Papua New Guinea sources have confirmed there were four victims of the crash of the twinjet Cessna Citation P2-TAA that crashed at Misima Island in PNG’s Milne Bay Province. Trans Air part-owner Les Wright, 56, had stated during the Coroner’s inquest into the Lockhart River Metro crash that he owned one-third of the disbanded Australian airline.

CASA has partly clarified an issue that had some of our readers reaching for their cheque books, word processors or lawyers. The bad news was that air operator certificate (AOC) holders and chief pilots    had been told that if they were flying “into or out of Australian territory,” they must ensure their AOC and associated operations specifications authorised them to do so. The further bad news is that in this context at least, Australia is deemed to end just 12 nm from the coast.

Australia’s biennial Safeskies conference has become the third Australian aviation organisation to receive an international distinction awarded by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI). The award is an Honorary Group Diploma for Aeronautics, and FAI is the world governing body for air sports and the monitoring and recording of aeronautical world records. It is the only body in the world with the organisational power and infrastructure to give meaningful international awards of this kind.

Last Friday (July 23) at about 4.30 pm, somebody slipped an envelope under the door of a Bankstown air operator. Soon afterwards, the operator received a telephone call advising that there was an envelope under his door. Despite the pathetic slapstick comedy of conducting official business in such ways, the message was an extremely serious one, being a CASA advice that the company’s two separate air operator certificates (AOC) were suspended with immediate effect.

New Zealand’s Auditor-General Office (OAG) has delivered a scathing report on the way the NZ Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) meets its safety oversight roles. Controller and Auditor-General Lyn Provost says that her office has carried out four audits since 1997 of the CAA’s certification and surveillance functions for civil aviation operators, the most recent of which examined compliance with earlier reports and recommendations.

The ATSB has released its final report on the “hard landing” accident to a Qantaslink Boeing 717 at Darwin on February 7, 2008. Although the landing resulted in a recorded vertical force of 3.6g and caused severe damage which resulted in the event being classified as an accident, no injuries were reported and the crew taxied to the terminal without further incident.

Western Australian charter and flying school operator Polar Aviation and its managing director Clark Butson have lodged a Statement of Claim in the Federal Court in Melbourne seeking damages from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) and six of its officials and former officials.

The Flight Safety Foundation says there is now an ‘Urgent Need’ for an International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) task force on judicial interference in safety investigations. The FSF is an independent, non-profit, international organisation engaged in research, auditing, education, advocacy and publishing to improve aviation safety. Its mission is to pursue the continuous improvement of global aviation safety and the prevention of accidents.

The US National Transportation Safety Board has adopted a study concluding that single engine aircraft with glass cockpits had no better overall safety record than aircraft with conventional instrumentation.

The warning comes as nearly all newly manufactured piston-powered light aircraft are equipped with digital primary flight displays.  And the number of older aircraft being retrofitted with these systems continues to grow.

Helicopter pilot training professionals contacting AviationAdvertiser say they were appalled to hear that the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) was not investigating the training helicopter crash on Mount Barney near Kyogle on January 28.  According to reports and photographs, Robinson R44 Raven helicopter VH-RWN collided with a sharp rock-strewn ridge, at the very lip of an almost vertical precipice estimated at about 1,000 feet.

Qantas’ low-cost carrier Jetstar has changed its operating procedures following a mishandled missed approach during an attempted instrument landing system (ILS) approach at Melbourne on July 21, 2007. A report released today by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) found that the go-around didn’t work as intended for two primary reasons

Dutch police have arrested a pilot at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport for flying a Turkish airliner with a dodgy licence. The Swedish pilot was preparing a Corendon Airlines Boeing 737 for a flight to Ankara, Turkey, with 101 passengers aboard when arrest was prompted by a tipoff from Swedish authorities.

The United Kingdom Air Accidents Investigation Branch (UK)/AAIB has released its final report on B777 loss of engine power and crash-landing in January 2008 at London-Heathrow.

In January the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) published a comprehensive report titled Answering the Call to Action on Airline Safety and Pilot Training in response to concerns about growing risk surrounding airline travel – particularly on regional carriers’ services.

In a press release that accompanied the report, FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt explained, “The report lays out our initial actions to improve and revise pilot training and to develop an effective pilot fatigue rule. We also share what we have done to begin what must be an ongoing dialogue with airlines and unions to strengthen professionalism in the aviation industry and create mentoring programs for our nation’s pilots. This report is a snapshot of our work, which is by no means finished.”

Search teams are working to recover the flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 that crashed shortly after takeoff at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport during a raging storm last Monday.

Automated signals from the devices have already helped searchers to identify the exact location of the recorders in water 1300 metres deep, about 10 km west of Beirut Airport, but it has not yet been confirmed whether they are still attached to the aircraft fuselage.

Four major Australian resource companies and the Flight Safety Foundation have developed and launched a unique new program to streamline the flight safety auditing of air operators contracted to transport resource industry workers and executives.

In Western Australia alone. Some 25,000 resource industry workers are transported by fly-in-fly-out contractors, and similar substantial operations are in place in Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and the Bass Strait oil rigs. All these operations involve a range of chartered aeroplanes and helicopters, as well as dedicated airline aircraft on charter to the resource sector.

Victims’ families affected by the May 2005 Lockhart River air disaster are dumbfounded at an Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) decision on January 22. They believe the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has seriously bungled its handling of an application for a foreign aircraft air operator certificate (FAAOC) to PNG-based Trans Air Ltd, the company whose Swearingen Fairchild Metroliner crashed during an approach to Lockhart River in bad weather with the loss of all 13 passengers and two crew.

Alexandria, VA, January 21, 2010 – The Flight Safety Foundation announced today that the International Society of Air Safety Investigators (ISASI) has signed the Joint Resolution Regarding Criminalisation of Aviation Accidents, a document that was originally jointly published in the fall of 2006.

“The safety of the travelling public is endangered by overzealous prosecutors attempting to criminalize aviation accidents, which can have a chilling effect on cooperation with accident investigators ,” said FSF President and CEO William R. Voss.