[Peetwo]

Update to Willow's WOFTAM waffle report (the www.report)-

The comments from the Planetalking article are IMO well worth regurgitating...

1. [b]James Nixon[/b]
   July 11, 2017 at 3:23 pm
   I call it “the cleanest third world country in the world”.
   After 31 years in the industry I am still amazed that an Australian A380 can fly from Dubai to Sydney and not have to carry an Alternate because of a CASA “Grandfather Clause”.
   This saves them carrying 20 tonnes of fuel every day compared to international airlines, and has resulted at least one declaration of emergency so they could land below minima. That flight didn’t even have enough fuel to divert to Canberra.
   Twice inbound Australian international flights have had to declare emergencies when arriving at Perth after unforecast weather materialised. One flight, from Singapore, Pilots even discussed ditching until a paxing Captain convinced them otherwise.
   Despite being called (behind their backs) “AUSTR-ONAUTS” for their pedantic ways, Australian pilots routinely set off to destinations in Australia without carrying enough fuel to reach an alternate airport, carrying only enough to cover and INTER or TEMPO for bad weather.
   But they don’t get it. It’s not only weather that can cause troubles. The better the weather, the more light planes out and about.
   One day, before flying from Alice Springs to Darwin, a Flight Engineer and I had to work really hard to convince a new Captain to carry enough fuel to get to Katherine if anything went wrong. He was terrified he would “be called in the office” for carrying extra fuel.
   We arrived in Darwin, on short final for 11, to see a Cessna 210 brake off a wheel and spin on the runway in front of us. Going around from fifty feet, we had only seven minutes of fuel before we were committed to fly to Katherine.
   Thankfully, the Cessna pilot dragged his wreck off onto the cross runway, the men in the little yellow car removed the wheel; and our passengers reached their destination.
   Had my Captain taken his planned fuel, and had the Cessna suffered a more debilitating arrival; we would have had to land over the wreckage on whatever runway remained.
   Fog is the enemy in Australia, a country that talks big about air safety, but only has two Cat 3B runways. When you fly into third world countries that have better facilities you wonder: “So does that make my country, Australia, the 4th, or 5th, world?”
   Pilots: if they don’t give you a Lo Vis licence and Cat 3B runways, cover your backside with fuel to go somewhere else. Not 200 kgs on every flight “for Mum” (200 kgs gets you no-where and is not going to help your Mum); but enough for a realistic alternate.
   And if they want to call you in the office for it, great. Get them to put it in writing. Take pics of every document, then contact Ben Sandilands or me.
   We’ll make you famous for sticking-up for your passengers.
   As Don Kendell once told me: “I haven’t spent 20 years building my company so you can turn a Metro into a rotary hoe, 20 miles west of Hamilton. Take The Fuel”.
   He was a very wise man.
   James Nixon
   http://www.TheCrashOfMH370.com
   
   
   1. 
      [b]Dan Dair[/b]
      July 11, 2017 at 8:35 pm
      Australia is flying 21st century, state-of-the-art aircraft,
      with fuel-alternative rules that were ‘cutting-edge’ in the late 1950’s.!!!
      (& with an unfeasably large number of airfields served by passenger jets, with no control tower, ILS, fire-service or effective weather monitoring….. but hey, she’ll be right.?)
      
      
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   [b]JW (Aka James Wilson)[/b]
   July 11, 2017 at 4:04 pm
   Jesus wept! A 177-page report to state something that’s blindingly bloody obvious. What a waste of taxpayer dollars.
   [/size]
   
   1. 
      [b]Resolute[/b]
      July 11, 2017 at 11:13 pm
      Yep very true
      
      
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   [b]Comet[/b]
   July 11, 2017 at 5:27 pm
   So now we have to follow the money trail to discover the reasons the ATSB refuses to perform its duty.
   Royal Commission needed.
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   1. 
      [b]Dan Dair[/b]
      July 11, 2017 at 6:52 pm
      ….or proper, old-school investigative journalism in the Australian mass-media.?
      
      
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   [b]Dan Dair[/b]
   July 11, 2017 at 7:32 pm
   I wonder from where the ATSB could acquire such a devious plan……….
   Sir Humphrey Appleby to Jim Hacker:
   “Put the problem in the title of the report, thus avoiding any further need to refer to it in the text”
   The ‘Yes Minister’ school of action-avoidance.
   [/size]
   
5. 
   [b]Resolute[/b]
   July 11, 2017 at 11:09 pm
   “doesn’t mention the 737s didn’t have to carry enough fuel to prevent it happening”
   Exactly Ben !
   CASA is always very good at arse covering.
   
