Mayday… Mayday… Mayday…

Long range search aircraft were soon dispatched to the area and just before 1 p. m. a radio signal was received from an emergency locator transmitter in one of the life rafts. The search aircraft, another Boeing 747, then descended to a lower level to conduct a visual search and in the next period of 90 minutes sighted five life rafts containing survivors, as well as several persons in the water. The Australian Coastal Surveillance Centre provided details of shipping to assist with the rescue and several ships were diverted to the area where the survivors had been sighted. The first ship reached the area about midnight but rescue could not really progress at any great speed until dawn.

All the while, the air search continued as not all of the eight life rafts had been located. From later interviews with survivors, it seems that some of these were not able to be launched due to damage incurred to the aircraft during the ditching manoeuvre. However, at the time it was necessary to try to locate these rafts as well as any individual survivors who might be in the water or clinging to pieces of wreckage. By Thursday morning the first of the survivors to be landed at Townsville had arrived, and indeed all who were to be recovered from the water had been rescued and were on their way to shore by that time. Two hundred and twenty two persons survived, about one third with injuries, including some with burns from the fire before ditching. Of the other thirty to embark in Honolulu, not all were recovered, leaving lingering doubts as to their true fate. The air and sea search continued for several days, but nothing more of great importance was recovered. The aircraft itself sank fairly quickly due to fire and impact damage and with a water depth in that area of about 4000 metres, recovery was considered impractical.

The foregoing was of course a fantasy, but it was a fantasy with a purpose: for this was the scenario of a ‘real time’ search and rescue exercise conducted by the Australian Department of Aviation on those dates, which I attended as an observer. The exercise was conducted in a closed environment, no radio messages were sent, no search aircraft were deployed, no ships were diverted, and of course, the mythical Boeing747SP, VH-SRX and her ethereal crew remain safely locked away in a filing cabinet in Canberra, to be redeployed in some form or another when the next of these exercises is held.

This exercise, on quite a large scale, with overseas participation from the United States Coast Guard, United States Air Force and the search and rescue authorities of many of Australia’s Asian and African neighbours, was one of a series conducted every two years to evaluate our search and rescue capabilities.

It was of particular interest, however, coming just twelve weeks after the well-publicised, and rather less than successful, rescue efforts after the ditching of a Rockwell Commander 685 in Bass Strait. In the exercise, the resident search and rescue personnel in Townsville were used to conduct the mock search whilst exercise control was vested in search and rescue experts from the Head Office of the Department of Aviation. A reserve search and rescue team were positioned to Townsville to provide coverage whilst the regular team was participating in the exercise. This proved to be a wise precaution as on a Tuesday morning, with the exercise at its height, a Hiller helicopter was lost near Charters Towers, requiring a genuine air search.

The exercise itself must be rated a success but to your correspondent, it seemed that some of the shortcomings of the Bass Strait disaster were still evident. The organisation of search and rescue in Australia is very rigidly structured. Individual personnel are encouraged to follow procedures rather than to use initiative. There seemed lack of willingness to call in outside expert opinion on a number of points. There was a lack of detailed knowledge of resources available, especially concerning aircraft.

Considerable use was theoretically made of two Grumman Mallard amphibian aircraft that normally ply the Whitsunday routes. When provision was made for refuelling these aircraft at Willis Islands, the search and rescue team did not seem to realise that one aircraft required turbine fuel and the other avgas. That problem aside, the use of a relatively small amphibian aircraft such as the Mallard for landings on the open sea would seem to be a little foolhardy.

When two Ansett Boeing 727 aircraft were requisitioned, the aircraft theoretically provided had no area navigation equipment, being two of only three in the fleet not so equipped. I fail to see how such aircraft could fly an accurate search pattern four hundred miles off the coast when considerable difficulty with accurate position fixing was experienced in the Bass Strait incident less than seventy kilometres from the coast. All this time other suitable aircraft were available from the domestic and international operators as well as from the Services.

Hopefully the state of search and rescue services in Australia is not beyond reprieve. Perhaps by the time you are reading this, a report commissioned by the Minister for Aviation on the efficiency of search and rescue services will have been made public and the Minister will see fit to act on that report.

If I might pre-empt Mr Whitecross, here are some things which ought to be done now. The rigid procedures laid down in Airways Operating Instructions on Search and Rescue must be closely examined to see if they are written to actually expedite search and rescue, or are they just designed to create a bureaucratic system for the system’s sake. I have the greatest admiration for the work of most of the individual officers of the Departments, (Aviation, Transport and good old DCA), that I have had dealings with over the years. Yet I find time and again that my confidence in the system is severely shaken.

In the area of resources, knowledge work should be done now to make the best use of that which is available. This cries out for the use of electronic data processing. Surely it is not too much to ask of a department whose forte is aviation, to build a data bank of knowledge of aircraft with any search and rescue capability. I cannot imagine any industry resistance to a self-help programme such as this where the navigation and supply dropping capabilities of all aircraft should be committed to computer memory to be instantly available time of need. This way the fiasco of the light aircraft supply dropping attempts and the misuse and non-use of various helicopters in the Bass Strait incident would have been avoided.

More use could be made of the legion of enthusiasts involved in all levels of aviation. After a particularly bad period in 1974 when several of their members were lost in light aircraft accidents, the Australian Women Pilots’ Association recommended to the then Department of Transport, that a volunteer organisation be set up and given appropriate training to assist with search and rescue, particularly as observers on search aircraft. Their suggestion was oh so politely ignored. Perhaps it is time the idea was resurrected. I don’t for one minute suggest that private pilots be sent into a search area, but I do feel that we have here an untapped resource. If anyone has any doubts that a programme like this would work they should examine the operations of the United States Civil Air Patrol, or closer to home, see what the volunteers of the National Safety Council of Australia have achieved in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria.

Now is the time for action. It is not that Australia has a bad search and rescue organisation, but we should stop patting ourselves on the back and recognise that improvements can be made which should not involve a great deal of capital expenditure. With a Minister who is clearly pro-aviation, great things can be achieved. How about it, Canberra?

Postscript: On a recent flight in a large Australian-registered airline aircraft we were asked, initially by Perth Control, to listen for an emergency locator transmitter signal reported by previous aircraft. We were asked to listen on both VHF and UHF distress frequencies, although as far as I know, no airline aircraft in Australia carry UHF receivers. At debriefing in Sydney I was asked again if we had heard the signal on UHF as well as VHF. This can only be yet another example of a lack of resources knowledge. Reference: Bureau of Air Safety Investigation Report 833-1017: Search and Rescue Activities Associated with the Ditching of Rockwell 685 Aircraft VH-WJC in Bass Strait, Tasmania, 17 July 1983. (Australian Government Publishing Service, $2.60.)