John and others
The ATSB has a system for classifying accidents and incidents - see on
their web site
http://www.atsb.gov.au/about_atsb/investigation-procedures.aspx and
http://www.atsb.gov.au/about_atsb/investigation-procedures.aspx#fn2
- the latter identifies what the various levels of investigation involve
in terms of ATSB resources.
Sport and recreational aviation accidents - even fatal ones - are almost
never accorded a classification higher than 4, which means that after
the recording of various factual information, the investigation is
either carried out with one or two ATSB investigators or may be referred
to another agency. In the case of a fatality this is often the police
force in the State or Territory where the accident occurred - either for
potential crime investigation or more likely for the Coroner to
investigate. The Police/Coroner will usually seek the assistance of the
GFA in the case of a gliding accident, but the GFA generally regards
itself as under-resourced to carry out aviation accident investigations,
as no funding is provided from Government sources to train and equip
investigators.In any event the funding provided by Government to the
ATSB is such that most accidents are not investigated in any level of
detail, unless they involve passenger transport operations in large or
medium capacity aircraft. The days when ATSB investigated sport aviation
accidents to any greater extent than this ended over 20 years ago, and
are not likely to return.
While gliding fatalities are investigated by TAIC in New Zealand, that
is not the case here, and the amount of knowledge gained from NZ
investigations is not significantly higher than here.
A further factor that militates against the GFA conducting and
publishing accident reports is the fact that, unlike Government
agencies, the investigator may be held personally liable for the way
findings are reported, and challenged by relatives of the deceased or
others who have suffered personal or property loss, or by survivors of
the event who may claim some degree of negligence (read financial
compensation for some assumed fault by the GFA or its members) or
defamation as a consequence of the reporting.
This has the potential to affect all of us, whereas an ATSB
investigation is rarely handled this way. Note that this is a fact in
spite of the acknowledged purpose of accident investigations being to
prevent recurrences and identify procedures or training that may assist
in this goal: accident investigators do not lay blame for occurrences
(and sometimes it is hard to read into their reports any reference to
even obvious breaches of the law or safe operating procedures).
This is why we have to wait so long for a Coroner to produce a report
before we can make changes to the system, especially where training or
procedure changes are involved, or airworthiness actions.
Wombat
On 25/04/2012 12:09 PM, john.mcfarlane wrote:
I would have thought that this is a mandated reportable incident via
the Fed Gov body delegated with that authority -- ATSB.
Will there be a formal report from the ATSB?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From: *[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent: *Monday, 23 April 2012 4:17
*To: *Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia.
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Subject: *Re: [Aus-soaring] GFA Site/accident
Re accident prevention, in this instance we will have to wait on the
Coroner's report, which I would not expect any time soon. It *may* be
able to pinpoint a problem, and if so we - that is the collective we -
can then act. However I am not holding my breath on this one.
Regards,
Gary
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