COMMITTEES
Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee
Meeting
Senator KROGER(Victoria—Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate) (12:04): by leave—I move:
That the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee be authorised to hold an in camera hearing during the sitting of the Senate on Monday, 18 March 2013, from 4 pm.
Question agreed to.
Oh to be a fly on the wall; or better still, Heff's old mate at the back of the room. Curiosity is a curse. Then we have :-
Submission 19:-
"The WX station at Norfolk was not set up right. The station should have triggered a speci when the WX got below the alternate minimum OR 1500 feet agl which ever happened first. As the alternate minimum at Norfolk is 1289 feet it took until then for the speci to be triggered this was about 40 min later/after the cloud dropped below the 1500 feet point and the speci should have been issued.
You can see this in the accident report but they seem to miss that the BOM did not issue a speci just a metar when the cloud dropped below 1500 feet. If a speci had been issued when is should have and was required then ATC would have past on the speci to the pilot and this would have happened up to 40 mins earlier."
Thus I would like to think the Senate Committee will pick this up, as it is all in the report and if you cross ref the met rules you can see the BOM did not follow the rules.
Thus the pilot seems to have to ware blame where BOM did not do their job correctly (following the rules) and thus Air Services did not inform the pilot.
N.B. I had some trouble with the copy/paste for this document, so it is not in exactly the format provided.
The submission raises some interesting points that never entered my head. It just goes to show how easily you can miss important information, by simply not being 'aware' that it even exists and making an assumption that BoM had NLK 'sorted'. More reading.........