   
6. 
   [b]Chris Randal[/b]
   July 11, 2017 at 11:47 pm
   Whilst you could be correct it is more that fact that Australia seems to believe that the appropriate NAVAIDS/Approaches are available/developed.
   The fault is NOT with the carriers – it is with CASA and their masters, and the fact that the motive for those running airports is profit NOT safety.
   Even WLG and CHC have ILS approaches and ZQN has an RNP approach. What does BNE/ADL/any other airport in Australia have?
   
   
   1. 
      [b]Chris Randal[/b]
      July 12, 2017 at 2:19 am
      Sorry – I’ll rephrase the first paragraph:
      “Whilst you could be correct it is more that fact that Australia seems to believe that the appropriate NAVAIDS/Approaches are not required”
      
      
      
   2. 
      [b]JW (Aka James Wilson)[/b]
      July 12, 2017 at 10:45 am
      Your comparison with New Zealand airports is not valid. BNE, ADL and other ‘large’ city airports in Australia have ILS approaches, but only MEL (and soon PER) has a full CAT IIIB ILS approach that allows landing in very low visibility conditions. The others only allow landings where the visibility is at least 550m, or in some cases higher. New Zealand is no better off than Australia – the only CAT IIIB approach is in Auckland. The approaches at WLG, CHC and ZQN do not allow landings in low visibility conditions (ie less than 550m).
      
      
      
      1. 
         [b]Dan Dair[/b]
         July 12, 2017 at 11:22 am
         James,
         Are there any figures available on just how much the new ILS system at Perth will cost.?
         
         
         
         1. 
            [b]JW (Aka James Wilson)[/b]
            July 12, 2017 at 4:05 pm
            I believe the total cost of the upgrade is about $36 million. Most of that cost isn’t actually the ILS upgrade; it’s the lighting infrastructure and transmissometers that are required to support low visibility operations.
            
            
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      [b]Dan Dair[/b]
      July 12, 2017 at 11:20 am
      “The fault is NOT with the carriers”
      Whilst agreeing that it is CASA who should be providing the lead on this matter, by requiring proper fuelling for an alternate airfield, in line with normal world standards,
      I’ll take issue with it being ONLY about CASA & not the airlines.
      Independently, any airline COULD choose to fly with enough fuel for a proper alternate, but they actively choose not to.
      That choice is made every day by virtually all of Australias carriers for the good of their profits
      & in direct conflict with claims of the so-called emphasis upon a passenger-safety culture.
      I would be extremely surprised if most/any Australian passengers realised that their home airlines don’t carry alternate fuel on a day-to-day basis,
      or that this practise is completely within the laws & regulations of Australia.?
      I anticipate that most passengers just assume that what they see in TV & films, about diverting to an alternate airport is what happens at home as a matter of course,
      and this is what their plane will do if the destination becomes unavailable.?
      Should the worst ever happen (as it nearly did at Mildura), the airlines will be quick to blame CASA, but this simply won’t wash.
      It is the airlines who are putting pressure upon CASA not to tighten the regulations, because they know it will affect short-term profits.
      Any airline could take this step & then market it as a safety feature (which it is.!), to attract concerned passengers & shame other airlines into following suit.?
      [/size]
      
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   [b]Dan Dair[/b]
   July 12, 2017 at 8:53 am
   “unforecast fog at Mildura”
   IMO that’s a significant part of the problem.
   Mildura isn’t the centre of the universe, but equally it’s not a one horse town.
   They have regular jet services as well as a bunch of daily turbo-props.
   But what they don’t have, is anyone actually on the ground who could let anyone in the AirServices main control office know that it was a bit foggy there.
   So AirServices allowed the two B737’s to divert to Mildura because they thought the weather was OK.?
   Actually, they must have KNOWN the weather was OK, otherwise they wouldn’t have let them divert.?
   Which is a bit of a shame considering they were completely wrong.!
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   1. 
      [b]JW (Aka James Wilson)[/b]
      July 12, 2017 at 11:13 am
      Dan,
      The BoM [i]does[/i] have an observer on the ground at Mildura, who reports to the BoM. The BoM then issues the observations and forecasts that are passed to aircraft by AirServices. In this case, AirServices personnel on the ground in Mildura (if they existed) would not have made much difference. If I remember correctly, the BoM observer stated that the fog formed very quickly, by which time the two aircraft were almost overhead Mildura with no fuel to go anywhere else.
      
