Skippers lose conquest at mine?
 

Have heard that Skippers lost a conquest off the runway 2 days ago at one of the mine airstrips - 4 pax, no one hurt.
Does anyone know if this true? .

At Lake Johnston on Friday apparently. From what they tell me, 2 pilots on board and I think 4 pax. All happened on takeoff, a late abort I think.
Nose wheel collapsed and I believe the engines and wings arent in the best shape. Skippers did well to keep this one quiet.
Good to hear there are no injuries.

uh oh, hope it wasn't whats his name who bent Waks Waks lovely Conquest a few years ago.

So, who has all the goss, some one must know more. where the hell is lake johnson? is that the cosmos project..... maybe the thunderbox project??? come on some one.

Hmmm, I guess that the Perth aviation community have decided that this isn't worth the gossip. Will have to wait the results of the investigation.

I do know that the individual responsible for redesigning KUZ whilst aloft DIDN'T do this one!

Or the embarrassment!!:O

Rang a mate of mine in Skippers and nobody is saying anything, so when in this situation get the wives together on the phone and two hours later.....

Seems that a female check captain was doing the checking thing when a prop went into over-speed, take-off was aborted however with insufficient runway remaining, no names are being mentioned at all, apparently the least said the better as a couple of contracts are getting touch and go.

Crews are keeping it really quiet as the more contracts they lose the less flying for the boys/girls at Skippers. Even the guys waiting to get into Skippers in June-July are keeping mum, worried that they might miss out on a position.

One of the passengers is rumoured to have a crook neck and shoulder and has already lodged workers comp claim and the rest were ok. (thats the wives gossip anyway)

Guess we will all have to wait till the crash report is published.

:O :O :O

Apollo I infer from your post that Skippers already have people lined up for future positions. Can I ask if they had contacts so to speak? The recruiting people there insist all is done by Staffcv, but as time goes on I get the feeling this Staffcv is just a sham.

Slice there is an old saying, "its not what you know, it is WHO you know"......

Like most companies it always helps to have a mate or two already in the front door. While the CV plays an important part, the candidates are always discussed with the current crews. All it takes is one to say you are a Duckhead and your goose is generally cooked.

The last batch of recruits all came from the same area in the North West. Maybe co-incidence but the word is that 2 of the next batch ear marked for positions in June/July are also from the same place..... and coincidentally good mates with the last batch, who were good mates with the batch before that....... On the other side of the coin the North West crew are usually well sought after because of the quality of the training and the fact that they are already known to all the big mining company personnel....good for customer relations.

All that said though if you don't know Ryno and all the boys forget it...oh it also helps to be a pi$s wreck and sexual deviate on weekends!!!


;)

So finally someone admits that you have to be a (or it helps) pisshead to get a job with a company.

How about for the pilots that do not drink ?

How about employing pilots on "actual merit" !!!

Is this a fair system ?

Probably not Bagot but thats the way aviation is and probably always will be like, guess it shows the importance of networking.

I also guess why so many jobs are givin out on word of mouth are there are a lot of wan*ers out there(not just in aviation), and people aren't gunna recommend people if they don't think they'll do a good job, because they are putting their name on the line pretty much.....

Fair or not it seems to be the way it is!

Apollo 4, well that certainly puts things in perspective. Everyone I have come across in Perth says this or that operator is a closed shop. I don't want to believe it but it sure looks that way.
:yuk:

Well Slice you have to walk outside the box and take two steps back.....then look at the whole picture..

At the moment I guess you are feeling a bit dejected, because you are inside the box.

Looking at the whole picture it seems very logical that if 2 pilots are coming from a north west company to Skippers, then it follows that there will be two vacancies in the North West.

So get one of the vacancies up north, become mates with the guys up there and in turn their mates in Skippers and next thing you know you will get a possie with Skippers and join the club..

Thats the train of thought that leads to employment ..

Good Luck...

BTW make sure you get the right north west company, no I am not going to tell you, do a little home work ask around......
;) :D

APOLLO 4

Great stuff! How to take a problem by the balls and deal with it. Edward de Bono ("Mr Lateral Thinking") would be impressed. Hopefully one or two business leaders would benefit from a similar approach, not least of all in the airline industry. Well done Apollo 4, and good luck Slice.

