PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Senate Inquiry, Hearing Program 4th Nov 2011
Old 23rd Jun 2013, 04:34
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denabol
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Tallong NSW
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Holy cow. I just started reading the media sites, and thought this one Ben had done was about the Hume freeway being finished, which is important out here.

Hume freeway fixed, but air safety broken | Plane Talking

Well no. It is about Pel-Air.
Highway accidents kill mainly in single figures and even today they quickly mount up, even thought the public is largely desensitized to the road toll until for example, a logistics company which flouts the laws on fatigue, rostering and drugs in the work place, lets one of its drivers smash head on into a private car, even on a dual carriageway, wiping out a family.


But airline crashes , although exceedingly rare, often kill hundreds of people at once.


Albanese has on his insanely overburdened desk a Senate Committee report into the conduct of the ‘independent’ air safety investigator, the ATSB, and the air safety regulator, CASA which without dissent across party and independent lines, makes grave and fully annotated and supported findings concerning their integrity and competency.


Albanese would also be mindful of Australia’s international reputation for getting air safety right, and no doubt horrified if he could spare the time to consider this report.


He appears however to have relied on public servants to advise him about matters concerning other public servants who have admitted in testimony and examination before the committee to various actions or omissions in carrying out their responsibilities in relation to the crash of a Pel-Air Westwind corporate jet performing an air ambulance role into the sea near Norfolk Island in 2009.


The accident is one thing. But the deliberate actions of CASA in withholding from the ATSB an internal audit which finds CASA failed in its duties in relation to Pel-Air to an extent which could have prevented the accident happening are another thing, and tell us, and the international air safety community, that the administration of air safety in this country is rotten.
The annotated and fully supported findings of the Senate committee also explain why the members lost confidence in the chief commissioner of the ATSB, Martin Dolan.


The ATSB report does not in fact fulfill its obligations to improve air safety because even though it inquired into the first ever ditching of a Westwind corporate jet, it makes no findings or recommendations following the discovery that none of the safety equipment or required procedures on board the flight worked.


It ignores the fact that the jet was flown without the operator having an adequate fuel policy for its pilots to follow, and appears to have been deliberately framed to avoid considering the unsuitability of the jet concerned to have ever been flown on the inter-island route it was following.


The minister would also, as a passionate believer in the rights and work place protections of individuals, no doubt be appalled at the full and concerted apparatus of the public administration of the ATSB and CASA being brought to bear on the captain of the flight to frame him entirely for the responsibility for the accident to the exclusion of a substantial body of improperly suppressed evidence on serious failings in the operator Pel-Air and the regulator CASA.
Minister, this is about fairness and equity, as well as about Australia’s international air safety reputation and the integrity and competency of the ATSB and CASA.


The report needs to be redone. Dolan needs to be fired. Both bodies need a complete shake-up, and the risk these two bodies pose to the proper administration of air safety in this country needs to be reduced through urgent but effective intervention.
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