Merged: Senate Inquiry

[Sarcs]

Yakkity Yak shades of Hempel - Part one

What posters’ seem to be forgetting is the two tonne elephant in the room that refused to contribute to the VH-NGA black box recovery slush fund…
Basic chronology of relevant period (my bold):

8 December 2009: E-mail from ATSB to CASA raising the possibility of contributing to a joint fund sharing arrangement to recover the black box and CASA advised they didn’t have the necessary funds.

16 December 2009: CASA accept the Pel-Air ‘Management Action Plan’ which consisted of three phases.

18 December 2009: Pel-Air successfully completed Phase 1 items and were able to recommence domestic operations.

21 December 2009: ATSB, with the assistance of the Victoria Water Police, use a remotely-operated vehicle (Rover) with an underwater video camera was to assess the wreckage.

23-24 December 2009: CASA overseeing FOI of Pel-Air Eric Demarco issues 14 RCA and a number of AOs. The RCAs needed to be acquitted by 28/01/2010.

24th December 2009: Dominic James notice of suspension of CPL, ATPL, CIR pursuant to CAR 265(1)(a). Also given notice to undertake examinations under CAR 5.38.

24 December 2009: Pel-Air successfully completed Phase 2 items and were able to recommence international operations.

8 January 2010: CASA issue 7 more RCAs and several more AOs, all of which Roger Chambers the Audit Coordinator signed on behalf of several SAR team members.

8 January 2010: Audit Report completed.

13 January 2010: ATSB issue preliminary report AO-2009-072.

3 February 2010: Video conference meeting between the ATSB and CASA to discuss critical safety issue.

So FF shirked the slush fund....but even then the ATsB (up till at least the 13 January 2010) were still determined to recover the black box. Apparently they carried out a feasibility review that was then forwarded to bean counter Beaker as a brief for assessment:

You Tube

{Comment: Sure would like to get a copy of the Beaker brief…FOI anyone?? }

Kharon: …“Was the wreck ever raised ? - truth or dare…”
Interesting question put… Heard a rumour that the Rover (21 December 2009) had actually managed to get a rope around the tail section of VH-NGA…

Hmm so curious I took a look at the S25 released Rover footage…

You Tube

Although not very long the time stamp is interesting to follow i.e. it has been significantly edited. The footage starts at 08:38 then jumps back to 08:28, then jumps forward again 08:33, then 08:36, then finally back again to 08:29.

The footage does match the findings as stated in the report…
“….The wreckage came to rest on a sandy seabed. Video footage showed that the two parts of the fuselage remained connected by the strong underfloor cables that normally controlled the aircraft’s control surfaces.

The landing gear was extended, likely in consequence of the impact forces and the weight of the landing gear. The flaps appeared to have been forced upwards from the pre-impact fully extended selection reported by the PIC.

The underwater video showed a lack of visible damage to the turbine compressor blades at the front of the engines. That was consistent with low engine thrust at the time of the first contact with the sea.
Consistent with the aircraft occupants’ recollections, the video footage indicated that aircraft’s configuration resulted in the bottom of the fuselage below the wing making the first contact with the water.

On contact with the water, the fuselage fractured at a point immediately forward of the main wing spar. The flight nurse was seated nearest to that location and reported the smell of sea water and feeling water passing her feet immediately after the impact. All of the aircraft occupants recalled that the fuselage parts remained aligned for a few seconds after the aircraft stopped moving, before the aircraft’s nose and tail partially sank, leaving the centre section above the surface of the sea. The passenger cabin/cockpit section adopted a nose-down attitude, leaving the wings partially afloat and the engines below the surface…”

So no smoking gun but it would be interesting to get a copy of the full rover video footage, especially with a pan out that takes in the tail after about 08:39…

{Fascinating rumour: Talk around the Norfolk Island traps (BRB ) is that there is a photo floating around of an open access panel to the black box??..}

Addendum: Ben's latest kind of fits..

MH370 PR stunt sees ATSB try to avoid its dismal black box record

The ATSB has sought to leverage a bit of reflected glory out of the MH370 black box search today with an illustrated and indeed useful primer on their uses in air accident investigations.

But for those that have followed its disgraceful mishandling of the Pel-Air crash, this PR exercise will do nothing to restore its damaged integrity, and in particular, its cavalier refusal to retrieve the data recorder from the sea floor near Norfolk Island where the small corporate jet was ditched in November 2009 shortly before it ran out of fuel.

The ATSB was a party to a botched and grievously inadequate investigation of that crash, in which in consultation with CASA, the Australian air safety regulator, an internal document related to CASA’s failures to conduct proper oversight of the Pel-Air Westwind operation was withheld from inclusion in the accident report.

A Senate inquiry into the investigation process which lead to the flawed and embarrassingly inadequate ATSB report being released included an entire section dealing with the unsatisfactory nature of the testimony given to its hearings by the chief commissioner of the ATSB, Martin Dolan.
The black box that the ATSB refused to retrieve from the wreckage of the Pel-Air jet could have provided vital information from the two pilots as to what they had been told about weather conditions at Norfolk Island before they found that they were unable to land and no longer had sufficient fuel to fly to an alternative airfield in Noumea, Fiji or New Zealand.

With such a shabby record in relation to Pel-Air and its flight data records , the ATSB lacks the credibility to add very much if anything to the high powered international task force now focused on seeking every possible piece of evidence that could cast light on the MH370 tragedy.

If it resolutely refused to pursue all the evidence available to it in relation to a small jet crash in Australia, what possible relevance could the ATSB have to determining all of the factors involved in the loss of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that vanished from air traffic control radars on 8 March, on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing?

Dozens of previous articles on the Pel-Air controversy, the Senate inquiries, and links to the full reports and documents that Australia’s aviation regulator and safety investigator sought to hide from the public can be retrieved from this catalogue.