Case Isn’t History
An aviation commentator is calling Australia’s two air safety bodies a threat to public safety, in the wake of a recent Four Corners programme on a plane crash near Norfolk Island.? All six people on board survived the crash, but the broadcast alleged that a private regulator’s report found that officials knew of poor practices at the airline before the incident, seemingly contradicting the official explanation of pilot error. Laurie Cox, a member of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots,?feels let down by the official report: “It is obviously very easy from any accident to blame a dead pilot. We’re fortunate in this incidence that there was a successful ditching occurred and everybody survived. And that’s the best outcome you could hope for.”
The pilot union goes on to claim that the response to the Norfolk Island crash shows that the two aviation regulatory bodies share too much information. “You cannot have the policeman working with the safety investigator to improve safety. People will not communicate properly with the ATSB if that role is too close. What has occurred in this occasion is classically a situation where the information regarding fatigue is being discounted in the report.”
The Four Corners programme revealed the audit found poor fuel, flight planning and pilot training policies, among others. ?CASA and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau both argue those problems weren’t to blame pointing the finger at the pilot, Dominic James.
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