[Peetwo]

Update: Latest MSM coverage.

Via PlaneTalking:

No Mayday explanation from cockpit of Essendon crash plane

Ben Sandilands Mar 29, 20179 Comments

[i]The causes of the Essendon disaster remain unresolved and the investigation has no cockpit voice or sound recordings to work on[/i]

Via the Age:

No engine failure on Essendon crash plane before impact: investigators
The Age
 - ‎17 hours ago‎

Via ABC news online:

Essendon DFO plane crash: Transport safety bureau finds no evidence of engine failure.

ABC Online
 - ‎20 hours ago‎

Finally via the Oz... :

No engine fault in Essendon Airport death flight

Images from an ATSB preliminary report into a Beechcraft King air B200 crash last month.
Simone Fox Koob
The Australian
12:00AM March 30, 2017
[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/author/cbd838094c278f870442ad76e8fc0bae/?esi=true&t_product=the-australian&t_template=s3/austemp-article_common/vertical/author/widget&td_bio=false[/img]
The light plane that crashed ­moments after takeoff from Melbourne’s Essendon Airport last month, killing all five on board, had no pre-flight faults and the ­engines had not failed when the aircraft went down.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigators are still trying to determine what happened in the cockpit of the Beechcraft King Air B200 on February 21 after the black box retrieved from the wreckage failed to record any audio from the incident.

Texan retirees Greg De Haven, Russell Munsch, Glenn Garland and John Washburn were on their way to King Island off Tasmania on a golfing “trip of a lifetime” when the plane crashed into a DFO shopping centre and burst into flames. All four passengers and Melbourne pilot Max Quartermain were killed.

The ATSB’s preliminary report into the crash, released yesterday, revealed there were no pre-existing faults with the aircraft that could have contributed to the accident and no evidence of pre-impact failure of either engine’s internal components.

“Witnesses familiar with the aircraft type reported that the takeoff roll along runway 17 was longer than normal. After becoming airborne, the aircraft was ­observed to yaw left. The aircraft performed a shallow climbing left turn,” the report read.

Byron Bailey, a senior captain with Emirates for 15 years and former RAAF fighter pilot, said the preliminary report indicated one of the engines may have started to lose power seconds after takeoff, a problem that can generally be ­corrected easily by pilots.

“There shouldn’t be a problem if a competent pilot is handling it,” he said. “You keep the wings level and keep going straight by pushing the opposite rudder to compensate for the yaw.”

Experts also said it would be harder to determine the cause of the crash without the audio ­recording from the plane, which normally records pilot speech and radio transmissions, control movements, aural warnings and background sounds such as propeller and engine noise.

Doug Drury, from the aviation department of the school of engineering at the University of South Australia, said it was unusual for the cockpit voice recorder to have malfunctioned.

“The cockpit voice recorder is very durable so it’s unusual for something to go wrong ... it would be (the responsibility) of whoever does the high-level maintenance on it ... to do a routine inspection,” he said.

The Australian revealed last month the Beechcraft Super King Air was in excellent condition after it underwent a routine check by service company Interair eight weeks before the crash.

The only audio available to ­investigators from the flight is the recorded air traffic control audio, in which Quartermain broadcasts the word “mayday” seven times.

The ATSB said yesterday further investigation would include a review of the pilot’s medical and flying history and a review of the approval process allowing the DFO to be built near the airport.

Chris Cowan, the chief executive of Essendon Airport, said yesterday the preliminary investig­ation showed “much of the speculation to date has been wrong and has not been appropriate, especially to the victims’ grieving families”.

“Tragically this accident could have happened at any airport in the world,” he said. “It’s a reality of modern society that airports operate in proximity to urban environments.”

"..Airport land use and air space planning always includes CASA [Civil Aviation Safety Authority] and Air Services approvals, based upon internationally accepted approaches..."  -    Err not according to CASA Acting DAS Comardy & Tiede:

Civil Aviation Safety Authority

[20:18]
 Senator XENOPHON: I have some questions about the tragedy at Essendon Airport and safety zones and I have some questions in relation to CASA and Airservices. Those are the two primary areas I will be traversing—I will be guided by my colleagues there. What role does CASA have, Mr Carmody, in relation to rules as to how close developments can be to airport runways?

