[Peetwo]

..As Chester clearly intends to never mention aviation, perhaps it would be a good use of resources if he told us of his grooming secrets, perhaps during a special guest interlude on MKR; that’ll WOW the punters.

Well; it’s bollocks ain’t it.  Quite -   - really.

Edit - Cancel that; I just threw up.  Darren has published a picture showing off the back of his hair-do, while he takes a ‘picture’ of the PM and brags about his ‘selfie’ skills.  Ye gods, remind me again, just what do we pay this chump a fortune to do? 

Excellent Q/ "K" and to pinch from your post off the O&O thread, with a couple of additions (including said photo mentioned above) - :

From Ben Sandilands blog  - Plane Talking, on Crikey:-

Nothing can excuse the Albury Virgin ATR safety fiasco, not even this latest piece of ATSB fluff.

Where  the T-tail on Virgin ATR was seriously broken, but kept flying

...Now we have a new minister, Darren Chester, and it is too early to determine whether he does what his department tells him to do, or even asks whether it tells him what he really should be told.


The ATSB initially buried the matter in its weekly review. But based on what the ATSB released in June and what a genuinely deeply concerned Virgin Australia said and briefed, respectively, at that time, this is what Plane Talking then posted:

The core elements of the ATSB report show that Virgin Australia’s engineering contractor and the airline failed to identify and understand serious damage done to this aircraft in the turbulence event.


The aircraft was then allowed to carry passengers for thirteen sectors in that state before an in-flight crisis five days later approaching Albury from Sydney where it was grounded [for months until repaired enough to be flown away for more repairs.]


These are scandalous disclosures.  No one in the general flying public in this country expects that a contract maintenance organisation could be so bad at its job that it failed to understand and identify the grave safety of flight issues apparent on the Virgin turbo-prop on 20 February.


It is after all, what the maintenance provider is paid by Virgin to do, rather than scratch their heads and release the aircraft back into service.


It’s Virgin’s inescapable legal obligation to ensure that all aircraft are safe before flying. It didn’t ensure the safety of these 13 flights. It’s CASA’s role to enforce and maintain a safe level of oversight on airline operations and ensure that those who carry out aircraft maintenance are competent and effective.

It’s the Minister’s responsibility, to make sure that rural and regional air services, including those that fly him and his colleagues to and from Canberra, are safe. It’s called Ministerial responsibility.

How on earth did this situation arise with this aircraft, and what steps have been taken to ensure that whoever screwed up so badly, within Virgin, and within the contractor, never get to imperil the safety of flight in this country in this manner again?

This may seem harsh. But flight safety standards are by necessity harsh. The harsh reality is that 13 passenger loads were exposed to a broken aircraft, and that is intolerable. Read the ATSB document linked to above very carefully, as it contains inferences and disclosures that are very disturbing...

The rest of the article – HERE – is worthy of consideration and discussion.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mountains to Molehills – ATSB style.

When this ‘incident’ first came to light there were serious questions raised, to which ATSB has not deigned to investigate or answer.  The aftermath – 13 passenger flights – are not the aberration, but a resultant of the first in a series of events which remain firmly ignored, unmentioned and; not, as yet addressed.  

In short; the root cause of the initial ‘problem’ remains unresolved.  The ATR has a facility which allows the two normally interconnected flight control systems (yokes) to be disconnected and operate independently.  This in case a manual flight control channel is lost.  With a significant amount of opposite direction pressure from the other yoke, (e.g. one pulls up, ‘tuther pushes down) the two flight control systems may be separated.  This event occurred during a ‘routine’ descent to approach at Sydney, with no noted flight control problem.  The potential for stress and damage caused by opposing control inputs, from two viable systems should have engineering alarm bells ringing, demanding serious, in depth inspection.  It did not.  The controls were simply reconnected, a cursory inspection conducted and the aircraft returned to service; for the remaining 13 flights.

In other accident events ATSB have played the accompaniment to the CASA preconceived notion, Canley Vale and Pel-Air for example.  Where ATSB report supported a stern, rapid prosecution of pilots and operators, through to Coroners court, where required.  There are some very serious incidents still on the books at the moment related to turbo-prop powered aircraft – Moranbah and the Newcastle coal loader incident for example; there are some serious, outstanding heavy jet transport incidents, such as Perth and Mildura which are still patiently awaiting their ATSB final report.

If we are serious about ‘safety’ the minister, the government and travelling public need to get over the bi-partisan system of relying on ATSB and CASA to ‘sort it’ and start demanding changes to the way our ‘aviation watchdogs’ set about doing their expensive business.  But, enough said.   All been said before, and precious little changes.  But gods help the government in power when the unthinkable happens and a Royal Commission is demanded.

The time is now, to get our aviation safety house in order, before we run out of dumb luck.

Toot toot.

When 'Darren' is standing looking down into a smoking hole, filled with body parts, will he have a hair out place then? - Big money say not.

Thanks P7, my shout; soon.

To add to the informative but very damning post from P7, here is just a little bit more for immaculate Chester to contemplate while swanning around inspecting lighthouses and capturing photo opportunities with the PM.

Further quote from Ben's excellent PT article, minister please take note :  

Apart from a fuzzier sense of what happened, diluted by time, and evidence the pilots were talking to each other but maybe not successfully, there is no sign of anything being done to ensure in hard, real measures, that nothing like this can happen again? The way things are drifting along, maybe nothing is going to be done at all?


The ATSB failed to produce a first or second anniversary interim report into these matters in accordance with ICAO protocols.


This is Australia, a first world economy, with a second world it-can’t-happen-here smugness about air safety and a ‘bugger you’ attitude to its obligations to the global air safety community.  This endangers us all.

