The Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s Earl Brown knows his stuff when it comes to safety in the air.
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The Brisbane-based aviation safety adviser is a former military pilot with years of experience in the air both with the Royal Australian Air Force and now with CASA.
He is one of eight CASA advisers around Australia doing the rounds of regional areas talking to organisations and pilots about safety matters in the air.
The North West Star caught up with Mr Brown as he was about to address Mount Isa pilots at Ibis Styles on Thursday evening.
“The exact message varies depending on where we go, but the main theme is safety,” Mr Brown said.
“We’re concentrating on a Lessons for Life seminar at the moment which harvests a lot of the key risks raised by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.”
Mr Brown said the ATSB had a top three and a top ten issues on their list which CASA used in their briefings.
“We run through some case studies and try to generate discussion and turn the focus back on some of the stuff people might have learned during their training even if they haven’t looked at it in a while,” he said.
“We look at some incidents where people might stop and think ‘there but for the grace of god...’”
Mr Brown said the issues facing pilots were similar regardless of whether they operated in urban or rural areas.
“Aviation is aviation and a lot of the issues are reasonably consistent,” he said.
“What we’re seeing out here is people away from controlled airspace, the amount of approaches available and some of the weather conditions might be different but otherwise a lot of things we flesh out are basic piloting techniques, things that they all know but it’s good to remind them, expecially private pilots who might not have an organisational safety focus.”
The key topics at the Mount Isa forum were fuel exhaustion and starvation and partial power and engine failure.
“Both are on the top 10 hit list for the ATSB,” Mr Brown said. “It pays to keep them in front of mind.”