New comment on "Some possible explanation of the crash"

Steve Bennett has left a new comment on your post "Some possible explanation of the crash":

I attempted to fly to Kokoda in May of last year in a twin otter with a female pilot. She taxied to the runway at Jacksons and then said to us passengers that the weather report in Kokoda was poor visibility and the female pilot then decided to abort even taking off and we returned to the APNG hangar. The next morning we flew in to clear skies.
In the times that I have left Kokoda strip, the plane has often banked to the right just after take off, completed a lap of the Kokoda Station and then headed up the Eora Creek Gorge and through Kokoda Gap.
My impression is that Ms Moala may have decided to abort landing at Kokoda and then headed straight up the Eora Creek. Perhaps the chap on board who had completed the Kokoda track on 2 previous times may have said something to her through the door which may have made her think that she still had time to swing around to the right and try another attempt at landing. Just that the mountain was in the way.
There is little chance that we will ever find out what caused this flight to go down; I don't see your commentary based on sex can help anything Terry. Poor form.

New comment on "Some possible explanation of the crash"

Terry has left a new comment on your post "Some possible explanation of the crash":

The female pilot Jenny Moala had just 6 months experience piloting a twin engine plane. It's reported she was calm before the accident. Of course she was calm. She had no idea what she was doing.
The media is interpreting 'calm' as 'in control'. What nonsense.
This is a clear case of an Affirmative action pilot killing 14 innocent people by her inexperience. God knows how she got the job.
Nowhere has the media pointed this out. Political correctness prevents it.
This is no accident. It was an accident waiting to happen. It was a certainty.
When I step into a plane, I look into the cockpit. If I don't see a middle aged man, I ask to get off. The women belong in the aisle serving drinks.
The fourteen people who died would have be served by looking in the cockpit and attracting the ire of the politically correct crowd. Better to be alive and reviled than dead.
Affirmative action and Political Correctness has no place when people's lives are at state. Merit does. Experience does.
Let Moala practice her flying skills on her own family. Not on the husbands, brothers and sisters of others.
Remember the facts here before you get all precious. She was female. She was 26 years old. She only had 2,500 hours flying experience. She was at the controls. She was flying in a nation known for its dangers.

Sorry David Baker

From Bruce Copeland

David,
 I am sorry. In the last week there has been speculation. As I person who has trekked Kokoda, several people have asked my opinion. The newspapers have got the basic facts out of kilter.
 The people I sent the email to were PNG journalists who I was trying to give a clearer picture to. The newspapers do not have the very basic facts.
 The aircraft flew down but the pilot aborted. Several PNG people tell me of the rain and cloud. Between aborting of the flight in the usual place for aircraft and the sighting of the aircraft, the aircraft was up
the Eora Creek gorge.
 The pilot would have entered the gorge in the cloud and rain. So now the journalists have a basic understanding. Again I am sorry that you have been angry. We now wait for the official investigation for the
full details.
 History of aircraft accidents in this country finds many such terrible tragedies. There are people in this country who have lost loved ones in the accident. I only tried to help. Several villagers from the area
have talked to me.
 
Regards,
 
Bruce Copeland
 

Re: Some possible explanation of the crash

Bruce, 
 Enough is enough mate...
 "Inescapable facts to be addressed":
 Followed by 2 x could be's, 2 x may have's, 2 x or, 2 x perhaps & 1 x possible....
 I find it extraordinary that your expertise crosses into aircraft engineering &
meteorology...
 How dare you speculate on the causes of this tragedy?
 As a former firefighter from Sydney airport who understands procedure, I find your opinions about weather & piloting aircraft appalling.
 May they all rest in peace.
 
 David Baker
Kokoda Culture
 

 

Some possible explanation of the crash

By Bruce Copeland

 

 
Dear all,
 
I wish to respectfully set down a range of factors in the recent air crash at Kokoda.

It may be several weeks/months before an official finding is made.
 
In the meantime, there are inescapable facts that have to be addressed.
 
The pilot radioed control that she was aborting the landing and climbing.

Then we find that the aircraft is crashed up Eora Creek gorge opposite Isurava.

By what mischance did that happen?
 
There are possible conclusions that can be drawn and based on the fact that there was fog.

Those of us who trek Kokoda know that the fog comes up the Eora Creek gorge in the afternoons and can stay until late morning.
 
Fog can cover the Kokoda plateau including the airstrip in a thick blanket.

 It could be that the pilot could not find the airstrip in the low blanket of fog.

She may have aborted having mistaken the airstrip or approached the strip for landing some distance down the runway.
 
Or she could have mistaken the strip.

In the fog, perhaps the road outside the Kokoda hospital could be mistaken for the strip.
 
When she aborted, she climbed to get out of the fog.

But it may have been high fog/drizzling cloud that covered the opening to the Eora Creek gorge.

She may have approached the gorge too close to complete the circuit.

Perhaps she should have circled to the left around the Oivi-Gorari area.
 
Once she flew into the gorge, fate of the aircraft was sealed.
There should be markers on the airstrip. But in fog, these may be of little use.
 
Those who trek will undoubtedly have the same basic views as expressed here.