And some additional comments to the PT piece:

2
Bill Morton
Posted April 13, 2016 at 8:11 pm | Permalink
“nor its contracted maintenance provider knew of or had recognised the implications of that incident”

Contractors work to make a profit and then a bigger profit and bigger management bonuses.

Private profit and public risk – the logical result of market dynamics.


3
Dan Dair
Posted April 13, 2016 at 11:22 pm | Permalink

Virgins brand-image suffers, but essentially, they have contracted-out the maintenance, so they’re not actually at fault. (though what the legal/insurance position would be for overall responsibility, I’m not so sure.?)

However, quite clearly the initial inspection was badly flawed & to some extent, all subsequent inspections by airframe engineers or flight crew is also culpable.

It would perhaps be nice to find out who actually did notice the damage and what it was that drew their attention.?

At least you could take away some kind of positive ‘moving-forward’ message from that information.?

It is depressing (to say the least) that the ATSB have failed to follow ICAO protocols,
and equally demoralising that so long after the event & with a whole aircraft, flight-crew & full-documentation to examine & interview, so very little seems to have been learned and that new knowledge then disseminated to those who might benefit from it.?


4
Dan Dair
Posted April 13, 2016 at 11:28 pm | Permalink

Presumably, there is positive aspect to be taken from this incident……Involving the amount of safety-margin / over-engineering that goes into (at least this part of) an ATR.?

Not just that the tail didn’t fall-off, but that it continued to fly, more or less satisfactorily, thirteen more times & it STILL didn’t fall-off.!!!!
(I’m reasonably sure that particular ‘siver-lining’ won’t make it into the ATR sales brochure.!!)


5
ghostwhowalksnz
Posted April 14, 2016 at 7:19 am | Permalink

It the ‘part’ was broken during a routine descent into Sydney, that doesnt tell me it was over engineered at all. Im thinking it was damaged during previous maintenance or a part used that that had dubious provenance.

Could some help identifying the exact part , as it seems a fairing has been removed to reveal the details, but the fairing wasnt the issue. I can see what looks like a fracture as well.


6
ghostwhowalksnz
Posted April 14, 2016 at 8:25 am | Permalink

Heres a summary of the two linked incidents

http://www.aeroinside.com/item/3998/virgin-australia-at72-at-albury-on-feb-25th-2014-suspected-bird-strike

 
And from the Aunty Pru blog archive: http://auntypru.com/shame-shame-shame-on-you/

ATSB CP Bullocks – Spring cleaning whitewash.


Never thought I’d say it but the ATSB is now officially one of the unblocked holes – organisational influences – in a very mouldy lump of Aussie Swiss Cheese.
Further to my post from the bump in the night thread – Of risks, red flags, ridiculous responses and a rooted system – PartII…

Quote:It is now obvious that the mandarins & minions in charge are air-brushing over a significant crater in the mouldy – aviation safety – Swiss Cheese. Instead of mitigating safety risk they are perpetuating and adding to the risk…FFS – ICAO…FAA..NTSB..TSBC anyone??- SOS

It is worth reflecting on the causal chain for this bizarre phenomenon, where the so called air safety watchdog is complicit in helping cover-up multiple identified significant safety risk issues.

From the Oz Matthew Denholm article today:

Quote:It was released on request to The Australian, with the bureau saying it no longer classified such radar failures as “incidents” ­requiring inclusion in its incident reports database.

“In 2013, the ATSB changed its Australia-wide coding practice for classifying infrastructure reports,” a bureau spokesman said. “As a result, notifications of infrastructure failures are only included in the aviation safety occurrence data if the event ­affected the safety of an aircraft.”

This ATSB change in methodology in recording (or not recording) incidents on the bureau occurrence database also has much wider implications, as not only will those incident records be lost to Aussie industry stakeholders but also to the Worldwide aviation community.

It should also be noted that the ATSB whitewash of the ATCO reported TASWAM incidents – much like the PelAir cover-up – is not in anyway an isolated aberration.

Quote: - They ought to as the iceberg is well and truly exposed –  the myriad of QF issues since 2008, Lockhart, Pel Air, REX vs a coal loader, a bent VA ATR that simply defies belief that it never speared in, and the list goes on. The muppets at CAsA like to talk about ‘red flags’. Well there are so many red flags covering the feckin Australian landscape it looks like the crash scene from the Germanwings crash. ICAO and the FAA must be concerned, surely?

- See more at: http://auntypru.com/shame-shame-shame-on...w2NPo.dpuf

 
Newsflash - Chester was just on ABC Radio being interviewed by Kelly Fuller on the Tamworth aviation rally 2 days ago - verdict?? Murky has reined him in and he is back under the "mystique" spell - FFS!

Well miniscule while your being misled by your head Mandarin, take heed because you have now inherited the 60 minutes clock to impending doom -   

Of risks, red flags, ridiculous responses and a rooted system - PartII

..This is further proof that the system is absolutely rooted - possibly beyond redemption - & in dire need of some external examination. To quote "K"...


"..Aye, nothing to see, move along, the new whitewash will cover the blood stains and the cloak of mystique will vanish all trace of the aberrations and indecency inflicted on the public, who have a right to expect better..."



It is now obvious that the mandarins & minions in charge are air-brushing over a significant crater in the mouldy - aviation safety - Swiss Cheese. Instead of mitigating safety risk they are perpetuating and adding to the risk...FFS - ICAO...FAA..NTSB..TSBC anyone??- SOS      

From the interview this AM it is pretty damn obvious that Skidmore, Murky & Co have blinded (the filter) Chester with the bollocks that 'aviation safety is their No1. priority'. After reviewing some of the above, for them to even suggest that the administration & enforcement of the 26+year, $300+million RRP is justified in the interest of air safety is simply bollocks - wake up Barnaby you now ultimately own this -  

..tick..tick..tick..tick..tick




MTF...P2