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Ansett's reform package approved

Paul Scully-Power

I'd like to welcome you all here to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. Apologise for bringing you out at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon - I know everyone has probably more interesting things to do, but I'm Paul Scully-Power, I'm the Chairman of CASA, and I'd just like to make a few brief points.

Number one - and most importantly - this Authority - the Civil Aviation Safety Authority - will not be issuing a notice to Ansett to show cause why it should retain its air operators certificate.

I must say - in all honesty - that the last week and a half or so have certainly been very difficult, and a trying time both for us and Ansett. Because after days and nights - and I might say some long nights - of intense and complicated technical discussion between Ansett and the Authority, a resolution has today finally been achieved. Ansett has been able to address all the issues of concern to this Authority regarding its aircraft maintenance.

And I must also add that through all this we here in the Authority have been very aware of that special place that Ansett holds in the rich history and tradition of Australian aviation. And that tradition - I'd like to point out and emphasise - includes for Ansett the long held international reputation in aviation safety.

We here at CASA are most confident that Ansett can overcome the difficulties of the past. Ansett now needs to look to the future and reinforce its status as one of the world's premier airlines. CASA is confident that Ansett is committed to achieving that end, and has the capability of rebuilding its operation. However, there remains a lot of hard work.

For its part CASA is firmly committed to working with Ansett towards the goal of implementing the airline's new operational and management structure.

For further details I'd like to turn over to our Chief Executive - the man who is the Director of Aviation Safety for this nation, and someone who I'm proud to say the Board fully supports - Mick Toller.

Mick Toller

Thanks Paul, thanks everyone. I'll just keep it fairly brief and let you have some time for questions. I realise you've got some fairly tight deadlines.

This has been a tough week, but I believe that the end result that we have achieved, is a major step forward for aviation safety in Australia. I think it's more than just Ansett, because I think that the statement that we've made about the standards that we expect and that we require of airlines in this country, will permeate to all the other major airlines and right down through to the smaller airlines in the industry.

The problems we saw with Ansett came really at two levels, because we were seeing serious management deficiencies at the maintenance planning level - so that's the top management areas - but we were also seeing problems permeating right through to the work being done on the hangar floor.

And the, the requirement that we had to place on Ansett was to sort out the whole of that problem. We had to sort out the problems right down from the top to the very bottom. And we believe that Ansett have done this.

We have got an absolutely firm commitment from Gary Toomey - who's the new Chief Executive of Ansett - that there will be significant changes to the organisation.

We believe that they are changes which address the problems that, that we had and the concerns that we had. They start with some changes in terms of introduction of quality management systems and maintenance planning being given much more strength, which really address some of the issues of management. But more importantly, they get right down to the shop floor type areas where there is a commitment to review the whole scheme for apprenticeships.

There's a commitment to review the staffing levels, to review the tooling levels - to make sure people have got adequate tools - and all those sorts of issues that do effect the workers on a day-to-day basis to ensure that the right quality of maintenance is produced.

Nobody likes the sort of experience we've been through in the last week - either on our side I can assure you, or if you're on the Ansett side.

But these sorts of experiences do have some very strong pluses and I feel sure that, that apart from our saying - as an Authority - that we're very serious about aviation safety, I think it's also done Ansett an enormous amount of good in binding together the airline, in making them all work together, and making them all work together focussing on the absolute importance of safety.

Thank you.

Question

Was the pressure applied to you [inaudible].

Mick Toller

No the show cause was a tool that we planned to use. All we were looking for was an outcome. We had safety concerns. It was important that those safety concerns were addressed. It didn't matter how they were addressed.

Ansett did not particularly want a show cause. They felt that would be damaging to their business, and so they imposed upon themselves a deadline to answer all our concerns before today.

That was not our deadline. Our deadline was basically two weeks from today, but they imposed that deadline upon themselves. There was no pressure on us to do anything other than to ensure the right outcomes.

Question

There's been a lot of talk about changes needed within Ansett. There's also been discussions with the Prime Minister [inaudible] about changes needed within CASA - especially looking into monitoring service bulletins - what changes will you be implementing within CASA.

