TIM PENNEY: Welcome, everyone,
to our Wet Season Seminar for 2018.
For those of you
that haven't met me before,
which is probably
the majority of you,
my name's Tim Penney.
I'm an aviation safety advisor
with CASA,
and my role
is purely safety education,
human factors, training
and that type of thing.
I'm not an auditor or an inspector
or anything like that.
My role is purely safety education.
So, why are we here?
It's obvious that there are
a lot of pilots.
Many pilots arrive in the Top End
fresh out of flight school.
Many of those flight schools
are down in the southern parts
of Australia,
and they come up here to the Top End,
everywhere from Cairns to Broome,
to start their careers.
And they arrive up in the Top End,
often with only a few hundred hours
at most
and with very little exposure
to any real type
of operational flying.
And it's no secret,
especially when you chat to people
that have been up here for a while,
that the hazards involved
up here in the wet season,
especially during the wet season,
are quite unique,
are not really found anywhere else
in Australia.
We're going to focus
on some of the main hazards,
some of the main things
that can come and bite you
on the backside
when you're flying across the Top End
in the wet season,
especially for the VFR pilot,
and especially for the VFR pilot even
in the early stages of their career.
Even if you're an IFR pilot,
even if you fly turbine equipment
in the flight levels,
even if you've been up here
for many years,
I'm sure there's still
some very, very good information
that you can take away tonight.
Because understanding these hazards
and understanding the risks
that flow from them, guys,
and the decision-making
that's required,
that's the vital stuff
that will keep you alive.
We have things like
the Bureau of Meteorology,
we have air traffic control.
They provide services
to the aviation community up here,
and that's fantastic.
But even the stuff
that our friends in ATC
and our friends
at the Bureau of Met provide
do have their limitations, OK?
They're not always the silver bullet
we may think they are.
So we're going to have
a bit of a chat
with our subject matter experts
from air traffic control
and the Bureau of Met
as we unlock some of the secrets
of the wet season.
What I'm going to do
is just ask the question
"What is a hazard?"
People go to university,
they do PhDs
in hazard and risk management.
You can make it as complicated
or as simple and straightforward
or as practical as you like.
Essentially, a hazard
is something like that.
Anyone seen that before?
It was 2004.
It was in Iraq during the Iraq War.
It was a 100m x 100m hole in a runway
about half a metre deep.
You would probably
call that a hazard.
Put simply, guys,
a hazard is anything -
and this is the CASA definition,
which we use in a lot
of our literature -
it's anything that is a source
of potential harm.
So a dirty big hole in a runway
is a source of potential harm,
especially if you try and land
an aircraft on it.
Wait till you see
the next picture, OK?
That is a hazard.
It's something that is a source
of potential harm.
And when we go flying around
in the wet season across the Top End,
there's lots of hazards out there.
It's a hazard-rich environment.
It is a hazardous environment
by definition
because there are a lot of sources
of potential harm.
By the way, that was runway 3-3
at this airfield in Iraq.
There were no runway lights.
No NOTAM was issued.
By itself, it was just a big hole
in the concrete, OK?
The risk, I suppose, wasn't realised
until something like that happens.
C-130 landed
and ripped the guts out of it.
Bit ordinary, OK?
No NOTAM issued,
no runway lights, OK?
The hazard was realised.
That hole in the runway
was a source of potential harm.
That was the end result, OK?
The hazard was realised
when someone decided
to land on the runway.
There were all sorts
of other factors -
no NOTAM, no runway lights
and all the rest of it.
So, risk, separate from hazard -
hazard's a source of potential harm -
risk is when that hazard
has been realised.
It's the chance
that something's going to happen,
that's going to cause you to impact
or have an impact
on what you're trying to achieve.
And we look at risk
in the form of two things -
the likelihood of it happening
and the consequences if it does,
that's all.
We're not trying
to overcomplicate things.
You know, risk can either be
a high risk or a low risk.
Risk can either be acceptable risk
or unacceptable risk.
Is there any such thing, guys,
as risk-free aviation?
Nuh.
Risk-free aviation,
you leave the aircraft in the hangar
and you walk away,
but no-one has a job.
OK?
We have to accept
at least some type of risk
in order to turn a dollar -
that's what we do.
Who wants to start the ball rolling
with one of the major risks
that pilots face
flying around the Top End
during the wet season?
-Let's go. Yes?
-WOMAN: Storms.
Storms. Thunderstorms.
Whack it down.
-Lines of convection.
-Lines of convection.
Yep. Very good.
We could give you the met brief.
That's pretty excellent.
Lines of convection.
What else can bite you
on the bum up here? Yeah?
-MAN: Turbulence.
-Turbulence, Pete.
TIM: OK, there are also,
there's weather risk,
there's organisational risks,
there's all sorts of risk.
There's physical risks too.
Give me some more, guys.
Come on, let's go.
MAN: Rapid change. Things change.
Things change quickly.
So, the rapidity of change. Good one.
-What else?
-MAN: Visibility.
Poor visibility, yep.
What can cause poor visibility
up here in the wet season?
Rain will do it.
OK, dry season.
Just out of interest, dry season.
Do you suffer from poor vis
in the dry season?
Yes, 'cause half
of Arnhem Land's burning
and all the smoke comes across.
What else we got?
-Yes?
-MAN: Bad runway conditions.
Runway conditions.
So things like contaminated runways,
OK, affecting braking performance.
It runs the risk
of runway excursions,
runway excursions off the side
or off the edge.
-What else have we got? Yep?
-MAN: Animals.
-Animals. Elaborate on that.
-MAN: Like kangaroos on the runway.
TIM: Kangaroos, yeah. Are they
more active in the wet season?
-MAN: I don't know.
-"I don't know." That's cool.
Whack it down. Wildlife.
OK. Could be all sorts of stuff.
Everything from birdstrikes
to, you know, heaven knows what.
Yeah?
MAN: Interesting when,
like, say, a thunderstorm
comes down on the airport...
Yes.
MAN: ..and it's banked up
with aircraft.
That's right.
And RAAF ATC aren't cooperating
and they're being a pain.
-Yep, exactly.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
What else? Yep?
Water and fuel, oil, gases, a risk.
Ah! Contaminated fuel probably.
Maybe contaminated fuel
from overwing refuelling.
Contaminated fuel
from drum stock, yeah.
What else? Keep going, guys. Yeah?
MAN: Dehydration.
Dehydration.
Yeah, you sweat a lot, don't you?
You can lose litres of fluid, OK?
Or, you know, you're in the cockpit,
it's stinking hot, it's humid.
What else? Think about
wet season operations.
Yeah?
MAN: Company pressure.
Like, operational pressure.
Operational pressures, Pete.
Operational pressures
to get the job done,
especially if the weather's
not cooperating.
-MAN: Fatigue.
-Fatigue.
The, um...just the dynamic nature
of the weather
in that...unpredictability.
TIM: Yeah. Perhaps
the unpredictability of the weather.
And that rapidity of change,
which we spoke about before.
Things are rarely static
for very long.
-MAN: Windshear.
-Windshear.
OK, Harry from the Bureau of Met
will talk about things
like low-level windshear
and gust fronts and microbursts
and stuff like that.
That's brilliant. Yes, sir?
MAN: Holding fuel
and reduced payloads.
Yes.
Reducibility to turn a dollar
'cause you've got to carry extra fuel
for things like weather holding.
-Yep?
-MAN: Unforecast holding.
Yep. Unforecast holding.
TAF said it was great,
or the area forecast said the storms
weren't going to roll in
until a certain time.
Sure enough, you get out there
and they're already forming, OK?
Because the weather forecast
ain't perfect.
Harry will tell you that a bit later.
They're not perfect.
It is a forecast, OK?
It's sometimes crystal ball stuff.
Yeah?
The roads staying closed
and more pressure
to get someone through.
Yeah. If the roads are cut,
there's more pressure on the pilot.
There's more pressure on the company
to make that communication link,
to make that transport link.
So other modes of transport,
I suppose, being compromised
puts more pressure on you guys
to get the job done.
MAN: Last light considerations.
TIM: Last light considerations.
Yeah, elaborate on that a bit.
If you've got TEMPO or INTER...
(CONTINUES INDISTINCTLY)
-TIM: Yeah.
-(CONTINUES INDISTINCTLY)
TIM: Yep. True.
Yep?
MAN: A requirement
for alternate weather plan.
Or unplanned one...
(CONTINUES INDISTINCTLY)
Yeah. The requirement for alternates.
And not every alternate
might be suitable as an alternate.
So your alternate planning
has to be pretty well spot-on.
MAN: Just general lack
of infrastructure in remote...
..in remote parts of the Territory.
Yeah.
The lack of infrastructure
during the wet season
can really make things difficult.
It's hard enough in the dry
when we can land on runways,
they're not flooded.
In the wet season, for those of you
who haven't been up here long,
everyone gets really tired
because they can't sleep
because there's storms.
That's the pilots, the engineers,
the fuelies,
everyone associated
with the aviation system
can suffer from fatigue
during that period.
And that plays across everything
we're talking about.
So if everyone is under the pump...
It happens in the build-up.
Everyone goes slightly crazy.
And it happens during the wet season.
So it's a layer of extra hazard
over the whole system
that relies on people
being at their best.
So, often people don't operate
at their best.
Yeah. And we don't... Yeah?
WOMAN: Sorry, just also,
maybe, like, increased debris.
Like, we talked
about runway conditions.
Like, water on the runway.
But, I guess, we had
a member of our work
who, I don't know,
a tree fell on his car.
-So something like that.
-Yep.
There's all sorts of hazards
with things
like falling debris,
blowing debris, that type of stuff.
Yeah?
MAN: VFR operations in IMC.
Going with no instrument planning.
TIM: That's it. That's probably
the big one, isn't it?
The VFR pilot
losing the visual horizon
and being stuck in cloud.
MAN: I'd say the threat of cyclones
and everyone rushing to either secure
aircraft or get them out of town.
Yeah. People having
to do things too quickly.
Yeah.
It's interesting
where Greg mentioned fatigue earlier.
I'm just about done here,
but think about how you react
when you're tired, OK?
We each react in different ways.
I know when I get tired,
I get short-tempered
and a bit shitty.
Some people get clumsy.
Some people get forgetful
when they're tired.
Have a think about, for example,
how you yourself
react when you're tired.
And just keep, I suppose, a bit
of a lookout for those red flags.
And with regards to fatigue,
the fatigue limits
that we have are exactly that.
They are limits.
It's my pleasure now
to welcome Harry Burns-Fabb.
Harry is a forecaster
with the Bureau of Meteorology
here in Darwin.
Harry's going to give us
a bit of a, I suppose, cook's tour
of thunderstorm activity,
wet season activity,
monsoon, cyclones,
all that good gear.
So, please welcome
to the floor, Harry.
Thanks for that, Tim.
I've been a meteorologist
up here in Darwin
for about three years now.
I work out of the Casuarina office.
We do the forecasts
for the whole
of the Northern Territory,
basically the whole of the GAF area
and a little bit
in East Timor as well.
I have specialised
in aviation meteorology,
and today I'm going to go through,
firstly, the kind of hazards
to expect in the wet season,
and then go into what products
the Bureau issues in the wet season,
and then a little bit about
what kind of limitations
are there on the forecasts.
As many of you know,
we don't always get it perfect.
So, what does a typical wet season
look like?
At the moment, we're in October.
November, it's the build-up.
It's pretty hot. It's pretty humid.
There's a lot of moisture
in the atmosphere.
Everyone's sweating.
We're starting to see
a few storms develop.
I don't know if a few of you
were flying around today.
There were a few thunderstorms.
Didn't quite make it into Darwin.
Early on in October,
you get a thunderstorm, you know,
once every few days if you're lucky,
that kind of thing.
Moving on into November,
that's where we start to get a bit
more moisture in the atmosphere
and you start getting
more regular thunderstorms,
so, you know, once every second
or third day kind of thing.
And then right through into December,
the atmosphere
is pretty well charged,
so you start getting
pretty regular thunderstorms.
From here, we're moving to a period
where the monsoon can occur.
We don't get a monsoon
for four months straight.
That'd be pretty unbearable, I think.
We get periods of monsoon.
So that's called an active monsoon.
And that's where we get, you know,
a few days, maybe a week,
maybe two weeks
of, basically, inclement weather -
rainfall, low visibility.
That's when you can get
100mm, 200mm in a day quite easily.
And that's due
to this monsoonal trough
lying over the Top End,
causing a lot of uplift
and there's a lot of moisture
in the atmosphere.
During this period,
we also have monsoon break periods.
And that's where we go back
to more build-up-like conditions.
During these periods,
there's a lot more moisture
in the atmosphere
than what there was in the build-up,
so you do get a bit more
regular thunderstorm activity.
And then, from November
right through to April,
this is our tropical cyclone...
tropical low season,
so these are the kind of months
that you can expect
a tropical cyclone
in our areas of the Top End.
Typically around the NT,
it's mostly late December,
early January
where we start seeing those
first few tropical lows develop
and possibly a tropical cyclone.
So, what does this look like?
A build-up thunderstorm,
as you can see,
if you've looked at the radar today,
it pops up.
A few scans later it starts decaying
and then disappears.
That's because the atmosphere
doesn't quite have enough moisture
to keep that storm going.
It starts to suck in dry air.
It starts to collapse on itself
and dies out pretty quickly.
Moving into the monsoon,
as you can see,
the whole radar starts
to get covered with rainfall.
And you get these bands also
of thunderstorms that can occur,
and they can sit over a location
and just keep coming in.
So those lines of convection
can really add up
to large amounts of rainfall,
ultimate conditions for a few hours,
maybe even a day or so.
