"K" top post! Is it any wonder that FF continue to lose people of the calibre and expertise of Ben Cook when they are answerable to numbnuts with questionable credibility and moral fibre?
Anyway back to the Hansard
which is a veritable gold mine of information be it tautological or otherwise
...on page 5 of the Hansard (amongst other statements) the DAS says...
"Mr McCormick: If I could make two points on that. If you look at the Chambers report—and I will go away and confirm this—to my knowledge the points raised in there are points that are also covered in our special audit report and our accident report. In other words, they are not raising new information; they are raising information about how internal processes in CASA were carried out. As I said, I will check that on notice, if I can; but I think you will find that there is nothing raised in the Chambers report that is not reflected in our accident report..."
Here’s a helpful hand for the DAS and his cohorts…page 21-22 of CAIR 09/3 on Fatigue Management reads:
1.18.2 Fatigue Management
The Chief Pilot also noted that the company operates on FRMS. This program examines a number of factors and gives a score which predicts whether any particular flight will produce levels of fatigue which would not be acceptable for the crew to continue to fly.
The crew on the accident flight were assessed as fit to fly using the predicted and planned flight and duty times and planned rest periods during the stop in Apia.
The planned roster had FAID scores for the captain and first officer of the accident flight as follow:
17 November 2009, Depart 22:00, Arrive 06:30, Daily hours 8.5, FAID score 27.9
18 November 2009, Depart 14:00, Arrive 03:30, Daily hours 13.5, FAID score 50.7
All times are in relation to Sydney
There was no evidence to support any updates to the FAID score based on actual sleep or use of the IFLS. Even with these updates the companies use of a sore of 75 to determine if a pilot is fit to fly is not appropriate as scores need to be determined based on closer examination of the roster patterns themselves i.e. regular RPT during the day is not the same type of operation as ad hoc medivac operations and scores should be varied according to task complexity, workload
(physical and cognitive) and risk.
Coincident with the accident Investigation and as part of the Special Purpose Audit of Pel-air the FRMS was evaluated with the following result:-
- A problem with Rex/Pel Air’s use of the FRMS and FAID was that no one had a sufficient understanding of FAID, in particular the limitations and assumptions used with the algorithm. Hence, there was not a good understanding of the forecast sleep by the model in determining the fatigue score, an option which is available on some versions of FAID.
- Other systems based evidence supports the finding that the Pel Air FRMS had a heavy reliance on FAID prior to the accident and that FAID scores became the primary means for making a ‘fly/no fly’ decision. There was evidence to support direct violations of the FRMS processes and policies (as per the FRMS report), which further suggests that work arounds were the norm to achieve operational needs to the detriment of fatigue management.
Errr…nowhere in that passage or indeed in any of the CAIR 09/3 that I can see does the author(s) (presumably ALOO and possibly Chamber Pot) ever state any of the FF oversight/surveillance deficiencies highlighted in either the excellent Pel-Air FRMS Special Audit report or the ‘Chambers Report’.
In fact CAIR 09/3 in its entirety can only ever be read by the discerning ‘man at the back of the room’ as a complete cover up/smoke screen of the findings of Ben Cook and his fellow human factors colleague as well as the findings contained in the ‘Chambers Report’! So sorry Mr DAS no choccy frog for you as no amount of spin or legal tap dancing can swerve around the truth in this matter.
For those interested in refreshing their memory on the infamous and hidden CAIR 09/3 here is the link where you’ll find it buried up the back:
Reference FF submission Attachment 5 Senate Committees – Parliament of Australia