[Peetwo]

Good catch "V"...

Any idea whether the towers impinged the OLS?

Bye the bye Wannabe has brought my attention to today's Oz beat up of the pilot...  

Crash pilot’s form raises questions
ROBYN IRONSIDE
Essendon crash pilot Max Quartermain was involved in a near miss at Mount Hotham.

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Questions have been raised about whether authorities should have taken stronger action against Essendon crash pilot Max Quartermain following his involvement in a near miss at Mount Hotham and his assertion to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau that he did not need to use a checklist.

The ATSB’s final report on the Essendon crash on February 21 last year found the pilot was unable to control the Beechcraft King Air B200 because the rudder trim had been fully wound to the left.

The rudder trim is supposed to be in the neutral position for takeoff, a condition the report found the pilot should have checked up to five times as part of pre-flight preparations.

With the aircraft veering left and losing altitude, and Quartermain apparently unsure of what the problem was, the B200 crashed into the DFO building adjacent to Essendon Airport within 10 seconds of takeoff.

All five people on board, including four American tourists, were killed.

The ATSB report on the Mt Hotham near miss on September 3, 2015, was not delivered until June 27 this year — four months after the Essendon crash.

In that incident, Quartermain was found to have struggled with a faulty GPS and poor weather, misreporting his location several times and coming within 1.6km of another aircraft, which changed its position to avoid a collision.

He eventually landed the B200 on the Mt Hotham runway from the wrong direction after an hour and 27 minutes in the air, on a flight that would normally take 38 minutes.

An incident report obtained by The Australian revealed the eight passengers refused to return to Melbourne with Quartermain later that day.

In response, Quartermain voluntarily suspended himself from flying until he underwent independent flight testing, which he passed at the second attempt.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority recommended he undertake remedial training in a B200 simulator but the ATSB had no evidence he had done so.

Yesterday a CASA spokesman said the recommendation to undertake simulator training was not mandated under civil aviation legislation.

The ATSB also noted in its report that Quartermain did not have an appropriate flight-check system in place for the B200 before the Essendon crash, and quoted previous correspondence in which the pilot said he did not need to use a checklist because he was doing it every day.

The ATSB refused to put a date on that correspondence or say whether any action was taken.

Yesterday, Central Queensland University safety scientist and former accident investigator Geoffrey Dell said the ATSB report on the Essendon crash revealed the very “different levels of safety standards in different parts of the aviation industry”.

“I found it interesting that CASA had issues with non-­compliance (by Quartermain) and months had gone by and nobody had gone to see if it had been corrected,” Dr Dell said.

MTF...P2