[Peetwo]

Personally I think this could be applied across a much wider spectrum of the Federal bureaucracy and is systematic of more than a decade of successive poor governance and direction at an executive government level,  Sandy dubs it the 'Canberra disease' and Ventus reckons it is a syndrome i.e. "acquired institutionalised ostrichitis syndrome" (AIOS).

AIOS reaches epidemic proportions in Can'tberra -  

Earlier in the week 'that man' from the Oz kept reporting on a something-nothing (possible) tailskid occurrence of a Singapore Airlines on departure out of Melbourne: 

Tail strike suspected
12:00amEAN HIGGINS

A Singapore Airlines plane flew on from Melbourne to Singapore despite being told it had struck its tail on takeoff..

  
Now along with Ben Sandilands from PlaneTalking, I was a bit bemused where 'that man' was going with what appears to be on the surface a non-event?? 

Probe into ‘tail strike’ flight
12:00amEAN HIGGINS
The air crash watchdog has launched an investigation into a now confirmed ‘tail strike’ at Melbourne airport...

But then after the 2nd Higgins report (above) the penny dropped...

This was not so much about the Singapore tail-strike occurrence but more about goading the ATSB into action by making reference to a) it being an immediately reportable incident that automatically must be investigated; and b) referring twice to the last high profile tail-strike incident that also occurred out of YMML:

..In 2009 at Melbourne airport, an Emirates Airbus A340-500 struck its tail three times, and sustained $100 million damage as it barely cleared the airport boundary fence before returning to make an emergency landing...

   
As a passing strange coincidence - - I too had recently referred to that accident in a Mount NCN post:

Safety loops, trends & disconnections?

Kharon: "..So to the 717 crew and their wee problems; how deep do we dig?  Is the fix presented adequate to task? Has the ATSB done enough to cure the problem?  Can this be classed as an ‘operational’ matter?   The rational way to answer is to examine one factor only – can this happen again?  The answer to that is a resounding absolutely. The loop remains open.."

Nail on head "K" but this is not an isolated occurrence aberration, these are well documented repetitive operational safety issues. Yet the ATSB don't seem capable of even joining their own dots, which perhaps is best reflected in the fact that this occurrence was 'desktop' investigated and discretely hidden away in the latest ATSB SIB - WTD..

IMO if the ATSB had of join some of their own dots, they would have spotted a growing trend of similar incidents/accidents that potentially point to similar/identical contributory factors.

 
Okay so referring to both the PT article & the Oz last article they both state that apparently the ATSB is investigating.
However if you refer to the ATSB aviation investigation page or the new investigation page there is no sign that this immediately reportable matter was actually recorded, or that the ATSB is actually investigating. This is despite other incidents being reported and being investigated since the Singapore incident date -     
Perhaps the ATSB is being bloody-minded about this because it is 'that man' making a song and dance about this reasonably innocuous event.
But it also could be that they're otherwise distracted and have gone into a 'bunker' mode because apparently that man Higgins has been doing some more digging on the MH370 front... :

ATSB jumped gun on MH370
12:00amEAN HIGGINS
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau was wrong to say it had consensus on a “death dive” theory for flight MH370.

[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/author/0573acb566bb47c45e64e4c55a998aba/?esi=true&t_product=the-australian&t_template=s3/austemp-article_common/vertical/author/widget&td_bio=false[/img]
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau issued a bulletin falsely claiming it had “consensus” from a team of international experts for its “death dive” theory that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went down fast in a pilotless crash, before two overseas agencies had a chance to express a view.

The ATSB made the claim as its chief commissioner Greg Hood joined the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines in a media campaign to hose down an alternative “rogue pilot” ­theory that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his aircraft and flew it to the end outside the search area chosen by the ATSB.

Internal ATSB documents obtained by The Australian show that while a senior investigator drew the incorrect “consensus” statement to the attention of colleagues only minutes after the bulletin was released, the organisation never issued a correction and instead secretly deleted the claim from its website the next day, after it had been widely ­reported internationally.

The ATSB repeatedly refused to say why it had deleted the “consensus” claim, and falsely denied doing so in a subsequent post.

