How safe are the Australian aviation safety regulations and what does 'safety' really mean anyway? How aviation accidents can provide a reality-based conception of safety and why it matters

How safe are the Australian aviation safety regulations and what does 'safety' really mean anyway? How aviation accidents can provide a reality-based conception of safety and why it matters

In the last 20 years since the year 2001 Australian aviation safety regulations have increased from some 550,000 words to 1.8 million words. Yet in the same period, and despite civil aviation fleet hours remaining essentially unchanged, the number of Australian civilian aviation accidents has grown. This is somewhat surprising in light of the safety goal of the Civil Aviation Act 1988 which is the prevention of accidents and incidents. What then has the more than threefold regulatory increase meaningfully accomplished in terms of the Act's conception of safety? The research responds with both critique and solution using an emergent, hermeneutic 'methodology of methodologies' and a case study from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia (AATA). The critique phase employs a hermeneutic close-reading of aviation regulations to demonstrate that regulatory 'liability-proofing' undermines the safety goals of the Act. The critique phase also shows how liability proofing and consequent dynamics of over-regulation flourish when no compelling and consistently actionable 'accident-proofing' conception of safety exists. In an attempt to better conceive just such a conception, the research moves to the solution phase where 50 years of Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) aviation investigations (1968-2021) are examined to meaningfully conceive a reality-based model called the Incident, Accident, and Safety Attribution (IASA) Model. The research then concludes by showing how the IASA model – as a 'red rule safety' conception and so-called because it emerges from 'written in blood' accidents – can usefully serve aviation regulators, managers, and practitioners by clarifying, emphasising, and standardising accident-proofing goals. It is hoped this can then moderate the current inclination towards regulatory excess and thus the safety goal of the Civil Aviation Act 1988 can be better realised.

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