And in monsoonal break conditions,
as you can see,
it looks pretty similar
to the build-up thunderstorms.
The thunderstorms
have a bit more energy,
so they last a little bit longer.
What are thunderstorms?
Thunderstorms are pretty common
up in the Top End, as you can see.
The average annual thunder days,
it's pretty much
the most in the country.
We have about 80 right across
north-western Top End there.
So, why do we have this?
Basically, you need three ingredients
for a thunderstorm to form.
You need moisture, instability
and lift.
So, moisture, we have that
right through the wet season,
as most of you know.
You walk outside, it's pretty humid.
Instability is the rate
where temperature rapidly decreases
with height.
And that gives the atmosphere
the ability
for convection to rise freely.
A lifting mechanism can be
some low-level convergence
atmospheric waves, such as a
Gulf line moving across the Top End,
local effects,
such as the sea breeze,
moving inland,
converging with the air inland
and then triggering
a storm from there,
or lifting ahead of a surge.
So, we get south-easterly surges
pushing up from the base
of the Top End sometimes.
And ahead of that surge,
you get a convergence in the air
that can trigger thunderstorms
quite easily.
So, thunderstorm timing.
Over land, thunderstorms,
as you're probably all aware,
are most common in the afternoon.
This is because the heat of the sun
heats up the land
and this gives it even more lift,
this gives it even more instability,
to then allow the thunderstorm
to grow.
Over maritime areas, thunderstorms
are most common overnight.
So, this is due to the sea surface
stays relatively the same
throughout the day and the night,
but what happens at night is the tops
of the clouds start cooling off
and this allows
bustles of air from below
to then access that energy
to start lifting.
What does a thunderstorm look like?
A pulse thunderstorm, so what you
kind of experience in the build-up,
it starts off as a cumulus,
starts developing
into a towering cumulus.
You get that convection coming up.
It starts bubbling up.
You're mostly just getting updrafts
at this stage.
No precipitation quite yet.
And then,
once the cloud develops enough,
it starts precipitating.
And this precipitation
causes downdrafts.
So, in the mature stage,
this is when the lightning activity
is at its highest, the windshear,
the turbulence, everything like that,
is at its peak.
You've got the updrafts
and the downdrafts in the storm.
And then in a pulse thunderstorm,
what happens is
it starts choking itself,
so it precipitates into the area
where it's trying to suck air up.
And it can't get any more air
to get sucked up,
so it starts dissipating
and you're just getting downdrafts
at this point.
So, pulse thunderstorms can last
from, you know, an hour
to two hours or so,
and then they start dying.
A supercell thunderstorm
is a little different
in that it can continue
for hours and hours on end.
This is because it has this updraft
that starts rotating.
And that rotation separates it
from the downdraft,
so it's got its updraft
and the downdraft,
and it can move along
with both of these happening
at the same time.
So it's feeding itself
and it's precipitating
at the same time.
So, like I said, these thunderstorms
can last quite a while
and are much more hazardous
as they can develop a lot stronger
updrafts and downdrafts.
Going onto hazards.
Some of these might be
pretty obvious.
There's quite a few hazards
in a thunderstorm.
Firstly, severe turbulence.
You can get downdrafts
of up to 6,000ft per minute
in a thunderstorm.
Severe windshear, so rapid changes
in airspeed and direction.
As I showed you the diagram before,
you've got
the updrafts and downdrafts
coinciding pretty closely
to each other,
so that creates a lot of windshear
in that area.
Severe icing because you've got a lot
of supercooled liquid water rising
and it hasn't had quite enough time
to cool off and form into ice yet.
So, low cloud and poor visibility
are very common in thunderstorms,
especially with heavy rainfall.
There's a lot more moisture
being precipitated
underneath a thunderstorm.
And, obviously, lightning
is a no-brainer.
It's going to be there
if it's a thunderstorm.
Another hazard in thunderstorms
are microbursts.
So, what these are is it's a sudden
burst of downward-pushing air.
So, what happens, precipitation
starts to fall below a thunderstorm
and then it evaporates
as it's dropping.
And this evaporation
cools the air below it
and changes the density of the air.
And as this happens,
the air keeps accelerating
and accelerating
as the density increases.
So then you get these sudden bursts
of air movement coming down.
And then they hit the ground
and start curling out,
and then you get
these turbulent eddies
forming at the sides
of the thunderstorm.
So, these are particularly hazardous
because not only do they cause
turbulence and windshear,
they can cause wind gusts
in excess of 100 knots.
So, what they look like
underneath a thunderstorm,
you've got the precipitation
falling here,
and it's kind of clumped,
like, in a blob there.
And then, as it hits the ground,
you can see it spreading out rapidly
and starting to curl out
at the sides.
Why are these hazardous?
Like I said,
it's the really strong wind gusts
you can get from them
and the high windshear.
So in this example of the aircraft,
encounters this pocket
of high wind speeds
from this downdraft coming outwards.
And then it gets into this area
of the strong downdraft,
so then it's just all straight down
on top of the aircraft
coming through there,
then increases into this other area
of high wind speed,
but in the opposite direction.
So there's quite a lot
of windshear and turbulence
right throughout
the whole downdraft system.
How do you know that there is
a microburst in the thunderstorm?
They're pretty hard to detect.
Some things you can look for.
So, blowing dust
because when you get
those winds coming down,
they will force debris out
quite quickly.
As I said, they can exceed
about 100 knots or so sometimes.
Virga, so that's precipitation
not reaching the ground.
This is more common
if the cloud base is quite high,
so maybe further south
in the Territory.
Precipitation -
when you see that precipitation
hitting the ground
and spreading outwards,
you know there's a lot of energy
forcing downwards
and then getting pushed outwards,
so that's a pretty good indicator
of a microburst in the area.
And these two last points
might be a bit obvious.
If you're getting reports
of windshear
and unusual airspeed fluctuations,
maybe you're encountering
a microburst.
Another phenomena
that we get from thunderstorms,
it's kind of similar to microbursts,
but it's a bit more...
it's on a larger scale.
So, these are called gust fronts
or outflow boundaries.
And what these are,
they're, again, the air
gets forced down in the thunderstorm
and it creates the outflow.
But this outflow keeps going
in the form of a gust front.
And then this creates
these pockets of severe turbulence
forcing out from the thunderstorm.
And these... I'll show you
in a second.
These can act to create
new thunderstorm cells.
So, on this radar example,
you can see thunderstorms
forming here.
And we've got this gust front
coming down here,
triggering more thunderstorms,
and then another gust front
coming through here.
So, what they look like
on the ground or in the air
if you're looking at them,
sometimes you can see them
in the form of these roll-like clouds
coming out from pretty close
to the base of the thunderstorm.
And they might come out and travel
a lot further ahead
of the thunderstorm.
So that's a pretty common sign
of the presence of a gust front.
So, moving on from thunderstorms,
another hazard
or a weather phenomena
that creates a lot of hazards
is the monsoon.
So, the monsoon is where we get
warm, moist, north-westerly flow
from the maritime continent
coming over the Top End
and converging on the monsoon trough
and causing large-scale uplift
to create a lot of rainfall,
a lot of embedded thunderstorms.
And from these, this also creates
a lot of low cloud
and reduced visibility
in these conditions,
which can last for a long time.
You can also get
quite strong wind gusts,
as the flow from the north-west
can be quite vigorous at times.
So, tropical cyclones.
I mean, the definition
of a tropical cyclone
is when it gets mean winds
above 34 knots,
so you know that it's going to have
quite strong winds.
Severe windshear
with those stronger winds.
And this is just within
the actual cyclone core,
I guess you could call it.
But outside of this,
you're going to experience
low cloud and rainfall
with reduced visibility
right around the system.
And then you also get these
embedded thunderstorm bands
right around the system,
which can also converge
and produce a lot of rainfall
over one particular area.
And these just aren't a hazard
for aircraft in the air.
Well, I hope you won't
be flying near one.
But aircraft on the ground,
you can have large impacts
from tropical cyclones as well.
So, I want to just go through now
products and services that we offer,
what they look like
in the wet season.
If you've seen
a Graphical Area Forecast
in the dry season,
it looks nothing like this.
These are a little more complicated.
So, a tropical cyclone
on a Graphical Area Forecast,
what we do is we put
the position of the tropical cyclone
and the movement of
the tropical cyclone on the product,
to give you an idea
of where the tropical cyclone is.
And from there, you can actually
go onto the public weather website
and seek out more information
about, you know, watches and warnings
and where that cyclone track...
..where the cyclone might move
from the track map as well.
Like I said before,
widespread rainfall, showers,
embedded thunderstorms
are all quite common.
Severe turbulence quite common
around a thunderstorm.
And then around a tropical cyclone.
And then moving out from the cyclone,
you get slightly decreased
weather conditions.
So, an example from a monsoon.
So, again, we mark on
the monsoon trough position.
And around this monsoon,
right up through the Top End,
especially coastal areas,
you're experiencing
widespread rainfall,
embedded thunderstorms,
showers, that kind of thing.
So, going back to thunderstorms.
What do these look like
in our forecast?
Initially, on the GAF...
So, thunderstorms will be included
on the Graphical Area Forecast
if we think there is any chance
of a thunderstorm forming,
be that isolated, occasional,
frequent, embedded.
If a thunderstorm occurs
outside the area
of us forecasting thunderstorms,
we will put an AIRMET out
as soon as we think there may be
a chance of a thunderstorm forming
or if a thunderstorm
has already formed.
On TAFs,
if the chance of a thunderstorm
is considered greater than
or equal to about 30% at a location,
we will put it on the TAF.
So, this isn't just...
we don't just send the TAF out
and say, "Oh, it'll be 30%
for the rest of the day."
We're constantly monitoring that TAF,
and as soon as we think
that chance has increased
to above 30%,
we are going to amend the TAF,
be that, you know, a few hours
before a storm might hit,
or if it's a very unpredicted
thunderstorm,
maybe, you know, just before
it hits kind of thing.
But we are going to be
constantly monitoring it.
It's not a kind of
"30% chance for the day"
set-and-forget kind of thing.
MAN: What sort of things
are you looking for
that might give you a heads-up
that it's coming?
Where convection forms,
so early cumulus development.
Triggers, so sea breezes moving in,
that kind of thing.
Low-level winds, which way
the thunderstorms will move.
There's... (CHUCKLES)
I could go on for days, but...
So, moving on, aerodrome warnings.
So, once a thunderstorm's developed,
we send aerodrome warnings for
Darwin, Tindal and Alice Springs.
And we will send these
an hour or two
before the thunderstorm's
expected to hit at the aerodrome.
So, the Darwin TTF.
This is just a quick heads-up.
So, we issue the TTF
between 20 zulu and 1229 zulu.
And this supersedes the TAF
for its 3-hour validity.
And any inconsistencies
between the TTF and the TAF,
given that it supersedes it,
will be limited to less than an hour.
So if we think that inconsistency
is going to be larger than an hour,
we'll amend the TAF as well
to reflect that.
So, what do thunderstorms
look like on the TAF?
A few examples.
So, if you're getting strong winds
in the line of thunderstorms,
so 30, gusting 50 knots here,
thunderstorms are likely
to be severe and organised,
meaning they're going to last
for a lot longer
than some kind of
pulse thunderstorms.
And, obviously, they're going
to contain very strong winds.
High bases on the CB.
So, thunderstorms will be
high based, obviously.
And they mainly contain
modest vis drops.
So the rain, the precipitation,
may not even reach the ground.
But strong winds are very common
because these can create
microbursts here.
And the INTER, not a TEMPO.
So, thunderstorms
can be pretty fast-moving.
And thunderstorms, as I mentioned,
thunderstorms in the GAF
but not the TAF,
there's less than a 30% chance there.
How do we forecast the weather?
What do I do at work?
(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)
MAN: What do you do at work?
I gather data.
So, we have to gather data,
we have to gather observations -
satellite, radar,
weather balloons, weather stations,
so automatic weather stations.
We also get data
from numerical weather prediction,
so we run a lot of models,
a lot of simulations that forecast
lots of different parameters.
We get all this information
and we analyse it.
We use our scientific understanding,
we use our training
to then develop a policy
on what's going to happen.
We use our situational awareness
and our knowledge of how many times
we've seen this scenario happen
in Darwin.
"Is this sea breeze
going to kickstart a thunderstorm?"
That kind of thing.
And then from here,
we develop our forecast.
So we code them up
in a specific way -
TAFs, GAFs, that kind of thing.
So, a forecast isn't perfect.
It's our best guess
of what we think will happen,
based on our experience,
our knowledge,
all the input that we're getting.
So, there's some uncertainty.
Observations are a big one.
There are large distances
between our surface network stations
in the NT.
And these automatic observations
can have errors in them.
We like to detect them
pretty quickly,
but sometimes that can feed
into other things.
The computers, they can give us
a pretty good idea of a large area
of, you know, this area might
have thunderstorms kind of thing.
It's up to us to then drill down
into the detail
and say, "Is Darwin
going to get a thunderstorm?
"Are the Tiwi Islands
going to get a thunderstorm?"
Of course. They get one every day.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
This is only as good
as the initial conditions,
so if you're feeding bad observations
into the NWP,
it's going to give you bad results.
And it's our risk assessment.
So, what we use is our knowledge,
our experience
from similar weather events
to say, "Yeah, this is
a 40% to 50% chance
"of happening for Darwin today,
"therefore we need to put this
"on the forecast nice and early
"and go from there."
And, you know, as each issue
of the TAF comes,
we'll slightly tweak that forecast
to best reflect
the latest information.
And it's the tropics,
so this is a huge source
of uncertainty.
