Proposed amendments to TSI Regulations
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is seeking views from the aviation and marine industry, and other interested stakeholders, on proposed amendments to the Transport Safety Investigation Regulations 2021 (TSI Regulations). The proposed amendments to the TSI Regulations are set out in the Exposure Draft for the Transport Safety Investigation Amendment (2022 Measures No. 1) Regulations 2022 (the Exposure Draft).
The Exposure Draft proposes to make the following changes to the TSI Regulations:
- For the purpose of accident and incident notification, aircraft operations are put into four categories (Category A, B, C and D) based on the types of accident and incidents they will have to report. Consistent with the Minister’s Statement of Expectations to the ATSB, the greatest focus is on receiving reports where the information is most likely to be used for the greatest public safety benefit.
- Align aircraft operation categories and updating definitions consistent with flight operations rules administered by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) which commenced on 2 December 2021.
- Align key concepts such as accident, serious aircraft incident and aircraft incident, as well as kinds of examples, with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) equivalents as best as practicable.
- Removing prescriptive lists of individual kinds of incidents and defining occurrence concepts more broadly, with guidance material supplementing examples of matters to be reported.
- Clarify that certain aircraft incidents are to be reported as serious aircraft incidents, due to their relative importance in identifying safety risks.
- Clarify that occurrences during repositioning flights prior to conducting a passenger transport operation or non-passenger commercial operation are reportable as part of the planned operation.
- Prescribe additional persons who are responsible for reporting in the aviation industry (aircraft insurers and sport aviation bodies) and marine industry (pilotage service providers and vessel traffic service providers) to increase the ATSB’s safety coverage.
- Improve ATSB’s administration of the occurrence reporting framework by making other minor, technical or clarifying changes.
To assist readers, an unofficial compilation of the TSI Regulations incorporating the Exposure Draft amendments – as if it had commenced – is provided for reference at Annexure 1.
To provide a holistic view of the proposed changes and how it might be implemented, a draft version of updates to the Aeronautical Information Publication (the AIP) is also enclosed (at Annexure 2). The AIP is guidance material published by Airservices Australia and the ATSB has responsibility for updating content on occurrence reporting.
In large part, it is not expected that the proposed changes will have significant impact on industry participants, which are already required to report occurrences to the ATSB by telephone and/or by written reporting. For the aviation industry, the alignment of aviation occurrence reporting terminology and concepts with CASA’s flight operations rulesets will provide more, rather than less, clarity on how different kinds of aircraft operations are treated for the purposes of occurrence reporting.
The amendments are proposed to be made by 30 June 2022, which aim to provide 6 months of lead time before commencement on 1 January 2023.
Proposed amendments to TSI Act
There are two complementary proposed policy changes also being consulted which relate to potential future amendments to the Transport Safety Investigation Act 2003 (TSI Act). These two proposals are not included in the Exposure Draft. Subject to decisions of the Parliament, they will be considered as part of future reforms to the TSI Act.
- The first of these proposals is to extend the reporting timeframe for written reporting following an immediately reportable matter (IRM) and a routine reportable matter (RRM) from within 72 hours to within 7 days. The genesis of this proposal is upcoming reform (anticipated July 2022) of rail sector reporting requirements in State-based legislation, progressed by the Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator (ONRSR).
- The second proposed change to the TSI Act is to clarify that the regulations may prescribe the means by which the written report is submitted. Presently, the TSI Act empowers the regulations to prescribe the particulars of written reports but it is unclear whether the means of their submission might also be prescribed (as is the case with similar provisions in sections 18 and 19 of the TSI Act). The purpose of this clarification to the TSI Act is to eventually enable an update to the regulations to describe how written reports must be submitted. Preferably, in the future, the regulations would prescribed electronically-compatible formats to allow ATSB systems to automatically ingest and process data.
The ATSB thanks readers of this consultation paper, the Exposure Draft and the draft AIP updates for their interest and participation in the legislative-making process.