This is the second time in two years the CAA has been taken to task over its handling of anonymous complaints. Photo / Supplied
This is the second time in two years the CAA has been taken to task over its handling of anonymous complaints. Photo / Supplied
A doctor has defended reporting a pilot to aviation authorities despite not being able to identify an informant who complained he was drinking in a hotel bar before flying a commercial plane.
The 2017 allegation, and another that the pilot was seen leaving an airport bathroom with a woman, turned out to be false but the pilot was investigated and said the false allegations put him under immense stress.
The pilot, who has name suppression, has taken his case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal to force the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to name the complainant so he can sue them for defamation.
On the second day of the hearing in Wellington, the CAA's principal medical officer Dr Dougal Watson said alcohol was an extremely serious factor in aviation safety and he acted quickly to try to contact the informant and inform Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority (Casa).
"The safety agency will take action without necessarily having all the information - they must.
"They take action to make the skies safe in the first instance and then gather further information."
He said it would have been a regulator's worst nightmare if the pilot had crashed while he was under investigation, so he needed to act quickly in informing the Australian authorities.
"We talk about high-cost safety failure. If you make a mistake in this area, it has the potential of having very high community cost."
Watson told the tribunal he made email contact with the informant to find out more information about them having allegedly seen the pilot drinking at the Rydges Hotel bar before piloting a flight to Brisbane in August 2017.
Despite numerous unsuccessful attempts to verify the identity of the informant, Watson passed on the complaint and their contact details to Australian authorities.
Under questioning today he told the pilot's lawyer, John Hall, that receiving anonymous complaints about dangerous practices was not unusual.
"I did not know what to make of the fact I couldn't confirm the identity. I did not see that as meaning they were being malicious," he said.
Hall also made the point that Watson had himself breached the Privacy Act when he contacted the pilot's employer - Virgin Australia - about the complaint.
Legally Watson should not have shared the complaint with Virgin, but left Casa to investigate.
Captain Graham Lindsay's won his court case against the Civil Aviation Authority has last year. Photo / Melissa Nightingale
Watson said with the benefit of hindsight he wouldn't have done anything differently.
"The issue before me was a very important safety risk and not one I could put on ice for a few days and wait for further information. I believe it was information that I should have passed on to Casa in the timeline I did.
"I do not resile from what I did, it was in the interest of New Zealand public safety."
The pilot said Watson treated him like he was guilty from the outset and instead of helping him clear his name simply told him to go and get a copy of his criminal record.
"I felt that I was considered guilty before any investigation was concluded," the pilot told the tribunal on Monday.
"Then he told me that if I'd been working for Air New Zealand he would have suspended my medical licence on the spot."
However, the pilot, who was employed by Virgin Australia, was operating on an Australian pilot's and medical licence, which was why Watson forwarded the informant's complaint to Casa.
A key aspect of the pilot's case is that Watson shouldn't have handed over the file to the Australian aviation regulator without verifying the complaint was legitimate.
It's not the first time Watson has been called as a witness in a case involving false complaints made against a pilot.
Last year Judge Arthur Thompkins found Watson was "over zealous" in pursuing Captain Graham Lindsay, going as far as claiming the pilot and safety investigator was a narcissist and a stalker.
Judge Tompkins' ruling in the Wellington District Court in October said the CAA did not have grounds to ban Lindsay from carrying passengers and that Watson had been "incorrect in his misplaced and unsupported view that Mr Lindsay constituted a threat to aviation safety".
Lindsay was a senior captain flying for Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong when the CAA received an accusation that he was mentally unstable. He was grounded for several years while the CAA investigated.
Initially anonymous, the complaint was "that he posed a risk of deliberately crashing his aircraft and killing himself, his crew and all his passengers".
Lindsay won the protracted court battle and $210,000 against the CAA for its handling of a false claim from his ex-wife's new husband that he was at risk of committing murder-suicide while piloting a plane after an acrimonious divorce.
Thompkins found the authority has been "primed to overreact" and Watson had been "over-zealous" in pursuing Lindsay.
The tribunal will hear from more witnesses on Wednesday before the hearing concludes.
