JamieMaree:

Whats not understood? Not much.

He ditched an aircraft causing life long injuries? True, but they got out with their lives which is regarded as an unusually good outcome.

Is not the Captain the final arbiter? Yes and no. He is the final arbiter once airborne but still has to rely on ground based services for weather and Air traffic control. It is arguable that these services may have failed him.

Were any of these people on the aircraft? They don't have to be on the aircraft to contribute to the accident, see above.

Isn't that what he is paid for? He is not paid to be infallible. He is paid to do the best he can to complete the mission with the equipment and resources available.

Managing the aircraft to be safe at all times? That is the general idea, one should never run out of safe options. However the available options are a function not just of the pilot, but of the performance of the aircraft, the mission required by the owner and the service quality available to the pilot including weather forecasting, airtraffic control, the required planning procedures of the employer and the aviation regulations themselves. these things are supposed to work together to guarantee a safe operation. They didn't this time. That is why we are waiting for the report.

To put it another way, this is not an open and shut case about a silly pilot.

Agreed Sunfish.

Mea Culpa over the recorders. Apologies all round. :sad:

John Sharp was CEO of REX, who owned PELAIR at the time. He was the accountable manager at the time. I believe he is still on the REX Qboard. Sharp was Minister for Transport when the Seaview inquiry was delivered and oversaw the division on the CAA into what we have today. You might be able to find a copy of the report, quite damning of some CASA staff and the CEO of Seaview.

Just a note on the Seaview disaster - for those interested:-

The Original BASI (before it became ATSB) Seaview Report:
https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/24362/...402804_001.pdf

Article in Flight Safety:
The Seaview disaster: conscience, culture and complicity | Flight Safety Australia

Thanks for the links. So as clearly described in the article that summarises the report, the chief pilot and CEO of Seaview clearly lied for the purposes of achieving a financial gain, and dumped it all on the PIC. The regulator was caught doing a crap job and was identified as implicit. Fast forward about 15 years to the next ditching, and what happens? The PIC is dumped in it again, the chief pilot given a job by the regulator within weeks after the accident, the regulator takes action against the PIC only, all key personnel of PELAIR and the regulator are absolved of responsibility by the ATSB and live happily ever after.

You can’t understand what you read apparently.
Seaview didn’t ditch. It ended up in the ocean probably having broken up in flight.
The owner and the chief pilot were a toxic combination of being shonkies and incompetent.
But: who didn’t do their medical on time?
Who apparently didn’t know enough about the aircraft he was flying?
Who knowingly broke the rules by flying rpt when it was a sham?
Who knowingly flew an overloaded and out of trim aircraft?
Who apparently couldn’t flight plan properly?
Who didn’t write defects up as required by the regs?
The pilot obviously went along with the owner and the chief pilot with all their Shonkies. Some choose to but no one has to.
All of the adversely named persons and agencies need to hang their collective heads in shame for not doing their jobs properly but none of them, none of them were the captain of the aircraft.
Yes it is an absolute disgrace that all the failures in the Seaview affair can occur, but in the end no one made the unfortunate pilot fly the aircraft that day in the circumstances that he did,no one! He had the option to walk away but soldiered on, I’ll bet in ignorant bliss.

You have to move past the private pilot mentality here. Please read the governing legislation for commercial operations, specifically CAO82.0 and 82.1 and their head of power, section 28 of the Civil Aviation Act. In commercial operations the OPERATOR is responsible for the competency of the staff, if the pilot can’t flight plan, can’t complete a weight and balance correctly, it’s the fault of the operator for not ensuring he can. If the pilot can’t do it he/she cannot not be rostered to fly. The operator must have suitable systems in place to ensure a pilot isn’t rostered to fly without a current medical, a weight and balance system that allows him to calculate it, and training and checks to ensure he can. A pilot flying without a current medical does not absolve the operator in any way because the chief pilot is responsible for tracking it, it’s one of the duties detailed in CAO 82.0. That’s the reason why certain types of operations require an approved check and training organisation, to ensure this is done to an even higher standard. An operator can be absolved IF there are suitable systems, training, programs in place, and has records to show the pilot was trained to use them and competency was checked.

Rumor that revised report will be released to the public next week.

I got it wrong then, I forgot about cup day as a release date.

The Cup isn’t on next week...

You're referring to the pilot here, JamieMaree.

The only one showing "ignorant bliss" is yourself. The pilot did not have the "option" to walk away.

A cold hard reality of commercial aviation is that if this pilot had walked away from that flight, he would have been walking away from his job - with an adverse employment reference under his arm, making it harder to get another job.

Such is the reality of commercial aviation, not just in Australia, but all over the world.

Oh yes he did. He only had a casual job in any case. And yes he no doubt felt he had some pressure on him to do the flight but no job is worth killing yourself and killing a handful of other people who by buying a ticket, felt they were buying some assurance that the pilot knew what he was doing, was properly licensed and qualified, was and would abide by all regulations.
If all commercial pilots operated to similar standards ( as you appear to endorse) there would aircraft wreckage across the face of the earth. Fortunately, most do not however.

So the operator had no responsibility? If so, the AOC system is a waste of time, energy and money.

Just let CPLs engage in whatever operations their licence authorises them to conduct.

Looks like you got wrong twice then Sunfish!:ok:

Absolutely the operator has responsibility but it is a different responsibility.
The PIC has the final responsibility for the disposition of the aircraft and its passengers. The final responsibility!

What do you mean by “disposition”?

the person who:

Has final authority and responsibility for the operation and safety of the flight;
Has been designated as pilot in command before or during the flight; and
Holds the appropriate category, class, and type rating, if appropriate, for the conduct of the flight.

"He had the option to walk away but soldiered on, I’ll bet in ignorant bliss."

He was tasked to do a job, why should he have "walked away" from that task?

Under the rules that pertained and with the information supplied to him at the time he was perfectly legal. Does anyone imagine if he had breached any rules CAsA would not have prosecuted?

It always seems to me to be a a "double Standard" that he was persecuted by CAsA for what appears to be the same "Offence" committed by the aircrews in the Mildura event, yet those crew received no sanction whatsoever.

Why? because they broke no rules.

The two events are remarkably similar, weather related events where crew have found themselves with un-forecast conditions and no backdoor. They were not the first, and unfortunately won't be the last.

The real crime in my opinion is the authorities an the operator's desperate attempts to deflect any examination of their own failings by manipulating reports to do so. There were many valuable safety lessons that could have been learnt it is sad that they were swept aside.

He didn’t have a valid medical so therefore he didn’t have a valid commercial licence. One doesn’t need to go any further than that.

Oh I see so a medical certificate lead to the ditching; well that explains everything