The maintenance of rail lubricators had become less effective in the months leading up to the derailment. This work was being transferred from contractors to internal Metro Trains Melbourne (MTM) staff and the transition was not adequately managed.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau advises helicopter operators involved in overwater operations of the importance of undertaking regular HUET (helicopter underwater escape training) for all crew and regular passengers to increase their survivability in the event of an in-water accident or ditching.
Safety Advisory Notice for all helicopter operators engaged in overwater operations
The Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities adopted a prescriptive approach to the Hume City Council building application within the obstacle limitation area of Essendon Airport, which was in accordance with the process prescribed under the Airports (Protection of Airspace) Regulations 1996, but did not require the application of risk management principles to the department’s consideration.
The lack of manufacturer written advice, limitations, cautions, or warnings (written or aural) about autopilot response to manual pilot control inputs meant that pilots may be unaware that their actions can lead to significant out of trim situations, and associated aircraft control issues.
The lack of manufacturer written advice, limitations, cautions, or warnings (written or aural) about autopilot response to manual pilot control inputs meant that pilots may be unaware that their actions can lead to significant out of trim situations, and associated aircraft control issues.
The operator commenced regular public transport operations into Kosrae with the only instrument approach available for use being an offset procedure based on a non-precision navigation aid. The risk associated with this type of approach was amplified due to the need to use a 'dive and drive' style technique instead of a stable approach path, and that it required low level circling manoeuvring from the instrument approach to align the aircraft with the runway.
The operator's documented procedure for company personnel to report accidents and incidents was in itself not sufficient to ensure that occurrences that had affected, or had the potential to affect safety, were reported to management. This decreased the opportunity for the operator to identify potential operational risks and take appropriate action to minimise them.
Rules and procedures for detrainment do not consider a priority option of moving the train to a station or platform.
The purpose of communication between key operational people was not always clearly stated nor understood leading to misunderstandings between people.
Key operational staff in NSW Trains and Sydney Trains continued to operate under RailCorp legacy systems, even though documented transitional arrangements had re-established lines of responsibility and authority.
The crew of V938 detrained passengers onto the track near Kilbride without having arranged the required train protection with the ARTC Network Controller in accordance with the ARTC Network rules and procedures.
Guidance material associated with the FAID bio-mathematical model of fatigue did not provide information about the limitations of the model when applied to roster patterns involving minimal duty time or work in the previous 7 days.
Consistent with widely-agreed safety science principles, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s approach to surveillance of larger charter operators had placed significant emphasis on systems-based audits. However, its implementation of this approach resulted in minimal emphasis on evaluating the actual conduct of line operations (or ‘process in practice’).
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s procedures and guidance for scoping an audit included several important aspects, but it did not formally include the nature of the operator’s activities, the inherent threats or hazards associated with those activities, and the risk controls that were important for managing those threats or hazards.
Although the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) collected or had access to many types of information about a charter and/or aerial work operator, the information was not integrated to form a useful operations or safety profile of the operator. In addition, CASA’s processes for obtaining information on the nature and extent of an operator’s operations were limited and informal. These limitations reduced its ability to effectively prioritise surveillance activities.
Although air ambulance flights involved transporting passengers, in Australia they were classified as ‘aerial work’ rather than ‘charter’. Consequently, they were subject to a lower level of regulatory requirements than other passenger-transport operations (including requirements for fuel planning flights to remote islands).
The available regulatory guidance on in-flight fuel management and on seeking and applying en route weather updates was too general and increased the risk of inconsistent in-flight fuel management and decisions to divert.
Although passenger-carrying charter flights to Australian remote islands were required to carry alternate fuel, there were no explicit fuel planning requirements for other types of other passenger-carrying flights to remote islands. There were also no explicit Australian regulatory requirements for fuel planning of flights to isolated aerodromes. In addition, Australia generally had less conservative requirements than other countries regarding when a flight could be conducted without an alternate aerodrome.
The operator had not formally defined the roles and responsibilities of key positions involved in monitoring and managing flight operations, such as the standards manager for each fleet and the General Manager Flying Operations (Medivac and Charter).
Although the operator’s safety management processes were improving, its processes for identifying hazards extensively relied on hazard and incident reporting, and it did not have adequate proactive and predictive processes in place. In addition, although the operator commenced air ambulance operations in 2002, and the extent of these operations had significantly increased since 2007, the operator had not conducted a formal or structured review of its risk controls for these operations.
