Jamair# 525 - Would not the 'silence' have been negated by recovery of the CVR and FDR? Be REAL interesting to hear what was on those - oh wait, apparently the cost of recovery (two scuba divers with a screwdriver for twenty minutes) made it unviable.... so a USV was sent down instead.
Hansard pages 65 – 69 inclusive – Cherry picked and my paragraph spacing, edited to my bold..
CHAIR: Mr Dolan, who made the decision not to recover the black box?
Mr Dolan: I did, Senator.
Senator XENOPHON: There is a briefing note on points for consideration in relation to ATSB recovery of aircraft flight recorders for the Westwind aircraft, VH-NGA—and it goes through various things. It talks about an overview of flight crew, recovery options, issues, risks, decision points, the costs and the benefits.
It talks about the ATSB's reputation of being seen as acting seriously when appropriate and fulfilling its share of the commitment associated with the considerable costs of installing and maintaining black boxes. It said 'present indications show a likelihood of strong safety measures in both normal and abnormal flight conditions based on existing data'.
Then it talked about the benefits and costs, risks and ATSB's reputation for being relevant on risks. It says, 'Next year's budget was reduced because of this year's underspend. We cannot assess the accuracy of the pilot's perceptions.' Following the EMT, it advised the approved deployment of the investigation team in Norfolk Island to conduct a search for the aircraft using a ping locator.
They also approved funding of up to $20,000 to recover the recorders and were open to discussions on further expenditure if required. So there clearly was a detailed discussion. The conclusion early on seemed to be to recover the cockpit voice recorder, but it was not recovered. We are all mystified—or I am. I think my colleagues are also mystified as to why we did not recover it.
Mr Dolan: At the initial stages, we understood the aircraft was in comparatively shallow water and that access to the recorders would be reasonably achievable by a diver or other mechanisms without too much difficulty.
That brief was to convince me to make the necessary allocation of resources to retrieve the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. Upon investigation, it became clear that the depth at which the aircraft was in the water, its location at a remote island, Norfolk Island, and the work health and safety standards applying to diving to those depths meant that there would have been a substantial cost of recovery.
The requirement was effectively that there be a decompression chamber, none of which was available on Norfolk Island, for the full time of the retrieval because of the depth at which the divers would be operating. When we got a reasonable and first approximation assessment of that, in the knowledge that, from our point of view, the key information we had about flight decision making would not have been recorded on the cockpit voice recorder which only had a two-hour time on it—
Senator XENOPHON: So let us not labour the point. That was an earlier assessment and subsequent assessment said that it was going to cost a lot more?
Mr Dolan: Correct.
CHAIR: Even though someone offered to do it for $500.
Senator EDWARDS: Is that right?
CHAIR: Yes.
Senator XENOPHON: But it would not have been on, on health and safety. Chair, to be fair to the ATSB, there is no way—
Mr Dolan: I would be unable to countenance that in terms of my responsibility.
CHAIR: As for your occupational health and safety background I am not allowed to climb up on my bloody bulk tanker, which I have been climbing on for 40 years, to put a hose in the top of it because it is not safe to climb up the side on a ladder on a fuel tank.
Mr Dolan: Falls from heights are a substantial cause of injury—
CHAIR: Yes, mate, but I have been doing it for 50 years and everyone else has been doing it. But there you go. All right and okay and we are grateful for your evidence.
From a little earlier: -
CHAIR: We may go into camera on that. You know I have never sent an email in my life, and it is quite evident every day why you should not.
There is an email here from a senior CASA official to senior CASA officers in which they talk about this matter. They get to you in this email: 'The ATSB are apparently'—this is the division of opinion which we got out of them this morning—'inclined to a mandated solution for a range of in-flight decision-making issues and are likely to press that line. Clearly, you may be heading to a difference of opinion here.' Are you?
Mr Dolan: As I was discussing earlier, we specified what we saw at the early stages of the investigation as a potentially critical issue. We drew it to the attention of CASA, and CASA considered it and responded that, having had regard to what we had drawn to their attention, they preferred an outcome which addressed the issue through training and procedural information rather than a regulatory mandate
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I notice the NTSB decided in the St Croix ditching that the aircraft had four hours and 35 minutes of fuel available and ran out after four hours 34 minutes. They decided that the last hour of the flight was the 'important' bit. Hmmm.