Topdressers on 60 Minutes

[FlyNavy]

Funnily enough (I'm not making a joke at anyone's expense here): Fighter pilots are notorious for radio discipline. They are not meant to talk on the radio longer than necessary while getting used to jargon filled short transmissions to get the message across. Sometimes they fly in formation without any radio calls at all - even to ATC - but this would be arranged beforehand for safety reasons. I would reckon flying especially at low level requires maximum concentration on the task at hand. That anyone needs to be kept awake at low level beggars belief. To me this apparent fatigue clearly indicates that it is real fatigue. What a sad turn of events for all concerned.

[Bruce]

why oh why is it always a small bunch of idiots who spoil the repuation of the majority? That sort of Cellphone use is just asking for trouble - even assuming hes running the Cellphone through the Helmet / headset channels.
Recently I've come across some geniuses who have given Homebuilt aircraft pilots a bad name by failing to read the AIP when visiting airfields. it just makes it harder to get credibility in our chosen field when that sort of thing happens.

[FlyNavy]

Education / Flight safety training / Regulations / Some kind of regular review of standards will all help pilots get the message and stay on message. Flight Safety is a worthwhile pursuit. Who needs to die because of factors like ignorance (about flight safety issues etc.) or lack of guidance about what is appropriate (via up to date regulations). If there is no ideal model to follow then self-regulation is hopeless. Probably this whole topic is way beyond the scope of my few sentences. I'll just state that military flying safety outcomes improved tremendously once it was realised that Flight Safety made a difference. And it keeps getting better. I'm sure all commercial pilots acknowledge this - about time other flying industries got the message. Flight Safety is important - you know it is.

[ZacYates]

A very interesting piece was run by Investigate magazine regarding the crash of Fletcher Falcon ZK-LTF, the incident mentioned in the 60 Minutes piece on Monday. You can read it here: www.investigatemagazine.com/archives/2006/03/investigate_mar_1.html

This in particular stuns me every time I read it "Mike Keen of Hamilton’s Superair insists he is being accurate in his view that fatigue is not a problem in the industry, nor is work pressure."

[FlyNavy]

ZacYates, thanks for the link to the report. The comment at the end really caught my attention. Not only are families and friends and work mates affected but also the people who attend such accidents. Sometimes the crash scene is not as peaceful as the one 'described' in the link.

QUOTE: "OSH has no jurisdiction over pilots/aviation employers; that’s done by CAA who have OSH personnel helping them. Truck drivers have limitations. Airline pilots have limitations. Australian ag’ pilots have limitations. But not NZ ag’ pilots. Once they did, 25 years ago, but it was too hard so it got scrapped. CAA recognised that ag’ flying was too dependent upon weather and seasons – “windows” – to have rules for pilots’ health and safety."

Because it is too hard then ag pilots must suffer? Surely appropriate guidelines about what is safe or not can be promulgated. Just having 'open slather' obviously does not work. Or are so many accidents OK? Just a rhetorical question. Good article - well worth reading - for insights into the NZed ag pilot safety issues.

It seems there are many issues left unresolved for a long time in NZed ag industry. I hope these issues are resolved to the satisfaction and safety of all concerned.

NB. I recall reading about a year ago in an Oz Safety magazine about the crash of an ag pilot last seen doing that wheel thing on top of a river (or canal?). Yep no one saw him until the crash site discoverd days later. Letting off steam by doing dangerous stunts (probably when fatigued also) is one of the dumbest things to do - ever. Military aviation mostly has got rid of these 'impromptu stunts' for good safety outcomes over the years. If anyone thinks of doing a 'stunt' on the spur of the moment it probably is not a good idea and it may well be your last one.

[ZacYates]

A prime example of your point is in this link: . The crash is something I think most of us have already seen, but the events leading up to it tie in very nicely with FlyNavy's argument.

Not ag, but in the same vein I feel.

[FlyNavy]

Link works best without the fullstop which gets included inadvertantly:

I did not watch the clip till the end because I know how it ends. I have read the investigation/reports - these are numerous. The crash was a massive failure of supervisors to pull the crash pilot into line. Bear in mind the pilot was doing authorised stunts. Perhaps the safety margin was nonexistant though - this is also a supervisory error. Anyway authorised stunts being practiced for an airshow are one thing in the highly supervised military environment.

Without supervision ag pilots need more education and reasonable rules for a safe framework to fly within. Farmers need to back off from influencing what an ag pilot does. Ag pilots need to be respected for their professionalism. If they say to a farmer that there is no flying today/now then that is it. No arguments. Tough on the farmer perhaps but REAL GOOD for the Ag Pilot who gets to go home that night.

If farmers have to pay more for longer hours to do the job more safely? So be it. If more pilots or planes need to be deployed to do the job more safely in any given period of time? Then so be it. I think my point has been made well enough by now so like commenting on UFOs - I'll stop right here.

[mstokes]

It is funny that we are talking regulations in NZ, yet in some way we are revisiting a cycle that happened years ago. Originally aerial topdressing was quite 'barn stormer-ish' in that any operator could start up with a tiger moth, throw a hopper in it and then head off to make money. I believe the CAA began to check up on pilots after it became known that many of the pilots were operating on a PPL and that maintenance was being signed off by other operators
who were more interested in doing jobs than maintenance. There were numerous cases in the past where pilots got grounded for spreading too much fert and the like, I can even remember visits by the CAA.

