Near misses a warning, say pilots

Press, 18 December 1985, Page 9

Near misses a warning, say pilots

PA Wellington The Airline Pilots’ Association yesterday called for more orderly development of aviation. The association’s technical director, Captain Peter Rhodes, said that unfettered growth since deregulation had placed too great a demand on the infrastructure — air traffic control, Civil Aviation Division regulations and inspectors. “We have had some really serious near misses this year. I am not scaremongering — raising public fears is the last thing I want,” he said.

“New Zealand has an enviable safety record. For our population density we have done very well.

“Serious incidents of the last year must be heeded as a warning that we are not going to keep that safety record without a big effort. “We have come to the point where we have to face the issues. We have the fixes — but they will take time,” he said.

Captain Rhodes said the association recognised that the national air traffic services plan, which updates

radar, air communication and air traffic control systems, was being introduced, and that the Civil Aviation Division under Air Commodore Stuart Mclntyre was answering many of the problems. “The Government has encouraged an open-skies policy and so we have had a proliferation of planes into a system that cannot cope,” Captain Rhodes said. The Government should either back off on deregulation or slow it to a pace at which the rest of the system could cope, he said. The user-pays principle and deregulation without a parallel degree of haste to examine and improve the rest of the industry were imposing serious distortions and threats. Air regulations were now seriously obsolete and aircrew licence examination material was dated, he said. More work to revise the system was needed. The monitoring of licensing and regulation adherence and maintenance standards were the responsibility of a division that lacked resources and manpower. The air traffic control

system had done sterling work for the traffic speeds and density it was designed for but, as with navigational aids, it was becoming increasingly unreliable and not supported by standby equipment. “Pilots and controllers alike have been reluctant to accept the limitations of the system and have had incidents as a result. We do have to accept that the system is deficient and operate within those limits,” he said. The $lOO million air traffic control changes would solve the problems but were years from installation. “In the meantime we have to make do with a decaying system in a period of increasing air traffic density and pressure to reduce costs,” Captain Rhodes said. Rescue crash fire services should have greater co-ordi-nation with the Fire Service. Ample evidence existed that emergency services were of little consequence in accident situations and people survived depending on onboard facilities and crew. Aircraft were no different from other specialrisk industries, he said.