line of defence to ensure a safe flight.

True, the culture of the operator can either challenge or support the pilot’s pursuit of safety, and other members of the team and even clients may add additional layers of complexity. But within a single seat aircraft environment, the pilot’s rock steady commitment to protecting their own neck and flying within their personal safety buffers becomes even more critical.

To all the application pilots out there doing their best in this busiest of seasons – always remember – fly to come home. n Australian Aviation is proud to be the official supporting journal of the Aerial Agricultural Association of Australia. The views in this column are those of the AAAA, and not necessarily Australian Aviation’s.