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Aviation History
1968
1968 - 1276.PDF
92 AIR TRANSPORT . . . FLIGHT International, IB July /96g The ARB and Safety THE IDEA OF divorcing safety from politics and delegatingthe regulation and administration of safety to anautonomous body is attractive, but there are disadvan- tages dn the proposal. There might be a case for including clearly defined incidents and defects in the definition of accidents which are notifiable to the Board of Trade; at present these apply only to those involving death, serious injury or substantial damage. The BoT is examining the possibility of taking account of the financial resources of airlines when considering the granting or continuance of Air Operators' Certificates. These were among points made by Mr Anthony Crosland, President of the Board of Trade, speak- ing at the annual luncheon of the Air Registration Board last week. He concentrated primarily on recommendations made in the report of the Special Review on Air Safety (see Flight for May 16, pages 737-739). In his opening address at the luncheon, the ARB's chairman, Lord Kings Norton, said that they were very pleased to welcome Mr Crosland, "particularly as, on a purely statistical basis, it is highly improbable that we shall see you here again . . . our Minister is never the same man twice." Ministers "slide through this chair on my right like pictures in a political newsreel." He referred, also, to the fact that this would be Mr R. E. Hardingham's last appearance at the luncheon as chief executive of the ARB. "When he retires from the board at the end of the year he will have had 32 years with us and have been 50 years in aviation. To have the respect of the whole of one's profession, nationally and internationally, is as great an achievement as a professional man can have. This is Bob Hardingham's achievement." Speaking of the safety review, Lord Kings Norton said that, though the idea that safety functions should be "extra- muralised" and combined with the ARB in a new board or authority would encounter considerable difficulties in imple- mentation, this proposal should be given the most careful and critical scrutiny. Properly conceived, such an authority could be a most valuable agency of government. He would like to feel that government, including the Civil Service, gave "the most serious consideration to handing over certain present functions of government to permanent agencies created for the purpose." This had already been done with success in the case of the ARB and extension of the system to non-political areas such as air safety was worth most serious thought when the ramifications of government were becoming so complex. Mr Crosland singled out three points for comment from the findings of the safety review. The first concerned the reporting of incidents. The recommendations in one of the appendices to the report were that steps should be taken to ensure that all occurrences that endanger aircraft should foe brought to light by operators and used by them for accident-prevention pur- poses; and that operators should bring incidents to the attention of the Director of Flight Safety in the BoT for the purpose of safety analysis. "These recommendations," Mr Crosland said, "fall far short of the suggestion that there should be a mandatory system of reporting all incidents to the Board of Trade, as if they were notifiable accidents. There is, of course, a well-known reluctance on the part of pilots, operators and others to disclose mishaps or mistakes that reflect no credit on themselves, but in the interests of accident prevention such disclosure is surely desirable. The incident of today may become the accident of tomorrow. But there is clearly a difference of opinion about whether disclosure can better be achieved by compulsion or by encouragement." After saying that there was a case for including clearly defined incidents or defects among notifiable accidents, he said that he did not intend to reach any decision until he received more information about the Australian and American systems. In the meantime, he added, he was glad that we were making good progress with the voluntary exchange of informa- tion on a confidential basis through the Flight Safety Committee. Financial influence ' On the relationship between safety and finance, Mr Crosland said that before introducing any change in legislation the BoT must clearly wait and see what the Edwards Committee had to say about the structure of the industry. In the meantime the BoT was examining the question. On the suggestion (by Captain F. A. Taylor, one of the advisers for the safety review) that an independent safety board should be set up, to include also the functions of the ARB, Mr Crosland said he was not going to come down firmly on one side or the other and that the Edwards Com- mittee might have some comments to make on the subject. After saying that the idea had its attractions, Mr Crosland said that "one has to ask whether those who advocate this system would be willing to forego the privilege of questioning, through Parliament or otherwise, the handling of safety matters toy an independent body. If a number of serious accidents took place in quick succession, is it realistic to expect Parliament to show no concern in the matter? In addition there is a large volume of civil aviation legislation, consisting not only of Acts of Parliament but of Orders and Regulations. We should have to consider how all this could be tied in with the operations of an independent body." 727 CRASH CAUSE UNCERTAIN •-- NO specific causes have been given by the US National Trans- portation Safety Board for the crash of the Pan American Boeing 727 cargo aircraft in the East Zone of Germany, ten miles west-south-west of Tegel Airport, Berlin, on November 15, 1966. The board's report, which was issued on June 27, finds that the probable cause of the accident was ". . . the descent of the flight below its altitude-clearance limit for undetermined reasons." The report points out that investigating officials were denied access to the crash site by Soviet officials and thus were severely handicapped in their efforts to determine the factors which led to this accident. "Furthermore," the board says, "the 727 wreckage which was returned by Soviet authorities constituted less than 50 per cent of the total aircraft. Among the significant components missing were the flight recorder and the cockpit voice recorder." The reasons underlying the descent of the 727 through its assigned altitude cannot be explained, the report says, and adds that ". . . there was no indication of a malfunction or failure of powerplants, struc- ture, or systems, nor was there any evidence of an in-flight fire or explosion." The 727 was operating a scheduled cargo flight on an IFR clearance from Frankfurt, Germany, to Tegel Airport. The flight progressed in a routine manner to the Berlin area, at which time Berlin control proceeded to vector the aircraft for an instrument approach to Tegel. Just after 0141hr Berlin control advised the crew that they were 6i miles from the outer marker and cleared the flight for an ILS approach to runway 8R. The crew's acknowledgment of this clearance was the last radio transmission from the aircraft. Surface weather observations made at Tegel at the time indicated that the visibility was 1-y miles in snow, with cloud coverage of 3/8 at 500ft and overcast at about 600ft; the temperature was -1°C. The board concludes that the lack of opportunity to examine critical aircraft components, or to have the benefit of flight- recorder and cockpit-voice recorder information, prevented any further knowledge from being gained about the circumstances leading to the crash.
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