Rice bowl protection and abrogation of responsibility, writ large.
P2 – was the AWIS and NOTAM situation for Mildura ever fully examined? Always made me smile, the notion that the automatic weather station was U/S. Remember that part in estimates where there was lots of wriggling and squirming about who owned the unit, who owned the wires, who owned the weather data, who was responsible; hilarious. Everyone was in Montreal or at the pub.
I’d place advance notice of actual conditions at a field on top of my list; QNH, cloud, wind and temperature/dewpoint; how many times have you called a CTAF and asked a local aircraft for the information? Makes life so much easier, but why is it that we have multiple redundancy and strict rules for airport lighting, navigation aid power,etc. dual everything just about on the flight deck – so that when an essential ‘item’ fails, the back up kicks in and we remain ‘safe’. So why has a backup AWIS rule not been issued and why has the ATSB not taken direct action to ensure that whoever is responsible for making sure the vital terminal conditions are always available 24/7, irrespective, at every airport, not just NOTAMed as not being available. I reckon the Mildura crews would have said thank you for the advance ‘warning’; or a ‘chat’ with the friendly local fuel agent even.
P2 – was the AWIS and NOTAM situation for Mildura ever fully examined? Always made me smile, the notion that the automatic weather station was U/S. Remember that part in estimates where there was lots of wriggling and squirming about who owned the unit, who owned the wires, who owned the weather data, who was responsible; hilarious. Everyone was in Montreal or at the pub.
I’d place advance notice of actual conditions at a field on top of my list; QNH, cloud, wind and temperature/dewpoint; how many times have you called a CTAF and asked a local aircraft for the information? Makes life so much easier, but why is it that we have multiple redundancy and strict rules for airport lighting, navigation aid power,etc. dual everything just about on the flight deck – so that when an essential ‘item’ fails, the back up kicks in and we remain ‘safe’. So why has a backup AWIS rule not been issued and why has the ATSB not taken direct action to ensure that whoever is responsible for making sure the vital terminal conditions are always available 24/7, irrespective, at every airport, not just NOTAMed as not being available. I reckon the Mildura crews would have said thank you for the advance ‘warning’; or a ‘chat’ with the friendly local fuel agent even.