The weather is chaotic.
There are a lot of subtle variations,
so a sea breeze of 12 knots
versus 14 knots
might mean the difference
of thunderstorms or no thunderstorms
in Darwin.
And there are limits
to the products we issue.
So, we know a lot more
about the weather
than what we can write
in a TAF or a GAF.
So we have limits of the product
as well.
So, the timing of thunderstorms
has a lot of uncertainty.
So, there's a few factors here.
So if we have thunderstorm activity
overnight or yesterday,
the thunderstorms
can be quite often delayed.
Large amounts of instability
in the atmosphere,
this can act to trigger thunderstorms
pretty quickly.
So sometimes we may not
be able to keep up
with that development
of the thunderstorms
if it's a little bit quicker
than what we expected.
The moisture levels
in the low levels of the atmosphere
can have a big impact
on the development
of thunderstorms also.
And the location.
Like I said,
we can say over a large area,
yep, there'll be thunderstorms here,
but in terms of the actual location
the thunderstorm will form,
it's quite hard to pick.
So, like I said,
it's subtle, small-scale features
that can act as a trigger here.
I've covered a lot
of information today.
If you want more information,
our website contains
a lot of knowledge.
We've got this thing
called the Knowledge Centre.
If you go to our home page,
scroll down,
click on 'Aviation Weather Services'.
Hit this button on the side
called the 'Knowledge Centre',
and it has a lot of information
about all our products,
different weather phenomena,
such as thunderstorms, monsoons,
that kind of thing.
So if you want more information,
have a look at our website.
And if you're unsure of the forecast,
you're looking at the product
and you're saying, "What's going on?
Why is this on the forecast?
"I don't believe them,"
give us a call.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
-HARRY: We'll discuss it.
So, if you want that number,
it's on the bottom
of all our Graphical Area Forecasts.
And also, if you're flying somewhere
and you see something
that isn't on the forecast,
give us a call and let us know.
We need that feedback.
Like I said, we have limitations,
and some of the limitations
are our observations,
so if we don't know it's happening,
we can't forecast it very well.
So, that's all I've got time for.
Thanks.
TIM: No, good on you, Harry.
I just want to quickly introduce
our second speaker, Bob Calaby.
Bob is the Aerodrome
Safety & Standards manager
here at Darwin International Airport.
Bob just wants to have a quick chat
to you for about five minutes or so
specifically on the subject
of cyclone safety around the airport,
things like tying down aircraft,
securing ground support equipment,
loose articles
and that type of thing.
So without any further ado,
please welcome Bob Calaby.
Thanks, Tim.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
And he's said it all already.
I just wanted to give you
that message -
please tie down your aeroplanes,
clean up your premises,
stow any loose materials
and ground service equipment.
But I'll just show you a few slides
from Cyclone Marcus
which most of us experienced
on 17 March this year.
That's my street,
and that was the scene
all over Darwin.
Also in Darwin Aerodrome, we had 500
trees down on the aerodrome itself.
That's my driveway.
-That was a great coconut tree.
-(LAUGHTER)
The Toll Freight 737-400
parked on Bay 25 -
it's parked there every weekend.
As it was, Cyclone Marcus
was a Saturday.
I know one of the captains
who lives in Brisbane.
He called me about 9:00
that Saturday morning
when this cyclone was brewing.
And of course we do have
a cyclone plan,
and we had made preparations.
But he calls me and he says,
"I'm just watching the Nine News."
He said, "I'm a bit worried about
that aeroplane up there."
He said, "There's not much fuel on it
"and I don't know
if there's any ballast."
And we had a discussion, and I said,
"Oh, should be right, Bruce."
(LAUGHTER)
"It weighs 40 tonnes empty."
"Alright, I'll tell Airwork, 'Bob
Calaby said it should be right.'"
And you can see there
it spun through 180 degrees.
It had the tail prop in place.
We think that it sat on the tail prop
and jumped its chocks
and then rolled forward.
But the gusts from Marcus, Harry,
130 kilometres on airport.
And at that time
when that was occurring,
we've got some CCT vision of that
as we do over the entire aerodrome,
so we don't miss too much.
We saw a number of individuals
in the Northern GA
attempting to tie down aircraft
in 130 kilometre winds.
So we don't want to see
a repetition of that,
so I say again the message is
get your aeroplanes tied down early.
The Fokker didn't move.
I think the 737's
got a big vertical fin,
and the winds were from the east.
Harry? In Marcus?
And, yeah, pushed it around
from the east.
There you can see it's spun around,
you can see the nose wheel
is on a 90-degree angle.
There are engineers based in Darwin
with Airwork,
and they assessed and tested
the aeroplane,
and it was fine, fortunately,
and my mate, Bruce,
flew it out on the Monday.
Here's some of the other damage
we saw at the airport.
The shade sails
over the taxi rank.
Our bowsers just airside of the tower
lost all their covers.
The Aviation Institute,
which was nestled amongst those
big, beautiful African mahoganies,
is now denuded.
We just have to give it a coat
of paint because it stands out.
But all those trees came down.
Just some of the clean-up
around the Aviation Institute.
This aeroplane, a 146 freighter,
it was at Pearl Flight Centre.
It was 180 degrees different
to where it is there now.
You can see it's also
rolled off the apron,
similar effect from the wind.
Now, airline aircraft
wouldn't normally be here.
And Airwork, I don't think
if there's a cyclone looming
they would leave the aeroplane here.
That one, unfortunately,
got clipped by another aircraft
about a week before that,
and required some repairs,
so that shouldn't have
been here either.
The message is
please tie down your aeroplanes.
We'll get out some information
to you.
MAN: Hey, Bob, can you
explain to these guys
the thunderstorm alert that goes off
in the single terminal,
and how the ground crew don't come
out so we can't taxi guys in and out,
they'll sit there
and block it up a bit?
-OK, thanks.
-(LAUGHTER)
There's a warning system.
It's actually owned by Qantas.
It's not DIA's.
And you'll see the 5-
and 10-nautical-mile warning lights
at the RPT apron.
I think the GA refueller
has a version.
And there's a 10-nautical-mile
warning.
At the 5, the ground crew
abandon ship,
they won't service the aircraft.
Although Qantas now have a procedure
where they can set up
the nose-in guidance,
so at least they can
park the aeroplane.
But, you know, as I say,
it's owned by Qantas
primarily for their benefit.
We issue the information
as an advisory only.
RICHARD THOMAS:
So, guys, the brief tonight
it's going to be about the wet season
from an ATC context.
It's not going to be like a lecture.
It's going to be
a bit of a practical brief.
I'm going to be telling you
how we see things,
what we can and can't do for you.
And hopefully you can take at least
something away tonight
to actually use
during the wet season.
Who's here in their first wet season?
Pilots.
A handful.
And going into
your second wet season?
Yeah, so a pretty good number
as well, so hopefully...
This is all aimed at you guys.
It's not really aimed at anyone else.
It's aimed at the pilots.
Hopefully you can
take something away from it
to actually use in your planning.
So, the scope tonight,
I'm going to talk a little bit
about controller workload.
I'll go into what we can do for you,
then into what we can't do.
Knowing what we can't do is just as
important as knowing what we can do.
It's all part of that
expectation management.
When you're flying into Darwin, you
need to have the right expectation
of how we can help you
and how we can't help you.
I'll talk a little bit about our
limitations specifically in Darwin,
whether it's equipment
or our actual facilities here.
And finally, I'll cover off
with a little bit of...
..so basically pointers for you guys
to improve your own safety
and to help efficiency
for everyone else,
other pilots and for ATC.
So, controller workload.
During the dry season,
if you're 100 miles away
and I tell you
to track direct to Darwin,
I'm about 99.9% sure you can do it.
Doesn't matter where you are,
if I give you a vector,
I know you can fly the vector, I know
there's going to be no weather.
It's pretty easy controlling.
It's busy but it's
not particularly complex.
We don't have much terrain and
when you take the weather out of it,
it's just busy pure ATC.
The wet season changes all that.
When we have a nice big thunderstorm
straight in the control area
somewhere or even on the zone,
all of that simplicity goes,
and it immediately
becomes more complex.
So eight aircraft during
the dry season could be quite busy.
Those same aircraft
during the wet season
can become incredibly complex
and very, very difficult to control.
So, what does that mean for you?
It means that the human being sitting
in that console speaking to you
during the wet season,
during a storm,
they're much more busy
than they would be in the dry.
So we may be slower
to issue instructions,
we may not be able to give you
what you ask for,
so it's important to remember that
that controller sitting there,
they're a lot busier
than they usually are,
and the pressure on them is exactly
the same as the pressure on you.
We all want to do well,
we all want to be safe,
but it's much harder in the wet
for us and for you.
So moving on to
what we can do for you.
So, ATC can provide you with
up-to-date weather in Darwin itself.
The control tower
are all qualified observers.
We can tell you exactly
what we can see.
The weather radar we use,
I'll touch on it later,
but it's not particularly useful
from an approach perspective.
But certainly,
looking out the windows,
we can tell you exactly
what we can see.
That'll at least give you
our idea of the control zone
and the immediate surrounding areas.
Advise of preceding ride-reports,
so we can just simply ask aircraft,
"What are the conditions
like on final?"
"What are the conditions like
at Lee Point?"
"What are they like
at Channel Island?"
We can just ask people to tell us
because they're the ones who are
going to have the best idea, not us,
and then, of course, we can relay
that information to you.
Holding instructions.
So, when there is weather
directly overhead the field
and visual approaches are not
actually possible at all,
we can give you instructions
to hold somewhere.
We do like to use those big
cardinal points around the zone -
Hope Inlet, Lee Point, Wickham Point
and Channel Island.
They're really easy to spot
for you guys,
and they're pretty close
to base points for us,
so it's nice to be able
to keep you there.
You're only about two minutes away
from base if we put you there.
Another thing to note, if we do
put you there with other aircraft,
regardless of whether you're VFR
or being separated,
we're not going to hold you
at the same level as someone else.
If I've got someone
at 1,000 feet at Lee Point,
I'm not going to put you there
as well.
I'm going to at least segregate you.
So we're not going to
stitch you up like that,
particularly with bad weather.
(LAUGHTER)
We're not required to separate
but we do still have that
duty of care there.
Estimated holding duration.
The important word there
is 'estimated'.
The weather in Darwin
is predictably unpredictable.
We're not that good.
We can't tell you when
a storm's going to end.
We can look at trends,
we can look at directions,
but there might be another storm
directly behind another one
or it may just present itself
over the field,
so we can only ever
give you an estimate.
And finally,
assistance with diversion.
So we can conduct coordination
with Brisbane.
We can find out what the weather
is like at places like Emkaytee,
Delissaville, up in the Tiwi Islands.
If it's bad in Darwin, it's probably
worse in the Tiwi Islands, that's...
Yeah, we can at least assist you
with a navigation service
if you do make that decision
to divert.
Once again, these are just
as important as what we can do.
The first one is pretty important.
A lot of these roll into each other,
but the first one's important.
We can't pre-empt what you want.
The only way for us to know
what you need and what you want
is for you to tell us.
That's pretty much the underlying
theme of my entire brief -
you've got to be able to tell us
accurately and early what you need
in order to fly your aircraft safely.
We can't provide you accurate
weather updates
for the entirety of our airspace.
The reality is that we're using
that BoM rain radar.
It can have up to a 10-minute delay.
So the information we're giving you
can be up to 10 minutes late.
In terms of track miles,
10 minutes is a long time.
That's the difference between being
at 30 miles and being close to final.
So just be aware that
the information we're giving you
is all we can see on radar,
and it may be late.
So the best judge of that weather
directly in front of you
is always going to be you.
ATC cannot always give you
proactive weather deviations.
It's pretty similar
to the first point there.
We can't tell you whether
diverting left or right
is going to be best for you.
Just because the first two aircraft
in front of you
over the last 10 minutes
diverted left,
maybe that's not going to
be best for you.
Maybe it's clear
and you don't need to divert.
Maybe you need to divert right,
maybe you need to descend.
We don't know. All we can do
is give you what you ask for.
That's a very, very important point
I'm going to try to hammer home.
Fourth one, I'm sure you're all
pretty aware of this as well.
We can't give you
what you want all the time.
Every single aircraft we control
is not in isolation.
We have to control every aircraft
in the context of not only
their processing,
but every aircraft
around them as well.
You may be 1 of maybe 10 aircraft
inside 30 nautical miles of Darwin,
and they all want the same thing -
they all want to land or depart.
So it's matter of prioritisation
for us.
Sometimes we can't give you
what you want.
It might come down to
a bit of negotiation.
I may offer you something else but I
can't give you exactly what you want.
Fifth one - this is
a fairly important one as well.
Special VFR.
Now, our pilot SMEs
want to touch on Special VFR,
but from an ATC context
don't use Special VFR
as a get-out-of-jail-free card
or a planning tool.
Don't sit down in your pre-briefing
during marginal weather
and say, "Oh, that's OK,
I can just ask for Special VFR,"
because it's not something
you can bank on.
Our requirements for
Special VFR clearances
are fairly straightforward.
If your Special VFR clearance
is going to delay IFR aircraft,
we just won't give it to you.
We're just going to have to divert
you or hold you or keep you low
in order to process you.
So that Special VFR clearance
shouldn't be used as a way to,
basically, get around good planning.
And, finally, much like
that first point there,
exact holding duration,
we can't do it for you.
During the weather
it's unpredictable.
We'll give you holding, we may
be able to give you an estimate
but it's not going to be exact.
So, some of the limitations here
in Darwin itself.
The visual appreciation
we can give you from tower.