Mick Toller

Well we're certainly undertaking - having discussed this with the Minister - a review of the way service bulletins are addressed world-wide, and whether there is well there will be, I think, a better way of doing it in Australia. I think that's a lesson that we've learned.

When you get a problem like this and you look back on it, there are always things to learn. I think that we can all learn from it. There will undoubtedly be lessons that CASA has to learn from it. They'll undoubtedly lessons that the rest of the industry has to learn from it as well as the lessons that Ansett have already demonstrated they've learned from it.

We will go through that process. We will, we will review everything that's gone on to find out what ways we can to, to make our processes and the things that we do more efficient.

Question

Will CASA be getting more powers though, to [inaudible] have a proper and adequate looking at service bulletins issued by overseas air manufacturers.

Mick Toller

We can take those powers if that is the right way to do it, and we'll certainly be looking at that.

Question

Do you think it is the right way to [inaudible] it.

Mick Toller

I think that we need to review it. I'm not sure what the answer is. I don't want to pre-empt the answer. We're going to get in a team of experts to do that. I am a pilot rather than a maintenance engineer, and I'll leave it to the experts in that field to say 'this we believe is the way to make sure that things that need to be done, do get done'.

Question

If you had the confidence in Ansett's maintenance system, how can you justify keeping the remaining nine 767s on the ground.

Mick Toller

Because there were two separate issues here. We had the issue of concern about the systemic issues - the management issues in Ansett - and those have been addressed.

But we had actual physical concerns about what has happened in the past - and the recent past - in terms of how those aircraft were being maintained.

The fact that we're changing things from now on, doesn't clear up the fact that we don't know what the state of those aircraft was. We've finished the first one. The first one is released. We will do the next four as quickly as we possibly can, and then get into the old five.

Question

Dr Scully-Power, are you satisfied with the way that the Authority's handled this matter.

Paul Scully-Power

Absolutely.

Question

You have no concerns [inaudible].

Paul Scully-Power

There's all sorts of reports always coming to light, but I can assure you the Board is absolutely behind and fully appreciative and we believe it's a fully satisfactory outcome, and the processes by which we've got there, we fully endorse.

Question

Mr Toller [inaudible] or will you be trying from now on to convince Kim Beazley and Martin Ferguson that you are doing the right thing.

Mick Toller

Well I think it's not important to convince a political party that we're doing the right thing. I think it's important that we convince the whole nation that we're doing the right thing.

I believe that what we're doing is the right thing. I believe that the improvements that have happened in the Authority over the last three to four years have been immense.

Everybody understands that, that CASA - and the CAA before it - went through a difficult patch in the 1990s. There were a number of criticisms made at the time - including organisational timidity and taking commercial interests too greatly.

And I think that everything that we've done in the last week actually refutes the criticisms that were made of the old CASA and the old CAA, and I think the very actions that we've taken - and the way that we've taken them - are a demonstration that those bad old days are over and we now have a strong, solid and very dependable aviation safety regulative authority.

Question

Mr Toller how are you going to make these [inaudible]. How far are you going to go with that.

Mick Toller

Well we are going to we've reached the stage today where we've agreed the principles of what they've said. There are obviously some details to be put on that. We are aware of most of those details already, but they've gotta be put into a formal document.

I have written - this afternoon - to Gary Toomey - as the Chief Executive - and I've said in that letter that CASA will require that these proposals be included in a formal, binding, undertaking between CASA and Ansett, and this will need to be finalised in the next two weeks.

So what we're looking to do is turn this into a very formal document that is as strong as the an enforceable undertaking that we were trying to get the Senate to agree to recently, and failed.

Question

Will it be a legal document.

Mick Toller

It will be a form of legal document, yes. It's, it'll be a binding agreement.

Question

What about the threat of legal action from Ansett. Are you still concerned about that.

