[Peetwo]

Sully and the search for IP -

While on Sully -

It always amazes me the strange parallels that play out on opposite sides of the globe in the world of aviation accident investigation...

The following New York Times article by Christine Negroni highlights the NTSB sensitivity as being portrayed as 'sullying Sully', in his command actions in the 208 seconds it took to successfully dead stick an A320 into the Hudson River, with a zero fatality outcome:

‘Sully’ Is Latest Historical Film to Prompt Off-Screen Drama
By CHRISTINE NEGRONI
SEPT. 9, 2016


 
Tom Hanks as Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III in “Sully.” Credit Keith Bernstein/Warner Bros. Pictures, via Associated Press

Compare that to these comments from the original ATSB Investigator in Charge of the VH-NGA (Norfolk Is - PelAir) ditching investigation: 

  
And as they say - "the rest was history..."

Next on Sully was this excellent perspective from A320 driver Owen Zupp , via Oz Aviation...

The parallels with ATSB historical and ongoing botched investigations like the PelAir debacle or the MH370 saga continue. Therefore I thought it prudent to carry the modern day Annex 13 AAI lessons learnt from the original NTSB investigation and 'Sully' the movie across to the continuing search for ATSB investigative probity...

To begin here is (IMO) a particularly relevant quote from today's Byron Bailey slap at the ATSB, via the Weekend Oz.. :

The US National Transportation Safety Board, the world’s premier aviation accident investigation board — using the opinion of bureaucrats relying on armchair aviation specialists, computer simulations and simulators — subjected the captain’s decision to ditch in the Hudson River to close scrutiny.


They did contend that the aircraft was capable of returning to LaGuardia or reaching the nearby Teterboro airport in New Jersey (an airfield I have flown out of recently).
When presented with the opinion of the flight crew and technical information from the black boxes, the NTSB was gracious enough to concede its initial premise was flawed.
How unlike the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s handling of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. P2 - In bold swap for your favourite ATSB cocked-up/cover-up investigation

 Next, in a further strange irony - , the following OP from the excellent (white hat fraternity) CASA publication Flight Safety:

Silver screen, silver tongues
Sep 16, 2016

Cinematic mythmaking is not funny when it detracts from safety

Aviation and the movies were two transformative technologies of the 20th century. Yet they have long had an awkward, unproductive relationship. The evidence for this is that there are few, if any, masterful films about flying, and many risible ones.

A list of the greats might include The Right Stuff (1983), but even here the imperatives of keeping the script snappy slice out much of the attention to detail safe flight depends on. Test pilots do not attempt altitude records on a whim, for example. (Surviving ones don’t, at any rate.)

The list of stinkers is long, and, to be fair, amusing, particularly if your idea of amusement is bitter laughter and having your ideas about the stupidity of the mob confirmed. They include the Airport series of 1970s disaster films, The High and the Mighty (1954), an unintentionally hilarious study of pre-CRM flight decks, complete with face-slapping; Flightplan (2005), which attracted the ire of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants; and the high point of the genre, Snakes on a Plane (2006).

‘So what?’ you might say. Pilots, engineers, controllers, cabin crew and managers go to the pictures for the same reason as everyone else; to be entertained, not to see their profession mirrored in excruciating detail. The problem is myth. Hollywood deals in myth, but aviation can’t afford to because myths get in the way of safety. The myth of the all-knowing, steely-eyed, square-jawed aviator is undoubtedly appealing, but was arguably also the source of so many avoidable accidents that aviation developed crew resource management in response, to puncture it.

Sully, the dramatisation of US Airways flight 1549, currently screening in Australia, is a textbook example of this hazard. And in aviation safety management terms it does create a hazard. When real life events become scripts it’s inevitable, and mostly harmless, that composite characters are created, timelines telescoped and side issues removed. If not the story would be too unwieldy. But Sully commits a graver sin. By presenting the US National Transportation Safety Board as small-minded bureaucrats, it delegitimises their work. This is serious because the NTSB has no power to enforce its findings, relying instead on its reputation as an independent inquirer. Any damage to that reputation is a blow against safety. By portraying investigators as bloody-minded buffoons—when the public record of the investigation shows nothing of the sort—the movie is also a swipe at the concept of safety reporting and just culture.

While most readers of this story would understand the distinction between reality and fiction, many non-flying audience members won’t, in the same way laypeople watching Flight (2012) might walk away thinking that secret and obsessive drinking is the mark of a master pilot, and that you speed up to penetrate a storm cell. In the slickly filmed and from a cinematic point-of-view, highly competent Flight, these howlers were perhaps forgivable. They are less so in a script that takes aim at one of the fundamentals of aviation safety.

FSA team
RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

Investigators say ‘Sully’ movie gets it wrong

Then from the New York Times a rather scathing look at the tardiness of the FAA to respond to SRs generated from the NTSB 'Miracle on the Hudson' investigation:

'Miracle on the Hudson' Safety Advice Not Carried Out

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SEPT. 15, 2016, 10:43 A.M. E.D.T.
WASHINGTON — In the seven years since an airline captain saved 155 lives by ditching his crippled airliner in the Hudson River, there's been enough time to write a book and make a movie, but apparently not enough to carry out most of the safety recommendations stemming from the accident.

