On 21 January 2013 the ATSB welcomed a delegation from the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. The delegation includes officials from the Myanmar Department of Civil Aviation and the Myanmar Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, and representatives from airlines within Myanmar.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is providing specialist assistance to Myanmar with its accident investigation into a Fokker 100 jet that crashed on 25 December 2012. The jet, carrying 71 people, including 5 Australians, landed in a field short of the runway at Heho Airport, which is the portal to the popular tourist destination of Inle Lake. There were fog patches in the area at the time. Two persons were killed, one a passenger in the plane and the other, a motorcyclist on the ground. The plane was badly damaged when its wings were shorn off and it caught fire. Ten passengers required hospital treatment and a further 26 were taken to hospital for medical checks.
The ATSB’s assistance involves the provision of technical specialists and facilities in Canberra to download and decode data from the aircraft’s flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder (commonly referred to as black boxes). This assistance is underpinned in Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, which promotes cooperation between member States internationally and details the protocols to facilitate the provision of such assistance.
Providing such assistance is also consistent with the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport’s statement of expectations of the ATSB that includes the requirement that, subject to available resources, we provide assistance to accident investigations in other countries, in accordance with international protocols. Under these arrangements, Australia provides assistance widely in the Asia-Pacific region and has assisted countries such as New Zealand, Papua-New Guinea and Indonesia, as well as other Pacific Island states.
The ATSB welcomes the opportunity to work with our counterparts in the region. It is hoped that the ATSB’s work will provide significant assistance to the Myanmar investigation and contribute more broadly to the enhancement of aviation safety internationally. These opportunities also provide a valuable means by which the ATSB can develop and exercise the skills and experience of its own specialist investigators.