SAFA Skysailor Magazine

38 SKY SAILOR May | June 2023 AIRS Safety Wrap-up – April / May 2023 by Iain Clarke – SAFA Safety Management Officer Greetings fellow pilots. Recently, we have had a couple of incidents that raised concerns within the Ops Team. On a weekend where firefighters were conducting aerial operations north of Manilla (NSW), a number of pilots undertook cross- country flights adjacent to a Temporary Restricted Area (TRA). The reports received by the Ops Team indicated that gliders were seen within the TRA, however, we have been unable to confirm this. A NOTAM was pub- lished advising of the TRA. You can find some information on aerial firefighting operations in the ERSA Special Procedures (go to the end and have a read of FN 24), but I’ll quote the important points from that document directly: 37.1 Bushfires may occur at any time and may require unnotified intensive aviation activity associated with aerial firefighting. 37.2 Operations may occur within 5NM radius and below 3,000ft AGL of observed fires. 37.3 In order to maintain safe operations, all pilots of manned and unmanned aircraft should avoid active bushfires where fire- fighting may be in operation. In the other event, a PPG pilot nearly had themselves shot out of the sky. Literally. They undertook a flight east of Sale and strayed into the RAAF’s weapons testing range, while there was a live fire exercise underway, and, in fact, flew through a stream of tracer fire. Needless to say, the exercise came to a screaming halt (at great inconvenience – the PC-21s were due to arrive soon), and the officer running the show, who is also a PPG SSO, was on the blower to yours truly letting me know what was happening. The pilot was soon identified. They had consulted a website to familiarise themselves with the airspace architecture, but this website did not have the NOTAM that was issued for the exercise, nor the fact that Restricted air- space volume (R391A) was active and in force at the time. The message here to everyone is that pre-flight planning is crucial! It is imperative that all pilots are familiar with the NOTAMs that are current for the area they are planning to fly. Equally, it is imperative that all pilots observe Prohibited, Restricted and Dangerous airspace volumes that are in force or may be in force from time to time. Your life and those of other airspace users or folk on the ground, depend on all of us operating our aircraft safely. This includes where we fly, not just how or in what conditions we fly. We have created a ‘Guide to Airspace Use’, in the ‘User Guides’ collection of the ‘Documents’ section on the SAFA Members website , explaining how to access and use the National Aeronautical Information Processing System (NAIPS). NAIPS is the authoritative source for information you can use to decide where to fly. Please, do not rely solely on other sites for making informed decisions. Now on to this month’s AIRS reports. We’ll start off down here in Tasmania and then journey north.