MOBIL FUEL CONTAMINATION REPORT SUMMARY Thursday 13th Jan. Air fuel problems 'well before warning' By ALISON CROSWELLER and CHRISTOPHER NIESCHE 13jan00 ALMOST a year ago, one airline company was so concerned about engine problems with planes it was servicing, it called in fuel supplier Mobil to test its product. Mobil gave the company's owner, Judy Pay, the all-clear, but now she is not so sure. Ms Pay, owner of The Old Aeroplane Company at Tyabb, near Melbourne, said yesterday her company serviced two Cessnas using Mobil fuel in March 1999 that had suffered extensive engine damage. Engineers who examined the planes said the engine damage was most probably related to fuel, because the engines had detonated in the air. "The only explanation was low-octane fuel or not enough fuel in the cylinder which causes detonation, it certainly wasn't the pilots who did it," Ms Pay said. Anxious for an explanation she called in Mobil. "They took some samples but rang us later and told us they had given it the all-clear," she said. "It seemed like an isolated thing at the time but now you just have to wonder." Ms Pay's incident was not isolated. The Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association yesterday reported receiving up to a dozen calls from members concerned that fuel problems may have existed earlier than November 21, the date Mobil has indicated a batch of fuel from its Altona plant first became contaminated. A skydiving company based at Wollongong, south of Sydney, had engine failure in a Cessna flying at 8000 feet on December 5 almost three weeks before Mobil issued a notice to aircraft operators about the contaminated fuel. Anthony Boucaut from Adrenaline Sports Skydiving said the plane experienced a complete loss of power: "It was a total engine failure." The plane's four passengers had to parachute to safety and the pilot tried 12 times to restart the engine without success before being forced to crash-land in a park, skidding 150m before stopping. The plane had been using Mobil fuel and fuel contamination was "the most likely and the most plausible explanation" for the engine failure, Mr Boucaut said. "We had no idea initially what caused the engine failure." Mobil issued its first warning about the fuel on December 23 but it was only after the most recent warning that Mr Boucaut suspected fuel contamination, but by then it was too late to do an investigation. Clarification A photo accompanying a report yesterday in The Australian headlined "Groundings aggravate the tyranny of distance" was incorrectly captioned. Airlink's fleet is based in Dubbo, not Lightning Ridge, and the company has grounded four of its 11 planes, not the full fleet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crashes linked to dirty fuel By NICOLE STRAHAN and RICHARD McGREGOR 13jan00 THE escalating crisis over contaminated aviation fuel will be the subject of a sweeping inquiry by the federal Government's transport safety bureau amid claims that the fuel may have caused two recent helicopter crashes. Acting Prime Minister and Transport Minister John Anderson announced that the inquiry would be widened to cover Mobil's performance at its Altona refinery and industry standards generally. Mr Anderson rejected Labor's demand for a judicial inquiry into the fuel scare, which has grounded up to planes and cost up to $100 million, saying it was "primarily a technical issue". But the Senate has called Civil Aviation Safety Authority officials to appear before its transport committee next Thursday, a move that could embarrass the Government. Fears spread yesterday that contaminated aviation fuel was distributed to airports throughout last year. The Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association revealed it had received about a dozen reports of rough-running engines occurring up to eight months ago. The scare has also unnerved the military, forcing the Royal Australian Air Force to check its Caribou fleet for signs of contamination. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said it was re-investigating two helicopter accidents in December at Moorabbin airport, Melbourne. Bureau deputy director Alan Stray said it was believed initially that the crashes were caused by practice landings in which power was cut to simulate engine failure. "As a result of new information that came to us subsequent to a decision not to investigate, we have quarantined the engines," he said. Mr Stray said fuel contamination had been ruled out as the cause of several crashes last year, including an accident at Gisborne, near Melbourne, in early December that killed four young people. AOPA general manager Mike Hart said mounting reports of previous fuel-related engine problems went back as far as May. "It is very difficult to track down where fuel went, and Mobil has not been very helpful with that," he said. CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said no evidence had been provided suggesting contamination occurred before November 21. Mobil spokesman Alan Bailey said the company did have a problem with its fuel in April, but this was not related to a change in the refinery process the reason for the latest problem. Investigations found none of the contaminated fuel was pumped into aircraft. CASA was forced to ground planes after an aircraft engine failed during take-off at Moorabbin in December. A contaminant created during the refinery process at Mobil's Altona plant between November 21 and December 23 caused fuel systems to become clogged with black deposits. Planes were grounded again on Monday when a previously undetected white or clear form of the contaminant was found in fuel and pilots reported rough-running engines. CASA expects to have a test capable of determining which planes have been contaminated including detection of the white deposits by tomorrow. But the AOPA says it could take weeks before the tests clear hundreds of planes to fly. