The various routes an investigation may (or may not) take are pretty clearly laid out by Mike Cleaver. It's been that way for quite a while but it is a great inhibitor to learning from the various events. With clubs reluctant or unable to carry out their own detailed investigation (whether through disinclination, lack of resources or training, or fear of litigation) it is hard to see what can be done. If the clubs don't want to (or can't) do it the next step up are the State Associations. If they won't do it or support it nationally then the GFA is unlikely to put its hand up for the task. It's one of the core weaknesses of our federated system that the clubs have to try to influence policy or procedures through their State Associations and so through their State representative on the GFA Board. It was supposed to be a "bottom up" system but it's operated as a "top down" one.
Unwieldy, unresponsive, and in the end somewhat unrepresentative due to a low level of interest and participation by the clubs in management of the sport. It's a system designed to fail, and if it wasn't propped up by Government money and the need to have somebody fight our corner when it comes to aviation regulations I think it would have collapsed a long time ago. As a long time safety consultant to industry I was interested some time ago to get involved in glider incident investigations and attended several CASA seminars on the subject, but it became clear that there was no resource base for glider investigations, no specific training for people wanting to get involved, no structure that would provide such a service and no real interest at GFA. CASA and ATSB have different priorities to us. I have a view about what happened in the recent case, but it's based on scant anecdotal information (I wouldn't even class it as 'evidence') and may be so far from the actual facts that it would serve no purpose in posting it. This area represents a "black hole" in the management of gliding safety at a national level, and until something concrete is done to change the way it's handled I think we will see more incidents for which any risk management reports or recommendations never get beyond the club concerned. Leigh Youdale _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list Aus-soaring@lists.internode.on.net To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