Dad's operation was quite carefuly policed, expecially as it started as a co-op. Where things went crazy I remember was in the 1980's, where suddenly jobs got scarce due to the economic policies rolled out at the time. Operators (including us) had to run on a very thin margin as we had to make the job viable for the farmer's who were still prepared to spread fert. This is where it got hard on pilots, many of which were owner operators. Suddenly jobs that were a bit dicey or 'should be left until tomorrow' had to be done (or they could be lost)and pilots were pushing themselves and their machines to what was often beyond breaking point. I knew of several Fletchers that had operated on 7 cylinders for a while, because there was not enough money to fix it. The removal of the fertiliser subsidy I agree should have happened, but maybe over time would have been better, in the end it seemed like we suddenly had far too many operators for the jobs and to in order to provide an income, I feel that many pilots thought they had to work harder and faster. It was not like they could hand the rego plate back to the bank with a 'sorry I can't pay' and take up an office job.

The thing to remember though is that there are a lot of ag pilots who safely abide by very good judgement and deliberately take the precatious approach. A job I went to see recently got delayed as the pilot was concerned about the wind, which was in my mind not that extreme. The loader driver (who I gave a lift to) explained on the way back that this pilot is very cautious of wind shift in the region, especially as it tumbles off the rangitoto ranges. In a 50/50 situation, he made the safe call.

In terms of Aussie and regulations, I can let you on some personal experiences I have observed personally. My father performed night spraying in Moree for a cotton plantation that is owned by an American multinational. Their demands on the operator meant that my father ended up flying almost 16 hours a night, from a few hours before dusk, through the night, and into the morning. The way the company functioned, the pilots were all asked to keep two logbooks, one on which the CAA would see (if required) with the 'regulation' hours, and the others on which they were paid. That season is the one I refer to earlier in my thread where two pilots fell asleep and crashed their machines (the operator was quite happy, the insurance pay out meant that two pistons could be replaced by a turbine). I rarely saw my father in that time, he was either asleep or at work and this was seven days a week.

He complained as he got older it got harder. When he was killed, he was relocating a loader vehicle from Cootamundra to Goulburn, he fell asleep and crashed. His (real) logbook showed he had flown 42 hours in the last three days and was also required to move his own loaders outside of this flying time. He needed the job, so he did the work that was required. CASA never commented on this incident, but the operator soon closed down their business.

I think you can always have agricultual aviation regulations, but the pressure is on everywhere, whether it be NZ, Australia or anywhere else in the world and people will be placed under pressure by any operator who does not put their staff first. I think attitudes are changing, I will admit there are things that need to improve. Proper authorities need to be in place, and not punish or police those in the industry, but to provide a basis on which a pilot and operator (if there is one) can converse on any issues and have these officially recorded and addressed. But I suppose the issue of regulating is like the speed limit, it is there signposted for all, yet there are still people being caught for speeding... in the end it comes down to the observation and judgement of the individual.

[philip]

One of my partners in my accounting firm acted for many topdressing pilots in the 80's and 90's. From memory the ACC levy rate was $17 per $100 earned. Desperate times and some drastic measures employed

[Peter Lewis]

. . . and the kicker was that you paid ACC levy at the highest rate for your most risky job on all of your earnings.
So if you flew ag-ops for, say, 20 hours a year and sat behind a desk for the other 1998 hours of the year you had to pay the $17 per $100 levy on every dollar that you earned from both jobs.

[FlyNavy]

I had to google 'ACC' and found this: www.businessnz.org.nz/doc/962/ACCleviestoohighnottransparent

ACC levies too high, not transparent
"Business NZ says ACC levy setting is not transparent and businesses are being overcharged...."

[fletcherfu24]

ACC tried for $25/100 on aerial topderessing at one stage.

[mstokes]

Ironic isn't it that due to the risk assesment on aerial topdressing, ACC were charging almost 20% of all revenue to the fund, which meant that operators had to try and salvage that elsewhere. No doubt through trying to cut maintenance, working the extra fifth of a day needed to cover this and pushing unsafe work situations. I am sure many pilots probably did jobs to save money on even just the fuel spent on ferrying the aircraft, when really the job was 'not on'.

Through this, no doubt more pilots and aircraft were involved in incidents and accidents, and then ACC would want to increase the fee due to the number of claims from the industry. It is a spiral cycle that begns to get ridiculous and seemingly focusses more on compensating those injured from work, rather than avoiding work related injuries...

Hopefully things have changed now.

[Peter Lewis]

Without defending the ACC (god forbid!) the earners levy is charged on the wages paid or the personal drawings taken, not on the price paid. So to clarify, its not almost 20% of all revenue.

[mstokes]

Thanks for clearing that up flyernzl, I am afraid my understanding of ACC get's confused over time. Cheers mate.

[dalcom]

Apr 20, 2009 19:58:36 GMT 12 ZacYates said:

The school was run by Beryck Dalcom at Wanganui, and from memory ceased operations around 1974. As companies began to train their own pilots such a school must have seemed unnecessary, and in fact the last course had a single student.

Certainly was an interesting piece. I had a feeling that it was ZK-LTF being raised again. I am also very sceptical of the idea of a fresh pilot simply being put into a Fletcher - or anything else - and being told to "go make the money". Perhaps Barry Cardno's book may be worth a read?

I'd have expected the industry to be doing better than ever in terms of safety, rather than the reverse?

This report was much talked about at work today, so will be interesting to hear reaction tomorrow.

[dalcom]

Hello there, I realise that this post is over a year old, but just to let you know, Beryck Dalcom had a heart attack in 1973 and never returned to flying. The school was wound up and he moved to Matamata, so you see, it wasn't that the school wasn't needed anymore, there just was no more school.

[ZacYates]

Thankyou very much for the correction, I have long wondered what became of Beryck.

[Darren Masters]

Met Barry this afternoon on my Queenstown flight. Lovely bloke. Amazing he survived that crash looking at the pics in his book.

[ZacYates]

I read Barry's book a few weeks back, what a story. His recollections of flying the Fletcher productively were quite cool to read, however his "training" left my jaw dropped fairly often.