A plane crash that killed three people in outback Queensland was "entirely preventable" and was caused by a well-known, long-standing defect which operators failed to report, a transport safety investigation has found.
00:01It was on November 4, 2023, when the twin turboprop Gulfstream aircraft, operated by Victorian company AG Air, was flying from Toowoomba in southern Queensland to Mount Isa in northwest Queensland to photograph fire zones when it was involved in this crash.
00:22So on board the plane was one pilot and two crew members, which included 22-year-old US citizen William Jennings.
00:32Now, the ATSB found that several times during the flight, it had changed its altitude and had also lost communication at times with air traffic controllers.
00:44Now, it found that the altitude changes were due to the pilot responding to pressurisation defects that they knew about in the plane.
00:56So was the crash preventable, Toby?
01:00Well, Ross, those pressurisation defects were known about for years in the lead up to the crash the ATSB found.
01:09So the aircraft was initially operated in South Africa from 1982 and works were done in about 2014 to fix those pressurisation defects and the aircraft then was brought to Australia.
01:25It was taken over by AG Air and began operating by AG Air in 2016.
01:30Now, the ATSB found the defect was not formally recorded by AG Air nor passed on to their external safety managers.
01:40But there was encouragement by AG Air management to its pilots to fly the aircraft at 19,000 feet.
01:50That's well above that 10,000 feet safe limit for aircraft with pressurisation issues.
01:56Now, let's take a listen to what ATSB Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell had to say.
02:02This was a tragic and entirely preventable and unnecessary accident that took three precious lives.
02:10The dangers of aircraft owners and pilots engaging in practices that deliberately circumvent critical safety defences cannot be underestimated.
02:23The ATSB, their jurisdiction goes just to investigating the crash and releasing the report that it did today.
02:31It's got no prosecution powers per se or other kind of enforcement measures.
02:36That's in the hands of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, the coroner and other bodies.
02:43Now, we've contacted CASA and those other bodies for comment along with AG Air, but we're yet to hear back, Ross.