If there's a cell
directly overhead the field
and we've got about
1,000 metres of vis,
any appreciation we give you is not
going to be particularly useful.
We can tell you that the weather
at the field is bad,
and that's about it.
If I can't even see the runway,
I'm not going to be able
to help you out about Lee point.
-(LAUGHTER)
-Unfortunately, yeah.
So, I can look at the radar,
once again,
but six, seven minutes delay on the
radar could be the difference between
Lee Point being perfectly fine
for holding
and Lee Point being a big mess.
So just be aware of that as well -
if we tell you
there's weather at the field,
we probably can't see a whole lot.
Separation - unfortunately,
our separation requirements
don't change with the weather.
We always require
the same form of separation.
You're going to be most acutely aware
of this in those big departure waves.
I'm sure you've sat at the holding
point on some of that wet season days
with three aircraft in front
and three aircraft behind you,
wondering what the delay is.
A big part of those departure waves
at the tower is visual separation.
We use visual separation
to get you off the runway,
and that becomes another form of
separation once you go to approach,
usually radar or vertical.
It doesn't matter if the aircraft
in front is a Conquest
and you're a Cessna 210.
It doesn't matter
if there's no chance in hell
that you can catch that aircraft,
the moment you're both airborne,
we have to be separating you.
And if we can't see one of you,
unfortunately we can't separate.
So, it's another thing we have to
stress to our controllers as well,
in those wet season departure pushes,
everything just slows down.
And it's unfortunate for you guys
sitting in the aircraft,
but that's unfortunately
what we require.
So, it requires patience
from the controllers
to just slow themselves down, and
even more patience from yourselves.
Some of the rapid changes that can
happen to the airfield itself.
Our configuration - we can rapidly go
from visual approaches
to instrument approaches.
Generally speaking
we'll try to pre-empt this.
If we know weather's coming,
we'll pre-empt with
our EIA on the ATIS.
Sometimes it's not possible,
sometimes it sneaks up on us
but we'll try as best as we can
to give you that pre-emptive EIA
when weather is moving in.
Availability of runways.
I'm sure you've seen Runway 3-6 not
available many times during the wet.
Once the crosswind gets to
that 20-knot point,
we just have to knock it on the head,
especially if it's wet.
This moves into
the bottom one as well - LAHSO.
You may have found yourself
holding at Wickham Point,
you're LAHSO-approved,
"Why can't ATC
just shoot me into 3-6?"
LAHSO is a procedure
that's under pretty heavy scrutiny,
and we have very specific criteria
we have to meet.
A lot of those criteria
are about weather.
So as soon as those
weather conditions,
the cloud and the visibility,
get to a point where we can't use it,
we just have to stop using it.
As soon as we stop using it,
that means delays.
It means we can't put you
on the runway
at the same time
as another aircraft.
It just means delays.
This is just a cover off
of the brief itself.
This is a few things
that I've put in,
what you as pilots
can do for yourselves,
for me as a controller
and also other pilots.
Pre-briefing and flight planning.
So, I can only imagine
how much more complex
planning your flight is during
the wet season compared to the dry.
I'm not going to stand here and try
and give you a lesson on it.
I obviously don't know but I can only
imagine that it's more complex.
The SMEs are obviously the ones
who are going to touch on that.
The second point there
is another highlight
of the major point of the brief -
request deviations early.
Tell us as soon as you can
what you need and when you need it.
If you're finding yourself imminently
about to fly into cloud
or about to fly into weather,
and you haven't told us
what the situation is,
you've waited far too long -
you need to be able to tell us.
If we can't give you something,
we'll tell you,
but you have to ask the question,
you have to tell us what you require.
The next two points are
exactly the same thing,
so be accurate with what you want,
be succinct.
Don't um and ah for 30 seconds and
block up the airways, be succinct.
Know what you want
before you push that button
and tell us what you need.
If it's something that you need,
use the word 'require'.
If you say the word 'require',
that's a catchword for us.
We know you need it,
so there's a much greater chance
we're going to do our best
to give it to you.
We may not be able to,
it may be a negotiation process,
we may have to offer you
something else,
But use the word 'require'
when you do require something.
Once again, plan for those
alternate options early.
The last two are pretty much
the same as well.
You obviously know that diverts,
diversions and weather deviations
and holding are far more likely
during the wet,
so your planning
needs to reflect that,
particularly with fuel,
which our SMEs will touch on as well.
That's pretty much it from me.
Thank you. Thanks a lot.
(APPLAUSE)
A number of years ago now,
quite a few years ago now,
the University of Illinois
in the United States,
they did a research project where
they had 20 pilots as guinea pigs.
These 20 pilots
were VFR-only pilots.
They put these pilots
in a flight simulator,
and they had the flight simulator
flying in cloud,
or simulated cloud conditions.
And they said to each of these
20 guinea pig pilots,
"Just try and keep the aircraft
straight and level for me."
It took anywhere from 480 seconds
to only 20 seconds
for these pilots to lose control
of that aircraft
and enter an in-flight
loss-of-control situation.
But the average amount of time
it took was 178 seconds.
So I thought it worthwhile tonight
to play this video.
It's an oldie but a goodie, but it
certainly drives home a good message.
MAN: Runway 3-5, clear for take-off.
VOICEOVER: The sky is overcast
and the visibility poor.
That reported 8-kilometre visibility
looks more like 3,
and you can't judge
the height of the cloud.
Your altimeter says
you're at 1,500 feet,
but your map tells you there's
local terrain as high as 1,200 feet.
There might even be a tower nearby
because you're not sure
just how far off course you are.
But you've flown into
worse weather than this,
so you press on.
You find yourself
unconsciously easing back
just a bit on the controls
to clear those
none-too-imaginary towers.
With no warning, you're in the soup.
You peer so hard into the milky
white mist that your eyes hurt.
You fight the feeling
in your stomach.
You swallow,
only to find your mouth dry.
Now you realise you should have
waited for better weather.
The meeting was important
but not that important.
Somewhere a voice is saying,
"You should have turned back."
You now have 178 seconds to live.
Your aircraft feels on an even keel,
but your compass turns slowly.
You push your rudder pedal
and add pressure to the controls
to stop the turn,
but this feels unnatural,
so you quickly return the controls
to their original position.
That feels better.
But now your compass is turning
a little faster,
and your airspeed
is increasing slightly.
You scan your instrument panel
for help, but you don't find any.
It all looks unfamiliar.
You're sure this is just a bad spot,
you'll break out in a few minutes.
But you don't have a few minutes.
(HEARTBEAT THUDS)
You now have 100 seconds to live.
You'll glance at your altimeter
and are shocked to see it unwinding.
You're already down to 1,200 feet.
Instinctively, you pull back
on the controls,
but the altimeter still unwinds.
The engine is into the red
and the airspeed's almost there too.
You have 45 seconds to live.
Now you're sweating and shaking.
There must be something wrong
with the controls.
Pulling back only moves that
airspeed indicator deep into the red.
You can hear the wind
tearing at the aircraft.
-You have 10 seconds to live.
-(HEARTBEAT SPEEDS UP)
Suddenly, you see the ground.
The trees rush up at you.
You can see the horizon
if you turn your head far enough,
but it's at an unusual angle -
you're almost inverted.
-You open your mouth to scream...
-(HEARTBEAT STOPS)
Unfortunately, we're still losing
pilots to this type of thing,
not only in the Top End,
in the northern parts of Australia,
but also in the southern parts
of Australia.
They're not just raw statistics,
they're real people,
and, you know, it's a tragedy.
So, sometimes you feel like
we have to keep, you know,
repainting the Sydney Harbour Bridge,
and going back
and revisiting this stuff,
but I think it's
an important message that...
A night like tonight, I think
it's an important take-home message.
VFR flight into cloud
is not a good thing.
In-flight loss of control -
if you're gonna have an accident,
in-flight loss of control is not
the type of accident to have.
The odds aren't good.
Thanks for that.
What we're going to do now
is enter that part of our night
where we hear from
our subject matter experts.
These are people with significant
operational experience,
many wet seasons under their belt,
some good stories to tell,
and some good information
to pass across.
So the first person that
we'd like to hear from is
is a gentleman
by the name of Greg Imlay.
Greg is currently
a flying operations inspector
here at the CASA Darwin office.
As you can see from the screen,
he learnt to fly quite a few
years ago now, back in 1974.
He's been the chief pilot
of two Darwin organisations.
And he's been with CASA
about nine years
in this role as
flying operations inspector.
Significant wet season experience
both here in the Top End
and also in South-East Asia,
with about 12,500 hours.
So without further ado, I'd like you
to welcome Greg Imlay, please.
(APPLAUSE)
They told me to bring two hats
tonight, and I've got them here.
This is one from Seair Pacific
where I did my float plane rating,
which was a ton of fun.
And this is my CASA one.
So, the first bit I'm going to be
talking to
is going to have the Seair one,
but I'm not going to wear it.
That's who I am at the moment.
I'm an industry person.
We've moved on from
the part of the evening
where we were talking about
concrete things, I suppose -
air traffic control and met,
and the airport,
things flying around the airport.
We're now moving into the area
where we're going to be delving
into human factors issues.
It's a sad fact that,
as Tim alluded to,
a loss of control,
or an entry into IMC by a VFR pilot
and the subsequent loss of control
is nearly always a fatal event.
Often a fatal event.
They still continue to occur,
and we still keep trying
to do something about it,
but it's a difficult subject
to get hold of
because it's a human factors issue.
Those human factors
are difficult to nail down
and difficult to do things about.
We're here tonight
because we're having a go
and because we're going to
keep having a go
at doing something
about these human factors.
The aviation landscape's
fairly different
to when I learned to fly
and became a commercial pilot.
It's become clear to everyone
that there are really not many
old and bold mentors around
in the GA industry anymore.
The airlines have sucked away
all those experienced people.
When I learnt to fly in '74...
..there were 10 instructors
at the school.
The lowest-experienced one
had 1,000 hours,
and the boss had about 15,000 hours.
The guy who taught me to fly
and sent me solo
had 10,000 hours.
Those sorts of people
just aren't around anymore
in the training industry,
and unfortunately, they're often
not around in small GA organisations.
So, that valuable mentoring
that was available then
isn't readily available now.
That's just a fact of life, and
there's not much we can do about it.
Like I say to plenty of people,
if it was possible for us to develop
a vaccine or a drug or some sort of
implant that we could give
all that accumulated experience of
everyone in the aviation industry
and just inject it into them, and
they will all have it from day one,
we would solve a whole lot
of this human factor stuff.
But that's just not gonna happen
whilst we have aircraft
with crew on them.
So, experience levels are down
across the board.
Mentors aren't readily available.
But unfortunately, experience
is sometimes the only way
to get a handle on some things.
You've got to actually...
have to experience it
to determine whether you can do it,
how dangerous it might be...
..and what you could do about
avoiding getting into
trouble with it.
But we can't just go and send you
off and fly into clouds
to find out how bad they are.
It just doesn't work like that.
We can't have people continuing
to push the boundary
to get closer and closer to an event.
That's just not going to work.
So, what we're going to try and do
is just instil a little snippet
of something from this type of forum
which you may be able
to take away with you.
Peter and the team are going to
work on a toolkit
which is going to look at
the hazards that we've identified.
And what we're going to try and do
against those hazards
is when we eventually send this out
to you or deliver a product to you,
is to give you some strategies on
how you might address those hazards
and stop them becoming a real risk.
Because while they're on the board
and sitting up there,
they're still a hazard,
like the hole in the runway.
They don't become a risk until
you actually interact with it.
Now, I was asked to talk about
something that happened in my past...
..in order to give you the "I learnt
something from that" lecture.
Not really a lecture but...
It's not really clear
whether I learnt something from
that at the time or not,
but looking back a long time ago,
I'll just go through what happened,
and let you think for yourself about
what the risks,
what the hazards were and...
Well, you'll see for yourself.
The reason we look back at stuff
is that.
There's been a few
paraphrases of that.
"Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it."
More simply put,
learn from the mistakes because
if we don't know those mistakes,
we might make the same ones.
So, one way for our industry
is to be informed of history
that's important to us as pilots.
Unfortunately, the place
you find that is accident reports.
Even if you read every one there was,
you wouldn't have the full picture.
But if you did read
every one that was out there,
particularly in Australia,
maybe in the, like, Top End,
or even if you drilled down into
just weather-related accidents,
there's an astonishing
number of them...
..and they've got depressingly
similar things in them.
And we'll get to that
at the end of my talk.
So, this is a repainted version
of the aircraft involved.
So the time is 1980.
It was my second flying job.
I learnt to fly at Bankstown.
I did an instructors rating
after my commercial,
and I did a bit of instructing with
the company that gave me my training.
And then I got a job at Moruya.
Moruya's on the south coast of NSW,
a beautiful seaside town.
I hadn't had much charter experience,
probably 20 hours, maybe.
At the time of this incident
in this particular aircraft,
I had 480 hours,
about 150 instructing
and about 50 charter.
I didn't have an instrument rating.
But let me tell you,
I knew everything.
(LAUGHTER)
-I was shit-hot. Alright?
-(LAUGHTER)
I was hired by the aero club
and I was the only pilot in town
with a commercial licence.
There were a couple
of private pilots.
So, I was the one they looked at.
Those years we had this...
This aeroplane was built
in about 1979,
and so it was only a year old -
beautiful.
It was a different colour,
everything was nice,
liked the plastic on the seats.
And I loved flying it.
So, I was hired to do a charter.
So the job was from Moruya
over to Tumut.
Now, those of you
who don't know that country,
Tumut is in the Snowy Mountains,
it's over the other side
of the Great Dividing Range,
but it's only 100 miles from Moruya,
so it's not a real big deal.
