JOHANNESBURG - Hair-raising tales, such as a thumping seatbelt causing an aircraft to crash and a frying pan being used to fix a plane, were heard at an aviation safety seminar on Friday.
Veteran airline captain Scully Levin, who heads the General Aviation Safety Initiative (GASI), said the main aspects in aviation safety that needed improvement were flight training, the conditions of aircraft and the high occurrence of human error.
“Poor decision-making by pilots is often the cause,” Levin told a SA Civil Aviation Authority seminar.
But recent research suggested human error was usually “the last link in the chain of events that lead to an accident,” said Peter Mashaba, of SA Express, in a presentation.
Just more than 80 plane crashes had been reported in South Africa by September this year, compared to about 140 by September last year.
In total, some 190 plane crashes were reported in 2008.
Levin said there was a minefield of problems that needed to be addressed to get fatality, accident and serious incident rates down in a country with around 10,500 registered aircraft. That number increases by about 500 aircraft per year.
The GASI, set up after a spate of accidents in the second half of last year, have already started implementing some proposals, including investigating some flight training schools and suspending unqualified instructors.
GASI also suggested new regulations for the requirements of licence renewals, since some pilots did not get enough flying hours to maintain their proficiency.
Pilots also needed better training in how to operate parachutes in the case of an emergency.
“The aviation environment is a hostile one,” said Levin.
“Cross-country flight within South Africa presents its fair share of problems.”
This included the “sparsely located” facilities of fuel stops and weather stations.
Levin said he had heard of a pilot whose plane’s spinner backplate, which is held in place by the propeller and the propeller nut, had broken.
“He went into the town of Mkhuzi Šin KwaZulu-NatalÆ and he bought a frying pan. An aluminium frying pan made by Heart Šthe brandÆ, cut the handle off, took the propeller off and used that as a spinner backplate.
“It’s a hellavu cheap, creative solution... but it also exposed him to danger,” said Levin.
He also lamented the state of some aircraft.
“I have a friend who lost a son because he was in plane who had a wing come off because the wrong bolts were used.”
Rennie van Zyl, SACAA acting executive manager for accident investigations, showed pictures of some plane crashes in South Africa.
“We have seen some significant accidents in South Africa, such as the separation of wings. We have seen some very nasty accidents,” said Van Zyl.
Often, human error plays a role.
He cited the example of a crash that happened after the pilot shut off the engine “because of a thumping sound” he heard.
“It turned out the thumping sound was made by the seat belt,” said Van Zyl.
Nobody was injured in that crash.
SACAA chief executive Captain Colin Jordaan said some pilots refused to wear shoulder harnesses, and he knew of two pilots who died as a result.
But overall, in South Africa, aviation safety seemed to be improving this year after “black September and black October” towards the end of 2008, when more than 35 accidents were reported in the two-month period.
“There is no way one can talk about being proud of an accident rate, but we are very pleased to see some of the initiatives we have put in place working,” said Jordaan.
New legislation in the aviation industry, which consolidates current laws and comes into effect in November, will see the creation of an independent Aviation Safety Investigation Board. It will take over the function of investigating plane crashes from the SACAA.
The board will still refer some investigations to the SACAA but will conduct most probes independently and report directly to the minister, said Jordaan.
-Sapa
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