Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
So you’re taking what Eddie posted as gospel, despite the evident evasiveness and geographical oddities in what he posted?
If something was wrong with the aircraft so as to have misled the PIC as to FOB, that would have been mentioned in the ATSB report, would it not? If there was something wrong with the aircraft, there would have to been some maintenance investigation and documentation, would there not? Do you seriously believe that CASA would have issued the necessary paperwork to let the operator kick the tyres and light the fires after a forced landing where there was a suggestion of aircraft defects being causally connected with the forced landing?
You need to sharpen and apply Ockham’s Razor.
Not taking anything he said as Gospel, he's left it wide open to anything having happened before or after he was there which was by all appearances only a short time.
LB, you seem to have a lot of inside information here, you're suggesting you know that there was nothing entered into the Maintenance Release after the Forced Landing or that any sort of exemption was granted by CASA to fly it back out? You suggest that Good Airmanship says that if the Low Fuel Light is on you should believe it, which I agree with, and according to Horatio he possibly took off with those lights on which would be extremely poor Airmanship, the sort that CASA would likely have him grounded for right? Yet apparently he is already flying with someone else now, the fact that CASA have apparently not grounded him I think alludes to there being more to this whole event than just simply taking off without enough fuel. Also if was so cut and dry then why does the report mention that the ATSB are bothering to check the following:
- information from the pilot
- flight logs and fuel records
- operational policy, procedures and practices applicable to fuel management including regulatory aspects
- serviceability of the aircraft fuel system components
- aircraft maintenance requirements and records
- fuel tank contaminant detection processes
- fuel quantity indication systems
- other fuel exhaustion or starvation occurrences.
To be perfectly clear to everyone, I don't doubt at all that it was Fuel Exhaustion, that much is evident, my whole point is that we don't exactly what led to this Fuel Exhaustion Event, from the facts that I can see it appears an Aircraft took off, it suffered a Fuel Exhaustion Event, the Crew put it down on a Highway and it was then subsequently flown back out again and then examined by Engineers when back in Broome. There are suggestions of Low Fuel Lights being on from some video evidence, that nothing was entered into the Maintenance Release, no Exemptions were given to be able to fly it out but I don't know where that info comes from and have no idea how reliable it is so I'm going by the facts as I see them which still leave a bunch of possibilities and mitigating factors that say to me not to put the boot in to anyone yet.
Also, I'm not casting doubt on the info that LB and Horatio have, but once again, I don't know the source of their info and therefore am not relying on it to draw any conclusions as of yet.