ANGEL Flight says it has co-ordinated free flights for more than 100,000 disadvantaged rural Australians and was committed to safety and welfare as its priority.
In a statement yesterday, the charity organisation said the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) offered no safety recommendations to pilots flying light aircraft in bad weather.
“The safety recommendation made was for the charity to book people on airlines for travel. This does not adequately factor in cost, particularly where two or more people are travelling, which is often the case,” Angel Flight chief executive officer Marjorie Pagani said.
“Nor does it properly factor in the infrequent scheduling or non-existence of airline flights into country regions across Australia.”
She said the inconvenience and difficulties faced by the elderly and families with young children at major city airports and associated ground travel also needed to be considered.
“Angel Flight does use airline flights where practicable and necessary and will continue to utilise these services,” Ms Pagani said.
“The rules implemented by CASA were not directed to the cause of the 2017 accident or any other accident in the community benefit sector.”
Ms Pagani said it was “regrettable” the bureau made no relevant safety recommendations, nor gave any guidance whatsoever, to pilots flying in poor weather conditions – the cause of the accident.
“It would have been of benefit to the flying community had the ATSB focussed on these aspects of the accident,” she said.
“The safety message raised – induction training and safety management systems, together with a pilot mentoring program, had already been implemented by the charity before the ATSB report and recommendations.
“Angel Flight takes and has taken, a very serious and proactive approach to improving safety and will continue to do so. Angel Flight will continue to urge CASA to improve its human factors training in the pre-licensing stage of training, in addition to the refresher courses now offered.”
Meanwhile, the charity engaged two senior expert statisticians and an analyst, all of whom finished the accident rate was not significantly different from the rate for other private flying across Australia.
“The ATSB also chose to compare only the passenger-carrying sectors of flights coordinated by the charity -it disregarded the flights, also coordinated by the charity, where the aircraft flew from home base to the city collection points, the return trips back to base and the positioning flights to collect passengers from their own home towns,” Ms Pagani said.
“It did, however, include those flights when reporting ‘occurrences’ against the charity flights.”
Ms Pagini said it had not been acknowledged that all volunteers operating their own (CASA-approved and maintained) aircraft for the purpose of these community benefit flights are CASA-licensed, CASA-trained and CASA-tested on a one or two-yearly basis.
“Angel Flight has ensured the volunteer pilot qualifications are not less than as permitted by the civil aviation safety regulations and for the entire period leading to the investigation (14 years), these pilots have had substantially more than the required experience for passenger-carrying private flights in Australia,” she said.
“The new rules decreed by CASA would have had no bearing on the accident under investigation and this has been acknowledged by CASA. The pilot under investigation had greater experience than that required by either the former or the current rules.”
