Fatigue issues are tied up in CASA red tape

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has held a successful, large aircraft (98 seats plus) sector risk profile workshop.

As part of its program to identify safety issues and assess the level of risk in the aviation industry the Civil Aviation Safety Authority recently held a large aircraft (98 seats plus) sector risk profile workshop, attended by Qantas, Virgin, Tiger, Alliance Airlines and the Regional Aviation Association of Australia.

This was yet another successful workshop based on the excellent and credible approach taken with the previous three workshops, namely the mustering, aerial application and small aircraft sector risk profiles.

Importantly, the key to success was that all the hazards identified were based on objective Australian Transport Safety Bureau data.

This gave all attendees a high level of comfort and subsequent ownership of the exercise. As recently as last year the ATSB indicated it had not identified any unmitigated fatigue issues as the causal factor in any accident or serious incident in regular public transport operations.

CASA so far has failed to produce any concrete evidence that fatigue is a safety hazard that requires the type of drastic regulatory change promulgated in Civil Aviation Order 48.1.

This order mandates a highly complex rostering system that is designed to mitigate against the supposed existing unmanaged risk of pilot fatigue.

This initiative, however, ignores the lack of evidence to support the assertion by CASA that fatigue is not already being managed successfully by the present safety management systems. The RAAA repeatedly has asked that the principles of CASA directive 01/2015 be applied to the new fatigue rules to comply with the new CASA mantra of being a fair, firm and consistent regulator. But to date CASA has steadfastly refused to do this. The proposed CAO 48.1 is the most restrictive aviation work and rest rule regime in the world, stricter than regulations in the US, Europe and New Zealand, with no evidence-based safety justification for it. This CAO means Australia again will be out of step with Australian government policy (and CASA’s own published aim) of international regulatory harmonisation and reducing unnecessary regulation.

Operators engaged in RPT or charter operations are required to have effective safety management systems that identify a range of hazards, including fatigue.

SMS were introduced and mandated by CASA in 2009 for high-capacity RPT and 2011 for low-capacity RPT. SMS are audited by CASA. But CASA has yet to produce any evidence that any identified fatigue issues have not been dealt with by the SMS regime appropriately and to the satisfaction of the operator and the regulator. Therefore, there already exists a successful system of managing fatigue. The operational restrictions and potential cost of the proposed CAO 48.1 are too great for a robust safety case and cost-benefit analysis not to have been established already by CASA.

The CASA requirement for operators to submit a fatigue risk management system by October is problematic for two reasons:

● Industry has still not seen a compelling safety case for CAO 48.1, using objective evidence in the Australian context.

● Even if an objective, data-driven safety case were to be published soon, this would not allow time for affected operators to make the decision on whether to implement an FRMS, then do the tailored work necessary to address the specific identified concerns relevant to their operational environment by the CASA deadline.

The RAAA repeatedly has requested CASA to delay implementation of CAO 48.1 until these concerns can be addressed, but to no avail.

Therefore, one can only fear that FRM is just the first casualty as we ponder what other hazards are likely to be subject to additional culling from SMS treatment and become the subject of more CASA red tape.

Mike Higgins is chief executive of the Regional Aviation Association of Australia.