Puff, Your comparing apples to oranges..This kid should be at school..

As a nation-state Australia is a signatory to the Safety of Lives at Sea treaty.

As such, the Gummint is obliagted to rescue any and all comers regardless of circumstance, as is The US and others.

We are IN, not OUT of the international SAR system through SOLAS.

There was another case in the general area where a sailor had to abandon ship and was picked up by a merchant. He helped out on the bridge until making port.

Sometime later, the boat fetched up in one of the archipelagos off Africa and the locals had their way with it.

The fishing boat might be able to do a tow and gain a salvage award, but if there's any weather, they'll just grab the girl and go.

As for taxpayer dollars, there's a gigabuck being flushed down the toilet for G20 security a couple miles down the street:{

Just for interest Tony Bullimore was 1400nm out from PH.

Didn't Tony Bullimore have two consecutive events in the same place at different times? Once is bad enough, but...

NO the A330 was chartered by AMSA after a request from Reunion Island.
Tax payers are footing the bill here and QF just happened to have a 330 available to go have a look. I don't think there would be to many aircraft in Australia that would be able to fly 2000NM then hold for a bit at low level and fly back to Perth.

The question no one has asked here is if you had a sixteen year old daughter, (including if your surname is Watson), whether you'd allow her to sail solo around the world.

Let's draw an aviation analogy. If some hypothetical mommy and daddy had the funds, they could give their 16 year old daughter two or three hours in a simulator where she could learn to just take off and set up the controls for an autoland. They could then place her at the controls of a long range jet full of fuel and little else and programme the FMC and set her off on a 'record breaking' round the world flight with only two autolands required.

My guess would be that if absolutely nothing went wrong, she'd probably get away with it (sleeping much of the time if she chose to while George the FMC did it all). However, most readers here would know how many things could go wrong in such a venture and would agree that those parents should be prevented from allowing their child to do such an incredibly dangerous thing.

Now I don't know a lot about around the world solo sailing, but (again) my guess would be that however well you planned it, as many of not more things had the potential for going wrong on such a trip than on my hypothetical two sector round the world flight - even if your name is Watson, where thankfully, nothing so serious that it was beyond the capabilities of a lone, very able sixteen year old to handle did go wrong.

Getting back to my first paragraph, how could you live with yourself if your sixteen year old daughter did meet her death on such a venture?

That's a whole new debate Fubaar, and one which has been covered in the media recently.

Humans are not rational (as much as we like to think they are). They tend to take the path of least resistance even if it's a completely stupid one. They also tend to like grand-standing. Parents dress their 5 year olds in teeny tiny skirts and 3 layers of makeup, and train them how to look, walk, and speak, so they can win beauty pageants. They argue violently over kindergarten/primary school soccer "matches" where the kids barely have the faintest idea what they're doing, but just like kicking a ball.

I don't pretend to know why this happens, but it's a fact of life these days.

VB, Tiger Alliance etc all have spare aircraft but only a QF widebody, Packer's Global, or possibly the VIP squadron would have an aircraft even capable of this mission. Not to many aircraft actually have a 4000NM+ range.

if i had a sixteen year old daughter she wouldn't be allowed to walk to the shops after dark. :}

Great news that the Qantas search crew spotted her and established comms! My question is about ETOPS though. The girl's position really was out in the middle of nowhere. What ETOPS level does Qantas operate their 330's? 180min or 240min? Also, how would that apply if the aircraft is flying low and slow to establish visual contact, if one engine goes inop and a diversion is needed from under 10,000ft 1500nm+ from a diversion airport? Or possibly ETOPS rules were suspended as this was a SAR op? Just curious.

ETOPs applies to commercial/RPT flights.

The bottom line is: they had to have enough gas to go somewhere, anywhere. End of story. ETOPs does not apply.

And well done to the crew, too.

DutchRoll, well the flight was performed by a civil airliner, with a civilian crew, in a charter situation (for revenue). In the US, Part 135 charter operations are subject to ETOPS. Not sure about CASA land though. And kudos to the crew and job well done. I just imagine that there would have been some interesting flight planning and performance calculations taking place.

YES!! A job WELL DONE by our 'National Carrier' at what would have been 'short' notice...

Besides the successful outcome of the flight, and FULL congrats to the crews who made it possible, just think of the positive publicity generated by this flight when those in the 'States' see that red tail with the 'roo on their TV.

Much better than 'Where the bloody hell are ya?'

I suggested the A-380 (?) in my intro post because that's how it was reported on radio this morning.

WELL DONE QANTAS!!!

Sorry misler (I was a bit harsh before I edited it), but we are splitting hairs here.

OK, the 330 is operated to 3 hr etops normally. I'm not sure if they were within the 3 hr range to La Reunion or not (they may well have been), but I suspect it would be academic anyway. Perhaps they had permission from the regulator, or it wasn't technically a "charter" - I don't know, and I don't imagine anyone actually cares.

Flight planning would indeed be interesting. As someone who has done real-time SAR I imagine it would have been "fill 'er up" and then work out a min diversion fuel to somewhere, wherever that may be. You then just fly the search pattern to your min diversion fuel (if required) plus a bit of a fudge factor, and hope that you find the survivor before you need to divert to some crap-hole in the middle of nowhere.

Dutch - thanks for the answer; it was merely for academic curiosity. Also appreciate the input on flight planning. It's certainly an interesting use of the 330!

none of you guys got the idea of what is like being 2000nm away from the shore in rough seas...with a DISMASTED boat waiting for somebody to find you... If you are the coordinator of a search and rescue you use all the possible and fastest tools you've got! The P3's are slower for the enroute part, so sending the a330-300 was the best choice, and boarding paramedics and co is the only solution to try to stabilize whoever is hurt, even just using the radio. The key in these situations, is to find first the remainings of the boat starting from the last known position,make computations of the currents and tides, then use it as datum point to start you searches in a growing spiral, and then good luck. Finding a person/raft in the water is one of the toughest challenges i've ever experienced as a pilot, consider that at 500' you barely see a raft in calm waters. :sad:

I am not a yachtie but the criticism of this venture V Jessica Watson seems to come from the timing of the trip in that Jessica avoided operating in the Southern Ocean during winter.

From her Blog however, one wonders if it made that much difference.

I don't know who operated this A330 but I bet the guys had a blast, especially with the successful outcome.

Stupid question - how did the A330 talk to her?

Aviation band VHF can't talk to Marine VHF from memory, someone remind me of the simple answer.

121.5?

Handheld?