Subscribers to Flight Safety Australia’s Summer 2019 print edition are already reading about how chasing animals with helicopters, aeroplanes or gyrocopters is a distinctively Australian form of aviation.
The issue’s cover story focuses on aerial mustering, examining the unique combination of cultures and hazards that give this form of aviation its own distinctive risk profile. As the story says and the video above emphatically demonstrates, ‘Aerial mustering is also practised in the US in Texas and the country’s south-west but nowhere on earth is better suited to this farming method than the huge cattle stations of Northern Australia.’
It goes on to report how experienced mustering pilots say taking a livestock-centred approach to mustering can also deliver safety benefits.
‘No matter what animal, whether its cattle, buffalo, horses or goats, it’s all about understanding how that animal reacts,’ a central Queensland based mustering pilot told Flight Safety Australia.
‘If you can keep your animals calm and relaxed, you will be calm and relaxed yourself,’ he says.
For the rest of the story subscribe to Flight Safety Australia, or buy the Summer issue from the CASA Online Store. As well as the mustering cover this issue looks at communications, pilot fatigue, spends a day in the life of CASA Aviation Safety Advisors, and reanalyses a historic crash that nearly decapitated Australia’s wartime government.
