[P7_TOM]

The great Mildura Fog and fuel duck up.

Courtesy Crikey, from Ben Sandilands on Plane talking. 

It’s almost three Australian winters since a Virgin Australia 737 with 91 people on board made an emergency landing at Mildura on a fog bound runway the pilots had difficulty seeing and came to a stop with its fuel tanks near empty.

That emergency also affected, although less severely, a Qantas 737, a Qantaslink Q400 turbo-prop and a small SAAB 340, but it was on the Virgin flight that passengers had to adopt the crash position while a pilot called BRACE BRACE BRACE .

Such a drama is extremely rare in an Australian airliner, and no record of anything similar happening in routine domestic operations has been found.

The ATSB inquiry into what has become known in the game as the 2013 Mildura fog and fuel f*ckup is of exceptional importance, because it raised what the safety investigator regards as crucial matters in terms of fuel regulations, airline operational policies and the competency and relevance of services that were or were not being provided by the Bureau of Meteorology.

Or to be blunt, it is about an event where the national slogan ‘she’ll be right’, was wrong, and many, many lives were put at risk.

The Virgin and Qantas 737s, both bound for Adelaide, were forced to land at Mildura because they weren’t obliged to carry enough fuel to go anywhere else when fog suddenly closed the runways as they approached their destination, only to find that the forecast for the MIA town was wrong, and it too was fog bound.

A very lengthy investigation by the ATSB has now reached the stage where the draft final report is in the hands of the airlines affected, as well as the BoM, and CASA, whose rule making wisdom and fortitude is again under scrutiny, and on last word, due for public release in March.

There is a potential problem with this, in that the review period gives directly interested parties like airlines and the weather bureau, an opportunity not just to correct anything claimed to be factual, but to airbrush if they see fit, the language the safety investigator might choose to use.

In short, to provide an opportunity to ensure that as far as possible, the public will be told that ‘passenger safety was never compromised/threatened/affected’ and that there is ‘nothing to see here, just move along’.

ATSB press releases are like the sedatives used in palliative care for the aged, and seldom contain or convey the critical matters it does, sometimes, and to its credit, thrash out in its full reports. They generally put what is left of the media to sleep before it occurs to anyone to actually read the real document and its appendices, and get some help from professional pilots in understanding it.

Make no mistake, the Mildura fog emergency (etc) concerns incidents where the lives of Australian airline travellers were right on the line. But tightening the fuel rules to those followed in the developed world, and even much of the undeveloped world, might cost the airlines money by requiring more fuel to be carried for that rainy, foggy or stormy day when the current practices could result in the filling of truckloads of body bags.

There are times when less obsequious or more direct language needs to be used, and this is one of them.

The interim report of the ATSB was obscured on its web site in a November update saying the draft report was ready for the review process.  However it can be read in full here if you click on the ‘interim’ tab, which doesn’t have its own sub link and might not catch the eye of the casual visitor.

That interim report was reviewed by PT at this link.

What say you P2?  If you take the PT links the 'ATSB report' is linked from the article - the ATSB link is HERE - click Interim for the report.