Analysis – The scoreboard we weren’t supposed to see
Australia’s long-claimed status as a shining beacon of aviation safety is copping a severe flogging in the global air safety arena.
Last year the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme conducted an audit of Australia’s air safety oversight. Its139-page report highlights the challenges that now face various government agencies to reach compliance with ICAO standards. These include the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) Airservices Australia, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (in its aviation search & rescue functions,) and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government which oversees them.
It also poses a challenge the responsible Minister, Anthony Albanese, must address. Handing this issue to a departmental spin manager just won’t work
Numerous industry identities agree it’s a seriously concerning issue. The USA and various European States have in the past and present been known to ban or limit a particular airline’s flights in their airspace when they perceive that the airline or its regulators are not doing their job. The recent downgrading by the FAA of Israeli national carrier El Al’s safety rating from 1 to 2 has the potential effect of preventing the carrier from increasing its USA services, which damages its competitive position because US carriers can then increase their Israel flights; and also of damaging the airline’s commercial reputation.
In reality most Aussie carriers have long understood the regulatory deficiencies and where necessary they’ve developed their own internal procedures almost as a form of self-regulation. Qantas as one example was among the first carriers in the world to install quick-access flight data recorders along with computerised systems to identify safety hazards in flight and training procedures to fix them. Years later, such programs are now becoming mandatory.
But foreign States that need to understand the safety performance of carriers wanting to fly in their airspace have to rely on data such as the ICAO report, which compares Australia’s performance with the global average of other audited States in eight critical areas. The findings of this audit could easily be enough to trigger limitations on some cash-critical international airspace used by Australian carriers.
In line with ICAO practice a draft report was circulated to all interested parties with invitations to acknowledge, to comment, and to say what plans were in place to fix the problems. The final report, published on the ICAO Web site, contains those responses and some proposed fixes, not all of which ICAO acknowledges as completely satisfactory.
Previous ICAO audit reports have been published on CASA’s web site, but although this one is on the ICAO site it seems to have fallen through the cracks in Australia.
It’s not hard to see why. On a scale of 1 to 100, the audited States score a dismal average of 41.52%, which is unsurprising because they include some much less mature aviation nations.
But the unfortunate Aussies score a very sub-Olympic 16.62%.
The report publishes a graphic representation of what it describes as “the lack of effective implementation of the critical elements of the safety oversight system in Australia” compared to the global average of other audited states.
Here are the numbers on which this damning document is based:
The ICAO report quotes a raft of data and findings to support its scoring.
“Primary aviation legislation” scored the lowest mark of the lot – 3.3%, which is unsurprising if you’ve been watching the game.
CASA has now been wrestling for about 18 years with the task of modernising its aviation legislation.
In September 2007 CASA admitted to a Senate committee that up to that time $144 million had already been spent on its Regulatory Review Program [RRP]. It added that its estimate for the current year (2006-07) was $24 million, and the projected costs for 2007-08 were another $23 million. That pushed the expected total bill to a staggering $191 million in 18 years – some $10.6 million a year – with almost nothing to show for it!
In the most recent change of direction all the considerable and quite constructive work that had been done in consultation with industry was shoved in a drawer and an executive decision was made to return to a previously discredited plan to change our aviation regulatory structure again by aligning it with EASA (The European Aviation Safety Agency).
In New Zealand the regulatory rewrite task, conforming to the format of the US Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs), was completed in seven years which included extensive and effective industry consultation. We’ve been told that the NZ DCA offered CASA the rights to adopt its system for a modest $1 million – probably Kiwi dollars at that!
Most of our industry contacts believe that if all the competent people who have left the regulatory body in disgust over the past 20 years were returned with an assignment to wrap up the RRP, the problem would be resolved very quickly. They also believe that the system is failing because the regulators are both making the laws and enforcing them – a ridiculously unique situation, akin to the traffic cops deciding on the speed limits and putting up the signs.
The answer, many suggest, is to remove the regulatory rewrite from CASA and allot it to an autonomous body of industry and CASA experts with aviation experience reporting not to CASA but to the Attorney General’s Department.