Of the 35 recommendations made by the National Transportation Safety Board in response to the incident involving US Airways Flight 1549, only six have been heeded, according to an Associated Press review of board records.

The movie "Sully," which opened in theaters last week is based in part on an autobiography by veteran pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, played by Tom Hanks. It celebrates how Sullenberger, along with his co-pilot, flight attendants, air traffic controllers, ferry boat operators and first responders, did their jobs with professionalism and competence, averting a potential tragedy. The plane lost thrust in both engines after colliding with a flock of Canada geese shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York. No one died, and only five people were seriously injured.

"The FAA was very upset back then that we made any recommendations at all," recalled Tom Haueter, who was the NTSB's head of aviation safety at the time. "They thought this was a success story."

But to investigators, the event turned up problems. "This could happen again and we want to make sure that if it does, there are some better safety measures in place," Haueter said.

Fourteen of the recommendations issued to the Federal Aviation Administration and its European counterpart, EASA, are marked by the NTSB as "closed-unacceptable," which means that regulators rejected the advice. One has been withdrawn, and the rest remain unresolved.

The untold story of the "Miracle on the Hudson" was the part luck played in preventing catastrophe on that freezing afternoon in January 2009. The wind chill was 2 degrees and the water temperature was 41 degrees, raising the risk of "cold shock," a condition in which people lose the use of their arms and legs, usually drowning within 5 minutes.

It was sheer chance that the plane, an Airbus A320, was equipped with rafts, life vests and seat cushions that can be used for flotation. The equipment is only required on "extended overwater" flights, and not on Flight 1549's New York to Charlotte, North Carolina, route.

The NTSB recommended requiring life vests and flotation cushions on all planes, regardless of the route. But the FAA responded that it was leaving that up to the airlines.

The board also recommended that vest storage be redesigned for easier retrieval. The NTSB's investigation found that only 10 passengers retrieved life vests and not all of them put them on correctly. Despite some changes by the FAA, the board says it still takes more than a few seconds to retrieve vests, which is as much time as passengers are willing to take when exiting a plane filling with water.

Because Flight 1549's descent was faster than the plane is designed to handle for a ditching, the underside of the aircraft was damaged when it hit the water. The two rear rafts were submerged and unusable. That left only the two forward rafts, which are designed to hold a maximum of 110 people — well short of the 155 on board. Many of the passengers wound up standing on the wings as the plane gradually sank into the river.

The NTSB recommended changing the location of the rafts to ensure capacity for all passengers, since it's unlikely the rear rafts would be available. The FAA rejected that, saying that if Sullenberger had followed Airbus' directions on descent speeds for ditching, the rear rafts would have been usable. The NTSB said the ability of pilots to achieve those descent speeds has never been tested and can't be relied on.

Some passengers wound up using the inflated exit ramps as rafts even though they're not designed for that. But passengers weren't able to release the ramps from the plane, running the risk that the ramps would be pulled underwater along with it. The NTSB recommended requiring quick-release attachments for ramps. The FAA rejected the advice, saying its analysis shows that the attachments were likely to be fully or partially underwater. NTSB said its investigation showed that wasn't the case.

In the movie, immediately after Flight 1549's engines quit, first officer Jeff Skiles, played by Aaron Eckhart, began going through a checklist of procedures for restarting the engines. Pilots are trained to do that in an emergency when they don't know how to fix a problem, but Skiles was only able to get through a fraction of the checklist items before the plane landed in the river.

The NTSB's investigation showed the procedures were designed for a dual-engine failure at a cruising altitude above 20,000 feet, high enough for pilots to complete the list while descending and still have time to regain altitude. But Flight 1549 collided with the geese at an altitude of only 2,818 feet. Among NTSB's closed-unacceptable recommendations are that the FAA require airlines to include procedures for a low-altitude, dual-engine failure in checklists and pilot training.

Continue reading the main story
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Follow Joan Lowy at http://twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/joan-lowy

Sound familiar? - Except how about 15 years for no response...
Finally I go back to the BB OP on 'Sully the movie'...

As for Sully, it is a brilliant movie and a must-see for all airline pilots and cabin crew.

It may possibly be one of the best crew training films made. The well-trained and experienced cabin crew performed admirably in their primary function of passenger safety.

It is a shame a movie could not be made about Qantas QF32, the A380 aircraft engine blow-up out of Singapore where the flight crew, under captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, faced a scenario that their simulator training had not covered (this was also the case with the Sully event).

The engine blow-up took out most of the electrical and hydraulic systems, and it was only the professionalism of the crew of the world’s safest airline that managed an extraordinary feat of airmanship in landing the aircraft safely back at Changi airport.

The ATSB should realise that the opinions of armchair experts, mathematical modelling and simulations do not stack up against the real-world experience and knowledge of professional airline pilots.

MTF...P2