CASA Media Release - Tuesday, 3 April 2001
CASA launches national air safety promotion
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority is running a major national air safety promotion in 2001.
The promotion, which begins today, is aimed at improving flight crew safety standards in both commercial and general aviation and involves experts from CASA, Airservices Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, and from industry.
It features a series of seminars for pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers in metropolitan and regional locations around the country until the end of October.
CASA's Assistant Director Aviation Safety Promotion, Mike Smith, says the seminars are of vital interest to all in aviation.
"CASA encourages everyone in aviation to attend the seminars, to update their knowledge and skills," Mr Smith said.
"Most aviation accidents and incidents occur when critical factors in pre-flight planning are ignored or not correctly taken in to account," he said.
Featured among the seminars, which are free, are workshops including Setting Your Own Standards and Weather Wise.
Setting Your Own Standards gives pilots a personal minimums checklist to help them identify risk factors and set their own standards based on their personal experience.
"Research has shown that problems that arise during flight are often due to the decisions made before the flight began," Mr Smith said.
"Setting Your Own Standards takes pilots through an interactive CD-rom provided by CASA and enables them to create their own checklist designed primarily for use during flight planning."
The University of Western Sydney developed the Weather Wise program from research in to the nature of weather-related decision-making conducted for the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States.
The "Australianised" version presented in CASA's safety promotion is designed to assist visual flight-rated pilots to recognise deteriorating weather conditions during flight and decide on a safe course of action.
Details of the seminar program are available on the CASA web site and in Flight Safety Australia.
Media contact
Peter Gibson
ph 02 6217 1015
mobile 0419 296 446
Ref: MR0115