Who’s minding the shop?
Some seriously bad examples of poor attention to specific operating regulations are scattered through the ICAO report, one of which is the lack of oversight of ETOPS (extended twin engined operations), a major issue with the advent of super-long-haul airlines with only two (admittedly huge) engines.
Airlines flying long distances over oceans and remote areas must provide for enroute diversions in case something goes wrong – such as an engine failure – and the flight can’t get to its destination, which may be ten or more hours away. This is a passenger-protecting safety requirement. Under current rules airlines must plan ETOPS flights so that if one of the two engines fails at any point during the planned flight, the crew can safely fly to a suitable diversion airfield no further away than three hours flying at engine-out speed.
To meet this requirement twin-engined aircraft sometimes have to fly a longer route than three or four engined aircraft to ensure they are always less than three hours (at the reduced speed) from a suitable airfield with adequate facilities and suitable current weather.
The standards of reliability, systems redundancy, operations planning, emergency equipment, flight following and crew training that are required must be closely monitored by regulators to ensure that all standards are complied with.
But ICAO reports: Although the air operators carrying out ETOPS submit periodic reports and airworthiness inspectors attend the operators’ meetings from time to time, CASA does not conduct ongoing oversight of reliability programmes and consequently does not initiate actions in case a degraded level of safety is detected.
Training deficiencies
Competency starts with training, and is a keystone of aviation safety – a concept which is embraced by CASA and every other aviation regulator. But does it work in CASA? ICAO reports under the heading “Civil Aviation System and Safety Oversight Functions”:
Training records of the technical staff of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) of Australia are not systematically maintained in a manner that provides for effective evaluation of the individual’s competency and training needs.
Airworthiness and flying operations inspectors spend endless hours leafing through the training records of approved maintenance workshops and air operators searching for any failure to maintain adequate and comprehensive staff training records. Maybe they’d be more successful closer to home!
Let’s not forget that one of the tasks of regulatory technical staff is to monitor the qualifications and training of their opposite numbers in industry, so we’d hope that they were well-qualified and up to the job. But:
CASA’s Human Resources Management Branch has recently established a training policy that makes a commitment to provide initial, on-the-job, recurrent and specialised training to its staff in the area of airworthiness. However, no training programmes have been developed detailing the type of training to be provided to technical staff in each position, including periodic training plans. In general, the training provided to technical staff is insufficient to address the competency requirements for all the technical tasks.
Hmmmmm!
Adequate technical guidance to inspectors in the field has always been a key regulatory function. One example is the carriage of dangerous goods, which demands continuous regulatory scrutiny and oversight to avoid events like fire or explosion, corrosion from spillages, chemical interactions, the transmission of disease and other airborne catastrophes. ICAO reports:
CASA has two dangerous goods inspectors; however, this number is not sufficient for the level of activity in Australia as to ensure effective safety oversight. In addition, the dangerous goods inspectors have not been provided with adequate dangerous goods training or technical guidance materials. Some dangerous goods manuals and checklists are under development, but only exist in draft form.
Then there are the regulator’s licensing and certification obligations:
The Personnel Licensing, Education and Training Group within CASA does not have sufficient human resources to perform the assigned functions and responsibilities in the area of maintenance personnel licensing. Required tasks that are not being accomplished include surveillance of delegated licensing activities and approved training organizations.
And in the important field of ensuring the medical status of key workers such as air traffic controllers and pilots, somebody’s dropped the ball there too:
CASA has procedures for issuing validations and conversions of licences on the basis of foreign licences. The procedures include verification in writing by CASA with the issuing regulatory authority, either by email or fax, before issuance of an Australian equivalent. However, the personnel licensing staff do not systematically contact the foreign civil aviation authority to confirm the authenticity of the foreign licence and its full conformance with ICAO Annex 1.
Another potential for someone to slip through the filter:
Australia does not require that an applicant for a medical certificate indicate to the medical examiner whether a medical assessment has previously been refused, revoked or suspended and, if so, the reason for such refusal, revocation or suspension.
