Call for expert aviation advice

Press, 22 November 1989, Page 33

Call for expert aviation advice

PA Wellington The Aviation Industry Association has been trying for months to tell the Government it needs expert advice on aviation, the association’s executive director, Mr Tom Riddell, says.

He said the association did not have a copy of the court of inquiry report into the Foxpine air crash which killed nine people, but he had seen media reports.

The court report was critical of plans'to shift responsibility tjpr air, safety from the Director of Aviation to the Secretary for Transport. “Any concept of having people who know little or nothing about aviation as principal advisers to Government on aviation safety is absurd,” Mr Riddell said. The Minister of Civil Aviation, Mr Jeffries, said after the Foxpine report came out that there would be a “senior safety adviser with direct access to the Minister of Civil Aviation.”

Mr Riddell said this ws a step forward but the association would not ac-

cept a situation where this adviser was delegated responsibility by the Secretary for Transport. “Only a situation where the adviser is both accountable and responsible directly to the Minister for Civil Aviation will meet the A.l.A.’s position,” he said. The A.I.A. believed there should be a Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the separation of the offices of Minister of Transport and Minister of Civil Aviation should continue. He said the A.I.A. would ask Mr Jeffries to consider establishing a Civil Aviation Authority when he met an Australian air safety specialist being called in to advise on the Air Transport Division’s staff resources. Mr Riddell said there were now a number of unresolved issues over the best way to address aviation safety and the Government should stop drafting the Civil Aviation Bill until vital matters of principle were resolved. “Any bill currently being developed is likely to have many wrong answers in it,” he said.