[Peetwo]

'That man Higgins' today, via the Oz : 

A pilot’s act of heroism, then lives destroyed over eight years of hell

Pilot Dominic James at Mosman in Sydney. Picture: John Feder..

• Ean Higgins
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM November 27, 2017
  

Whatever he did or failed to do earlier in the flight, the way pilot Dominic James brought it to an end is regarded by aviation buffs as an extraordinary feat of airmanship, the stuff of legend.

It was during the night of ­November 18, 2009, and James was at the controls of a Westwind two-engine jet owned by Pel-Air. He was in command in the left-hand seat, co-pilot Zoe Cupit in the other. In the rear, on a stretcher, lay the very ill Melbourne woman who was the purpose of his CareFlight mission from Australia to Samoa and back: Bernie Currall, who had contracted a severe infection from a botched hysterectomy and needed intensive care in an Australian hospital.

Also in the passenger section were Currall’s husband, Gary, and the flying doctor and nurse sent to look after her during the flight, David Helm and Karen Casey.

James had set off with enough fuel to fly from Samoa to Norfolk Island, where he intended to take on more; he left the tip tanks unfilled to keep the aircraft light enough to get to high altitude where jets get best endurance.

The CareFlight Pel-Air Westwind plane that was forced to ditch in the sea off Norfolk Island.

He did not have enough fuel to fly to an alternative airport in the vast spaces of the Pacific if the weather at Norfolk Island turned bad at the end. But that was allowed for his type of flight under Civil Aviation Safety Authority regulations, it fitted Pel-Air’s operational guidelines, and the weather report for Norfolk Island when he set off was good. When the plane approached Norfolk ­Island, however, the weather wasn’t good. In fact, it was just about the worst it could be, the rain torrential, the clouds low.

James and Cupit attempted to get the plane down on Norfolk Island four times, trying different approaches. Fuel was about to run out, and there was nothing for it: James had to try to ditch the aircraft in the sea, in a storm with big seas, in the dead of night.

James lowered the flaps and slowed the aircraft, but it was too dark to see the direction of the swell. The plane hit the water hard, and Casey suffered a severe jolt which tore her neck and shoulder muscles.

“It broke underneath me,” Casey told The Australian. “The impact smashed all my teeth. I was knocked out very briefly.”

Karen Casey was a nurse on the Careflight plane.

The water started pouring in, and Bernie Currall was helpless on the stretcher. “She was absolutely terrified,” Casey said. “She was strapped in, relying on us. It was a rough ocean, and it was coming in over her head.”

Helm and Casey worked to get Currall unstrapped, and they ­escaped the sinking plane. James marshalled everyone in the ocean. Some had life jackets, some didn’t. James got his pocket pen light out and shone it into the night.

Incredibly, a fireman saw the light from shore, and was able to relay directions to a rescue boat, which picked up all six souls.

Businessman and aviator Dick Smith, who has flown similar twin-engined light jets over oceans, described James’s actions as “an incredibly talented feat”.

“Being able to get that plane down at night and all the passengers out alive was great,” Smith said.

Eight years on, the toll of the accident is still being played out. Casey has not been able to work again, the physical pain from her injuries persisting, and she still struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. While she got a large compensation payout for the physical injuries, Pel-Air and its insurers fought her claim for PTSD, arguing it was not a “bodily injury” as required under the Civil Aviation Act. Casey won the PTSD part of the case initially, but the airline successfully reversed it on appeal earlier this year.

Helm, who suffered a debilitating back injury, returned to his ­native England and works as an emergency doctor near Brighton.

The greatest tragedy involves the woman for whom the flight was made: Bernie Currall. Having survived the ditching, being pulled naked from the sea after 90 minutes in the water, and then a long time in an Australian hospital, she developed chronic PTSD and had to spend periodic stretches in mental wards.

“She was one of those people who smoke a lot and seem permanently spooked,” James said of Bernie Currall’s mental state.

She, too, battled Pel-Air and its insurers for years. In February 2015, she committed suicide.

“She put up a brave fight, but the insurers were brutal,” James said. All the survivors have stayed in touch, and they are close.

“We were up against three sets of giants,” Casey said. One was Pel-Air, the second was an “insurance company that was just massive”, and the third was “a federal government that wasn’t going to help”.


The 2009 Pel-Air Westwind on the sea bed. Picture: ATSB

Left a widower, Gary Currall is understood to be trying to put the terrible affair behind him.

Cupit went on to fly with Virgin. But James is still battling two government agencies: CASA and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which investigates air ­accidents. In what James says remains “the worst thing that happened to me in my life”, after the accident CASA suspended his ­licence to captain jets that have two pilots. CASA has revoked the suspension, but the flyer and aviation watchdog are still locked in a dispute about how and when an ­“observation” flight can be flown to confirm it.

James now flies as co-pilot, or in command but under the supervision of a captain, for another charter and air ambulance company, Falcon Air.