Apollo 4 I am well familiar with all off what you speak of. It is just with this Staffcv setup it really makes it hard to judge if the a particular company is actually going to look outside their 'box'. Other companies will be straight up and tell you ' we get our guys from...the next guy on is... etc. etc.'. This one does not and you have to wonder why they bother with Staffcv. Maybe just fishing for guys with time on Metro/Braz/DHC8 etc.? :}

Meanwhile back at the batcave, what was the upshot of the crash, what happened and who was the checker on board?

Well the Conquest is pretty much stuffed I am told and includes props, engines, nose and main spar. (only 3 rd hand info here)

The check captain was a female known only as "mumble shorts" and the checkeee a pretty shaken but not stirred sort of character.

Stan is apparently spewing and the ensuing safety review is being dreaded. Lots of discussion and finger pointing, even to the point of, "should have done a circuit" type comments..

To the crew you did the best you could at the time, with the situation before you. Everyone walked away = RIGHT DECISION.
Sure with hind sight many things could have been done differently I am sure, but this applies to everything in life.

Metal can be replaced flesh can't.... Your experience now makes you both members of a survivors club, although nobody is busting to join this club, the knowledge gained is invaluable to your employer.

Make sure you receive proper counselling regardless of how you feel... You have both undergone a critical stress incident and are at risk of post traumatic stress disorder. No matter how tough or chilled you feel get a professional stress debrief.

Good luck


:) :cool:

Apollo 4

I cannot help but add my agreement with your thoughts.

FMQ CESSNA 441 4410109 1979
LBA CESSNA 441 4410042 1978
LBC CESSNA 441 4410236 1982
LBX CESSNA 441 4410091 1979
LBY CESSNA 441 4410023 1978
LBZ CESSNA 441 4410038 1978

A clunker by any other name is still a clunker.

These aircraft were beyond their economic life by the early nineties.

That they are still around is as much a testament to their robust manufacture, the failure of the their users to understand the "duty of care" in regard to their use as is the ability of the operator to communicate it.

It's all about the lowest common denominator.

The recent recommendations by the Coroner after the inquest into the so called King Air "Ghost flight" in regard to the use of these types, seems to have gone serenely unnoticed, at least until the next one.

Whether the aircraft are maintained within an inch of their life, or not, is beside the point.

They were already operating on the "profit edge" in the early eighties and the revenue then was not all that much different than it is now? And I'm not talking relative dollars here.
Most were in the early nineties already approaching 15 -20,000 hours.

If it were "economic" in these terms QF would still be operating B747-100s.

The City Of Bunbury a B747-200 was retired to Longreach with not all that many hours more than some of these types and certainly was the same vintage. The B747 is an "industrial" grade machine, designed for heavy commercial use, Conquests and King Airs are not

I would also be surprised if the "checkers" "checker" and so on up the line, had any thing but the merest acquaintance with a "factory" or "Flight Safety" rating.

"Myth" and "tales" and "this is how it really works", gets piled on top of each other. The regulator does not have anyone who knows better and the whole thing becomes a self fulfilling fantasy.

Nothing to do with lack of individual professionalism, just the way the system has evolved.

Dancing with the man who danced with the girl who danced with the Prince of Wales is hardly the same as dancing with him personally.

Stan can spew all he likes, fingers can be pointed until the cows come home and the 'should have' scenarios can be scenarioed ad nauseum, but until they get their fleet into the 21st Century and deal with the Damoclean "duty of care" hanging over their and any others using these types, heads there will be, if we are lucky, only "incidents" such as these.

How much more "luck" are we going to get?

Or is there to be yet another inquest, the legal buzzards are already sharpening their claws.

geez, if they're clunkers you would hate to see some 404s I know with 25,000 plus and still operating rpt!

Gaunty, I generally agree with the thrust of your comments (on most things in appears). However, let's draw the line between airframe life/hours/cycles and engine hours life/cycles. Otherwise you end up with people looking at a crashed Tiger Moth saying that the aircraft is seventy years old and shouldn't be flying when the engine which failed is only 400hours out of overhaul.

If anyone should be taking seriously your point that these aircraft are not doing what they were designed to do it must be CASA? Why aren't they? How do operations in the C441 differ in the country of manufacture?