#SBG Addendum: 13 Feb ’19

SBG Addendum: 13 Feb ’19 – AP Forum version.

(Yesterday, 09:19 PM) P7_TOM Wrote:  Hook, Line and Sinker.

The bait taken; the catch assured. As the wondrous CASA ‘smoke and mirrors’ machine defers and deflects public attention away; far away from the real story. History GD; never, not ever forget it. 

GD – “There needs to be an immediate halt to CAsA’s actions (I mean CAsA’s sanctions and violations) against Angel Flight and a high level inquiry needs to be enacted. It frightens me to say this, and hold no hope, but the Miniscule needs to intervene AND DO IT RIGHT NOW. Either that or all of industry must come together and act as one now.”

“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course…it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.

Sure, the Angel Flight bagatelle is of passing interest; it is despicable etc. However the actors in this little charade are ‘winding the audience up’ to a fever pitch’ Much like a magician needs to distract the careful watcher; so must CASA. Carmodiy’s arrogant statements are designed to be inflammatory; and, boy-oh-boy – ain’t it working. 

CASA, the DoIT, Ministers and many other ‘big guns’ are in deep do-do. If the big underwriters ever get close to the flames, those emanating from the government assisted cooling of the  fires lit by the Essendon DFO disaster; heads will roll; lots of ‘em. The ‘serious players in the insurance world and there are very few of ‘em must be farting blue lights.  If the Unions – like the SDA – ever get down to brass tacks and see just how little insurance is available; or, may be legally counted on there will be hell to pay.

You see there is not an underwriter (not a broker) who will acknowledge a legitimate claim against them if it can be demonstrated that the DFO was ‘knowingly’ built within the area designated as a ‘runway’. There is not a Union in this world which would, without full foreknowledge of the associated risk, place it’s members in a high risk situation – not without ‘insurance’, risk pay and an evacuation plan. Not going to happen – right.

And there it is. No one body is responsible for ‘approving’ the DFO grand scheme. The DFO operation is in so much debt as to beggar the imagination. Their building insurance does not cover being hit by an aircraft having a ‘legitimate’ accident within a mandated runway area. The insurance boys will be out of that so fast it would make your head spin. The only folks happy are the legal eagles – years and years of work there – it is a true legal paradise.

It begs the question. Where was our much vaunted CASA safety oversight when the DFO master plan of madness was approved? Hiding behind some legal interpretation of ‘Commonwealth’ land and ‘approvals’ perhaps? They are supposed to be the ‘be all and end all’ of ‘safety’.  Did they realise the risks the DFO crowd were taking? Did they even stop for a moment and think Whoa? No, they bloody well did not, which is bad enough. But did they also, knowingly, turn a blind eye to the aberration? 

There is a multi story building, within the mandated confines of an active runway. It is widely known that the building should never have been approved. It is not widely known that the DFO could not, not at any price, buy insurance for an arguably illegal building being in a collision with an aircraft.

Angel Flight is a worthy cause and has my full support – but it ain’t the headline; not anymore. The CASA smoke and mirrors deflection system is at full throttle. Why else resurrect the done and dusted AF drama. To perhaps avoid a Royal Commission asking why CASA appear to be and seem determined to continue taking no responsibility for the Essendon DFO accident at all. If not the much vaunted, all seeing, all powerful, all wise, ‘safety watchdog, then whom? –Now that is a question I should like answered – fat chance, right.

Like Ol’Tom I’m still scratching my head at the sheer mendacity of Carmody Capers & the CASA Iron Ring to face down the critics of their manafactured non-safety case embuggerance of Angel Flight…  

Quote:…Importantly, CASA has deliberately bypassed its own policies, protocols and ethical standards, by failing to adhere to its regulatory reform criteria. Instead, the CEO of CASA has issued a Direction, simply a ‘law’ which is signed by him. I have repeatedly asked the CEO why he has done this, and the response was, firstly, ‘because I have the authority’, and then when pressed further, ‘because it’s easy’…

The above relayed statement simply beggars belief but does effectively highlight the extent to which Carmody is prepared to smear Angel Flight,AOPA Oz and by extension all CASA licensed pilots all for the  single purpose of distraction, diffraction, obfuscation of what is we believe to be the real cover-up story. In case you missed the reference (above)… 

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Essendon crash: Locals say plane smashing into shopping centre ‘a tragic mess’
By Jane Cowan
Updated 22 Feb 2017, 3:26pm

Ref: ABC News 22 February 2017 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-22/p…ss/8290906

Just the other day, Robert Fisicaro, who works inside Essendon’s DFO shopping centre, was talking to a friend from the airport. An idle chat.

