Inside the wild worst of regional aviation in Australia, as uncovered by the ATSB

On 26 June 2007 a Skippers Aviation Embraer EMB-120ER turboprop with 31 people on board nearly crashed on final approach to the Jundee mine airstrip in WA.

The ATSB final report into this serious incident reads like a tour through the wild west, or worst, of Australian air transport.

It has bad piloting, dismal airline management, inadequate training and a lack of executive and employee comprehension of the basics of aircraft fuel load error prevention, and a streak of good luck, all coming together in what was close to a tragic stuff up.

In fact, the left hand engine had been run dry of fuel. The rattled and inexperienced pilots, who had never been trained to identify and correct a range of flight emergencies, saw that they were pointed in the direction of Wiluna, around four to five minutes flight time away, and landed there.

Subsequent investigation found serious deficiencies in the company’s procedures for calculating fuel for the EMB-120.

As usual with ATSB reports , it is necessary to download and read the report in its entirety, rather than the bland abstract.

After the ATSB began its investigation CASA, the air safety regulator served a show cause notice, followed by a supplementary show cause notice on Skippers Aviation which put the company’s airline operator certificate or AOC at risk.

The ATSB reports that the supplementary notice was issued “when further investigation led to the conclusion that there were gross deficiencies within the organisation in being able to ensure appropriate flight safety outcomes.

“Following an extensive audit of Skippers Aviation, CASA noted that the company’s CEO elected to leave the company.”

The ATSB report acknowledges safety restoration actions taken by Skippers and the imposition of 34 special clauses on its AOC.

The air safety investigator also says that the crew’s endorsement and other training did not include simulator training and did not adequately prepare them for the event.

At the time there was no EMB-120 flight simulator facility in Australia and no Australian regulatory requirement for simulator training.

Since then Ansett Aviation Training, a company which retains the name and logo of the Ansett airline and is based near Melbourne Airport, has opened an EMB-120 simulator which is being used by all operators of the type in Australia.

This allows 225 different emergency scenarios in the turbo-prop to be explored in a realistic manner even close to the ‘virtual’ ground, compared to only 13 scenarios which were permitted for pilot training in the real aircraft for safety reasons.

The ATSB report includes these observations by Ansett Aviation Training on the skills and experiences issues still facing third level regional operations, as well as a commitment by CASA on mandatory use of flight simulators.