[Peetwo]

Glib spin and Horse-Pooh.

CHAIR: Mr Monahan, just to go on from that, did I understand correctly that you just said that most accidents in the private aviation space happened as a result of reduced maintenance or—

Mr Monahan : No—

CHAIR: poor maintenance? Could you just explain your answer.

Mr Monahan : What I'm saying is that the accidents that happen through each sector of aviation have different themes. The No. 1 across the world, globally, is controlled flight into terrain.

Wiki - “A controlled flight into terrain (CFIT, usually pronounced cee-fit) is an accident in which an airworthy aircraft, under pilot control, is unintentionally flown into the ground, a mountain, a body of water or an obstacle. In a typical CFIT scenario, the crew is unaware of the impending disaster until it is too late”


BOTH the AF fatal accident involved Uncontrolled collision – i.e. the pilot lost control, (a crash) the collision a result of ‘loss of control’ due to spatial disorientation. Monahan further compounds the felony stating:-

Monahan - “That is flying into weather when you're not qualified, and what qualifies that.”

Patently misleading, as at the time of the collision, the pilot was clearly not in control. The following is (IMO) a deliberate deception, through use of mixed definitions related to two distinct and very different events. Loss of control in flight (Section 5 / p4) claimed more lives than CFIT. Many, many more than any mechanical issue.

Monahan – “That is the biggest accident, and the biggest killer of people. That's the first place you look. So you try to find ways to address the most likely case of mishaps in the future for a particular sector or cohort of pilots. That's the discussion.

Two clearly defined type of accident combined to support a denial of the real problem. For a classic CFIT see the ATSB report into the recent event in Tasmania. For a classic ‘loss of control in flight’ see ATSB Mt Gambier report.

The ‘discussion’ should be focused on answering the age old question:



What made the VFR pilot decide to attempt operations in the existing weather conditions?

CASA can wriggle and dance all they like; paper the entire planet with fatuous rules; but until they get a real handle on preventing VFR pilots tackling clearly visible IMC, then the problem will simply persist. There are solutions available which may not eradicate the recurrent events, but may reduce the incidences. They could begin with basic flight training – the current system is (IMO) counter productive – designed for auditing comfort through ‘tick-a-box’ paperwork – miles of it. This, stand alone has the potential to seed a future accident.

The type of Mumbo-Jumbo Aleck, Monahan and Crawford use to avoid dealing with root causes is mind numbing, the product of knee jerk, arse covering ‘do nothing’ just  to make it appear they are on the ball.

The Senators need substantive submissions from which ‘real’ questions may be asked. The AF inquiry provides a perfect platform to have the questions raised and answered.

Get on with it; talk is cheap - Ale cost real money. Handing over.

Toot – toot.

Totally concur with all of the above but there is more, much more inside of this 'on the record' Hansard. For mine the most critical part of this public hearing was the ATSB session where Senator (growing legend) Patrick got the Dr Godley (Chelsea-Manning) to openly admit that not one single AF pilot was interviewed or surveyed in the course of their bollocks investigation. 

For the record, courtesy AOPA Oz - from about 01 hour 36 minutes: 

And for my quote of the hearing so far...

..CHAIR: I want to be very clear on this: you've taken responses from respondents who weren't answering a specific question on this and didn't know that their answers would be used towards this sort of report, and you've extracted those responses and extrapolated them in your report, which attributes the high accident rate to, in particular, 'pilots experiencing perceived or self-induced pressures'. It seems to me to be a fairly significant leap to take answers from respondents who weren't aware they were asked this question—not a specific question, and not a question directly in relation to this accident—and use them directly in relation to this accident...

GOLD, absolute GOLD! - Take a bow CHAIR...  

Coming back to the super spook Monahan's bollocks evidence, I draw attention to the following Hansard (for the record) passage from Angel Flight CEO Marjorie Pagani:

I challenged Mr Monahan about this when he came to my office on 28 November 2018 with a hastily scribbled bunch of notes and said: 'We're going to propose these new rules. They'll be published in five days.' I've been working with CASA for 1½ years. We had initiated safety training, mentoring, which CASA has now stopped. We had been putting into place a lot of safety procedures, which really were the responsibility of the regulator, and at no time were our plans criticised. They certainly said they'd like to see us move more quickly, but at no time did they ever mention this new set of rules. It was presented to me—not shown to me but told to me on 28 November. I said to Mr Monahan: 'What does this have to do with the accidents? It has no relationship to them, these rules.' He said to me, 'I agree, it isn't related, but we have to do something.' That was one day after they'd received a call from the ATSB asking, 'What have you done since the accident?'