The people who wanted to go there
were some high-powered locals.
I can't recall what they were in
but they might have been
real estate people
or stock and station people
or something like that.
But they wanted to go there,
they were paying a fair bit of money
to do it, I had to take them there.
I don't recall the forecast.
It was probably alright.
But the fact that I don't recall it
probably means I didn't
pay much attention to it.
However, one of
the clients' friends said,
"Oh, yeah, the weather's fine
at Tumut. No problem at all."
So I went, "Great. Good to go."
So, being a good charter pilot,
and wanting to save money,
I just drew a line from Moruya...
-This is a new chart, of course.
-(LAUGHTER)
Not the chart at the time.
(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
So this is the line
I drew on the map.
And you'll see that there's
a bit of terrain here,
a bit of terrain here,
this is Canberra here,
and there's the destination.
What could go wrong with that?
Looks OK. Straight line.
So, the day came, we took off.
Climbed up, the Cessna 206
climbed pretty well.
So I'm heading off
in the direction of Tumut.
I knew the area reasonably well.
I'd flown around it for a bit.
Been there for a couple of months,
like four months or something.
So, I'm flying out there,
and there's some cloud.
Yeah, OK.
Well, it's on the coast, there's
always going to be a bit of cloud.
So, inevitably, as I got closer
to the hills and climbed higher,
the cloud started
to come down a little bit,
or, I suppose,
I got closer to the cloud.
I need to set the scene for 1980.
In 1980, VFR pilots going into
controlled airspace was not routine.
There was some sort of mindset that
we didn't call ATC
to get a clearance.
There was some sort of mindset that
the controlled airspace
was reserved for IFR jets.
So, in the back of your mind, "Oh, we
really avoid controlled airspace."
So I never considered going direct
to Canberra, for instance,
and then going over there.
I just said,
"No, no, we'll give that a miss
"and I'll just skirt around
the edge of the control area."
So, I climbed up to a height
that would keep me clear
of the ground, I thought,
but the cloud
started to get thicker.
I did some sort of
left and right weaving here
to stay in some low country,
but the cloud was still
getting thicker, but I kept going.
I could deal with it.
I was the gun pilot for Moruya.
I'm... I've got no problems.
So, I found myself
flying up a valley,
somewhere around here.
And the cloud got
thicker and thicker,
and the vis was poor,
there was a bit of rain.
I thought, "Oh, well,"
I knew where I'm going.
Over the other side of these hills
here there's low country,
so all I've got to do
is get past this little bit
and all will be well.
-MAN: Straight run.
-Would be good.
-Edge it in.
-(LAUGHTER)
However, then, of course,
the inevitable happened...
..and that visibility turned
into cloud, straight into it.
It's hard to recall what I did then,
but what I do believe I did,
I just froze, I sat there.
Fortunately,
when I sat there and froze,
I was looking at
the attitude indicator.
That previous video
showed the person looking outside.
If I was looking outside, I would
likely to have been like that.
And for some reason, I was looking
at the attitude indicator.
And I kept looking at
that attitude indicator.
I presume any of you who have been
in a stressful situation realise
that your vision narrows,
you get tunnel vision,
you only see something
straight in front of you.
You don't know what's going on there.
The passengers could've
been screaming,
they could've been doing anything,
don't know.
All I could see was
the attitude indicator.
And all I did was keep
that attitude indicator level.
I knew how to fly on instruments. I
had a little bit of instrument time.
I had a bit of instructing
under my belt too.
It took about a minute.
I thought I stayed level.
Turned out I didn't.
But in about one minute,
I popped out and I'm out here.
I more than likely clipped
the edge of that control zone.
And as it turns out later,
I wasn't exactly where I was.
One of the things that struck me,
and this struck me in later years,
I never really had any
conscious thought processes.
I don't recall ever thinking about
turning back.
I don't even recall thinking about
climbing up into cloud,
or climbing above it
and asking for clearance.
I don't believe any of those things
crossed my mind.
After I entered into cloud,
all rational decision-making
went out the window.
I was a passenger.
I was trapped looking at
the attitude indicator.
So, if you think about what
the accident report might have read
if we'd have smacked into the hill
or lost control,
it would have said
what it usually says.
The aircraft
was probably serviceable.
It had sufficient fuel
for the flight.
The pilot was licensed
and had a proper medical.
The aircraft was loaded to within
its weight and balance limitations.
The aircraft was equipped
for VFR flight.
The pilot did not have
an instrument rating.
The pilot planned a straight line
across very high country
without even thinking about
going another way.
The forecast indicated that
VFR flight was possible
but there were problems with cloud.
And the end of the accident report
in those days
would have read something like,
"The reasons for the poor
decision-making of the pilot
"in not turning around or avoiding
the weather could not be determined."
And that used to appear on just about
every weather-related
accident report, and it still does.
It turned out that I wasn't
quite where I thought I was.
When I came back that afternoon,
it was nice and shiny,
I realised that
I was over here somewhere.
And I was at about 5,500 feet
on a VFR altimeter
in a Cessna 206 in cloud.
Who knows how close we came?
So, what did I learn?
Well...on that day,
I didn't learn anything.
Landed at Tumut, they went
and did their business.
The weather improved,
got back in the plane, flew home.
I didn't talk to anyone about it.
Didn't have a partner.
Had a few friends.
Had a beer at the pub.
Didn't talk to them about this.
Couldn't talk to them about that.
Didn't have another pilot person
there to talk to.
Being a young gun pilot,
self-introspection
isn't my strong suit, in 1980.
I'm probably not much better now,
but then, I was hopeless.
I just saw the world
as a big, bright shiny ball,
and I was flying around
and having fun.
It wasn't, "Did I do something wrong?
"Did I make a decision
or did I not make a decision?
"Did I expose people to dying?"
or anything like that.
That didn't cross my mind.
And even so, that sort of thing
is quite difficult to share,
and quite individual.
And it's not until you mature a bit
do you realise that
you can talk about that
and express it
and perhaps get something out of it.
So what can we do?
We've got to find a way
that these sorts of experiences,
which almost wrote myself
and four people off...
..don't get learned
by bitter experience.
It's like the cliff-diving thing -
I'll keep diving a bit higher off the
cliff until I really break something.
We can't keep doing it.
So what we've got to do
if we can develop that vaccine
to stop people going into
these sorts of situations,
we've got to develop some strategies.
We can help, but as you can see
from this scenario,
a lot of it's entirely personal.
You're the one
making the decisions or not.
In this case...
I didn't make many at all.
I just kept going.
That was really simple.
Turning around and going back
might have been a bit harder.
So, what I'm putting out
to you there is...
..this accident would have been
a purely human factors accident,
it would have been depressingly
the same as other accidents,
it wouldn't have been any different
to all those other hundreds
that are out there.
It didn't happen to me at 500 hours.
I got through it.
But we can't discount the possibility
that someone in this room
might find themselves
in this same situation again,
in the future.
Now, these forums are one way of
getting this information across...
..in a way where we can
openly talk about it.
And if you can openly talk about it,
someone else can learn from it.
I'd like you to welcome
Cameron Marchant,
currently head of operations
at Flight Standards here in Darwin.
Learnt to fly back in Brisbane.
He's had numerous jobs
across the Top End
with everyone from Vincent Aviation,
Skytrans...
Was chief pilot at Chartair.
Qualified flying instructor
with the army
on helicopters
at 1 Aviation Regiment.
Currently does also check
and training roles with Airnorth
and is currently also
a flight examiner.
Everyone, will you please welcome
Cameron Marchant.
(APPLAUSE)
There's a lot of wisdom
that can probably be dragged
out of dead-guy quotes.
Greg's given you
a good dead-guy quote tonight.
"Those who don't learn
from history's lessons
"are doomed to repeat them."
These are the lessons
that other people have paid for.
They've bought them
and that's on your behalf.
So Greg's case study there,
and I think we'll all agree,
that with his near-miss, he was
probably one of the lucky ones.
Many are not so lucky.
It's really, really important
you do read and learn
and analyse not only the other
experiences that others have,
but also the ones that we all have
on a day-to-day basis.
Those of you who know me well
know that I expound the virtues
of self-analysis
and reviewing every flight that you
do, whether or not it goes well
or not so well,
to pull out the little gems of
knowledge or the little treasures
that you can put away
for future reference.
If it's true to say that we all start
our flying careers -
and most of this is directed
at the pilots, of course -
if we all start our flying careers
with two bags,
one of them's an empty bag.
That's the bag of experience.
And the other one is a full bag.
That's the bag of luck.
Alright, it's true to say
that our aim as pilots,
particularly in the early phases
of our careers,
is to fill the bag of experience
as best we can
so that we can refine our judgement
and our techniques...
..preferably before we empty
the bag of luck,
the depth of which we don't know.
So what I want to do tonight
with my discussion
is to help...is to not really discuss
how innovatively, over the years,
I've tried to empty my bag of luck,
which still has something in it,
I hope,
but what I want to talk about
is maybe giving some tools -
the aim of tonight is a toolkit,
so prior to Peter and the team
releasing the toolkit
they'll formally put through,
I thought I'd just run through some
concepts and maybe offer some tools
that, hopefully, you'll be able
to gain something from.
I have one slide.
You can work through it with me.
And it outlines the template
of what I want to speak to.
The first one,
and if you have a look at everything
that's been said tonight,
the aim of tonight,
or the focus of tonight,
is wet season weather,
weather in general,
weather-related bad things
happening to aircraft.
However,
when I sit down and look at this,
it's not just weather.
It's always weather
and something else.
'Swiss cheese' model -
we've all read it in the books
about multiple things lining up
to cause the bad outcome.
If it was just weather,
you damn straight
would never fly into it.
It's always weather
and something else.
And it's that something else
that, I think, actually
is part of what we need to analyse.
In Greg's case tonight,
I'll put it out there,
who wants to hazard a guess
or an answer
to what was the 'something else'?
MAN: ATC.
ATC?
(ALL LAUGH)
I didn't plant that!
(LAUGHTER)
Sorry, Rich. You're taking a kicking.
Alright, who can help him out?
Maybe leave Rich alone.
MAN: Complacency.
Complacency?
Alright, who would agree
that Greg was complacent?
Oh, you can put your hands up.
Won't hurt.
Yep. OK. Cool.
It's Rat On Greg Day, if you like.
-MAN: Greg's got his hands up.
-GREG: I put my hand up.
Yep. Absolutely. What else?
MAN: There you go.
MAN 2: Yeah,
I was going to say probably ego.
Possibly ego.
Everyone's bashing around
human factors here. That's great.
That's definitely something
in our industry these days.
Something else.
Take another dimension.
MAN: Commercial pressure.
Commercial pressure's a big one.
What, therefore, guys?
A meeting? Got to have them.
Alright, all the commercial pilots,
charter pilots, in the room
are aware of commercial pressure.
It will cause you to make decisions
that are not necessarily
considerate of risk.
I'll talk about that
a little bit later.
I'm a simple guy.
To me, the number one thing
there in Greg's situation
is weather and terrain.
I've spent wet seasons
flying around North Queensland,
Papua New Guinea,
East Timor, alright?
Terrain, terrain, terrain, alright?
As the clouds get lower,
the ground gets higher.
It's always that way.
Alright, it's always weather
and something else.
Might just be one thing.
It might be two.
It might be three.
Just take five seconds.
Just have a think about
what a 'something else' might be
that hasn't been raised so far.
Roland? What do you reckon?
ROLAND: Bit blank at the moment.
Oh - inexperience.
Inexperience. Definitely.
It's very, very, very hard
to analyse something
that you don't really have a level
of technical knowledge about
or have seen before.
What about another one?
MAN: A way out. Plan B.
OK. Not having options.
So that's a decision-making process.
Structures. Greg's already
mentioned that, which is great.
One last one.
Yourself, sir, in the white shirt?
MAN: Poor planning.
OK. Poor planning.
Alright. Always something else.
I could rattle off a whole lot -
weather AND the aircraft,
a VFR aircraft
with dodgy instruments.
Weather and night-time.
How do you see thunderstorms
at night?
MAN: Oh, they're pretty bright.
You actually don't, until they
start taking pictures, alright?
When the paparazzi come out,
they take pictures.
That's where you see them.
But they're hard to identify.
And one of my sort of
personal nearly whoopsie moments
was thunderstorms and night.
I'm sure you can draw the lines.
Right, so weather and something.
It's always that something else
that causes you to make a decision
that's not necessarily considerate
of risk.
The big ones
in the Northern Territory
tend to be commercial pressure,
complacency.
Greg was shit-hot, alright?
He's not alone in the room.
So something to bear in mind.
Some specific pressure points
that I want to raise.
The first one -
where the weather actually starts
to impact on us, alright?
The weather and something else.
If it was just the weather,
you would never fly into it.
But let's look at
some specific pressure points
like a 'MasterChef' cooking class
or something like that.
The first one's departures.
Rich from ATC
has basically said
ATC don't really advocate the use
of special VFR as a planning tool.
Absolutely not.
That's not the intent.
Now, we know, "Oh, yeah,
"there's always margins
built into these things."
Alright, just what is the
visibility minimum for special VFR
for an aeroplane?
MAN: 1,650.
1,600 metres.
MAN: It's not much.
Really?
And you're planning to do that?
So special VFR is not a tool
to get out of the control zone,
anything else like that.
You're deliberately making a decision
to erode a margin
that's placed there for your safety.
Does that sound like something
a reasonable person would do?
OK.
There's a term that goes with that -
it punches around the lines
of negligence.
So departures are definitely
something to think about.
Along the way, avoiding weather.
Usually the thing
with avoiding weather
is just that it means
more track miles.
