[Peetwo]

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.

 

MTF...P2