MH370 PR stunt sees ATSB try to avoid its dismal black box record
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ATSB supplied image of its recorder laboratory at work
The ATSB has sought to leverage a bit of reflected glory out of the MH370 black box search today with an illustrated and indeed useful primer on their uses in air accident investigations.
But for those that have followed its disgraceful mishandling of the Pel-Air crash, this PR exercise will do nothing to restore its damaged integrity, and in particular, its cavalier refusal to retrieve the data recorder from the sea floor near Norfolk Island where the small corporate jet was ditched in November 2009 shortly before it ran out of fuel.
The ATSB was a party to a botched and grievously inadequate investigation of that crash, in which in consultation with CASA, the Australian air safety regulator, an internal document related to CASA’s failures to conduct proper oversight of the Pel-Air Westwind operation was withheld from inclusion in the accident report.
A Senate inquiry into the investigation process which lead to the flawed and embarrassingly inadequate ATSB report being released included an entire section dealing with the unsatisfactory nature of the testimony given to its hearings by the chief commissioner of the ATSB, Martin Dolan.
The black box that the ATSB refused to retrieve from the wreckage of the Pel-Air jet could have provided vital information from the two pilots as to what they had been told about weather conditions at Norfolk Island before they found that they were unable to land and no longer had sufficient fuel to fly to an alternative airfield in Noumea, Fiji or New Zealand.
ATSB photo of the crash site from which it refused to retrieve vital data
With such a shabby record in relation to Pel-Air and its flight data records , the ATSB lacks the credibility to add very much if anything to the high powered international task force now focused on seeking every possible piece of evidence that could cast light on the MH370 tragedy.
If it resolutely refused to pursue all the evidence available to it in relation to a small jet crash in Australia, what possible relevance could the ATSB have to determining all of the factors involved in the loss of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that vanished from air traffic control radars on 8 March, on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing?
Dozens of previous articles on the Pel-Air controversy, the Senate inquiries, and links to the full reports and documents that Australia’s aviation regulator and safety investigator sought to hide from the public can be retrieved from this catalogue.
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We know that the ATSB is salivating over the prospect of taking over the MH370 investigation.
It’s no coincidence that the ATSB has suddenly started to crow like a rooster about its expertise with ‘black boxes’.
It’s obvious that the ATSB wants to bathe in the glory of undertaking the biggest air crash investigation of all time. It obviously wants the international media attention, limelight, accolades, laurels and glory.
These public servant bureaucrat hacks are up their usual work-shy glory-high habits. So unsurprising they’re trying to get in on the MH370 act, it’s all about basking in fame and getting their mugs on TV for ‘profile’. I can imagine them salivating at the opportunity for all that press, and it makes me sick. God help us if there’s a serious Australian incident they have to investigate – if that awful event were to occur, we’d be best served by handing it over to the NTSB, not an out-of-practice quango staffed by veteran nobodies, who take months, if not years to produce even straightforward reports.
Looking at it from the other side:
If the ATSB were the lead investigative body on MH370,
Wouldn’t it give Ben (& other, like-minded investigative journalists) the opportunity to HIGHLIGHT the previous failings of the ATSB (ie: The Pel-Air crash)
and
To raise-awareness amongst the Australian people of what has so far been done (or not done) in their name, in the Pel-Air investigation.?
Dan Dair, Exactly my thoughts as well. We need an opportunity to get focus on Pel-Air. MH370 may provide it. It would be nice if something good came out of this tragedy.
MH370 is exactly what the ATSB needs to divert attention away from Pel-Air. Everyone’s attention will be focused on the 777 investigation.
comet,
That’s the existing status-quo, with or without MH370.
At least it’s possible that things might change if the investigation is handled by the`ATSB.
If the Australian public are following the investigation, it may open them up to articles relating to the previous failings of the department.
It may also create pressure on the government to ensure that the Pel-Air black-boxes ARE recovered & analysed as part of the ATSB retaining its credibility (sic) during the MH370 investigation.
(I agree it might not, but then nothing would have changed from now, would it.?)
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