Mick Toller

We've never been concerned about the threat of legal action. We take our decisions based on purely safety grounds. We have the good reasons for taking those decisions, and we would not be concerned at any stage. If we worked under the threat of legal, of legal action, we couldn't make the decisions with the of the strength that we do so.

Question

Are you responsible for the Chairman of Air New Zealand and Ansett [inaudible] legal action during such [inaudible].

Mick Toller

Well I think he's actually denied actually saying it now. I mean, I saw he retracted, and, or least, he said that he'd never said it. So I think that we'll just leave that one in the sides.

It's been an emotional time, let, lets understand that. I mean it's been a difficult time for both sides. Emotions do run high. People have been short of sleep - there's no question of that - and sometimes things are said in the heat of the moment, or unthinkingly in these periods. We'll look back on it and history will judge I think whether we did the right thing and I'm sure confident that it'll show that we did.

Question

Do you think that the Prime Minister's comments this morning on Melbourne radio - saying he wanted some changes in CASA and the system of air safety regulation - are any criticism of you.

Mick Toller

I don't know. I have to say I haven't actually seen those comments. I can't, I can't comment on them until I've read them so.

Question

Do you feel you have the confidence of John Anderson, you know, John Howard, and do you feel confident of being reappointed by the Government.

Mick Toller

I the issue of reappointment is one that I don't think is really relevant. If I ever thought that I did not have the confidence, or if I was ever told that I did not have the confidence of John Anderson or of the Cabinet and the Prime Minister, it wouldn't be an issue of whether they have to decide whether to reappoint me or not, I would, I would resign on the spot.

If they believe that somebody better could do the job, I would be happy to, to hand over to somebody with different skills. At the moment there is no indication to me whatsoever that I have anything other than the full confidence - both as the Chairman has said - of the Board and of the Government.

Question

Has Ansett given you any sort of indication of what the last, you know, eight days has cost them.

Mick Toller

Not at all. No, we've never discussed money or commercial issues with Ansett at all. We, we've just purely talked safety issues.

Question

How long will it take to get all the planes back in the air.

Mick Toller

I think that's a difficult one. Certainly the first one took longer than we expected. That was an issue of putting together a very complex set of documents, and then resolving a number of issues with them.

I think the next four aircraft, you know, we may be able to do them - they certainly won't be taking a week each which was suggested by someone this morning - they'll be done a lot more quickly.

The last five, which are the old aircraft - which are really the ones we've seen all the problems in this year - I wouldn't like to predict.

Question

What's this [inaudible].

Mick Toller

I, I would just wouldn't like to be we will do them as quickly as we can. It's very intensive in terms of our labour as well, obviously. We've got, we've got a very large team from all of our offices throughout Australia working on this at the moment, and we will continue to give it as many resources as is necessary.

Question

Once Ansett has its systems and procedures in place to your satisfaction, how would you describe it - as adequate, as better than adequate, as

Mick Toller

I believe that the system that Ansett has had started to put in already I mean part of these systems they'd already put into the operational side of the airline are probably world leaders in quality management systems. The problem that we had was that while they were addressing this on the operations side, they weren't addressing them on the maintenance side.

They have now committed to moving these quality management systems into the, into the maintenance side. So we will see the same, the same degree of safety management of levels of defence which you need in the maintenance side, that we've seen before in the operations side.

Question

So then how would you describe that level of attention to the maintenance side once those procedures are in place.

Mick Toller

I would say that when those procedures are in place - and bear in mind it will take some time to implement them, because we're talking about major change here - but when they're in place they are gonna be sort of up with the best.

Question

World class.

Mick Toller

I believe very much world class.

Question

When would you like to see Ansett replace [inaudible].

Mick Toller

I understand that, that Gary Toomey announced that they were on the market now. Clearly, from our point of view, they are the most difficult aircraft in the fleet. They are very old aircraft. Their maintenance requirements are greater. We don't have a strong view about how quickly Ansett get rid of them, though I must admit that I would say that I'd be happy to see them go.

Okay. Thanks everybody, thanks for coming. Have a quiet weekend - cause I'm going to.

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