[Peetwo]

Disingenuous? ATSB?, Oh you bet.

As forecast by Aunty Pru, Beaker leads the way.  The ATSB cannot be trusted to reinvestigate the Pel-Air ditching let alone the manipulation of the manipulated final report.  This is the crowd 'helping' the Malaysian government.  The question; just how are they helping, begs answer. 

The Sheik's disturbing post only gives an inkling of the duplicitous nature of the ATSB management ethos, which is fully supported by the government DoIT and by extension, the Minister.  Manning, the new boy is conspicuous by his absence; meanwhile the ubiquitous Uriah Heep continues his on his merry way, unashamed by the Pel-Air report, the Senate Inquiry or the TSBC peer review.  The thing that  really gets me cranky is this benighted industry will, passively sit back and let 'em get away with it: MILDURA; ATR 1; ATR 2; REX 1,  all outstanding examples of how to PC air safety into a 'DIY', in house side line for Safety Management Systems.  

You wait for the company concerned to fix it; wait for CASA to decide if there is a juicy prosecution available; wait until the airline has covered it's arse: then, trot out a fluffy report which says, what happened, what has been done and that all parties are thrilled to bits.  Who needs the ATSB then? no one is the answer, they can just hire a technical writer to mop up, save a fortune and play golf whenever they like (tax payers expense of course) The peer organisations such as NTSB and TSBC must be watching closely; for they too, like a game of golf.  

Here are some of the concerns which PAIN registered with the Senate during the Pel-Air inquiry; still valid, still virginal and still, as yet, unanswered.  We just hope they have done their homework as well as the PAIN research crew have. The questions will be answered then by Golly..   Supplementary submission – HERE – from the AP library.  

Ok, ok, -STEAM OFF.  Well, honestly; etc. etc.   

Toot toot..

In between the time that Senator X called for the Pelair inquiry..

Information about the Inquiry


On 13 September 2012 the Senate referred the following matter to the Senate Standing Committees on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport for inquiry and report.

Submissions should be received by 12 October 2012. The reporting date is 29 November 2012. On 30 April 2013,the Senate granted an extension of time for reporting until 23 May 2013.

The Committee is seeking written submissions from interested individuals and organisations preferably in electronic form submitted online or sent by email to rrat.sen@aph.gov.au as an attached Adobe PDF or MS Word format document. The email must include full postal address and contact details.

...and the first public hearing on 22 October 2012 there was much conjecture on the UP and on various tendentious blogger sites on what would be revealed (or not) on the latest in a long line of Aviation Safety related Senate inquiries.

On one particular day - the 23 September 2012 - PlaneTalking made no less than two posts in relation to the upcoming PelAir inquiry. It just so happened that on the UP I noted & recorded both of these posts. Now upon reflection and in the interests of ATSB investigative probity - with regard to the current bureau PelAir reinvestigation - here is both my UP posts that reproduce IMO these very relevant PlaneTalking articles:

Well, well, well....sure is quiet on PPRuNe lately, hopefully everyone is busy writing up their submissions for the upcoming Senate Inquiry well here's a bit of goss that may help fire up the neurons:

From Planetalking Sep 23, 2012 4:05PM:

Earlier today an article about rumors that the ATSB final report into the Pel-Air ditching was being withdrawn or revised was denied by a Ministerial spokesperson.

But in the course of this an explanation of the RVSM or reduced vertical separation minima was provided, and is published below:

· Non-RVSM-equipped ambulance aircraft can be cleared by NZ ATC into RVSM airspace, should traffic allow and the necessary altitude ‘buffers’ be available.
· In this case the aircraft had been cleared by ATC to cruise within NZ/Pacific RVSM airspace, at FL350.
· After initially being cleared by ATC at FL350, the aircraft was instructed to descend to FL270 due crossing traffic. Being conscious of the increased fuel burn at the lower altitude of FL270, the crew requested and was subsequently re-cleared by ATC to climb to FL390. This was maintained until descent into Norfolk Island. Once at FL390, the crew reassessed their fuel remaining and set a lower thrust setting to satisfy themselves that they had sufficient to complete the flight with the necessary reserves intact.

This is further evidence as to how this ATSB report is a disgrace.

Nowhere in the report is RVSM even mentioned. It is very obvious in the ATSB report that the there is a place in the narrative where the words reduced vertical separation minima ought to have appeared.

Why didn’t they appear? Could it be that the report avoided or expunged this term so as to avoid alerting the curious reader to the fact that the Pel-Air jet which routinely used this non-RVSM airspace was not equipped to use it as a matter of course?

Might that have then caused the curious to turn to the standard operating procedures quoted by the ATSB and discover that there is no contingency written into them for a need to exit RVSM airspace, and that the fuel burn figures pointed to by the ATSB have even less relevance to the situation the pilot was put in by the operator that CASA so woefully failed to supervise?

This illustrates why this report is so bad. It is designed to steer the reader away from asking questions that would embarrass the operator, or from asking further questions about the quality of its oversight by CASA.

The ATSB has already been caught out publishing incorrect information about the meteorological information provided to the pilot, which was picked up in the 4 Corners report and dealt with there.

Its inability or reluctance to even mention RVSM or the certification of the pilot to land at Noumea in the event of a diversion is telling.

This report is going to be examined in minute detail in the Nick Xenophon instigated Senate committee hearings into it and related matters.

It is reasonable to anticipate that the operational history of Pel-Air medical repositioning flights in this part of the Pacific, including diversions to Noumea which caused friction with its civil aviation authority because of the level of equipment present on its aircraft will be discussed under parliamentary privilege.

Indeed there is a real prospect that the hearings will carry out the job that the ATSB either failed to do, or was unable to bring itself to do because of the adverse effects that may have eventuated for Pel-Air.

