Some critically important aspects of the transcript show why relying on hearsay like transcripts is fraught with risk.
Understand what the transcript process is. Someone is listening to a recording and typing out what they hear.
Have a close look at these extracts, and note some odd things:
… few 6,000 broken 2400 …
…overcast one thousand one hundred…
Note that in the second extract the altitude transmission is typed out in words, but in the first extract the altitude transmissions are typed out in numbers. Note also that in the first extract there is a comma in “6,000” but no comma in “2400”.
Do people make mistakes when typing? You bet.
How do we know there are no errors in the transcript?
We don’t.
Do we know that “2400” means “two thousand four hundred” was transmitted?
We don’t.
Do we know that the person transcribing didn’t make a mistake and type “2400” instead of “240”.
We don’t.
What we
do know,
for sure, is that:
1. if “few six thousand” was transmitted, that was a mistake by someone – either by the person making the transmission or in the material the person was reading; and
2. we don’t know, for sure,
and neither CASA nor ATSB knows for sure, what was heard and understood in the cockpit.
For all we know the “aaaah” moment resulted from the Nadi transmitting and the crew hearing “few six thousand broken two hundred and forty”. A double ‘WTF?’, resolved 30 seconds later by the SPECI. And note that a SPECI can be issued for
improvements in the weather.
Someone should fit voice recorders to these aircraft, so that there would be less doubt about what was received in the cockpit…