[Peetwo]

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

Still stewing over that absolutely UFB, piece of shite - ATSB Corporate Plan . Summed up nicely in this quote by the Ferryman...

Kharon quote:


"..But ATSB should know better; this ‘thing’ Dolan has signed off is another escape route, crafted by experts with the sole aim of changing sod all, while looking good.  You can easily picture it; there’s Beaker, fresh from another failed attempt at swimming lessons; feeding his face on the best of Toulouse tucker, when a text pings in – “Sign this Mate, all will be well, enjoy your break, L&K MM”.   “OK” texts Beaker; “Use the one on record”.  And so the legend of the ATSB is continued; unabated, unashamed and unrepentant.."

However after reading the following - from that little chappy from Tassie - sadly I believe that it is only getting worse and the relentless tick..tock of the doom clock, is gradually getting louder, & louder...  

{Note: The most disturbing bits are in red bold}

Tasmania air surveillance: Unreliable radar sees planes go ‘missing’  

• by: Matthew Denholm
  
• From: The Australian
  
• September 02, 2015 12:00AM
  

Tasmania Correspondent
Hobart
Failures in Tasmania’s $6 million air surveillance system — including planes disappearing from radar screens for minutes on end — are still occurring ­almost monthly, as air traffic controllers warn the system is “unreliable”.  

Reports previously missing from the public record but provided to The Australian show the Tasmanian Wide Area Multilateration (TASWAM) radar-like surveillance system failed 38 times between June 2013 and last month.

There have been 14 failures reported this year, including on June 18 when an aircraft near Launceston disappeared from radar screens “for several minutes”. That was the third such ­occurrence since June 2013, ­including an August 9, 2013, ­report of an aircraft departing Hobart not being visible on screen for 20 minutes.

These latest failure reports are in addition to more than 90 faults reported between 2010 and May 2013 and revealed last month.

They include blunt assessments from clearly frustrated and concerned air traffic controllers that TASWAM’s “unreliability” is sapping “confidence in their surveillance ability”, adding to their workload and even delaying flights.

While the earlier data was publicly available on the website of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the more recent data — post-June 2013 — had not been made publicly available.

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.”

The 38 post-May 2013 ­failures in TASWAM occurred in June, July, August, October and December of 2013; every month of 2014 except August through to October, and; every month of 2015 up until and including July. Outage times varied from one minute to seven hours.

Bureau media manager Marc Kelaart said none of the reported TASWAM failures — even where planes disappeared from radar screens — were regarded as having compromised aircraft safety.

“The aircraft were still under full communication and control by ATC and there were no losses of separation (planes flying too close to each other) or other ­safety related incidents,” he said.

The failure reports made by air traffic controllers show a level of frustration and concern about the apparent fragility of the TASWAM system, introduced in 2010 after concerns about several near misses. One report, dated January 25, 2013, relating to intermittent failures, warns “controllers are losing confidence in their surveillance ability” because of the frequent faults.

Further failures a day later led a controller to report: “Controller confidence in the system is very low. They’re basically using procedural techniques for separation (of planes) due to the unreliability of TASWAM.”

On December 19 last year, the system’s failure forced controllers to delay all flights between ­Tasmania and Melbourne by five minutes as a “mitigation” strategy.

In May last year, controllers complained that TASWAM’s 14 ground stations were not monitored for power failure, unlike other radar or radar-like systems, and that a failure in just one or two receivers was enough to down the entire system. On July 8 this year, Hobart airport reported 11 of the ground receivers went down at a time of high air traffic, with “complete loss” of surveillance across the state.

Mr Kelaart said some of the failures were due to problems with aircraft transponders, which send signals from planes to the TASWAM ground stations, rather than the infrastructure itself. “In addition, Airservices has advised the ATSB that controllers were encouraged to report everything, regardless of whether the TASWAM was being used at the time, and that some reports were associated with lack of controller awareness around the areas of coverage,” he said.

Airservices Australia, the government business that is responsible for TASWAM, said it was “confident that Tasmanian airspace is safe”. “In the past five years the TASWAM network availability has consistently exceeded 99.95 per cent,” said Greg Hood, an Airservices air traffic chief. “There have only been three instances where the target was not achieved and the lowest level of service availability was 99.80 per cent.

“Of the TASWAM faults ­reported by Airservices to the ATSB, none were assessed as ­impacting on aircraft safety or ­requiring further investigation.”

There were 14 ground stations, using signals to triangulate aircraft position, and “multiple layers of redundancy in place to safety manage any technical faults”. “In the event of a single ground station fault, there are ­numerous other ground stations fully operational to ensure surveillance is maintained,” he said.

The number of failures had ­declined over time as controllers grew “more aware of the system parameters”.

UFB....  

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     
MTF...P2