More track miles means more fuel
and more time -
two things we don't really like
to chew out.
And what if you didn't take
enough fuel?
Now, some companies
will have a policy on this.
And that is
that during the wet season
they will enforce or mandate
that an amount of contingency fuel
is carried
regardless of the flight.
That's a management strategy
put in place to help mitigate
the challenges that come
with avoiding weather.
But you can also apply
a personal minimum on that.
If you're looking at a fuel plan
and you're seeing zero margin
or a very small positive margin
in the wet season,
I would probably put it to you
that you can do better.
Avoiding weather,
for those who haven't had
any experience avoiding it -
to go around a thunderstorm you might
need an extra 40 track miles.
In a 210,
how long does that take to fly?
Anyone who's current on the time?
WOMAN: 20 minutes.
15 minutes, thereabouts, yep.
Litre a minute -
that's 15 litres of fuel.
And then you get back to Darwin
and this guy says,
"Hold at Lee Point."
(LAUGHTER)
Sorry.
MAN: You just set him up.
Right, now arrivals.
OK, this is the fun one.
Airports are in a location,
they don't move.
Weather moves to airports.
Weather hangs around airports.
Darwin has a particular
couple of weather patterns
that do hang around this airport
from time to time.
You're running late in the day,
you're running low on fuel,
you're getting towards your margins
and you want to get home.
And there's a thunderstorm
near the airfield.
Not on it, because he can't see
out of the tower
and he can't tell you what's going on
and you know that's just pretty dumb,
but it's just to the north
of Lee Point.
Is that going to pose a risk
to the airport?
Yeah. Maybe.
So these are the sorts of things
you have to have a think about.
The windshear effects
that Harry spoke about -
these are all pressure points
that factor into your flying,
mitigating that.
Well, air traffic control at Darwin,
just because they say,
"Make an approach,"
doesn't necessarily mean that
that risk has been mitigated.
Air traffic control can't provide
that separation or guarantee for you.
Out at Maningrida or Lake Evella,
or Ramingining
or all of those wonderful
Top End destinations, it's up to you.
You may have to hold,
you may have to divert,
you might have to do something else.
Trevor's got a story about that
in a bit.
Things to think about.
And these are the common profiles.
These are the things we see
time and time again that come up.
So lastly, I want to talk about
a couple of things that you can do.
Alright? What do you reckon?
I reckon the first thing -
flying instructor -
I'm always going to tell you
to read your books and learn stuff.
Alright, each of you needs to
look at ways of building that bag
of experience I was talking about.
And, congratulations,
by attending here tonight,
coming along
and talking to people and listening,
for what you get out of it,
you've had an experience.
The bag of experience
got slightly fuller.
Well done. Talk to your friends.
Talk about your experiences
as you go along.
But read things.
Visit the BoM website,
have a look at the Knowledge Centre.
Talk to the air traffic controllers
at the tower party -
before they all get blotto.
(LAUGHTER)
But develop
your professional knowledge
because that's where you can then
make decisions considerate of risk.
When you make a good decision,
generally
you're drawing on two things -
technical knowledge and experience.
Now, if you don't have
a high level of experience,
you then have to try and draw from
a high level of technical knowledge.
So pursue it.
Other things you can do -
contingency field.
I've mentioned it.
I would suggest in the wet season -
suggest - half an hour.
If you're coming back VFR
late in the day to Darwin,
we all know that there's thunderstorm
activity across the wet season,
you might like to carry
about half an hour of marginal.
Something you need to analyse.
Or drop short of Darwin,
take on fuel to bring you home
if payload's an issue.
There's always a way.
You just have to think about it.
But there's always a way.
Someone mentioned
the poor man's weather radar.
That's the OzRunways, BoM website.
Rich has mentioned
the 10-, 15-minute delay.
Great tool for situational awareness.
Not really definitive, but great tool
for situational awareness.
Now, modern-day aircraft
are getting G1000
and all sorts
of wonderful things, alright?
I dread the moment that we see
a fleet of Diamonds in Darwin.
I think I'll stab myself
in the eyeball with a plastic spoon
when I do.
But these aeroplanes invariably
are going to commonly come
with weather radars,
so that means, "Wake up
and smell the new millennium."
If you've got an aircraft
with a weather radar -
I often hear this from pilots,
they say, "Oh, my aircraft
has a weather radar."
"That's great.
Do you know how to use it?
"Do you know how to set the tilt?
"Do you know how to interpret
the returns?"
Learn those things
because you can read a lot
from that particular equipment.
And the last thing -
we've spoken about risking hazard
and bad outcomes.
We've spoken a lot about how to avoid
and this is probably
a good point to bear in mind.
Dealing with threats,
errors, hazards.
It's about avoidance,
recognition of avoidance,
but it's also about mitigators,
should you find yourself
in Greg's position
or should you find yourself with
178 seconds to sort your shit out.
So things that you should be doing
and working out as pilots -
practise your IF skills.
Everyone's got a computer at home.
Everyone can get a flight simulator.
Practise your IF skills.
Even if you don't have an instrument
rating, practise your IF skills.
Alright?
I can't stress enough
that when you get into a situation,
you'll wish you had those skills,
you'll wish you'd done the practice.
Practise, practise, practise.
It's like going to the gym, alright?
So there is that.
And upset aircraft recovery training
or knowledge.
Before I talk about
why that's in place,
I might just put it out there.
Why would I want to talk
about upset aircraft recoveries?
MAN: It's the first time you might
realise that you've got problems
when you're seriously...
Because when you have 10 seconds
to live, you look out the window,
you can see the ground
and the trees rushing up
and you can even see the horizon,
but...if you turn your head
far enough.
And it's at a funny angle.
Aeroplanes - turbulence penetration
speed, manoeuvring speed.
Aeroplanes have structural limits.
Recovering upset aircraft -
if you get inadvertent IMC
and you lose control of the aircraft,
you may get a window of opportunity
to correct it.
Usually, the first you'll know about
it is when you break out of the cloud
into some level of visual reference.
We talk about nose high, nose low,
unusual attitude recoveries.
There's a range of things there.
But the reason we talk about
the specific techniques,
on one side it's to avoid
stalling the aircraft.
On the other side it's to avoid
tearing it apart in flight.
Fun facts -
aircraft have G loading limits.
Section 2 of the flight manual.
How are those G loading limits
affected with flap extension?
Know that.
How's it affected with weight? How's
it affected with a range of things?
Invariably, though, you're likely
to end up in a high-speed situation,
so exceeding a manoeuvring speed
and then trying pretty sporting
recovery techniques
in a limited period of time
is something that you probably
really need to have
some technical knowledge in.
More fun facts -
G limits on aeroplanes
are generally only considered
in the pitching plane,
nose up, nose down.
They're not really considered
in the flight manual
against what we call rolling limits,
which is the application of pitching
G whilst rolling the aeroplane.
Wings, wing spars, made of metal,
they're really good at flexing.
They're not really good at twisting.
Typically speaking, the load factor
limits in your flight manual
have about a two-thirds limit
for rolling G.
A normal category aeroplane
has a normal G limit
of somewhere around about
the three to four G mark.
Two-thirds of that knocks it down
a little bit.
There's specific numbers
that elude me.
But nevertheless,
with rolling G applied,
two to three G is very serious
for that airframe,
particularly at high speed.
Remember, energy is all about
the v-squared bit.
There's always a v-squared.
So every knot
has a real, real impact.
So maybe a few of you thought, "Hang
on. Where did all that come from?"
OK, that's my point.
You don't know what you don't know
until you go out and find it.
Read widely, talk to people,
seek mentoring,
seek skills development...
..so that you can come back
and share your experiences
and so that the rest of us
don't have to sit here and analyse
and that the rest of can learn
from lessons
that perhaps
you don't have to pay for.
Thanks.
(APPLAUSE)
Our third SME that we're
just going to hear from now...
I'll just click it over.
..is Trevor Woods from the
Northern Territory Police Air Wing,
flying a PC-12.
As you can see there,
Trevor learnt to fly
back in the mid-'80s over in WA
and is currently
a Senior Pilot Training and Checking
with the Police Air Wing.
He has 11 years experience
doing aeromedical work
with RFDS and Pearl
and, I think, this wet season
will be his 20th wet season
with about 13,000 hours.
Please welcome Trevor Woods.
(APPLAUSE)
Cameron talked
about mitigation here tonight
and the flight that I'm actually
going to tell you about,
talk to you about,
is how I went through mitigation
to actually do the complete flight.
Now, I started with...
We talked about two bags,
one with experience
that didn't have much in it.
But when I was...
when I first started flying,
my dad had a 150,
so I put a few bits of experience
in my bag straightaway with Dad.
Once again, flying training.
I had the luxury of having people
with a lot of hours,
grade-one instructors, to start my
instructing and to do my training.
Once again, from those guys I put
a lot more experience in my bag.
And then I got my first job,
up in the Pilbara.
Sort of, semi...I didn't count it
in the wet season,
but that was semi wet season
up there when I was up there.
So a little bit in my bag again
about wet seasons.
And then the next time,
got an instrument rating.
Couple more bits in my bag.
It was all good.
Headed up to Darwin in the mid-'90s.
Started flying up here,
come into my first wet season.
I was lucky enough to get up here
in...it was about Easter time.
So I had a whole year to get used to
the aircraft I was flying,
ATC, and all the places I was going -
half of them, I couldn't pronounce
their names, as you know.
So then I worked for
a charter company out here,
got enough experience on Conquests
and went back to the RFDS.
RFDS was a great training ground
for me.
And then kept on - everything
I did there with the chief pilot,
training captains,
all the ICOS I did,
kept on filling my bag up, just kept
on going and going and going.
So I did 10 and a half years
being there.
Up here with Pearl.
When I was up here, that's when
I started my checking training.
Once again, from all that experience,
kept on putting stuff in my bag.
Came over to the police in 2009.
We had a guy doing
our checking training,
Peter Tippett - you might know.
He's pretty well
Mr Pilatus in the world.
Filled my bag up more.
So I was very lucky.
I had a good, constant stuff
throwing in my bag for this.
So the flight that I was
going to talk to you about
is mitigation -
how I got through this flight.
It was in February 2011.
It was just after Cyclone Carlos.
It'd just been through
about three, four days beforehand.
It was only a cyclone.
There was only just the one.
And it started over the Daly River,
back around to the west,
back over Darwin,
then it headed down the Kimberley
and down the west coast of WA.
Left a fair bit of weather here.
Usually cyclones drain a fair bit
of the weather away,
but it left a lot of weather here.
So I come out to work -
we actually evac'd the planes away
down to Katherine on the Wednesday,
and we brought them back
over the weekend.
One of the aircraft
was US on the Monday.
We all rocked up to work.
We had two flights going.
I got out, I did my plane,
seven o'clock sign-on.
But the other plane was US.
So we actually had to use my plane
first up. So that's OK. I'll wait.
So the other guy went out,
flew out and come back again.
I was meant to be airborne again
by about 11:30.
Obviously, like, things happened,
things got pushed back,
took more time refuelling,
and it wasn't until 12:30 I departed.
Now, this flight was going to be
seven sectors in the afternoon.
So it was going
from Darwin to Tindal,
Tindal to Numbulwar,
Numbulwar to Lake Evella,
Elcho Island, Milingimbi,
Maningrida, back to Darwin.
So that's a fairly big day
and half of it's already almo...gone.
But I'd had rest, I was in at work,
and I looked at - "OK,
this is going to be doable still."
So this is where I had to start
to reach into my bag of mitigation.
Go through there. What's happening?
I've had good rest, yes? Had lunch.
I had a plane full of fuel, 'cause
we could take full fuel on the NG,
and three people.
We're taking officers back 'cause
they had been stuck in Darwin
because of the weather,
so we couldn't fly them
to their normal parts.
They had people everywhere
and we're just delivering people
back into communities,
our police members.
So it was fairly important to get
these people back on the ground.
So, uneventful -
we go down to Tindal,
pick up another three members,
so it's six people on board now,
and we head out to Numbulwar.
When I was heading into Numbulwar -
most of this time
we were in cloud, actually,
'cause of just the weather,
it was just the wet season,
so we broke out of the cloud
at about 10,000 feet.
Going into Numbulwar is not a
problem, visual approach into there.
And when I was coming in to land,
on 1-5, towards the east,
there was a fairly big thunderstorm
there, probably about 10 miles away.
We landed. Not much time to actually
offload our passenger that was there.
There was only one getting off.
Bit of gear.
And by this time the thunderstorm
had pretty well developed
in a matter of five minutes
to move close to us,
which was probably too close
for us to actually take off then,
which I decided -
I'll wait on the ground.
So I waited on the ground
for an hour.
So, once again,
pushed that time away.
So I'm biting into my day again.
After an hour,
thunderstorm had run its course
and I headed up to Lake Evella.
25 minutes up there.
We could hear people
going into Lake Evella.
It's all OK.
But on the plane radar, Stormscope,
there was a mass of a couple
of thunderstorms to the north,
from the west around to the north,
and all around to the east
at Lake Evella.
Not a problem.
There was VFR planes going in there
and it was virtually
an isolated thunderstorm area there.
So I land.
We go, backtrack down the runway
and that's fine, park up,
get out of the aircraft.
It starts raining.
The thunderstorms
have moved from the north to us.
There was lightning
down the south of us -
to the east, south, north, west,
every which way you want to go.
So once again, mitigation.
"What I'm going to do?"
I've got to work out, I've got still
another four sectors to go.
It's not going to get back
into town now, into Darwin,
until late in the evening.
So then my thinking was,
"Well, I may as well close the plane,
"stop all the water
running in it at this stage.
