Claim: Probe into fatal Australia bushfire plane crash complicated by dangers.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: 2003 Canberra bushfires
text: waterbombing the fires in the forests west of Canberra crashed into Bendora Dam with one person, pilot Duncan Patrick, injured. The pilot was reloading water buckets from the dam at the time of the crash. ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope and ACT Chief Fire Control Officer Peter Lucas-Smith were reviewing the fires nearby during a routine bushfire surveillance flight in the Snowy Hydro SouthCare helicopter. The unconscious pilot had been pulled from the sinking wreckage by a SouthCare rescue helicopter medical crewman Euan McKenzie, but due to the weight of his clothes and lack of life vest, was unable to

title: 1950 Australian National Airways Douglas DC-4 crash
text: back to the fire and determine its position. MacDonald did so and advised Air Traffic Control of bearings from the fire to York and Northam, the towns nearest the crash site. Frank McNamara (62), an apiarist, and Geoff Inkpen (25), a young farmer, heard the sound of a big aircraft in serious trouble, flying low nearby. McNamara described the noise from the engines as "terrifying". They investigated and saw the bright light of a flash fire. McNamara sent his two teenage sons in his utility truck to York to alert the police. McNamara and Inkpen then set out on foot

title: Garuda Indonesia Flight 200
text: back to appear on the 6pm news that night. Two Australian Federal Police agents, Australian Embassy staffers Liz O'Neill (public relations officer) and Allison Sudradjat (Minister Counsellor and Senior Representative of AusAID), and "Australian Financial Review" newspaper journalist Morgan Mellish were among those killed. The accident was investigated by the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC). Australian Federal Police disaster victim identification experts were deployed to the scene to assist with the identification of bodies. Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) staff assisted at the scene by inspecting the wreckage. The United States' National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) dispatched a team

title: 1950 Australian National Airways Douglas DC-4 crash
text: in the direction of the fire. As there was bright moonlight, they were able to hurry through the bush. After about half an hour, they came upon a scene of devastation. They were astonished to find an elderly man in a dazed state wandering around the burning wreckage. He gave his name and explained that he had been a passenger on a large aircraft. He had survived the crash despite being badly burned. No one else was found alive. In response to notification from Air Traffic Control, three ambulances from Perth were despatched in the direction of the crash site,

title: Eyre Peninsula bushfire, 2005
text: were covered in smoke. But we had the sea to go into so we were right." Between 5 October 2005 and 8 May 2007, South Australia's Deputy State Coroner conducted a coronial inquest that examined a large range of factors connected with the bushfire, taking evidence from 140 witnesses. In his 703-page report released on 18 December 2007, the coroner made 34 wide-ranging recommendations for minimising future bushfire risks, to which the South Australian Government subsequently responded. The report also listed other investigations into the bushfire. An Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program broadcast on the day on which the coronial

title: 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission
text: Kinglake West and swarmed Kinglake less than three hours later. News of deaths reached the Kangaroo Ground CFA office at 5pm and Rees said he'd first been informed of these deaths between 7 and 8pm. Rees was also unaware: of the aircraft line-scan taken after the fire erupted, chief fire behavior expert Dr Kevin Tolhurst’s presence and predictive map he and his team produced. Rees’s evidence explained that warnings weren’t issued from the centre but from the periphery, the local incident-control centers (ICCs), the IECC’s only responsibility was to place such warnings on the CFA website, but nor Rees or

title: Paul Lockyer
text: August 2011. On 18 August 2011, Lockyer and two fellow ABC employees, pilot Gary Ticehurst and cameraman John Bean, died in a helicopter crash on the eastern shore of Lake Eyre in South Australia. The trio were on assignment filming a story about the lake. The aircraft was an Aérospatiale Industries AS355F2 helicopter owned by the ABC. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau conducted an investigation into the fatal accident, finding the probable cause to be spatial disorientation of the pilot, during a period of high workload shortly after taking off for a VFR flight on a dark night. The accident

title: 1950 Australian National Airways Douglas DC-4 crash
text: was not burnt, but autopsy showed both his legs were broken and he died from a fractured skull. Postmortem examinations were performed on the 28 victims of the crash. The two co-pilots died from multiple injuries. Twenty-three passengers and the two air hostesses were found to have died from multiple injuries and burns, or incineration. Only 12 of the 28 victims could be formally identified. The remaining 16 victims were either unrecognisable or unable to be identified and were buried in a mass grave at Perth's Karrakatta cemetery. On its fatal flight the "Amana" was carrying 24 passengers, including 2

title: Merpati Nusantara Airlines Flight 5601
text: were strewn over the area. A baby was found 20 meters from the wreckage, with its legs had been burnt out due to post-impact fire. A child body, nine years old Meka Fitriyani, was found in her mother's arm. Most of the bodies were found in burn condition and large burn injuries due to post-impact fire. As the plane crashed, the fuel ignited and exploded causing massive fire in the crash site. The post-fire was so intense in fact it burns the vegetations in the surrounding area and ignited some bush fire. The wreckage was still smoking when it was

title: Qantas Flight 72
text: the flight crew. The ATSB investigation is supported by the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), Qantas, the French Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA) and Airbus. Copies of data from the aircraft's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were sent to the BEA and Airbus. The aircraft was equipped with a Northrop Grumman made ADIRS, which investigators sent to the manufacturer in the United States for further testing. On 15 January 2009 the EASA issued an emergency airworthiness directive to address the above A330 and A340 Northrop-Grumman ADIRU problem of incorrectly responding to

