Knowledge is safety

However, earlier this year and without warning, the ATSB opted to publish them in a difficult-to-navigate format that meant the reader had to start selecting options. Indeed, in the process of stopping the I&A reports weekly it also deleted easy access to the previously published 11 years of I&A reports. Now to access an incident or accident report one has to have knowledge about an event having happened and then do repeated searches of the detailed data listing to try and find if the notification has been published online.

This writer was involved on a close prox incident in mid-May that by early August could not be found in the detailed data. Was that a lack of inclusion in the ATSB records or was it the searching technique that made it inaccessible? Time was spent looking for that one record. For a reader to access a week’s I&A event readings now would be almost a full-time job.

In September 2012 this writer emailed the ATSB commenting on the fact that the so-called weekly I&A reports were taking an inordinate amount of time to get published. The ATSB replied stating that, “the aim was to get the I&A notifications published within five working days of the occurrence . . . however, that depends on the resources available to the team at any given time …. we are planning to implement a publicly accessible database in 2013 … so that information is available to the public as it is processed by the ATSB. ” This does happen with major incident and accident reports, ‘Aviation Safety Investigations & Reports’, typically three or four a week, but it has not happened for the rest of the 100 or so events that happen weekly.

Two recent international aviation safety events involving Australia have without doubt soaked up ATSB time, personnel and finances to the determent of the run-of-the-mill local incident and accident investigations and reporting. That is unfortunate for the safety knowledge of local airline and general aviation operators and pilot stakeholders.

My email to the ATSB of June 25 2014 stated: “As a flight instructor I find these (weekly) A&I reports of enormous interest to both know what is going on around the country, to understand and try and avoid repeating the same event and to absorb those events with the view to passing on that knowledge to flight students in order that they may avoid doing those things. ” That view still stands. In aviation knowledge is safety. A lack of that information is a detriment to safety. In late July the ATSB advertised for a notifications officer with a closing date of August 8. The position was to be for 12 months and would involve processing initial incident and accident notifications at the Canberra central office. One can hope that new position will speed up the flow of information of initial notifications and maybe restore the currently absent weekly notifications, recent and past, in a format that is easy to access, read and digest.

Information is knowledge. In aviation knowledge is safety. A lack of that information is a detriment to safety.

Passing of Mac Job This writer is saddened to report the passing of famed Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) Aviation Safety Digest magazine editor and aviation writer Mac Job on August 6.

This writer worked with the DCA during the period that Mac was the editor of the Aviation Safety Digest. It can now be said that I spent more time in the editorial office than I should have. It was a great atmosphere talking with a writer who had real life experience flying general aviation aircraft for a living.

Mac wrote the Safety Digest in a way that even today is revered and many pilots wish it was brought back and even reprinted. I have a copy of every issue of the ASD and Mac’s last issue, #100, is a signed copy. Mac went on to write the Air Crash and Air Disaster series of books plus others. They should all be must-reads for pilots of today.

Mac was on the same plane as American writer-pilot Ernest K Gann. Both were real pilots writing about real aviation happenings. But Mac wrote more and longer.

There are few real writer-pilots. Mac was one of them. How many pilots his pen has saved we will never know. I was privileged to have known him.