"Then I'll go down,
have a cup of tea,
"wait for it to blow over."
Not knowing that time...
there was probably going to be
a supercell thunderstorm
stick around.
So what I did was had points
of working out the mitigation
of when I'm actually
going to take off -
the latest time
that I'm going to Lake...
..from Lake Evella to Elcho
and complete flying.
And that was starting
to get there now.
It's starting to get to
the 5:30 which I'd calculated.
Still raining. Still thunderstorms.
Still lightning everywhere.
So I had to have a lot of plans.
Plans - I'm up to
plan, like, C now.
But I'm not going to go over
to Lake Evella.
Maybe I could go
to Maningrida on the way home
if I leave a little bit later.
Once again, that came up.
That time, I went,
"What am I going to do now?
"Oh, well.
I'll wait till seven o'clock."
Seven o'clock was when I was going
to go straight back to Darwin.
I had guys on board. I had still
five people to deliver around.
They were needed in the police
station. They were needed back there.
They'd been absent for a good week
because of the cyclone.
So, once again,
talking about pressures
that are put on us to go.
But there wasn't one there
because if it's coming
to seven o'clock, I'm staying.
I'm staying at Lake Evella.
I'm not going out.
I'm not lea...I'm not taking off.
Previously to that flight,
three weeks beforehand,
our aircraft, our other aircraft,
was struck by lightning.
So I'm very aware.
That plane's actually been struck
by lightning three times now.
(LAUGHTER)
So it's a big, big cost, big time,
and sitting on the ground out
at Lake Evella for...to get it fixed
would be a long time.
So we decided to stay.
And we stayed the night.
We had our clothes what we flew in.
The other guys were there too.
But we were all glad
that we stayed that night,
'cause that thunderstorm didn't give
up till 11 o'clock that night.
So it was overhead
for a good five, six hours.
So next day, what did we do?
We got new weather.
And I continued on my flight
that I did...had planned
from the day before.
Everything was fine.
I ended up getting back in
at 12 o'clock the next day.
So I had looked at my mitigations,
what I did,
so I made that decision
each time I had a decision.
Everything was going south
all the time, so I'd pull it back,
make the decision to go south,
change my timings.
I was lucky - I had a lot of fuel
and I had people
that were understanding
that it wasn't quite right
to fly in that weather.
So that's my story.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you so much, Trevor.
A lot of experience -
aeromedical, flying Police Air Wing
around the Territory.
Just before we finish with
our open panel to conclude the night,
Greg Imlay just wants to come back
and have a quick chat about
the CASA perspective.
I suppose Greg had his industry hat
on for his first chat with us,
but Greg would just like
an opportunity
just to, I suppose,
give us a bit of a heads up
as to the type of things
that the regulator,
the type of things that CASA,
wants to see
and expectations for flying around
here in the Top End,
especially during
the wet season time.
GREG: Tim initially said
'CASA responsibilities'.
It's not really about
CASA responsibilities.
It's about what goes on
in these circumstances.
And I'm talking about circumstances
where someone might do
the wrong thing
by getting stuck in cloud.
Someone might do the wrong thing
by being reported going into cloud.
Someone might do the wrong thing
by ATC helping them out
getting down through cloud
or something like that.
It does happen.
So I'm going to give you
the CASA position on what this means.
We all know there's rules
about flying in cloud,
and that's it there
for those of you who don't know.
So, CAR,
which is the head of power, says
CASA can notify the distances
from cloud in AIP or NOTAMs.
What CASA chooses to do
is to put it in the AIP.
And I've just got a few extracts,
just a couple.
This is the VMC criteria for Class C
and it gives you the VIS
and the distances from the cloud
horizontal and vertical.
The next slide is in Class G
and there's a whole lot of
'subject to items' there
which I won't bore you with,
because you, being
commercial pilots - or most of you -
should know all this from Air Law,
and if you don't know it,
go and read it tomorrow.
It's not rocket science.
But, look,
we can stick rules out there.
Like, there's plenty of rules
out there.
Speeding - 100km.
Don't drink and drive.
Don't text and drive.
People bust those daily.
Why do we bust them?
Because any one of those
could kill you.
Texting while driving,
driving while drunk
or under the influence of drugs
or speeding at the wrong place
and flying in a cloud
can all kill you,
yet, as humans,
we continue to do that,
which is bizarre.
If we were aliens looking down,
we'd say, "That's pretty strange."
Why do we do that?
There's a whole lot of reasons why.
I won't go into that now.
You know, peer group pressure -
"I'll just have another drink."
"Oh, come on, have another drink
before you go. You'll be right."
"Oh, look, the cloud's not that bad.
I'll just keep going.
"I'll get through it in a minute.
No problem. I've done it before."
What CASA and industry need to do is
to work out why these things happen
and why we keep doing
that sort of stuff
and establish some strategies,
and that's what
we're talking about tonight.
But let's move on to what happens
if you do find yourself
having to bust one of these rules.
We have a regulatory philosophy.
It's up on our website.
I'll give you a chance to read it,
but if you don't really
want to read it
I'll just paraphrase the bits
that are important.
We've got a just culture,
and it says people aren't punished
for actions, omissions or decisions
taken by them
that are commensurate with
their experience,
qualifications and training.
So, if you really didn't know it
and you really acted on the fact
that you didn't know that
because you weren't
experienced enough
or you didn't have training
to know that,
we do not take action.
But there's a downside to that,
of course,
and I haven't highlighted that,
but if you're negligent,
reckless or wilful,
well, we might do something.
Now, this is the same of
any regulator.
If you make a mistake
on your tax return,
you're likely to just get
a nasty letter.
If you do it repeatedly
for a lot of money,
they're likely to take action.
Same with us, basically.
No different.
The next thing is,
when we do take something,
we adopt an approach
that is encouragement
of training and education
with a view to remedying
identified shortcomings
and correcting specific deficiencies,
which is what we're doing now.
So, our first action
is to educate and train.
We don't immediately
reach for the pad
and write you out a fine.
It just doesn't happen.
OK, so, let's go back a bit.
So, let's go through what happens
if we get a report
of someone flying a VFR aircraft
into IMC without
an instrument rating.
Fortunately,
we're getting that sort of report
because we're not getting it
from ATSB
because if we're getting it
from ATSB,
you've probably crashed.
The good thing is you're still alive
because we're getting reports saying,
"That pilot did this on this day
"and they're living
to tell the tale."
But you've broken the rule,
so we've got to find out why.
Now, in my nine or so years
with CASA,
I've never heard of anyone,
of CASA fining anyone,
of giving them any licence sanction
or giving them any other grief,
apart from talking to them,
when such things have happened.
When ATC have reported people to us
for flying in cloud
and stuff like that,
when ATC have had a report
go through the system
to say someone entered cloud
and they are a VFR pilot,
I've never heard of CASA
ever hunting those people down
and fining them.
I don't believe it's ever happened.
If they've done it 20 times
in two weeks,
probably yeah,
but if they did it once,
it's unlikely to ever
go anywhere near that.
So, what does happen?
Well, let's have a look at
an incident.
Let's assume we get an incident
report coming through our system.
So, the first thing
we would probably do
is try and work out how it happened,
and this is a typical pathway.
Those of you who know
the Reason model
will know 'Swiss cheese',
and what we're talking about here,
I'm just going to highlight
a very brief couple of things
that could combine,
as Cameron was saying,
'weather and...'
We're going to do
what the 'and's might have been.
Inadequate planning.
I did that.
Fatigue could be an issue.
Get-home-itis -
Trevor was talking about that,
those people wanting to get home.
Some poor decision-making -
didn't turn around at the right time
or didn't go back, didn't divert.
The others,
they're some of the others.
Didn't happen to have a IFR rating.
And there's that bad weather
sneaking in.
They all combined
to produce the IMC encounter.
In this instance,
let's assume that the pilot,
even after having all this go wrong,
had attended one of Cameron's
Upset Recovery Training sessions
and had a decent set of IFR skills,
even though they didn't have
a rating,
and that they were high enough
above the ground
that when they popped out of
the bottom of the cloud,
they went, "Ooh, all OK,"
and didn't overstress the aircraft.
All OK.
That's when we get to
talk to the pilot
and maybe the operator
if it's an AOC operation.
How did all this happen?
We know pretty well how this happens
and we can talk about that.
It just happens.
There's nothing you can do about it.
But all this took the aircraft
to the weather.
The weather didn't come at you.
Trevor's sitting there
in wherever it was - Lake Evella.
The weather came to him then,
but he wasn't in the air.
Every other time,
you end up going to the weather.
So, what we need to discover is
why that took place.
So, what we do is
we get the pilot in.
Tell us what happened.
Tell us why,
what reasons were there
possibly for you
to not have enough time
to flight plan
and maybe not reading
the forecast properly?
Were you fatigued?
Were those people wanting to get home
or was that operation
really commercially important
that meant you could toss
a few things out the window?
And when you were faced with
the weather
coming up in front of you,
what were you thinking?
What were your plans?
Did you have a plan?
Did you have a way out?
Did you even think of turning back?
Did you even think about
not departing?
We do this in a way to discover
what this individual did or didn't do
on that day...
..because we could learn something
from something they say
that we could tell you.
That person is unlikely
to do that again,
but that's just one individual.
There's 117 in this room.
This is one way
we could get information
that you may not have otherwise known
and pass it on to you...
..or put it in our handout
or do whatever we can
or make a video or do something.
So, that's what we do.
We look at all that stuff
and we talk to the pilot about
what could have been done better.
If there's operator influences
in there,
like excessive commercial pressures,
like not giving people
enough time to flight plan,
like a whole lot of things,
we can take that up with
the operator,
but that's a different thing.
As far as the pilot's concerned,
none of that leads to a sanction.
If they go and do it 10 times,
it probably will.
That's our role. That's what we do.
Before I finish, I'm just going to
move on to a little scenario
to deal with this issue
of commercial pressure,
because it's obviously important
in any aviation enterprise.
We're dealing with
expensive equipment
with lots of money invested.
It doesn't earn any money
on the ground.
The people don't pay
when they're sitting on the ground.
So, this is something I learned
quite a long time ago,
and the hazard here
is commercial pressure
and this is a typical example of how
it was mitigated in these instances.
Trevor gave us a good example of
how it happened here in the Top End.
This is a slightly larger and older
example, but you'll get the idea.
I had a mentor.
He was a Qantas director.
He was the chief executive of a big
flying school that I ran in Cessnock.
He was a part-time director
of the school.
His Qantas seniority number
was 6 or 7,
so he was an old and bold dude.
And he was rostered for command
of QF1,
which is the flagship service
from London to Sydney
and they were in London.
The flight used to leave
at a specific time every day.
Unbeknownst to the crew,
operations moved the flight
an hour earlier.
The crew were in a hotel -
all the flight attendants,
everyone's in the same hotel.
London operations send the crew bus
to the hotel,
expecting the crew to be outside
in their uniforms,
like they all sit outside the hotel,
ready to go.
No crew.
Ring, ring.
Where, where? Oh, no-one to be found.
Find the base manager
who comes to the hotel,
goes up and knocks on
the captain's door.
The captain opens the door.
He's sort of in his jammies
or whatever it is.
Clearly he's not ready yet
because it's an hour early.
"Oh, Captain, you're late."
"No, I'm not." "You're late."
"This is when it was meant to be."
"Oh, they changed the time.
You've got to get going.
"You've got to get going right now."
"Oh, OK. Why?"
"Well, we've got 400 people
sitting at the airport
"waiting to get on QF1
to fly to Australia."
"Uh, no, that's not going to happen,"
he says.
"You're going to go back
to the airport
"and you're going to tell Traffic
"that the aircraft will depart
one hour late."
"Oh, I can't do that.
I can't do that. There's 400 people.
"Princess Di is travelling
to Australia on QF1 today.
"We can't do that."
My mentor says, "Yes, you can,
"and make sure you tell her as well."
(AUDIENCE MEMBERS CHUCKLE)
Sounds simplistic,
but you can imagine the chaos
that would cause.
As it was related to me, he said,
"There's absolutely
no reason in the world
"why we should short-circuit
the one-hour preparation time we need
"after we drive
an hour to the airport,
"an hour preparation
to get that aircraft,
"an analog 747
and all its bits and pieces
"ready to go."
So, I had a few slides here.
I've got to go and do
flight planning.
I've got to do checklists,
and in Qantas 747s classics,
there's millions of them.
The people are standing
in the terminal.
The pressure is enormous,
but this person had
the presence of mind
and probably the experience to say,
"No, we're not doing that.
"We are not going early.
"I'm not going to
short-circuit that."
Now, this may seem an example
that's quite above
what the level of aviation
you people may be engaged in,
but the principle
is exactly the same.
If someone is telling you
you've got to depart in 15 minutes
and you need half an hour
or 45 minutes,
you need to develop a strategy
in your circumstance
to deal with that,
because if you don't,
that inadequate planning
will be up there
as one of those latent factors
that we may have to
talk to you about down here,
or worse.
It might be ATSB writing the report
for your relatives
because you didn't have the time
to do the plan properly.
Each of you is in
a different working situation
with a different company,
with a different mindset,
with a different commercial attitude,
but you're in charge of when you
turn the key or press the button.
So, it's up to you
to do that bit at least properly,
so find a way.
We can help.
Find a way
and it will block
that Swiss cheese pathway
in your circumstance.
OK. Thanks for listening.
(APPLAUSE)
If there's anything you want to ask
any of these guys,
please put your hand up
and away we go.
We've got a question over here.
I shouldn't need a microphone.
TIM: That's OK.
Question's just relating to
Special VFR.