And in the essential function of overseeing the quality of pilot training:
CASA issues Certificates of Approval to training organizations for them to conduct personnel licensing examinations on behalf of the State. In addition, CASA issues Instruments of Delegation designating individuals as Approved Testing Officers who perform personnel licensing practical examinations. However, CASA has not developed and implemented a surveillance program for the oversight of the consistency and reliability of the examinations conducted by these Approved Testing Officers or training organizations.
In these areas CASA has launched a comprehensive plan to correct the serious decline in the standards of many flying schools and approved testing officers. But why were these situations allowed to develop? And what is to be the measure of their success?
What effect has this audit had on our global aviation business capabilities?
Opinion
Australian air operators, manufacturers, service providers and other industry participants are all potentially tainted by these findings. Australian agencies’ responses need to be positive, effective and convincing enough to restore confidence in our threatened industry.
They’re not.
We’ve quoted only a handful of examples. The audit identified much more concerning issues than the deficiencies it enumerated, but some are a little too complex for this forum. It also clearly suggests that there is a surviving “culture” within the regulatory body which has nurtured this mountain of deficiencies over more than two decades.
To these individuals, regulatory reform is abhorrent because it requires simple, comprehensible and enforceable outcome-based regulation and denies them opportunity to hide behind contradictory and scrambled rule structures and to make an industry out of micro-managing aviation by issuing exemptions and approvals and billing for them.
Never detail a problem without proposing a solution!
AviationAdvertiser has discussed this with numerous industry figures including former regulatory workers, working and retired pilots and engineers, lawyers and safety specialists. The consensus is that despite any remedial action CASA might now be implementing the opposition to reform is so embedded in the lower and middle management levels that it needs to be addressed in a very rigorous way.
The regulatory rewrite must be removed from CASA’s area of responsibility and assigned to a compact group of dedicated specialists drawn from industry or with appropriate regulatory experience, possibly also with input from Canada and/or New Zealand, reporting directly to the Attorney General’s department, with access to relevant but formerly sidelined research material, and working to a meaningful deadline. This should not overlook the possible value of adopting either the Canadian or NZ rule sets and adapting them to the Australian aviation environment, or the adoption of any rule subsets which are currently works in progress.
The theory is that once a respectable regulatory foundation is in place, the other problems will disappear anyway, because the outcome will be what the opponents of reform most deeply fear – what you might call administrative root canal therapy.
Paul,
Of the eight areas represented in the bar graph alone, how many relate to Air Services Australia, and how would any censure or action by the ICAO effect towers run by AsA in other countries?
MM Waugh
So what is new? Whilst ever the Government percieves that Aviation Safety and Airspace is a function of ‘user’ pay only, combined with a confrontational and litigiuous style Civil Aviation Authority there can not really be true safety. Paper trails and confrontational audits do not give the authority much insight into standards.
Perceived industry consultation misses out on many knowledgeable people because they are not necessarily a member of a group and to boot may have an opinon. God forbid that! Combine this with an inabilty of Airservices and CASA personel to accommodate change the G.A indsutry is slowly but surely becoming lifeless and huge future losses in foreign exchange are already in train.
As I overheard a cynic recently at a meeting he stated that CASA and Airservices had the finest brains of the 19th century.
Nothing will ever come of change unless a tough stance is taken to force the issues. A good beginning would be to realise that some organisatons with whom they consult do not have any answers as they are so unknowlegeable. Then they must communicate, coordinate and cooperate with the whole industry, sifting out the dross, think laterally and rid their organisatons of those that resist change and superimpose the US FAA based system and airspace system across Australia. Send a permanent representative to the FAA in Washington to influence the rule changes that Australia would like to see –
It would be a whole lot less expensive for the tiny user pay pool. Where are the thinkers?
Just the sort of leverage CASA needed to get a larger slice of the Budget pie.We can expect to be told that these deficiencies can only be remedied by building a bigger empire.More staff,more money,more waste.Happy days.