RACHNA LAL
SUVA
The Civil Aviation Authority of Fiji says the hard landing by the Fiji Airways Airbus A330 in Sydney is commonly known in the global aviation community as Loss of Control.
Authority chief executive, Netava Waqa, said this was one of the top three major causes of accidents with Controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) and Runway Excursion (RE).
Mr Waqa said the authority was constantly being updated of the progress of the operator investigation.
“They (Fiji Airways) need time to thoroughly conduct their investigation. A report will be submitted to the CAAF once the investigation is completed,” he said.
Mr Waqa said under the new International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) safety management approach, the risk owner, Fiji Airways in this case, conducts its own investigation.
He said the risk owner had to identify the hazards and mitigate the risk(s) by introducing the necessary safety enablers to lower the risk to achieve acceptable level of safety or eliminate the risk completely.
Corrective measures
Mr Waqa said among other things, the authority had to ensure corrective actions implemented by the operator adequately mitigated the risks and root causes.
“This is to ensure this type of event and other hazards identified during the investigation does not happen again. CAAF will wait for the operator to complete its investigation and consider what ‘proactive’ and ‘predictive’ risk mitigation or process it plans to implement to deal with this matter,” Mr Waqa said.
Maintaining standards
Mr Waqa described the aviation industry as high-tech and highly-regulated.
“The International Civil Aviation Standards have evolved and matured over the years and State’s regulations are built on these ICAO requirements,” he said.
“They offer checks and balances or redundancies to prevent things from going wrong.
“These regulatory solutions have been put in place after many years of learning from accidents and fatal events and are put in place for good reasons to safeguard the airline business and the public safety.
“Sometimes, for commercial and other reasons, these standards are viewed as a negative thing and taken lightly and not often appreciated until things go wrong as is this instance.”
Feedback: rachnal@fijisun.com.fj