Internal ATSB emails ­obtained under Freedom of Information statutes by The Australian reveal the truth behind the organisation’s media manoeuvres.

The revelations come amid doubts expressed by independent experts about the reliability of the Inmarsat satellite data the ATSB uses for its rapid descent assumption, and claims the agency has, to avoid embarrassing Malaysia, steered away from the “rogue pilot” theory.

MH370 vanished on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board. Its radar transponder was turned off and radio contact was broken.

Radar and automatic satellite tracking data indicate the Boeing 777 reversed course early in the flight, and flew along the ­Malaysia-Thailand border and out over the Andaman Sea before making a sharp turn south to end up in the southern Indian Ocean.

The ATSB designed the search zone based on its “ghost flight” theory that the pilots were incapacitated, and that after flying on autopilot, the aircraft came down quickly after running out of fuel.

In July, two developments led to international debate about the ATSB’s strategy.
Reuters reported the project director of the underwater search, Paul Kennedy of Dutch survey group Fugro, said the rogue pilot theory might be right after all.

“You could glide it for further than our search area is, so I believe the logical conclusion will be, well, maybe, that is the other scenario,” Mr Kennedy told Reuters.

The same weekend, New York magazine revealed a Malaysian police report indicated the FBI had determined Zaharie had charted a similar route on his home flight simulator.

Days later, the ATSB issued a bulletin in the name of the federal government’s Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre for the MH370 search, downplaying the rogue pilot theory.

The ATSB claimed in its July 27 bulletin the satellite data showed MH370 came down “most likely in a high rate of descent”. As originally released, the bulletin said: “This is indeed the consensus of the Search Strategy Working Group,” referring to experts including from the US and British air crash investigation.

The documents obtained under FOI show that just a few minutes after the bulletin was ­issued, an ATSB senior investi­gator warned colleagues by email this was an “error” and that the sentence should be taken down.

“It is certainly not yet the consensus position of the SSWG … 2 parties are yet to make a formal response on the subject,” the investigator said.

The email chain shows another ATSB senior investigator agreed and gave instructions for the sentence with the “consensus” line to be removed from the ATSB’s and the JACC’s websites.

But the ATSB did not retract the sentence until the next day, by which time it had been reported internationally, including in Mal­aysian and Chinese publications.

As earlier revealed by The Australian, the deletion of the “consensus” line was discovered by British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, a member of the independent group of aviation experts who on their own initi­ative have been reviewing the MH370 scientific data.

When, at the time, The Australian rang the ATSB spokesman who had issued the July 27 bulletin to ask why the deletion had been made, the spokesman hung up and JACC director Annette Clark declined to respond.

Subsequently, ATSB MH370 spokesman Daniel O’Malley and JACC chief co-ordinator Judith Zielke would also not say why the “consensus” line had been secretly disappeared.
When The Australian reported the deletion of the sentence, the ATSB issued a denial on its website, saying the report “falsely ­accuses the ATSB of ‘secretly retracting’ information”.

In a statement after it had been made aware of the FOI material, the JACC said: “The information was retracted when it was learned not all working group members had, at that stage, provided formal responses. Subsequently a consensus view was reached.”

Oh Hoody what a total 'clusterf**k' - but wait there is more...

Two days ago DIPs to the 2nd PelAir cover-up/cock-up?? ATSB investigation were informed by Dr (Beyond-all-Reason) (I've a conflict of interest) Walker that there would be a further public update issued on the progress of the 'RE'-investigation.

Well again without absolutely any recognition (i.e. update to the aviation investigation page, media release or tweep from the twitter guy) the ATSB discretely by stealth released an update eight in what has to be the longest running ICAO Annex 13 AAI in the history of the world??

Updated: 13 October 2016

The collection and analysis of a large volume of evidence for this investigation has taken longer than originally foreseen.  However, the ATSB now has sufficient evidence to establish findings across a number of lines of inquiry.  The ATSB is in a position to finalise a draft report which is expected to be released to directly involved parties by the end of the year.  Subject to comments made during the draft report review process, the final report should be released publicly in the first part of 2017.

    
No further comment required - UDB? No actually totally ducking believable...


MTF...P2