 This is a terrible accident that we all wish never had happened.
 
Regards,
 
Bruce Copeland

Kokoda crash backs back a lot of memories

By PAUL OATES

 

This latest air crash brings back a lot of memories and not all of them good.

Every sympathy should be extended to the families of the victims.

Some thought should also be given to those who have unenviable task of going in and investigating the crash site.

The role of the local people is very often overlooked.

 I wonder if the media ever give that a thought when they have a 'feeding frenzy' on the disaster but then quickly lose interest in what some have to do afterwards.

The concentration on the crash and the victims and their family's subsequent grief is almost macabre and borders on the sensational, an aspect some have already commented on when media coverage of PNG is concerned.

Flying in PNG should never be taken for granted.

The number of times I have left my fingerprints in the aluminium seat frames of small planes in PNG is too numerous to mention.

Isn't it amazing that now PNG is a separate and sovereign country, the amount of assistance being offered to help with this exercise seems to dwarf any provided to us when TPNG was an Australian Territory?

We had to cope with similar situations, often with limited assistance from Australia, who had very little idea of our role and it sadly appears, still don't, if the recent Government reticence in supporting Chris Viner-Smith's long, hard slog and Keith Jackson's efforts in obtaining some recognition for former kiaps.

 

Thoughts on the Kokoda crah

From John Fowke

Like all fatal crashes, it's a tragedy.  One of many in PNG which we have all been affected by in some measure over the years. And an unimaginably violent end to life for loved ones in the minds of suddenly-bereaved relatives, both in Australia and in PNG. But what did you think about the Australian response? Would the House of representatives stand in silence for a minute if nine Aussies had been killed in a tourist-coach crash whilst speeding to Uluru on a similar package deal? Or on a tour to the War Memorial in Canberra, for that matter? The Kokoda Track as a fashionable "feelgood" icon for affluent middle-class Aussies is getting a bit over the top in my admittedly-tetchy opinion; and as well, a horse to which our Canberra spin-meisters on both sides have proved only too ready to hitch a wagon or three. Dr Johnson's famous admonitory phrase about patriotism comes to mind.

Almost nobody ever goes to stand and think on the beach at Buna, or climbs to the crest of Shaggy Ridge, or visits the site of the Tol massacre or the beautifully-maintained War Cemetery in Lae, among many other reminders of wartime sacrifice and tragedy which are relatively easy to get to from major provincial centres. Why? Because all this is now forgotten- ignored entirely in the mish-mash of postmodern, lefty/sociology-driven drivel substituted for history and geography lessons in Australia's schools. To say nothing of what may or may not be taught in PNG's schools. In PNG it is often said that " the war wasn't of our making, we were just drawn in and suffered as a side-effect of antipathies among the industrialized nations." Of course, a very successful Asian invasion is in progress in PNG today. Allowing it to occur and to control major aspects of the economy, as it is being allowed to do, casts a shadow of shame upon the memory of all those thousands of Papuans and New Guineans who did in one way or another contest the imposition of the Japanese " Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere"- the invasion of 1942. Many more of them lie buried in their home soil than the 9000-plus Australians who lie in the various War Cemeteries in PNG, and in yet-to-be-discovered graves, lost and alone in the bush.

Those wartime carriers, labourers, PIB soldiers and the members of the RPC and the New Guinea Police who served in the conflict, 1942-45, are the true founders of the Independent State of PNG. Not the politicians of the First House. Not Gough Whitlam or his Parliament and his Department of Territories. No, it was the fighting men of PNG. Without them, and without the Australian and American servicemen and women who served and who died in the New Guinea campaigns, all of us in Australia and in PNG would live in very different circumstances, today. We in Australia, as well as their own countrymen, should honour their memory in the manner due; not in loose, emotional expressions flowing from the words of a part-time poet writing for the "Australian Womens Weekly." And not by allowing distortions of the facts to be generated by tour-operators and others who profit from the interest in Australia's part in the Pacific campaigns.

A few keen overseas bush-walkers do undertake a professionally-guided trek across the Bulldog Track from the upper Lakekamu to Wau, but this worthwhile adventure-tour has received very little publicity because of the big shadow cast by the prominence of the Kokoda Track/Trail enterprise. The whole Kokoda thing was raised to its current prominence by Paul Keating's Prime Ministerial visit, aided by the earnest zeal of the pioneer Track tour-promoter- who espouses the cause of the villagers along the track as a prime driver of his enterprise. The publicity so generated has created the erroneous belief that the Track-side and Kokoda villagers are the only descendents of the "Fuzzy-Wuzzy Angels." This is a point recently repeated with laboured and entirely ignorant emphasis. In fact the "fuzzies" who, like a great many of the first wave of Australian soldiers to hit the Track, were conscripts, not volunteers, came from all along the coast of Papua from the Fly through the Gulf and Central Districts, on past Milne Bay and East Cape to the Islands. The "Track" villagers and all the people of the Northern Division, old and young alike, suffered the brunt of the Japanese invasion and subsequent campaigns, the danger and the disruption. Many of the men of the Division served with the Allies, too; but they were by no means alone in this.