Almost 12 months to the day, post 14 on page one I think you are referring.
You have got to be kidding me.
- He departed underfuelled - refer Jamairs post, and regardless of whether or not there was an exemption, he still did not carry prudent fuel. TRUE IT SEEMS
- He could have diverted to New Cal after he received WX advising that he was now below the alternate minima. Had he been departing that point in space with that WX it would have required an alternate or suitable holding fuel. He had neither the fuel nor the brains to divert. TRUE
- He arrived with WX that was even worse still, and knowing he was low on fuel he never declared it or an emergency. TRUE
- He flew several VOR approaches which are not runway aligned by a mile or two from memory and require a circle to land. TRUE
- After a couple of them he tried yet again. TRUE
- He had a F/O that was not endorsed on GPS approaches, yet he was, but they never tried one. The RNAV for RWY 11 IS RUNWAY ALIGNED. TRUE
- He could have had the the FO call the numbers for distance and height to the SNFWM and flown a 3 degree profile watching the Radar Alt which it should have had, and flown the RNAV as a sudo ILS, and landed the thing on the runway. Might have been hard work and scary but should work. TRUE
- Some folk will argue "but that is descending below the MDA why would I be encouraging busting the minima, well he went well below the minima when he crashed it on the water . TRUE
Bloody lucky of the highest order that anyone lived, let alone the patient. Lucky the bloke who spotted them stopped where he did, by rights he had no reason to belive he should have. TRUE
So......poor planning, poor in flight monitoring, poor decission making in the cruise and poor decission making once it all turned to sh!t . TRUE or so it would seem
So show me one area of this guys flight operation where you can honestly cut him some slack? Maybe commercial pressure prior to departure?TRUE If so then he should have diverted in the first instance, and that extra cost would have shoved it right up the ar$e of the company for being so stingy. Of course he did sink a perfectly servicable jet on the bottom of the sea in return.
I too think the ATSB will be getting all manner of requests to distort the facts to minimise the arse covering required for the obvious.VERY TRUE in particular Pel Air and CASA
I am not sure why you are singling me out over Jamair morno Forkie and others, but hey I am vocal so happy to take your wrath too. I have said already, I feel for the guy, he had poor culture from the start, this is PA's fault, he had flown this way many times before and gotten away with it, PA again, CASA had poor oversight and poor compliance by education. He had poor hotel, sleep communications, but at the end of the day as PIC he was the final link in the chain, with knowledge, authority and the brains to stop the holes in the swiss cheese from lining up. Maybe you are Dominic? Probably not, but even if you were, I think most folk would agree that the PIC made a bunch of bad decisions, given a crappy hand that he was dealt, and even still he pushed on. And then failed to make some resourceful decisions like trying other options. Running low on fuel doing VOR's that don't work?
The definition of stupidity is to keep doing what you are doing expecting a different result. A VOR 04 or RNAV on any other would have been straight down the runway not a kilometre misaligned. He could have made a scary but illegal landing, even covered it up, and not had a crash. Maybe the good of this is his crash will affect change.
So as you say, he may have made a blue, and the system he was part of was very much an equal part, I have gone out on a limb and said before if I were to guess the blame portions, 20% CASA, 40% Pelair and 40% PIC. You are quite correct, it was not 100% Dominic, I agree, but he had 100% of the opportunity to stop the BS when he awoke from his hotel room.
Thanks for your rant, I do mean that, I think in a way we are mostly agreeing unless I missed something.