Pilots are being pressured to fly into potentially dangerous fire scenarios or where aircraft would provide little benefit, despite worsening aerial firefighting safety risks, according to a newly released survey conducted by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

The federal agency conducted interviews with nine firefighting aircraft operators and 11 fire agency representatives from around Australia to understand the current safety risks in the field. It notes that since 2016, the ATSB has commenced 17 investigations involving aerial firefighting aircraft with incidents steadily increasing.

“Additionally, the ATSB has received anecdotal reports from aerial firefighting pilots and operators concerned about the way activities are coordinated and unsafe tasking. These reports also indicated that many do not want to report occurrences to the ATSB as it may affect their potential to win contracts with firefighting agencies,” the report notes.

The results showed that how safe the industry feels largely depends on who you ask, and both the safety and occupational risks they face.

The majority of aerial firefighting operators said they didn’t feel that agencies valued their safety and had a negative “safety culture.” This contrasted with the answers given by fire agency representatives, who claimed safety had “always been very much at the forefront” of their operations.

“Interviewees perceived a lack of understanding of aviation safety and risk management among senior fire agency personnel across states and territories,” the surveyors said. “Interviewees’ understanding of who was accountable for aerial firefighting safety varied, indicating a lack of clarity on this issue.”

A similar disparity was found in how operators and agency representatives viewed the pressure placed on pilots to fly. While every interviewee acknowledged there was some pressure to fly, they differed on where that pressure came from.

Firefighting operators largely blamed their pressure to fly on agency personnel, describing both overt pressure and implicit pressure like being asked to “take a look” at flight conditions. The responses from agency representatives said the exact opposite, claiming the agencies placed no pressure on pilots and instead blamed either more senior agency personnel or public and political pressure.

“Interviewees believed this was because aircraft, especially LATs, are a very powerful visual representation of agencies’ and governments’ response to bushfires,” the surveyors said. “Three of these interviewees specifically mentioned public or political pressure to fly relating to LATs.”

Numerous interviewees said operators would feel safer if fire agencies enhanced their management and developed a just, learning, reporting, informed and flexible safety culture. A shared desire for standardisation and formilization of policies and procedures was also present in the responses.

“This desire was expressed in relation to aircraft coordination, communication, training, pilot performance, and the identification of risk and monitoring of changing conditions,” Bureau Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell said in a press release regarding the report.

The survey is part of an ongoing ATSB safety study into Australia’s growing aerial firefighting sector. While findings and recommendations will be saved for the final report, this survey report identified 18 key safety themes.

Around 500 aircraft provided by over 150 operators are used in aerial firefighting operations across Australia.

Click here to read the full report.