No proper protocols were followed. The minister here, sadly, has been grossly misled by CASA. He's been told that there's been public consultation. You will see in your bundle of documents that there are about 10 pages of protocols for consultation that CASA is supposed to follow. It didn't follow any of them. He's also been misled in that—and I spoke to Mr McCormack about this—Mr McCormack had been told by CASA that it was only following the FAA. That is totally, 100 per cent wrong. Private flights in the USA are not regulated. We follow the Californian model, US Angel Flight West, the biggest operator, which does private flights—no regulations. There are so many ways that they have misled the minister, which is really unfortunate. I don't blame the minister. It is the responsibility of CASA (and his CASA-sexual aviation adviser) to properly inform the minister.

What we would like to see—and I hasten to add that when I challenged Mr Carmody at a meeting in Canberra, where various CASA executives and our directors were present, about why he was not following protocols on this, Mr Carmody's first answer was, 'Well, I have the power'  —that is, to issue an administrative directive without going through the protocols. I pressed further, and Mr Carmody's answer was, 'Well, Marjorie, because it's easy.'  That's what he said in front of his senior executives and me and one other director of Angel Flight. And, really, what CASA hasn't done, which we would welcome, is to get rid of this ridiculous document, which does not address any safety issue whatsoever related to these, and most, accidents, and send it to where it's supposed to go—to advisory committees, to industry, to proper industry consultations.

CASA says: 'We went to industry consultation. We set out this consultative document a few weeks before Christmas.' Then the responses came in. Within three working days after the responses—and there were a huge number of responses—they had the rules published. That seemed a bit odd, but how reliable are they? And Mr Greg Hood from the ATSB has also read these and clearly relied upon them, because that was raised at our last meeting. I have added to your documents just one example of these submissions where an ATPL commercial airline pilot, corporate jet pilot and very experienced private flying pilot put in a very lengthy submission of five pages. What came out from that same person on the website—and you have this in your bundle; I won't mention any names—is four lines. That was said to be this person's submission: four lines. (somewhere in HERE)

  
Typical but still unbelievable - 

Hmm...and what about the 'passing strange' Henwood connection:  https://auntypru.com/forum/showthread.ph...16#pid9916

Cursed curiosity bump got busy – so I managed to ‘scroll’ down to the gubbins.


“Last name (required)" quoth the document. There, neatly typed in was the name ‘Henwood’. An old Cornish name, something to do with wild birds and woodlands – but, I digress.  

Not a lot of the ‘Henwood clan’ in Australia, even fewer in aviation circles; fewer again in the list of qualified aviators. There is however a Henwood employed by the ATSB. We must all hope that the ATSB Henwood  (lead investigator) into the Mt Gambier AF accident; is not the writer of the submission. (If she did indeed provide a submission).  For many reasons, as it should cause a minor furore; the Australian paints a picture – HERE. But if (Big IF) the unqualified ‘Henwood’ was ‘lead investigator’ and the writer of the ‘response’ I imagine the very least that would happen would be a call to strike out the cosy MoU between CASA and Hood’s version of the ATSB. CASA could wind up deep in the snake pit – if they have used this one submission – pre-emptively – in their haste to clip the wings of Angel Flight. At very least, someone could do a bit of digging and find out just exactly how aeronautically and investigatively qualified Henwood is, to be ‘Senior Investigator’. Not too much info on the ATSB site.

-   

MTF? - Yes MUCH...P2 

ps Media release from Angel Flight CEO Marjorie Pagani:

Most of you would be aware that we appeared before a public inquiry (on Wednesday) into the ATSB and CASA, in relation to the ATSB Report and the CASA CSF Rules.

After many requests for an answer by Senator Patrick directed to the ATSB, they finally conceded that they had not interviewed one single pilot before reaching their conclusion that there was ‘perceived pressure’ on volunteer flights – a significant matter as this assumption was central to their findings.

CASA admitted its rules may be ambiguous, and conceded it was an error to include helicopters. It has been required by the Inquiry (for the second time) to provide its safety case within two weeks.

The Senate committee will consider the evidence at the close of the evidence.

We would like to express our appreciation to all of the RRAT committee, in particular Chair Susan McDonald (Qld) and Rex Patrick (SA) for steering this important investigation, and giving us the opportunity to present our data (by independent experts) which shows clearly that the ATSB report and assumptions are seriously flawed, and to require both agencies to be accountable for their actions, which have adversely affected the general aviation community, and the disadvantaged people of rural Australia.

We would also like to thank our volunteer pilot and hon. Safety Manager Dr Owen Crees, for his invaluable assistance, and Ben Morgan and AOPA for the tireless efforts directed to protecting the rights of pilots to fly without unnecessary and unfair restrictions and costs. I urge those of you not already members of AOPA to consider joining, to help strengthen this important advocacy organisation.

Regards,

Marjorie Pagani
Chief Executive Officer
Angel Flight Australia