Please Explain??????
 

Monday, 17 September 2007

Ben Sandilands writes:

The Phuket crash follows closely on the belated decision to hold an Australian inquiry into a bad weather incident involving a Jetstar flight that had a much happier ending.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has launched a level three inquiry into the incident on 21 July when a 177 seat Jetstar A320 arriving from Christchurch came within 20 feet of the ground at Melbourne Airport while making two missed approaches in fog.



A level three inquiry is one "where investigation is likely to significantly mitigate future accidents."


Until that investigation was launched Jetstar had been allowed to conduct an internal inquiry into the incident.


But it took Jetstar weeks to work out that something was amiss in the conduct of what should have been a routine set of missed approaches before the crew decided to divert to nearby Avalon Airport, which was fog free.


The airline then issued confusing statements as to what had happened, and went on to claim there had been a failure in the functioning of the automatic go-around system in the Airbus.


Suddenly the Minister of Transport, Mark Vaile, was asking questions, his regulator the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, stopped saying it was all a minor matter best left to the carrier, and a dossier full of evidence about what really happened on board the Jetstar flight lobbed on the front desk of the independent investigator, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.


Whatever might have failed on the Jetstar flight, whether human or mechanical, there was a failure in process intended to ensure the prompt and public investigation of flight safety incidents involving a mainline Australian carrier.


Nothing adverse is known or suggested about Jetstar’s determination to get to the bottom of the incident. But an internal inquiry was inappropriate.


A claimed failure of a major system in a widely used airliner should trigger an immediate independent inquiry like the one now underway, but two months late. The ATSB is required to produce an interim factual report into the Jetstar incident no later than 5 October. After that comes the full report, which may take months to finalise.

Been done before on here. Try searching for it.

Suffice to say that an ATSB inquiry wasn't what Jetstar were looking for.

That's called political interference when authorities look the other way to protect the national carrier from enquirys.

In New Zealand NZCAA admitted several years ago that 90% of incidents are never publicised.

In July 1999 I witnessed a near head on collision at WLG between an Metro on finals and a Mooney single taking off the wrong way.

NZCAA didn't want to know and tried to persuade me that I was mistaken.

The investigator was some idiot brain who had left the Ozzie CAA in disgrace after the balls up over that Lord Howe Aero Commander crash. The NZCAA investigator would not interview witnesses and made up his mind at the outset that I had seen an MU-2 doing calibration flights. The hell I did. How do you mistake a Mooney for an MU-2

These idiots at CAA and TAIC are culpably dangerous to the industry.

Very minor, but just wondering if J* has a 177seat config. I thought that budget 320's had a 160 config?

serous answers only please,,,, or zip !!!!;)

180 seats on an all one class A320.

177 seats!!!!!!!

regarding the incident......very serious, i'm surprised more has not come out!!!

i think i'll keep quiet on this one!!!

all i'll say the a/c was working fine!!!!!!

All that wonderful JetStar training ,saved them, no doubt!:)
"What's this button do again"?

Yep JQ A320 have 177 seats whilst 3K (JQ Asia) cram a few more in at 180.

The carrier is irrelevant. LCC or legacy, they all have their trials and tribulations. Sadly, oft time some (though it seems at times many) of those fortunate enough to get a gig with a legacy carrier forget their good fortune and simply denigrate those less fortunate who take employment with a LCC. Dunnunda is proof positive of this phenomenon.

Unemployed asked about this back in early Sept on this thread and then a coupla days later preset started this one.