The aviation industry has been slow to acknowledge the risks associated with ground operations. While most occurrences on airport aprons and taxiways do not have consequences in terms of loss of life, they are often associated with aircraft damage, delays to passengers and avoidable financial costs to industry. The focus of this report is to examine ground occurrences involving high capacity aircraft operations. This report examines occurrences involving ground operations and foreign object debris that occur at Australian airports which receive high capacity aircraft. It uses occurrence and…

The ATSB receives around 15,000 notifications of aviation occurrences each year; 8,000 of which are accidents, serious incidents and incidents. It is from the information provided in these notifications that the ATSB makes a decision on whether or not to investigate. While further information is sought in some cases to assist in making those decisions, resource constraints dictate that a significant amount of professional judgement needs to be exercised. There are times when more detailed information about the circumstances of the occurrence would have allowed the ATSB to make a more informed…

Forty-four per cent of all accidents and over half of fatal accidents between 1999 and 2008 were attributed to private operations. These figures far surpassed the proportions for any other flying category, even though private operations contributed to less than 15 per cent of the hours flown in that decade. This report aims to identify the factors contributing to fatal accidents in private operations and how these factors differed from non-fatal accidents. This was achieved through exploring common occurrence types (what happened), contributing factors (why the accident happened),…

A significant proportion of all occurrences reported to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) involve aircraft striking wildlife, especially birds. This report provides aviation birdstrike and animal strike occurrence data for the period 1 January 2002 to 31 December 2009. It also describes the results of an ATSB survey of aerodromes concerning current wildlife control measures. Reported birdstrikes have been generally increasing since 2002. In 2009, there were 1,340 birdstrikes reported to the ATSB. For high capacity aircraft operations, reported birdstrikes have doubled from 2002 to…

On 3 July 2009, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) was notified that a SAAB Aircraft Company 340B (SAAB), registered VH-ZLW, had commenced its take-off roll along the runway 25 left edge lights at Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport, New South Wales. This was one of three occurrences over the previous 2 years that involved aircraft commencing take-off on the runway edge lighting. In addition, within the previous 2 years the ATSB investigated two other occurrences involving pilot misidentification of runway alignment cues or lack of those cues during take-off. All five Australian…

This report provides Australian aviation accident and incident, collectively termed occurrence, data for the period 1 January 1999 to 31 March 2009. This data was provided to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau by 'responsible persons' as defined in the Transport Safety Investigation Regulations 2003, Part 2.5. The data excludes non-VH registered operations in the sport aviation category (except for Tables 1 and 2 which shows all occurrences), and is current as at 31 March 2009. The data will be adjusted quarterly to reflect new information received during the reporting period.

This report tables rail safety occurrence data by state and territory between 1 January 2001 and 30 June 2009. Data is adjusted biannually to reflect new information that comes to light during the reporting period. There is a lag period of approximately 3 to 4 months between the end of the 6-monthly reporting period and publication of this data. The data is presented as counts, and normalised using kilometres travelled and number of track kilometres. Data presented in this report conforms to ON-S1: Occurrence Notification Standard 1 (2004) and OC-G1: Occurrence Classification Guideline…

This publication celebrates the ten-year anniversary of the formation of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) on 1 July 1999. It is the story of the ATSB, and the earlier organisations that came together to form the ATSB a decade ago. A proud history The ATSB was formed on 1 July 1999 from the amalgamation of the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation (BASI), the Marine Incident Investigation Unit (MIIU), and non-regulatory parts of the Federal Office of Road Safety (FORS). In addition, an embryonic Rail Safety investigation capability was established. As this publication shows, each of…

This publication represents the last in a series of annual reviews, dating back to 1999-2000. Over the last ten years, the Bureau has built a reputation as a world class investigative organisation. This has been chronicled through the ten annual reviews which the ATSB has released. From 1 July 2009, the ATSB has taken on new annual reporting responsibilities which will result in the publication of a very different document. This change is entirely appropriate given the ATSB's status as a newly established statutory agency. However, consistent with our new mandate, I know the Commission will…

Although several studies have reported the common threats and errors identified in line operations safety audits (LOSAs) of high capacity regular public transport (RPT) operations (Klinect, Wilhelm & Helmreich, 1999; Veilette, 2005; Thomas, 2004), there is little information on the types of threats and errors faced by pilots in other parts of the aviation industry. This report catalogues the most common threats to operations, and errors made by pilots, in aerial work and low capacity air transport operations, as perceived by flight instructors, check-and-training pilots, chief pilots and…