Transport watchdog 'cherry-picked data'
Experienced pilots have accused the transport safety watchdog of cherry-picking data and using "astonishingly inaccurate statistics" in its assessment of the poor safety record of a charity flight organisation.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the charity in question - Angel Flight - will come under scrutiny from senators during a parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday.
Last month, in reporting on a 2017 fatal crash on an Angel Flight "mission", the ATSB said the charity that pairs sick people in regional areas up with volunteer pilots willing to fly them to medical appointments had a safety record seven times worse than other private flights.
But in submissions to the inquiry, three experienced pilots - including one who says he's Angel Flight's most active volunteer - have rubbished the investigation.
They say the safety watchdog seemed eager to blame the organisation rather than the pilot who had less than three years' experience and wasn't qualified to fly in foggy conditions on the day.
"I cannot hide my disappointment in the ATSB findings," Shaun Aisen writes in his submission.
"It would seem that the specific report ... has been a direct attack on Angel Flight, and not about the pilot errors that occurred."
Mr Aisen has been in the aviation industry for more than 30 years and describes himself as Angel Flight's most active pilot, having flown more than 490 of its "missions".
He accuses the watchdog of going on a witch hunt - pointing to its use of just 10 years of flight data rather than the whole 15 years of operations - and using some "astonishingly inaccurate statistics" that he says don't compare like with like.
"The ATSB's reputation and integrity is detrimentally affected by the supporting data - it is significantly skewed, blatantly incorrect and appears pre-conceived. This is deceitful, dishonest and inappropriate," Mr Aisen writes.
He says Angel Flight has always had a mantra of "if in doubt, don't go" and he personally has cancelled flights when concerned about safety or passenger comfort.
Another long-time Angel Flight volunteer, Allen Hilton, says he had also cancelled some 50 missions over the past decade.
Former Queensland coalition minister Howard Hobbs - now a director of the Australian Mooney Aircraft Pilots Association - said if the existing rules about the conditions in which pilots can fly had been followed, the accident would not have happened.
"The prime minister recently issued a firm reminder that it is the government that sets policy, not the public service, and he put the 'quiet Australians' at the heart of the public service mission," he writes, saying neither the actions of the ATSB nor CASA met this goal.
"Angel Flight is one of those quiet Australians.
"Everyone associated with Angel Flight ... (is) becoming increasingly disappointed in the present bureaucratic prescriptive processes that seem more interested in stifling aviation rather than growing and improving it by evidence and outcome-based regulation."
