Light plane deaths up more than 50%
- Paul Bibby, The Age
- December 30, 2008
DEATHS from light plane crashes increased by more than half this year after a horror run in which 12 people died in three months, figures from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau show.
The death of a NSW farmer in a crop-duster crash yesterday brought the number of light plane crash deaths to 36 for the year, up from 23 last year. There have been three since October.
The figures show that more than half of the deaths involved planes in the category weighing less than 2250 kilograms, including a significant number of ultralights and other recreational aircraft.
Despite this, there is a push to extend the limited training and maintenance regulations that apply to recreational aircraft to significantly heavier planes.
Recreational Aviation Australia — the organisation that represents Australia's ultralight, glider and gyro pilots — is pushing for a significant increase in the weight limit of aircraft that come under its administration.
The new weight limit of 750 kilograms, up from 544 kilograms, means the RAA would be responsible for administering licence testing, training and maintenance of hundreds of light aircraft currently covered by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, including two-seater aircraft such as the Cessna 150.
Pilot training administered by RAA does not include the two hours of flight instrument training that are compulsory under CASA's regulations.
"Australia has maintained an aviation safety record that is the envy of much of the world and that is in large part because of the quality of our pilot training," said the president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, Captain Barry Jackson.
"As commercial pilots, we share uncontrolled air space with these pilots in parts of Australia, and it is not in the interests of safety for training standards to be allowed to drop," he said.
In a submission to CASA, Recreational Aviation Australia said its training syllabus was based on that used by CASA and that, skill-wise, there was no difference between the pilots in either system.
Concerns have also been raised about RAA's simplified maintenance standards that allow aircraft to be maintained by engineers who are not licensed by CASA.
"What you're going to get is owners maintaining their own aircraft because that's what they're allowed to do with gyros built from an IKEA-style flat-pack," a senior source from the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers said.
RAA said it was already responsible for maintaining complex aircraft and that it had no misgivings that it could safely administer aircraft in this new category.
The crop-duster crash happened about noon at a property near Nyngan, police said.
An ambulance spokeswoman said the pilot was dead when paramedics arrived. He was the only person in the plane.
A 51-year-old man with head injuries has been flown to hospital after the light plane in which he was a passenger crashed south-west of Brisbane.
The single-engine Lake Buccaneer seaplane carrying the pilot and a passenger hit trouble shortly after take-off, crashing into a paddock about two kilometres north-east of the Dugandan airstrip near Boonah about 11am yesterday.
The passenger, with suspected head and facial fractures and a broken arm, was flown to Princess Alexandria Hospital in Brisbane.
