CASA and staff misfeasance
Fuel Debacle and Reports to CASA
I only became interested in fuel issues, when I had a stopped engine due to fuel filter blockages, on and off for about 18 months prior to the Xmas announcement. The announcement caused me and a lot of others whose aircraft usage for private purposes peaks across the Xmas period.
I had contacted CASA about the matter during the previous period and after the announcement.
I am still waiting for the reply.
Mobil still have not replied either, although I had their cohorts in my office denying any complicity in the matter at all.
I was able to trace the fuel problems to a brown "stuff", bacteria and water. The solution of killing the "bugs" with an appropriate additive worked with the assistance of a fuel specialist engineer, who had never seen this type of issue before in AVGAS, but had seen it in AVTUR.
The fuel all came from a bowser, which Mobil claimed had never had any of their "batch-related" fuel in it.
It is interesting to now bump into people who had issues prior to the "grounding" of bad fuel, brown stuff, blocked filters, stopped engines.
I reported the problem and solution to CASA with the usual nil-response.
A cover up??, malfeasance???, just incompetence?? - whatever it was, the regulator still has a lot of answers to give.
How can we be sure that reported incidents, prior to the event are properly followed up, without the reporter being ignored or in some cases, actively acted against.
The SDR system for example is not bullet proof, which, when properly acted upon, gives good industry warning and the issuance of AD's and AWB's, much less a report that may well warn people of a problem that may have seen, but not related as a wider problem, or thought to meet CASA's SDR system.
There is a recent case where a SDR report, has been wrongly indicated as "maintenance" by CASA, rather than get to the real underlying cause.