I've seen recently where
the weather's been OK,
a little bit of cloud on the deck.
Getting clearance out of here,
there are times I've asked for
a Special VFR
just to get close to cloud.
Would you prefer I do that
or would you prefer me
just to get five mile off track
and stop on 500 feet
just till I get past the weather?
I'm just trying to work out
what's easiest.
I mean, I couldn't care less
either way.
It's a bit contextual,
so every situation's different.
The decision is always
going to be yours.
You're going to have to decide
what's going to be safest for you.
If you come and offer us to deviate
or Special VFR,
if you give us the option
to give you,
that's a bit of an odd one,
but I'd expect you just to decide
what's going to be safest.
I like Special VFR,
'cause it keeps me on track,
it keeps me on a constant climb,
but after listening to what you said
earlier about Special VFR,
you know, I just wasn't quite sure.
GREG: So, I'll just go on from there.
Cameron touched on the visibility
minimum for Special VFR,
so Special VFR, however,
only applies inside Class C,
so if you are at
the Special VFR minimum
and you enter Class G,
you have breached that rule.
Oh, it's close to cloud
coming out of here,
not that visibility
is close to cloud.
So I get that.
So, hence the reason why Cameron is
suggesting that Special VFR to depart
immediately places you
behind the eight ball,
because you are instantly
leaving the control zone
in a compromised situation.
-MAN 2: No, not necessarily.
-MAN: Not necessarily.
-If the cloud's base is at 1,500...
-GREG: Yep.
..Special VFR, you can fly
just below it in Class C.
Outside, in Class G,
you are VFR-legal anyway.
GREG: Yep, that's obviously a case.
What we find, however, when we get
reports about people from the tower
saying, "Look, these people
are going out in Special VFR
"and the weather's really bad,"
like, the weather is close to
non-VMC, we're talking about.
You're not talking about really
a non-VMC situation all over.
MAN: No.
You were just talking about
going in a direction.
That's a different matter.
Often, we get reports from the tower
and from people walking up
Nightcliff Beach
seeing aircraft coming up
along very low levels
with a cloud base
that is pretty low to the ground.
And, yes, inside the control zone,
Special VFR could be permissible,
but in that circumstance,
if you did depart
and the weather was such that,
in the entire control zone,
you had to have a Special VFR
to stay under the cloud,
if that weather existed
outside the control zone,
you would immediately have breached
the VFR rule,
which is not a good place to be,
back to that
1,600-metre visibility issue.
So, that's our take on
what we get from reports
and what we advise people to do.
If you have to get out
on a Special VFR clearance
with widespread bad weather,
as soon as you're outside the zone,
you're non-VMC.
Now, the special case you're talking
about might be different.
TIM: Anyone else?
The criteria for
expect instrument approach
versus expect visual approach,
sometimes it just doesn't seem to
make any sense.
RICHARD: Yeah, gotcha.
Yeah, so, a lot of the time,
it's going to be based off
sector observations,
so we may actually be at a stage
where we've gone
'expect instrument approach'
because a certain portion
of the airspace is no good,
whether visibility or cloud,
but we know for a fact,
based on the sector observations,
that you are probably going to get
visual from the north or something.
The way weather works in Darwin,
the north might be completely clear
and the south might be
completely and utterly soup,
so when it comes to that,
generally we're going to go off
a general observation.
If it's more likely that aircraft
are going to require
an instrument approach,
we'll just put 'expect instrument
approach' on the ATIS.
That's not saying that the entire
airspace is completely souped-out
and visual approaches
are not available.
It's just an expectation from us.
So, we'll make a general judgement
and that's all we really can do
with the ATIS.
The ATIS is just a very,
very general piece of information,
but yeah.
And what height
would you base that on, generally?
The 3,000 feet, the MSA,
or would you use the radar?
'Cause some days, you sort of hear
scattered at 2,000
and it's still visual approaches,
and other days,
it'll be a few at 3,500.
Yeah, if you're coming in
from the north,
we can even vector you
all the way down to 1,700 or 1,800,
depending on where you are.
We're vectoring off
what we call our RTCC
overlaid onto the screen,
so we don't necessarily
have to use the MSA.
We're looking at the screen,
we're using an RTCC,
so, generally speaking, if it's few
at 2,000 or scattered at 2,000,
it may be completely confined to
a certain part of the airspace,
and if we've got aircraft
coming in from the north
who we're pretty certain
can still maintain visual,
there's not going to be
an issue with that.
But in terms of the specific
criteria, it's really...
As I said before, it's going to be
a general assessment of the airspace.
This is directed at Cameron.
You mentioned before
about weather radars
and, I guess,
learning how to use them properly.
I've had a look myself online
in user guides and flight manuals
and things
to find some good information
on weather radars,
and I haven't really found
anything too useful.
Do you know anywhere
where there's good resources
or where to find information
like that?
As with most things, the first place
I would counsel you to start
is the manufacturer's guide, alright.
It's going to be
the first place I'd look,
and that's probably going to
give you direct instruction
on how the functionality
of the equipment works,
so what all the buttons do and what
the modes and the selections are.
That's part of the story
with weather radar, I think.
I think the rest of it,
which is how to interpret it, is...
There are a few good articles
about it.
I would suggest that
Google is your friend
and, to be honest with you,
I think the best way to capture it is
to read several different articles.
You'll get little snippets
of good stuff out of each.
For example, if you Google search
'how to set the tilt on a radar',
you'll get a story about
altitude in thousands of feet,
drop the thousands, drop the radar
down till you get ground,
return at that distance,
tilt it up seven to eight degrees,
good to go -
you know, rough kind of settings.
So, you will definitely get
that sort of information.
Setting the tilt
is one of the common things
that people tend to struggle with
to get the most amount of value,
and also interpreting
the radar returns,
so you'll find articles
on that kind of thing.
If you Google search 'weather radar',
I think you'll probably be
inundated with general information.
If you Google search,
and I just keep using Google
as an example
because that's where everything is
and it's always true.
(AUDIENCE MEMBERS LAUGH)
It's like Facebook.
But if you Google search
something like 'setting the tilt',
'interpreting the returns',
then I think you'll get some more
targeted information, absolutely.
But find someone and ask them.
You know, talk to your mates,
talk to, you know, other people,
I mean, cross the road, talk to me.
I don't know, but go and talk to
someone about, "How do I do this?"
Everyone will have an opinion
and that's one of the traps.
Harness the good,
push away the bad in every opinion,
but that's where you're going to
get your info from, for sure.
The guru we used to use
was a guy called Archie Trammell.
If you contact me,
I'll give you his details
and he's got a crowd called Radar
Training International in the States.
He's known as Mr Radar
in the '60s and '70s.
I don't know whether
you've interacted with him,
but the stuff that he's got
is quite practical-based.
It's old-fashioned, but a lot of
the radar principles haven't changed.
If you contact me later on,
I'll tell you,
but maybe we could include that
in the notes, Pete.
Trammell. Archie Trammell.
You mentioned your PC-12s
got struck by lightning.
What kind of damage
did they get from that?
TIM: Ch-ching!
(AUDIENCE MEMBERS LAUGH)
So, what happens when a PT6 engine
or most turbines
get struck by lightning,
it normally comes in
through the spinner,
so the shaft that is
going through the engine
normally gets instantly magnetised.
The way they check for that is they
walk up with a handful of paperclips
and they throw it at the engine case
and if they stick, it's magnetised.
That means you've got to come down.
So you can imagine getting
struck by lightning in Woop-Woop.
The engine's got to come out
right there,
and if it's a PC-12, for instance,
normally the loaner engine
might be in Canada,
so it's got to come out,
or wherever it is,
and get stuck in the aeroplane
and swapped over.
There will be an exit hole somewhere,
and in PC-12s,
they've got some carbon fibre.
It normally goes out a wingtip
or a tail.
When I joined the Air Wing in '99,
one of our aircraft had been struck
by lightning some time before
and it just got back in the air,
but for two years after that,
just about every electrical component
one after the other fell over
until we replaced
just about everything.
So, the effects of lightning strikes
in certain aircraft,
particularly in modern ones,
are long-lasting for
an owner or an operator,
but, basically, the first thing is
the engine will normally get a hit.
I don't know what happened
in Trevor's instance,
but that's the story.
But, again, that class of aircraft
is probably not specifically designed
to be struck by lightning.
Airliners probably have
better defences.
OK, so, that was out
at Maningrida area, I think,
and the aircraft was actually on
the ground there for quite a while,
and I wasn't there at shipping,
but they would have done
the repair out there,
put a spare loaner engine in
and flown it out.
The second time,
it was actually probably...
I think, actually, just before
Cyclone Carlos, actually,
and looking back now,
one of our pilots
was flying back through,
very clear of the weather,
coming back through Jabiru area
going to Karra.
Gave her, as we do,
that starter coming in
and it was struck by lightning then.
The pilot only saw a big flash,
didn't feel it hit the aircraft,
but once he landed knew there was
a big chip out of the propeller
and an exit out of the tail.
So, once again, loaner engine
and another three or four weeks
before a new one comes back in again
after it's been done up
and then you've got to
change them back over again,
so it's a big expense.
It's about...
It all depends on it
because of insurance and stuff.
If the type of stuff is expired on
the aircraft, on the engine,
they only give you a pro rata.
So, sometimes it's probably around
about $300,000 to $500,000
and if you replace
the propeller blades,
it's probably $25,000,
$30,000 as well,
if you can find them these days.
And the second time,
or the third time,
it was flying out of Alice Springs.
It was flying from Tennant Creek
back to Alice
and that was a thunderstorm
that they had a fair...
I suppose they were
around about 50 miles away from
that thunderstorm itself,
and the lightning had come down
horizontal and stuck the aircraft.
So it was a fair way away.
There wasn't any diversions
at the time.
I followed an aircraft in -
Cameron would be aware of this one -
one of the Beech 1900s of Vincent
was going to Jabiru.
There was one fairly small cube
about 15 miles
to the south of Jabiru.
I was following in, I was probably
about 10 minutes behind,
and they landed.
I landed behind them
and they were over having
a look at the right-hand engine,
all sad-faced and everything.
I said, "What's wrong, guys?"
They said,
"We've been struck by lightning."
And I go, "Lightning?
"That cloud that
was just down the south?
"I hardly picked it up
on the weather radar."
It was showing a little green
on the weather radar. Isolated.
We were in clear sky
and it had shot out 10 miles
or 15 miles horizontal lightning,
hit the propeller
and exited the aircraft wing.
And we were in blue sky.
TIM: Just out of interest, who here
has had a lightning strike before?
Not many?
Yeah.
I've been in a Dash 8
that got hit by lightning,
but that's about it.
We also have Bob
from Darwin International Airport.
If you have any airport-related
questions, please...
BOB: I've got a lightning story.
TIM: Oh, OK. Fire away, Bob.
Thanks.
Gerard asked earlier about
the storm warning system
that we have on airport,
and it's there for good reason,
for the ground handlers.
But during a thunderstorm
one afternoon,
ATC had asked Safety 1 for a water
depth assessment on the runway,
and they'd gone out and done that.
It was one of
our seasoned safety officers
and many of you will know
Mike Clancy,
our Airside Ops manager.
His second day on the job
and we got a call from ground,
"We think Safety 1's
been struck by lightning
"on Taxiway Bravo 2."
And so we were expecting the worst.
I was a member of the rescue party.
We went out to the vehicle.
They were fine. They were dazed.
The lightning had struck
a taxiway light
about two metres away
from the vehicle
and it wasn't going anywhere
and we had to tow it back
and it was
a brand-new diesel LandCruiser.
And so much energy went into
the ground around that vehicle
that it fried everything under
the dashboard and the panel.
It was $20,000 to repair,
so that's an indication of
lightning power on the ground.
Anything else for the airport,
while I'm here?
(AUDIENCE MEMBERS LAUGH)
To Rich, with Darwin being very...
..lots of controlled airspace
and restricted airspace around,
you spoke about
the 'request and require' comment.
If there's active restricted airspace
and pilots require
to fly through that,
does the term 'require' allow pilots
to fly into that airspace?
And also,
how do restricted airspaces
get controlled from ATC?
This is a really good one for us.
It's actually so important to ATC,
it's part of our core theory -
what to do if an aircraft is forced
to fly into restricted airspace.
If you find yourself in a situation
where you really
only have two choices -
to fly into the weather
or to fly into restricted airspace -
the diplomatic answer I'd give you is
don't fly into the weather.
At that stage, when you fly into
that restricted airspace
when you're given no choice,
we have a certain list of actions
that we have to take.
The first action is to cancel
your control services,
so we're making it very clear to you
that you're not flying on
an airways clearance
when you enter
that restricted airspace.
The reason for that is
'cause we may not own it
and we may not own it and we may not
know what's going on in it,
so we certainly
can't have you operating
under airways clearance from us
when we don't actually know
what's inside the airspace.
And from there,
we have a checklist of actions.
One of them will be
to continue to provide
your flight information service,
so we're not going to
just stop talking to you,
but we're going to be
telling you that
you're now proceeding
at your own risk.
We don't know what's in the airspace.
It's not ours or it may not be ours.
You're proceeding at your own risk.
I would suggest that the safety
or the risk of flying through
restricted airspace
versus the risk of flying through
an active cell is...
You know, you can probably work out
what is less hazardous immediately.
And from there,
we continue an alerting service,
so we'll actually go to alert phase.
We'll instruct you to squawk 7-7-0-0
and go from there.
So, it's actually stipulated
pretty clearly what we're to do.
A big part of it is you're not
under our clearance anymore
and we have to state that to you.
It's very important
that we can't tell you
necessarily everything
that's going on there
because it may not be ours.
