CASA defends air safety, extends Ansett investigation
JOHN LAWS: Well the issue of air safety is under the spotlight again, after three separate plane accidents at the weekend, claiming nine lives incidentally. And while these incidents involved light planes, there's been plenty of concerns about the maintenance programs on the larger aircraft, particularly Ansett's fleet of 767s. To find out a little more about this we've got on the line the Director of Civil Aviation Authority, Mick Toller. Good morning Mick.
MICK TOLLER: Good morning John.
JOHN LAWS: How're you doing?
MICK TOLLER: Well I've had better weekends, we could put it that way.
JOHN LAWS: I'll bet you have. It was not a good weekend for air safety was it?
MICK TOLLER: I think when people talk about it being a black weekend, I think that's a good expression. It saddens all of us in the business when we have tragedies like the ones that have happened over this weekend.
JOHN LAWS: Is it inevitable that light aeroplanes are going to fall out of the sky?
MICK TOLLER: Well no form of transport is 100 percent safe. Yes, I mean, we're always going to see occasional crashes. When they come together like this they obviously sort of hurt people more in terms of the fact that they take a lot of notice.
The Canberra one of course very close to home for me, I've got a light aircraft and fly out of Canberra, I'm part of that community. So, you know, we all feel it tragically.
JOHN LAWS: Oh, it's dreadful. It's dreadful for the people left behind. Do you have any indication of what might have caused any of those accidents?
MICK TOLLER: Not really at this stage John. I mean the ATSB will investigate all three of them, they obviously appear to be totally unrelated and totally different forms of accidents. That investigation is very important because one of the things about this industry is that we do make a big thing out of learning from accidents and learning from incidents, and putting those lessons into the future to stop future accidents.
JOHN LAWS: As you fly out of Canberra did you know the pilot of that aircraft?
MICK TOLLER: I didn't in fact, I mean I know of him, he owns a local flying training school and he's just recently bought that aircraft, but I actually haven't met him.
JOHN LAWS: Was he a highly qualified pilot?
MICK TOLLER: I can't say. I honestly haven't checked his personal qualifications John and that's obviously something that the Bureau will be looking into to when they do the full investigation.
JOHN LAWS: How tightly regulated is the light plane industry?
MICK TOLLER: Not very. And that's appropriate. It's similar if you like to driving our cars on the road, it's something that we all understand the risks of aviation, who fly light aeroplanes, we all train to minimise those risks, but we accept that they happen.
It's not like we have to protect the fare paying passenger, which is the role that CASA takes. There are regulations, they're pretty tough regulations, and the individuals who own the aircraft are very, very good at complying with those regulations.
JOHN LAWS: How does our safety record in the light plane industry compare with other countries?
MICK TOLLER: We're up with the top ones, I think it's safe to say. We've obviously got a lot of light aircraft flying in Australia, it's the perfect country for it. The places that are similar are probably Canada and the United States. And we're on about a par with their overall safety record in the general aviation field.
And overall the trends have been improving, that safety's been improving as times got on. And people have, learned lessons as I said from previous incidents and accidents.
JOHN LAWS: Given that it's simply coincidental that these three accidents occurred over the weekend, does it mean that you're going to tighten up regulations or are you going to accept it as being simply coincidental?
MICK TOLLER: I don't think either of those at this stage. It would certainly be wrong to take a knee jerk reaction and say that we must do something quickly. Because, frankly until we know exactly what happened in these accidents really it's not fair for us to turn around and take immediate action.
Equally, you know, we won't do nothing. We will have a look at what we can do in the future. Maybe it's an education issue, maybe it's a safety issue maybe it's a training issue. We'll look at all these things when the answers come out and do what we can.
JOHN LAWS: Obviously the Ansett maintenance problems are considerably more serious.
MICK TOLLER: Indeed. I mean that's very much a focus of my attention this morning.
JOHN LAWS: How can a 767 be fitted with the wrong part and then fly for a week before anybody noticed it was a wrong part?
MICK TOLLER: Well I think that's a very good question John, it's one that we're certainly asking ourselves of Ansett at this stage. I think it should be said, and I'm not trying to defend them but the parts are almost identical in looks, and in fact very nearly the same piece of metal in fact.
But that said, that's no excuse, they should have the processes in place, there should've been a label on that which said not to be used on 767-300 aircraft, or something similar. It wasn't, we want to know why their system has broken down effectively for the second time in a month.
JOHN LAWS: Are you going to extend your investigations into Ansett's conduct?
MICK TOLLER: We will indeed. I mean this just gives us more to look at. It confirms what we suspected, which was that the problem is with the management systems, with how they run the maintenance side of the airline. We'll be looking at that very closely. This gives us one more part of it to look at and make sure that they learn from this and put in place very much a new system that cannot let this happen again under any circumstances.
JOHN LAWS: Have you got concerns about the outsourcing of some of the maintenance work?
MICK TOLLER: Not necessarily. I mean a lot of big airlines outsource, Cathay Pacific outsource, Singapore Airlines outsources. All of the names of airlines that we all regard as being at the very top. Outsourcing itself is not necessarily an issue, it doesn't actually matter who does the job as long as they do it the right way.
JOHN LAWS: Qantas is talking about sending its maintenance work to New Zealand, Qantas are sponsors of mine. It might save costs for the airlines but will it be at any cost to the traveller, do you think?
MICK TOLLER: No our role at the Authority is to ensure that it if Qantas outsource their maintenance to say New Zealand, then we will be checking with the New Zealand authorities and working together to ensure that the standard of work that is done in New Zealand is the same as the standard of work that is done in Australia.
It's a global business. You know, there are companies in Hong Kong and Singapore and Ireland and Abu Dhabi who live off maintaining aircraft from all around the world. So it's not anything that's that unusual, but it is something that we do say, look there's only one standard that's acceptable and we will make sure that that's complied with.
JOHN LAWS: Okay. Mick, when do you think you might have some information concerning the accidents during the weekend?
MICK TOLLER: I think it might take some time. It's always dangerous to rush into these things John. But the first thing is to let the ATSB do their accident investigation. That's their role, they're very good at it and we'll wait until we get a preliminary report from them.
Some things may be fairly obvious fairly soon - we might hear fairly quickly. Others might be more of a mystery and need more detective work.
JOHN LAWS: Okay. Thanks for your time Mick again. You're always good to make yourself available to us, we appreciate it.
MICK TOLLER: It's my pleasure John.
JOHN LAWS: Director of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, Mick Toller, who is good, he's always there if we need to question him. Ansett obviously got to be looked at closely. I just don't understand, whether it's a similar looking part or not a similar looking part, how the wrong part can be put on an aeroplane and stay there for a week. Don't know. And that's, I suppose, what they want to know.