“There’s gonna be an accident here,” his mate said.

The conversation is eerie now, as a black hole gapes in the side of the DFO building at Essendon and five people are dead.

Robert works at Berkowitz Furniture inside the complex and was moments away from work when the plane crashed.

“This airport’s smack in the middle of suburbia. Planes are going to come down always. We’ve all been saying that. We say it in jest, but now it’s happened,” he said.

“It’s not something you think, ‘Oh gee, it should have never happened’. It happens. If you’re gonna put a shopping centre next to a runway this is what happens.”

The crash has him rethinking the safety of his workplace.

“Our biggest problem here is one way in, one way out. The entry and exit points here are actually pathetic, so we’re very lucky.

Quote: “..Half an hour later and the general public would have been in here, so it could have been a whole different ball game. And if it was a weekend, that’s 10,000 cars blocked up first thing in the morning..”

He said staff had been through an evacuation drill for a potential terrorist attack, but not for a plane coming down.

“Which is weird because we’ve got an entire two runways that run opposite our stores,” he said.

“Literally customers can stand and watch planes come in. It’s a spectacle. So they’ll have to get their act together here.”

Locals concerned about airport buffer zone

So who approved the DFO in that location?

The Howard government allowed the privatisation of Australian airports, including Essendon, by providing them very long-term leases.

Since then the airport has proceeded to put a series of commercial, non-aviation enterprises on the land including the DFO.

Because the airport is on Commonwealth land, it does not require local or state planning approval.

It has always been the view of locals that Essendon’s buffer zone is not big enough and compares poorly with the buffer zones for other airports around the country.

They say the airport is built on a 300 hectare site when it should more properly be 1,200 hectares.

In 1978 a family was incinerated when a light plane crashed into their house in Airport West — a gas heater in their house ignited fuel from the aircraft’s ruptured wing tank.

In 1986 five died when an air ambulance plummeted into a paddock.

Seven years later in 1993, a plane crashed into houses without killing anyone in what was dubbed the “Miracle on Gilbertson Street”.

All of these accidents have happened within the 1,200-hectare zone that residents argue should buffer the airport.

PHOTO: Police in front of a wheel on the Tullamarine Freeway that came from the crashed plane. (ABC News: Jane Cowan)

Plane crash a ‘tragic mess’

“It’s tragic mess,” said resident Helen van den Berg, who used to organise a group of residents called the Close Essendon Airport Campaign.

Eventually she closed the protest group down, because no-one was listening.

“We were ignored by everyone. CASA, ministers. Any voice from the community is ignored.”

Some of the strongest pushback against relocating it comes in the form of the argument that it’s an essential location for police and emergency services, crucially close to city hospitals.

But emergency flights are just a fraction of the aviation activity at Essendon which is mostly general light planes and charter aircraft.

“You see a tragedy like this and think of the decades and decades of people who’ve tried to highlight the safety concerns,” said resident Helen van den Berg.

“It could have killed people at DFO, it could have hit the freeway. That’s why the buffer zone should be there.”

Quote: “For 25 years there have been community-minded people here raising concerns about the operation of an airport that has no protection zone…”

“Why, if you’ve got something there for the common good, like an airport, why do you at the same time put other people in danger? It’s inconsistent.”

Commercial development too close to runways, advocate says

PHOTO: Fire crews work to put out a blaze after a plane crashes into DFO at Essendon Fields. (Metropolitan Fire Brigade)

Marcus Diamond from the Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP) said his members had previously raised concerns about commercial shopping developments being built on airport land at Essendon

The DFO shopping centre, which the plane crashed into, is on land owned by Essendon airport. It was built in 2005.

“If this was a grass field as it used to be, it could be a different situation,” Mr Diamond said.

While stressing the cause of the crash was still unknown, he said inappropriate developments at airports across Australia were increasingly hindering access to runways.

He said many light plane crashes occurred close to the runway, so it is important that the area is clear.

“It’s an increasing problem at airports around Australia. We’ve put in multiple submissions to government on this,” he said.

DFO has been contacted by the ABC about its emergency response plan.

Essendon Airport chief executive Chris Cowan said counselling would be available for any DFO staff and the airport’s emergency plan covered all contingencies “from minor to full scale emergencies including on airport and off airport responses”.

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MTF? – Yes much…P2  

Reference: https://twitter.com/PAIN_NET1/status/109…9776233473