And hey this is not an isolated case of a substandard, ulterior motive ATSB 'Final Report'...hmm it's just one that has grabbed a certain amount of mainstream media and public interest!

ps Don't know if I'm really taken by the new format at Crikey!

New evidence that the ATSB Pel-Air crash report is flawed | Plane Talking 

     
& then a couple of hours later... :

Update to the update!

---

Planetalking sure is firing up about all this:
Quote:
*Publication of this post has produced a categorical denial from a Ministerial spokesperson that the ATSB report in question is being replaced or amended.
Of course those who read this post will become aware that this is not the real issue, which is the disgraceful quality of the report that the ATSB issued.

There are rumors circulating that the ATSB final report into the Pel-Air medical evacuation flight ditching near Norfolk Island in November 2009 is to be withdrawn and replaced with a new report.

The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Anthony Albanese’s media officers have not responded to a query about the validity or otherwise of this rumor since Saturday morning.

If the rumors are true, it will an heroic admission of exceedingly serious failures on the part of the ATSB, the air safety investigator, and reflect very adversely on CASA, the air safety regulator.

It would also follow from such an admission that both bodies would undergo some serious changes in management and conduct in order to restore Australia’s reputation as a level one state in terms of air safety administration.

If however the rumors are untrue, or there is instead a ‘final’ final report being prepared, which will attempt to repair the damage to process and institutional reputation done by the ‘no longer final’ final report, as well as to the captain of the flight, both bodies will struggle to regain credibility and respect from many stakeholders in aviation in Australia, as well as in the eyes of peer organisations, including ICAO and the FAA.

One way of analyzing the performance of the ATSB and CASA in relation to Pel-Air is to look at how the final report was constructed to load almost the entire blame for the accident on the captain for having inadequately fueled the small Westwind jet for first stage of its medical retrieval flight which was from Apia to Norfolk Island, where it was to refuel and continue to Melbourne, carrying the two pilots, two passengers and two medical professionals.

But even though the ATSB quoted at length Pel-Air’s operating manual for the flight, including the fuel calculations based on its flying at an optimal altitude, it fails to mention anywhere that the jet had not been upgraded to allow it to fly through much of the oceanic airspace it was to traverse at such altitudes under the rules applying to reduced vertical separation minima or RVSM.

Nor could the jet legally plan for or make a fuel diversion to Noumea as it encountered stronger than expected headwinds and higher fuel use because of the RVSM issue because Pel-Air had not trained the pilot to use New Caledonia airspace, which as a special jurisdiction affiliated with France, uses European air space regulations.

Neither of these critical matters are mentioned anywhere in the report. But they were raised with the investigating officers. The significance of both matters could not fail to be apparent to CASA or the ATSB, making inescapable a conclusion that both bodies were averse to making detrimental findings about the operator and had thus unjustly and deliberately focused all of their negative findings on the pilot.

For the two most important bodies in the public administration of aviation safety in Australia to conduct themselves in this manner is grossly improper.

The captain, Dominic James, was being directed by an airline CASA failed to properly regulate, to fly an oceanic route according to a fuel rule that CASA ought never to have approved, according to standard operating procedures for an altitude unavailable for much of the distance because it wasn’t RVSM equipped, and had not been trained to the regulatory standard required to use New Caledonia airspace in the event a diversion to Noumea, which some have criticised him for not using.
Much of the context for this is made lay friendly by the ABC TV 4 Corners report into the crash. But on its website, under background documents at the above link, 4 Corners also posts a CASA audit of Pel-Air which took place, as had been scheduled before the crash, shortly after the crash.

This audit found multiple serious safety deficiencies in Pel-Air’s operations at the time of the crash. Yet in its previous audit of Pel-Air CASA didn’t find much at all, leaving viewers to wonder whether the operator suffered a precipitous decline in standards in that period, which would surely have required an immediate grounding Tiger style, in the interests of public safety, or whether CASA audits are fundamentally useless before the fact.
The 4 Corner’s program site also hosts uncut videos of interviews with CASA’s director of safety, John McCormick, and the chief commissioner of the ATSB, Martin Dolan. Both interviews are shocking reflections on the processes and attitudes at these vital aviation authorities.

Dolan’s performance is more than 18 minutes of severely compromised testimony, in that he seems utterly unwilling to even acknowledge that CASA found more than 20 safety deficiencies were in effect at Pel-Air at the time of the crash or that they had anything to do with the accident.

Dolan and McCormick are well aware, and on the public record as being aware, that it is the airline or the operator that is ultimately responsible for the flight standards that are delivered to, or upon, the public.

This concept of airline or operator responsibility is the foundation stone of air safety regulation in the developed world. It has been trashed in Australia by this disgraceful ATSB report into the Pel-Air crash.

The performance of CASA and the ATSB in particular has been exposed as severely and dangerously deficient by the Pel-Air report and its aftermath.
One way or another, and without delay, these deficiencies must be remedied.
Oh there is some awful murky waters loaded with pony pooh to navigate before we get to the guts of all this me thinks...scratching my sore noggin!

Yeah Blackie and I forgot to mention the 'Beaker from the Bureau'....hmm that would be a.. on cozying upto that numbnut!

Hmm...it would appear that I didn't think much of Beaker back then either.. ..& is Ben Sandilands a soothsayer all something...

It is also interesting to see the political process with Albo's toing & froing...err bollocks & bullshit and how that is now being replicated by Farmer Truss & co...FFS

However more importantly is the part on the RVSM in Ben's 1st post that on the 2nd (or is it 3rd??) time around should not be again neglected to be reviewed, along with all those other awkward operational/organisational contributory factors, like for example err...regulatory oversight...

MTF...P2