      
      
      1. 
         [b]Dan Dair[/b]
         July 12, 2017 at 11:34 am
         I wasn’t there & don’t purport to be definitive on this,
         but in my experience Mist forms very quickly.
         Fog tends to develop over a period. Indeed Mist may form & then lead to fog later.?
         My only experience of ‘instant’ fog is that which happens when you are travelling & move into a ‘fog bank’.
         If you’re stationary & the fog exists as a bank, you can see it slowly moving towards you.
         If it forms around you. it tends to do it over a period of an hour or hours.
         However, whilst I freely admit that I have no idea what is normal & usual for the area around Mildura airport,
         I would venture to suggest that the observer may have had his feet-up until ‘the two aircraft were almost overhead’, at which point he started rapidly thinking-up a good excuse.?.
         
         
         
         1. 
            [b]JW (Aka James Wilson)[/b]
            July 12, 2017 at 4:09 pm
            I wasn’t there either, but the ATSB investigation report into the incident states the following:
            “Between 0925 and 0931, the visibility at Mildura abruptly decreased from about 28 km to 1,000 m. In addition to the recorded indications, the BoM forecaster received a phone call from ATC asking about the conditions. In response the forecaster contacted the BoM observer located at Mildura Airport. The observer advised the forecasting office that the mist and subsequent fog arrived rapidly from the south.”
            
            
            
            1. 
               [b]Dan Dair[/b]
               July 13, 2017 at 6:27 am
               James,
               “Between 0925 and 0931, the visibility at Mildura abruptly decreased from about 28 km to 1,000 m”
               So, according to the observer the weather changed from essentially completely clear to totally boxed-in, over a period of just six minutes.?
               I refer you back to my previous ‘feet-up’comment.!
               
               
               
            2. 
               [b]Tango[/b]
               July 13, 2017 at 8:08 am
               Dan: You are being your usual obscured self.
               I have seen fog banks move over 2 miles in very short periods of time.
               In minutes you can go from totally clear to zero zero.
               There is a lot lacking in the system, but with what they had it was what looked like an easy choice.
               What I can say is that if you have the instruments, you can both predict and forecast the POSSIBLIY of a sudden fog development or movement.
               That certainly was lacking.
               My take was I would have taken Adelaide, but then I have a great deal of confidence in my ability to fly instruments, Adelaide had much better setup than Mildura and a diversion with no reserves if iffy at best.
               
               
               
            3. 
               [b]Dan Dair[/b]
               July 13, 2017 at 10:18 am
               Tang,
               I’m not being ‘obscured’.?
               JW tells us that the official report says;
               “Between 0925 and 0931, the visibility at Mildura abruptly decreased from about 28 km to 1,000 m”
               28 kilometers is around 17.5 miles. That’s a darned sight more than two miles……
               If the observer was actually observing, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that they’d have noticed the weather begin to close-in when they first saw the fog-bank or adverse conditions, around the time that visibility was no-longer at 28km.?
               With the benefit of hindsight, Adelaide is a far better option, especially as it ended-up having much better weather than was forecasted.!
               But importantly, the two aircrafts’ crews were told by AirServices that Adelaide was fogbound & Mildura was clear, when actually, the reverse turned-out to be true.!
               
               
         2. [size=undefined]
            [b]JW (Aka James Wilson)[/b]
            July 12, 2017 at 9:57 pm
            I should add, the aircraft arrived overhead Mildura shortly after 0930.
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            1. 
               [b]Dan Dair[/b]
               July 13, 2017 at 10:27 am
               James,
               & I should add that according to the figures you tell us were in the report,
               this weather-front closed-in on Mildura at an approximate speed of approaching 300kph or around 180mph.
               That’s pyroclastic flow or hurricane pace, not that of a random bit of weather.?
               
               
8. [size=undefined]
   [b]George Glass[/b]
   July 12, 2017 at 5:32 pm
   It is difficult to convey to the general public how crap the infrastructure in Australia is. Politicians are terrified of infrastructure. It cost money. It’s in unpopular. Fat better spend money on child care centres. So infrastructure is ignored. Perhaps you could justify Cat 1 20 years ago. Today is delusional. Its exhausting even thinking about how you to explain to the travelling public how exasperating it is for professional aircrew to have to explain delays/ diversions etc. etc. And it all boils down to this; crap infrastructure, weak bureaucracy, know nothing politicians and no forward planning. It’s dangerous, it’s incredibly frustrating for all professionally involved and won’t change until there is a black smoking hole in the ground. The subsequent Royal Commission will be a ripper.[/size]
   

MTF...P2