title: Whyalla Airlines Flight 904
text: the South Australian Coroner. This included immediately mandating that all flights operated within Australia over water with paying passengers on board were to carry life jackets. Previously, this had been only required for aircraft carrying more than nine passengers. Subsequent revisions of the regulations in the aftermath of the accident also went further, requiring emergency beacons, lighting and provisions to be carried on such flights. The investigations also prompted CASA to take action warning pilots and operators of high performance piston engine aircraft about potential dangers of running engines with a leaner than optimal fuel-air mixture. Whyalla Airlines Flight 904

title: 2000 Australia Beechcraft King Air crash
text: was unable to determine the cause of the crash. The Coroner recommended an aural alarm system for pressurised aircraft, and a low-cost "black box" flight recorder. The Coroner was critical of the poor co-ordination between the ATSB, the Queensland Police and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA). He also criticised the ATSB for failing to take notes when interviewing witnesses, and for its poor presentation of evidence. When the air traffic controller responsible for the Beechcraft received the open-microphone transmissions, he alerted his supervisor that he was concerned the pilot could be suffering from hypoxia. The controller and his supervisor

title: 2003 Canberra bushfires
text: emergency services and the policies that govern their operations, including a greater emphasis on provision of information to the public. The Coroner's inquiry commenced in January 2003, and hearing officially opened on 16 June 2003. The Coroner's Court of the Australian Capital Territory conducted an inquiry into the cause, origin, and circumstances of the 2003 bushfires and inquests into the four deaths associated with those fires. The inquiry was under the provisions of the ACT "Coroners Act 1997". The inquiry was marked by controversy, and in February 2005 the ACT Supreme Court heard an application that the coroner be disqualified

title: Western Australia Police
text: "The helicopter probably entered a vortex ring state during the final approach". The pilot and crewman received minor injuries, and the two passengers serious injuries, as a result of the accident. On the 26 January 2001, four police officers lost their lives when their Cessna 310R plane crashed at night near the mining town of Newman. The plane was returning from Kiwirrkurra, on the edge of the Gibson Desert, when the aircraft's engines failed due to fuel starvation on the approach to Newman airstrip. The crash was the single biggest loss of police lives in West Australian history, and the

title: Asiana Airlines Flight 991
text: 2012, the International Civil Aviation Organization considered applying new safety standards to air carriage of lithium batteries as a result of this crash and the crash of UPS Airlines Flight 6 in Dubai after a fire. The Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board (ARAIB) determined that a fire developed on or near the pallets containing dangerous goods but no physical evidence of the cause of the fire was found. The fire rapidly escalated to become large and uncontained. Without the data from the black boxes, the board was unable to determine exactly what took place in the cockpit during the

title: 1950 Australian National Airways Douglas DC-4 crash
text: one engine, and ultimately temporary loss of power from all engines on at least one occasion. The Investigators did not find a likely source for the water. All but one of the 29 occupants on board the aircraft died, either from multiple injuries and burns, or from incineration. One elderly male passenger survived the crash. The first rescuers at the crash site found him wandering about, dazed and distressed. He suffered serious burns and was admitted to hospital where he died six days later. The accident became the subject of an Inquiry chaired by a Supreme Court judge. In the

title: 1940 Canberra air disaster
text: writer Macarthur Job (Aerospace Publications, Canberra 1992). The Court of Inquiry into the accident found that it was most likely from the aircraft stalling on its landing approach, resulting in loss of control at a height too low to recover. The aircraft crashed into a hill with great force, killing all occupants instantly, then burning fiercely. Menzies was deeply affected by the crash, both personally and politically. "This was a dreadful calamity," he told the House of Representatives the next day. "For my three colleagues were my close and loyal friends. Each of them had a place not only in

title: Paul Lockyer
text: was the first fatal accident involving a twin-engine helicopter in Australia since 1986. Addressing Parliament, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, spoke of Lockyer's coverage of important events, his famous inland reports and his reporting of the 2010–2011 Queensland floods. She spoke of the dangers journalists were exposed to, saying "[They] took these risks and told these stories. They were true professionals and true gentlemen of the Australian media." The renowned artist John Olsen, who was a regular visitor to Lake Eyre, had been invited to be a member of the helicopter party, but declined due to ill-health. He later offered

title: Australia–Indonesia relations
text: seeker boat rescues. Nineteen Australian passengers, including government officials Elizabeth O'Neill, Allison Sudradjat, and "Australian Financial Review" journalist Morgan Mellish, were killed when Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 crashed in Yogyakarta on 7 March 2007. The following year, both countries signed a memorandum of understanding on air transport safety, which included $24 million of funding to train 40 Indonesian airworthiness inspectors, improve air traffic management, and enhance Indonesia's capacity to undertake investigation of transport accidents. Public opinion polls conducted by the Lowy Institute, an Australian foreign relations think tank, found that Australians rated their views towards Indonesia as 54 degrees, on

title: 1949 Queensland Airlines Lockheed Lodestar crash
text: aircraft. The aircraft's cabin door had been torn away by a tree stump and lay about behind the aircraft but despite the open doorway no-one inside the passenger cabin attempted to escape. Fuel floating on the surface of the water was burning fiercely, making it dangerous to approach the wreckage. One of the first witnesses to reach the scene believed he saw two people at the front of the passenger cabin who were alive but before he could get close enough to investigate he was driven back by flames. A fire engine from Coolangatta arrived within minutes of the crash.