[Peetwo]

Update to O&O investigations & the secretive ATCB -

ATSB O&O investigation No. - AO-2015-131

Via 'that man' in the Oz today:

Anger at chopper crash probe delay

12:00amEAN HIGGINS

It has now been two years since Richard and Carolyn Green and John Davis died when the helicopter they were in crashed.

Delays to chopper crash inquiry ‘ridiculous’: Felicity Davis

Felicity Davis says while many other people have complicated marital histories, hers was simple: she married documentary maker John Davis and had two children with him. “We stuck together for 43 years,” she said.

That marriage ended two years ago when, in early November 2015, her husband died when a helicopter piloted by his friend, landscape photographer Richard Green, crashed in rugged country in the NSW Hunter Valley region during a storm. Green’s wife, Carolyn, also died in the crash, and the tragedy of the prominent Sydney environmentalist trio made huge headlines.

Ms Davis has done her best to put her life back together after losing her husband but is still tortured by not knowing how the accident happened.

That’s because the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which initially told her it would finalise its investigation in less than a year, still hasn’t done so two years on.

“I just feel we are getting fob­bed off,” Ms Davis told The Australian. “The other day, I came back and I just thought, this is getting ridiculous.” Ms Davis has found her treatment by the ATSB disrespectful and undignified.

“I have just been waiting and waiting,” she said. “They keep saying they are going to file a report.”

There is still mystery about how the accident happened.

A farmer reported seeing the Airbus Eurocopter EC 135 land in a field at one stage, Ms Davis said, but it returned to the air. “What I want to know is, why did they set off again?” Ms Davis said.

But apart from her obvious personal interest, Ms Davis says she wants the investigation to achieve what the taxpayer-funded ATSB is supposed to do in the first place: work out what happened for the good of aviation safety.

“Was it something that the pilot did wrong, or the helicopter? We need to know because it would stop other people doing the same thing,” she said. “It’s a safety issue.”

It is exactly what an ATSB ­investigator said in a corporate video the bureau made to explain the investigation process.

“The whole idea is that perhaps we can prevent another accident happening,” the investigator said in the video.

The log on the ATSB website about the helicopter crash investigation shows repeated failure to meet its own deadlines. In October last year it said a draft report would be issued in November that year, and a final report a month later.

The ATSB then kept pushing back the date, citing “workload and competing priorities”, and now says it expects completion in “the first quarter of 2018”, which would be 2½ years since the ­accident.

An ATSB spokesman refused to answer questions about the helicopter crash investigation “until the final report into the accident is released”.

Transport Minister Darren Chester declined to comment.

 

Via the Courier Mail:

Shameful heel-dragging on air incident probes

Mike O’Connor

December 1, 2017 12:00am



AS tens of thousands of Australians prepare to head to the airport for the great Christmas holiday migration, they might care to ponder the following.

In the skies over the Gold Coast on July 21 last year, an arriving Jetstar A320 and a departing AirAsia X A330, with a combined seating capacity of 520 passengers, came frighteningly close to flying into each other.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau says the jets came as close as 183m vertically and 630m laterally when regulations stipulate the separation should be 305m and 6km respectively.

The ATSB said the results of its investigation into this would be made public in July this year. This has not happened.

According to the ATSB website, completion of the draft investigation report into the incident “has been delayed by the involvement of the investigator in charge on other aviation safety investigations and tasks”. It says a final report is anticipated to be released to the public in May 2018, almost two years after the event.

In February this year, four American tourists and their pilot were killed when their aircraft crashed soon after takeoff from Melbourne’s Essendon Airport.

It was later revealed that the pilot was being investigated over a near collision at Mount Hotham on September 3, 2015.

Essendon DFO shopping centre in Melbourne following the crash of a light plane. (Pic: Jason Edwards)

The completion of this investigation has been delayed three times due to competing priorities and workload of the investigator in charge.

In July it was promised by October. It still has not been released.

According to the ATSB, “the draft report has been finalised and is currently undergoing an internal review process prior to approval by the ATSB Commission”.

It begs the question that if the investigation had been carried more quickly, would that pilot have been at the controls at Essendon and would the Americans still be alive?

Just over two years ago, three people died in a helicopter crash in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales.

Among the victims was pilot Richard Green, who had a history of close calls.

He had lost his licence for six months in 2013 after being involved in four dangerous flying incidents in 11 days in May 2012.
Six months later he was in trouble again when his helicopter struck power lines.

Following the Hunter Valley tragedy, the ATSB said it would complete its investigation in a year. Two years on, Felicity Davis, whose husband John died in the crash, is still waiting for the report.

Only a third of ATSB investigations are completed within 12 months.

Dick Smith has called the ATSB “secretive” and “insecure”. (Pic: Dylan Coker)


Dick Smith, a former chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, has described the ATSB as “secretive, insecure, and inclined to protect its own interests and those of companies and government instrumentalities rather than serving the public and individuals”.

“They are basically a secret, secret organisation,” he said this week.
It is screamingly obvious that there needs to be a public inquiry into the workings of the ATSB.

Business as usual, with inquiries into incidents that involve the safety of passengers dragging on for two years, is no longer acceptable.

The aim, surely, is to discover the reason for accidents or “near misses” as quickly as possible and prevent them happening again.

The system appears to be broken. The public deserves a better deal.

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MTF...P2