CASA, the air safety regulator, is refusing to disclose the outcome of its inquiry into the Pel-Air ditching of a medivac flight near Norfolk Island on November 18 but it has suspended indefinitely the pilot licence of Dominic James, the captain of the Westwind jet now in pieces on the sea floor at a depth of about 47 metres.

A spokesman for CASA refused point blank to comment on the inquiry, or the pilot licence suspension, or elaborate on the regulator’s previous statement on November 20 that:

CASA has legal requirements for air operators to carry sufficient fuel to undertake a flight safely. This includes (additional fuel to deal with delays caused by weather or other factors and enough fuel to divert to alternate aerodromes.

However, Crikey has learned that CASA had failed to ensure that this requirement had in fact been imposed on the operations of aerial ambulance flights by Pel-Air, despite regulations designed to prevent flights to oceanic airstrips, including the one at Norfolk Island, being operated without enough fuel to divert to an alternative strip in the event of bad weather.

CASA has previously insisted that all comments on the crash, in which all six people on board survived after treading water for 90 minutes, must come from the ATSB, which has already released a sharply detailed preliminary report, and more recently, a video of the wreckage on the sea floor from which it is considering its options for retrieving the voice recorder and flight data black boxes.

Further screen captures from the video, and a report on the state of the investigation are posted on Plane Talking.

Contrary to the ATSB report detailing the extent of injuries as minor, it is understood that one or more of those on board suffered significant complications arising from the force of a high-speed impact with the sea.

It is also understood that but for the actions of the first officer in raising the undercarriage at the last moment, a more severe structural break up would likely have killed all on board.

The wheels of the small jet fell back into the lowered position before it eventually sank, coming to rest in two main parts.

In law, and in the terms of an air operator certificate or AOC, Pel-Air is responsible for the actions of its pilots, their standards, and their recurrent training. In almost any first- or second-world aviation jurisdiction, except Australia, the failings of air carriers, and by extension, the failings of the safety regulators charged with enforcing the rules, are disclosed publicly and subject to detailed media and parliamentary scrutiny.

But not in Australia. CASA and the major airlines it is responsible for are, were, and will “forever” be totally without fault, completely blameless, immune from public debate, and fawned over by the governments and oppositions of the day.

Sure, pilots can be “executed”. But those responsible for their actions, and for the operations culture that  sustains unprofessional standards, are sacred.

The sooner Australia has the courage and integrity to allow fully transparent oversight of its airlines and open accountability by the regulator to the major aviation stakeholder, the public, the better.