Gaunty
Are you unable to entertain the possibility – even the remote possibility – that what the crew heard made sense and supported the decision to continue?
There’s no need to resolve confusion, if there’s no confusion.
Doesn’t matter whether the aircraft has 2 HFs or 20. All of them will be affected by the same prevailing propagation and atmospheric conditions.
We both know it's possible for a pilot to receive and understand, with no confusion, a message that turns out to have been misunderstood.
I say again, so there’s no confusion: It is
certain that neither CASA nor ATSB knows what the crew actually heard, or what the crew actually understood what they heard to mean.
But again, let’s get out Occam’s Razor. Let’s assume:
- the transcript reflects, precisely, the terms of the transmissions to the aircraft (BTW: I’m certain the transcript contains inaccuracies, at least to the extent it’s capable of different interpretations of what was transmitted)
- the crew received, verbatim, the entirety of the transmissions
- the crew understood that the conditions at Norfolk were below the alternate minima but above the landing minima.
Let’s also assume that the entirety of the pilot population is of the opinion that good airmanship would have a resulted in a decision to divert in the circumstances.
How is it, then, that the system of training, licensing, air operator certification, operational regulation and surveillance results in innocent passengers being put in an aircraft under the command of an ATPL holder, supported by another ATPL holder, who are unable to make a decision that is, apparently, a ‘no-brainer’ to everyone else?
Are there
really no systemic issues that may be relevant?
Sunfish: During the ATSB’s most recent appearance at the Committee’s hearings, Mr Dolan dismissed the Reason model as being so-last-century.
If we want to go to Professor Reason's model of investigation—though we think we have come a long way since Professor Reason's initial work in the 1990s …
These days you just collect a bunch of hearsay, jump to the obvious conclusion, and ignore or cease to continue to investigate anything that might be contrary to the obvious conclusion.