IT WAS not good enough for the Minister for Transport, John Anderson, to wash his hands of the dispute between Qantas and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
As it happens the Civil Aviation Safety AUthority has seen sense and amended their air-
traffic control experiment in such a way that Qantas and other airlines will now lift their suspension on services to Newcastle, Grafton, Port Macquarie and Taree.
Under the earlier plan, smaller aircraft arriving and departing regional airports would have no longer been tracked by ground-based controllers while at lower altitudes. They would have been forced to rely on see-and-avoid techniques, with ground-based radar advice and guidance available only on request.
Presumably Qantas did not like the idea of relying on sight only by small aircraft pilots.
Of course, an airline with the economic clout of Qantas could make CASA see sense. But airline industry is a very competitive one. In the future, it may be that some airlines could be tempted to put income before safety and go along with whatever CASA experiment is flavour of the month.
Clearly, the concerns of Qantas were not fanciful in this case, yet Mr Anderson was content to do nothing. He argued that he should not involve himself in the details of air safety. That may be true to a point, but that point was reached this time, and could be reached again. There are grave dangers in bowing the mentality of self-regulation, down-sizing, user pays and market forces when dealing with safety. Ultimately, Governments are responsible for safety.
Mr Anderson should recognise the dangers posed by CASA putting the interests of private hobby pilots and corner-cutting by small airlines ahead of the safety of the bulk of passengers of the major car