Airlines PNG, which crashed a Twin Otter carrying 13 people including nine Australians near Isurava on the Kokoda track yesterday, had a shocking safety record under its original name Milne Bay Airlines.
It added to those 42 (or more) fatalities with at least two under its current styling, which recently dropped the word ‘of’ from the title.
The same type of aircraft, a twin engined Twin Otter turboprop, was involved in the 2 August crash of an Indonesian Merpati Airlines flight in the mountains of West Papua which killed all 15 people on board.
The prominent place of Twin Otters in air crashes throughout PNG and West Papua is coincidental. There is no other design available with its combination of size and capabilities for short unpaved field operations including higher altitude strips and the accidents in which more than 1300 people have died in at least the last 20 years world wide have everything to do with where and how it is flown rather than its inherent safety.
Twin Otters are very safe until flown into terrain by pilots who lose ‘situational awareness’ or get lost in clouds containing mountains and gorges.
The anger and sorrow which the Kokoda disaster brings involves terrain that is the natural enemy of sophisticated air navigation and precision landing systems, including those that are used by larger jets at tough airstrips like Queenstown in New Zealand, in Tibet, and the hairier ski resort strips in Colorado and the European Alps.
At places like Kokoda they have to rely on judgement. And an element of luck. PNG pilots will talk about sitting out the clouds, playing a waiting game ready to advantage of any thinning or breaks.
There is a reason why they are able to talk about this. They have played the patience game successfully. Those that don’t die.
By comparison with the “village” level strips of PNG, the so called scary approaches to Courchevel, Colorado Springs, Lhasa or La Paz are mundane.
For these reasons it is impossible to imagine operations like Airlines PNG not having any crashes, but what infuriates many PNG expats and nationals is that its third tier carriers have what always comes across as an indifferent, take-it-or-leave it attitude when a flight goes down.
The national flag carrier Air Nuigini, only flies these days to centres where a jet as large as a Fokker F 28 can land on a proper runway with navigational aides and some very strict standard operating procedures about last minute decisions to land or go around.
In the wilder places, this amazing and scary third tier air transport network will inevitably continue to kill those who have no real alternative transport to and from the outside world, including the latter day Australian casualties who came to pay their respects to one of the great heroic chapters in our own history.
My Dad flew that route (Moresby to Milne Bay and back) many times during his service with the RAAF in the South West Pacific from 1943-45 and lived to tell the tale. The mountains and the clouds are the same, the planes and technology are vastly improved and no one is trying to shoot them down. Surely the risk factor has reduced in the last 65 years?
I think you have summed up very well the problems of aviation in PNG. I am 100% sure that there are not many pilots that deliberately fly themsleves into mountains. Most sane humans have a sense of self preservation well before they consider others.
Re Air Niugini flying to only airstrips rated for F28’s. That, as far as I know is factually, incorrect and not because they do not fly F28’s anymore but because I am sure they fly Dash 8 aircraft into strips such as Tari and Mendi where I do not think the old F28’s could land.
I think they also fly to Tabubil which once again I am sure could not take an F28 (if they were still be flown in PNG). I also know that Goroka was a very marginal airstrip for the F28. It may have been lengthened by now to take an F100 but most other airstrips especially smaller ones have deteriorated in the last 35 years. Many have closed so despite advances in saftey equipment on board the aircraft other infrasructure has gone down hill.
I posted on this in the usual place about my solo trek there in 1990. My main point in this awful context is, that I didn’t fly to or from the track/trail.
There surely is a case now for road upgrade from Kokoda to the coastal exit at Oro Bay/Popendetta – where I got the Lutheran Ferry to Lae and flew from there by jet back to Moresby and home to Sydney and then Canberra. Even an airstrip at coastal Oro Bay seems better than mountains strip than going all the way to Lae.
By the way the Ferry back then was very modern, big and a blessing. I gave away my seasick tablets.
My trip was on back of a ute from K to Oro like Charlie Boorman style. It was great, fun, and no doubt not for all kinds of trekkers. But it wouldn’t take too much to make the road safer for a minibus just as I took a minibus to Sogeri Village at the start of the track 30km north east (from memory) of Moresby.
This is an awfully tragic situation. I suspect that most Kakoda trekkers do not realise that the riskiest part of the adventure is the flight to the Kokoda airstrip and back. I am a student pilot and fly a recreational aircraft. The worst thing that can ever happen in piloting is to fly from a visual rules situation where you can see the ground to one in which the visibility is reduced in all directions by cloud and fog. This is called flying into instrument meteorological conditions. In 76% of cases this leads to an out of control spiral within 172 seconds of the pilot becoming disorientated (yes, you have less than three minutes to live). Now, a modern Twin Otter has instruments on board to assist the pilot in navigation when visibility is limited. But, these are of limited yuse when a relatively inexperienced pilot on type is disoriented, is stuck in a narrow valley and has only a limited amount of time and thrust to climb back out. Only major internatioanl airports have the type of instrument landing system that allows an aircraft to touch down safely in very low visibility, that is, with a cloud ceiling lower than say 200′. So how would it be possible for an aircraft to land and takeoff safely at an airstrip that has no marker lights, no radio, no radio navigation aids, and as far as I can tell, no navigational approach charts. For the sake of other trekkers, it would be best to either close the strip completely, or else allow limited helicopter access when visual flight rules apply. There can be nothing like a strict flight schedule. As an aside, a similar accident happened a few months ago at Lukla Airport in Nepal involving the same type of aircraft. Now Lukla is perhaps the world’s most difficult airport to negotiate and is at a considerably higher altitude than the strip at Kokoda, yet the same principles of good pilotage apply. I just hope something can be done to prevent any more loss of life at Kokoda.