Mr Carmody : What would normally occur is that those wishing to develop something on the airport would go to the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development. The department would come to us and, I presume, to a number of others and seek advice on the safety implications for such a development.

 Senator XENOPHON: That is, respectfully, quite a vague answer. If you do a search of academic papers online, there are dozens of papers you can find on calculation of third-party individual risk in determining public safety zones for airports. An annexure gives a description of the calculation method and how you determine that. It is an academic paper that I am referring to. There is another one from 2008 from the 4th International SIIV Congress in Palermo, Italy: Proposal of a methodology for airport public safety zones policy. There is a fair body of information out there in determining the risk, is there not?

Mr Carmody : There is. I was just going through the process of how we provide advice. Mr Tiede, who is the Manager of Air Navigation, Airspace and Aerodromes, can give you the details on how this works.

Mr Tiede : The public safety zone item is a matter of government policy. It relates to protection of third parties, as Senator Xenophon has said. The only public safety zone legislation in Australia exists in Queensland, and we can look at that in detail—perhaps not this evening—if it is helpful. In the case of this accident, a public safety zone protected area would not have played a part in the role of the accident. The aircraft did not enter what we would understand to be a public safety zone area. Traditionally or historically, public safety zones have been quite a sensitive area for government and the NASAG. It has been in discussion in Australia since about 2010, but little headway has been made. I would suggest it is more of a policy matter than a CASA matter.

Senator XENOPHON: You are there to determine the safety of those that use aircraft, and you do not say CASA has a role to say, 'This ought to be an appropriate buffer zone, or an appropriate public safety zone,' so that if a plane does lose engine power it has the maximum chance of landing safely, rather than having a building in the way?

Mr Tiede : That is correct.

 Senator XENOPHON: There are no rules, are there?

Mr Tiede : The state of Queensland has some.

 Senator XENOPHON: What is CASA's role?

Mr Tiede : CASA's role would be to provide regulatory input to the discussions as the policies developed.

 Senator XENOPHON: So you do not have a role to say to local councils or whoever controls the land around the airport, 'We don't think you should have a whopping building within 500 metres of that runway'?Mr Tiede : I think Mr Carmody highlighted that in the case of leased federal airports we are a referral agency to the department. We provide safety advice to the department.

Mr Carmody : And the department considers all the advice it receives, I think, in the development planning process, including ours...

Perhaps discussion on the absolute 'zilch' care factor from CASA and the 'partial' (self-preservation) factor from M&M's department would best be taken to the Airports thread, here is a link & further "K" quote from this AM, for those interested... :

An irritating puzzle.

"There is a possibility that the increase in the dollar trigger may permit larger buildings to be constructed under that trigger which may inadvertently have an effect on aviation safety."

[which] may inadvertently have an effect on aviation safety.

Irritating, I keep going back to that statement; it is so blasé and dismissive. Weasel words. The purpose of it troubling; in the final analysis it is not ‘aviation safety’ which is at risk, but the public. Anything relatively large, travelling at speed, loaded with fuel hitting a building will cause damage, fire and possibly take lives. There is a sensible prohibition against building in the median between motorways; I imagine some smart developer would just love to build a shopping mall and a few blocks of home units between the lanes – life near the fast lane.

 
Finally this, from the "K" post above, could go to further pre-accident organisational issues or contributory factors:

 "..The reason being that after the ‘Mt Hotham’ debacle, there was period of ‘CASA’ inspired ‘checking and training’. I need to know if this was done ‘for real’ or at a simulator facility; if so which one? No doubt I’ll have the answers soon. Then we shall see.."  

Indeed it will be fascinating to see how this investigation develops because (IMO) if anything the initial preliminary findings create more hypothetical questions than answers...

MTF...P2