[Peetwo]

Hoody the ATSB & back to Reason? 

P9 - Aye, Hoody has his work cut out for him, let’s hope his first act is to acquire a sharp axe.  He knows which heads must roll, but will he swing it?  That boys and girls is the first and only question which matters.

 
Excellent rant "K", totally nailing the Hoody conundrum, if he doesn't act quickly and decisively on taking the Chief Commissioner role, I fear that the ATSB is inevitably doomed to irrelevance & eventual disbandment.

Quoting again from the UP, 'IsDon' pretty much mirrors a lot of the "K" sentiment and takes the dichotomy a step further by joining the dots with the PelAir debacle   :

IsDon - ..If you have experienced yet another display of incompetent forecasting by BoM and the field is below minima for longer than 60 minutes then, with nowhere else to go, you're committed to land regardless of the minima.


That said, expect the Monday morning quarterbacks (ATSB) to pillory whatever decision you make based upon airmanship and the best information you have available at the time. Especially if doing otherwise might actually find the route cause of the issue and that route cause may lay the blame squarely at the feet of Airservices Australia or BoM or some other government organisation that might be an embarrassment to some politician somewhere. How long has it taken for this report to come out, three years? How long did the pilots on these aircraft have to make their decisions? 15 mins? Maybe less.

The discussions here so far have missed the main point of this incident. I find a lot of similarities with the ATSBs handling of the disgraced Norfolk Is investigation and report on this incident. In both cases the ATSB has deliberately attempted to deflect any blame from BoM, CASA, Airsevices or any other government agency and has tried, and failed, to blame the crew.

It wasn't so long ago that the ATSB was formed. It was perceived, at the time, that CASA had a conflict of interest when it came to investigating accidents and incidents as it may seek to hide any blame possibly attributable to its own failings. Fair enough that an independent organisation should be tasked with that responsibility. This incident, and the Norfolk Is debacle, have demonstrated that the ATSB has a way too cosy relationship with other government entitities and will seek to deflect blame from them at all costs. Including destroying the reputations and careers of the crews involved.

Time for the ATSB to go.

And if anyone is of the misconception that Mildura & Pel-Air are merely a 'two off' aberration, please refer to O&O posts 61 to 63. In particular the P9 post - A Sunday rant. (My turn). - where "K" again makes a systematic 'nuts & bolts', no bollocks analysis of both the occurrence & the ATSB (top-cover) report:

P9 - The common threads are easily discerned, but even this latest pathetic report tries to hint at pilot error.  It is a good thing that the ATSB do not apportion blame; but they do hint at it.  Why?, well, another common factor is the sacred cow of the BoM, who only need to be within +/-70% accuracy of actual in their forecast (from memory) to be off the hook.  This level of accuracy has little intrinsic or practical value to a pilot.  In court the responsibility will all fall to the pilot, everyone else has wriggle room and bolt holes, all except the poor mutt in the dock...  

 
&..

..It’s a trend and ATSB should be screaming from the roof tops, demanding something be done to reverse that trend.  Do they? No sir, they do not.  We get presented with a snide, trite, puerile little report which tries to shift the spotlight off the piss poor service to the travelling public delivered by our expensive ‘safety watchdogs’.    

  
&..finally.. :

Routine, bog standard, sensible operating practice.  The rules and the BoM failed the public yet again, with everyone off the hook except those burned alive.  It is high time the ATSB started bringing this trend into focus instead of drafting a carefully prepared, prejudicial statement for prosecution use...

So back to the Hoody conundrum??

Q/Can Hoody drag the ATSB back to Reason? And/or has he even been tasked to do so?

From the government's point of view why would you persevere with a severely discredited, obviously not independent, government agency that is not fulfilling its primary purpose as a transport safety watchdog?

Might as well save the taxpayers $30 million +/- annual running cost of the ATSB, farm the ICAO Annex 13 AAI role to a private organisation, like a Flight Safety Foundation; or an ICAO approved regional (Asia/Pacific) AAI? 

It will be interesting to see which way Hoody jumps but for mine the Mildura Fog duck-up final report should provide the full stop to an era (more than a decade) where the ATSB severely lost their moral (Annex 13) compass - SOB?; or SOB? (sacrifice our bureau or save our bureau )   

P9 - "..The Beyond all Reason methodology and those that espouse it are not only becoming an international embarrassment, but part of the causal chain..."

The clock is ticking and the ATSB is still very much part of the causal chain...tick..tick..tick




MTF...P2