After the accident, the ATSB took almost three years to produce a report that focused on what it said were mistakes by James relating to fuel planning and weather checks.
But an ABC Four Corners investigation revealed a CASA audit after the crash, and not mentioned in the ATSB report, uncovered 57 breaches and “serious deficiencies’’ at Pel-Air.

The disclosures led to a Senate inquiry, which found grievous failures in the ATSB investigation and CASA’s handling of the affair.

In its wake, the then transport minister, Warren Truss, ordered an unprecedented fresh inquiry, and last week, after another three years, the ATSB brought down its second investigation report.

The second report placed considerably more emphasis on failures in CASA’s regulations governing long-distance flights in remote areas — of which it says many have still not been resolved — and Pel-Air’s poor guidelines.

While it confirmed James had operated within the rules and regulations, it still found he made a number of errors related to fuel management and keeping abreast of weather updates. It also found he did not put the aircraft down at optimal speed and failed to report his final location.

James says the report still leaves a stain on his reputation as a pilot despite the fact he has had a flawless professional flying record over the past eight years.

He says the investigators did not appreciate the circumstances at the end of the flight.

“The whole world is burning down around our ears,” James said of those final minutes.

“We have the radio, the passengers to manage, and I have to control the aircraft.”

Casey thinks James’s treatment by the ATSB “stinks”, and misses the fundamental point as far as she is concerned: “I’m hurt, but I’m alive. I have nothing but praise for Dominic.”

James has had a longstanding ally in former independent senator Nick Xenophon, who helped get the Senate inquiry going. Xenophon’s replacement, Rex Patrick, told The Australian he was dissatisfied with the second ATSB report and was taking steps to have the organisation reappear before a Senate committee for a further grilling.

The second report comes at a time when the bureau is under ­attack for repeatedly failing to bring out investigation reports on schedule, and for suppressing critical information related to its failed search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Senior ATSB officer Colin McNamara refused an FOI request from The Australian for the MH370 documents because their release “would, or could reasonably be expected to, cause damage to the international relations of the commonwealth”, a decision supported on review by ATSB chief commissioner Greg Hood.

According to Smith, a former chairman of CASA, it all goes to a toxic culture in the ATSB, which he describes as secretive, insecure, and inclined to protect its own interests and those of companies and government instrumentalities rather than serving the public and individuals.

Relatives of those killed in air accidents point to broken promises. Felicity Davis’s husband, John, a prominent environmentalist and documentary-maker, was killed in a helicopter crash in ­November 2015, and at the time the ATSB said it would complete an investigation in a year. It has now been two years, and the ATSB keeps saying it will produce a report, but doesn’t.

“I just feel we are getting fobbed off,” Davis said.

The Australian put questions about Davis’s concerns to the ATSB and sought comment from the investigator involved. There were no answers to the questions and no comment from the investigator, but McNamara took a dislike to the fact that the request had been made in the first place, and sent a menacing email back. Unless The Australian changed its behaviour, McNamara warned, “We will exercise our right not to engage with you on future requests”.

According to Smith, such behaviour is “outrageous”. “They are basically a secret, secret organisation. They are so insecure.”

Smith believes it’s time for Transport Minister Darren Chester to take charge and demand the ATSB bring itself up to the levels of efficiency, timeliness and transparency that Australians expect for their taxpayer dollars, and in a fashion consistent with a democracy that values free speech and freedom of the press.

And some comments...

Michael

Look at PelAir history from the time it phoenixed out of Wings Australia in the early 1980s. Three Westwinds destroyed and four pilots dead. Dominic and many other living victims.

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Peter

The ATSB is a national disgrace! Vastly experienced pilots like Byron Bailey and hundreds of others, plus experienced air crash investigators have continually voiced their opinions that MH 380 was flown by the pilot deliberately into the sea, and there is sufficient physical and other evidence to support this view.

The ATSB officer MacNamara has given the game away by stating that to release documents to the Australian would, quote: "would have the expectation to cause damage to the international relations of the Commonwealth"!

That sentence says it all, and has revealed what this whole appalling fiasco for the last two years has been about!

They have been looking in the wrong place, they know they have been looking in the wrong place, have spent 2 years and $200 million doing it, all to appease the sensibilities of the Malaysian Government.

If the minister doesn't put the cleaners through this disgraceful body he too should be fired.

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David

Bring CASA to heel as well.

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pmac

ATSB and the APVMA must be trained by the same obfuscation college

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graham

After coloring themselves into a corner, it was a pretty good effort by Dominic James and crew including the Doctor and Nurse who didn't wilt under pressure; pretty rare to have a 100% survival rate in such a situation.

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Peter

Who do these "supervisors of flying bus drivers" think they are. Shades of 1950's Qantas pilots who exuded a "God Like" air. Time for public servants to be just that "Public Servants"

MTF...P2