AU: CASA junked plan for skydiver warning
By Steve Creedy & Michael McKen, The Australian | Jan. 06, 2006
Australia's air safety regulator proposed four years ago that skydiving planes should warn passengers they may not be as safe as other aircraft, but it did not proceed with the idea.
A notice of proposed rule making issued by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in August 2001 proposed that parachute planes be required to display a placard warning that the operation "is not necessarily being conducted to the standards of a fare-paying passenger flight".
The move was part of a plan to clarify the legal status of parachuting aircraft by creating a new classification for the sport that meant skydivers were no longer treated as passengers.
However, CASA confirmed yesterday it was never acted on and questions still remain on whether commercial parachuting operations should be treated as a private or charter flight.
A recent spate of accidents involving parachutists has brought the issue back into focus and the federal Opposition has called for an urgent review of the regulatory oversight of skydiving.
On Monday, five people died and two were injured when a Cessna 206 owned by the Brisbane Skydiving Centre crashed into a dam at Ebenezer, west of Brisbane. Under current practice, parachuting jumps are treated as private flights and the companies that operate them do not require an air operator's certificate or come under CASA scrutiny.
CASA's 2001 document argued that parachutists, regardless of how many jumps they had made, were engaging in a sporting or recreational activity where they accepted more risk than would be considered acceptable for the travelling public.
CASA also proposed continuing to allow private pilots to fly parachuting planes, but said they would still have to have the 200 hours' flying time needed to qualify for a commercial licence.
The pilot in Monday's crash, Anthony Winter, 22, obtained his commercial licence in August and had held a private licence since October, 2003.
It has also emerged that Brian Scoffell, co-owner of the Brisbane Skydiving Centre and one of two survivors of Monday's crash, was suspended as a chief instructor for six months after an investigation into a teenager's death during a jump in 2000.
According to the findings of an inquest into the death of Brian Roberts, 18, Mr Scoffell was found to have committed three "operational breaches" during the teenager's parachute training. But Coroner James Gordon said the breaches, under Australian Parachute Federation regulations, in "no way caused this death".
The brother of Nigel O'Gorman, 34, the Irish skydiving instructor who died in Monday's accident, visited the crash site after flying from Ireland with his parents. Standing with his brother's fiancee, Emma McCormack, beside the dam where the plane crashed, Simon O'Gorman said: "Parachuting was his life. Most of the time he did it for hardly any money. He did it because he loved it."
Simon said his brother had served with the Irish Navy and trained Thai police in parachuting before coming to Australia five years ago.
Brisbane Skydiving Centre director Angela Garvey said Nigel O'Gorman and English fellow instructor Colin Hicklin, 41, who also died in the crash, would have done all they could to protect the two recreational skydivers killed - Susanne Williams, 49, of England and Barbara McLelland, 40, of the Gold Coast.
Police said Mr Scoffell, 57, was recovering well in Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital. The other survivor, Mandy Best, 27, was in a satisfactory condition in the same hospital.