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the ABC 13th Jan Democrats shelve plans for Senate fuel inquiry The Australian Democrats have shelved plans to hold a Senate inquiry into the fuel contamination crisis. The Democrats say they are satisfied with the Government's new terms of reference for the Transport Safety Bureau's investigation. Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson is confident CASA can deal with the inquiry into the fuel contamination crisis. Geoff Sims reports. Regional centres and airline operators may not recover from from the fuel crisis that has grounded light aircraft across Australia. Paula Kruger reports. The Transport Minister, John Anderson, has ordered the bureau to broaden its inquiry to examine production and quality control procedures in the aviation fuel refining industry. The Opposition is continuing to demand a fully independent inquiry. But Democrats Senator John Woodley says he is prepared to let the Transport Safety Bureau run its own investigation, before deciding whether a separate Senate committee inquiry is needed. "We've got confidence in the ability of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau to do this. "But we will be having some hearings next week which will involve an examintion of CASA's role and it will be easy enough for us, if we believe there are still questions not answered, to initiate a Senate inquiry in the next few weeks." Mobil The Mobil oil company has knocked back the Federal Government's offer of a mediator to settle financial claims with aviation operators affected by contaminated fuel from Mobil's Altona refinery. The Transport Minister and Acting Prime Minister, John Anderson, made the offer to Mobil executives in a bid to settle disputes and resume clean fuel supplies as soon as possible. Mr Anderson had suggested mediating a resolution through the aviation industry organisation, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Mobil spokeswoman Samantha Potts says for the time being the company would prefer to continue one-on-one negotiations with affected customers. "We appreciate the Government's offer and we'll see how things go, but at the moment we believe we are in direct contact and we're doing everything we can to resolve the issue," she said. "There are some meetings which are arranged for the next couple of days to more completely discuss the issues with the parties involved." CASA backed Also, Mr Anderson says there is no evidence of any failings by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in the fuel contamination crisis. Mr Anderson says he is not aware of any evidence that CASA has acted inappropriately. "If it's necessary, we'll have a look at [CASA's role] again in view of what we may learn out of this. But at this stage I see no evidence that CASA's failed in its responsibilities," he said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fuel scare inquiry widens From AAP 13jan00 8.45am (AEDT) THE investigation into the aviation fuel crisis will look at old fuel samples pilots have held on to, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said today. Up to 5,000 planes have been grounded on Christmas Eve and again on Monday after substances were twice found in engines fuelled by avgas from Mobil's Altona refinery. ATSB deputy director, air safety investigations, Alan Stray, said investigating old unreported aviation incidents that may be linked to avgas would be difficult unless pilots had kept fuel samples. "In one case I believe (one was kept) by a fuel distributor who is also an aircraft owner who took a fuel sample around about 18 months ago and has just kept it stored," Mr Stray told the Nine Network. "We have now requisitioned this sample and hopefully we will be able to get that tested." He said the ATSB inquiry was very wide-ranging and expanding daily. "Over the last 24, 36 hours it's been expanding rather rapidly to now include Mobil's production and distribution procedures and in fact there is no real limit to how wide this investigation will go," he said. "For that reason it's very difficult to say just how long this will take but, within the scope of our resources and those that we can obtain from other government agencies and in fact industry, we will be hopefully leaving no stone unturned." The ATSB is now examining fuel contamination as the possible cause of two helicopter crash landings at Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne on December 9 and 21. Mr Stray said he could not confirm reports that some aircraft could be out of action for months or even never fly again as that was for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority's (CASA) airworthiness branch. "Our role is to establish what happened in this unhappy saga and why it happened with an aim of prevention in the future," Mr Stray said. He said the ATSB would be looking at CASA's role along with oil companies and their agents. "It's very hard to say just how far this will go," he said. Mr Stray said some experts may be brought from overseas and expertise had already been contracted from independent laboratories which were not carrying out work from Mobil. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From th ABC 13/01/00 Meeting ends without action on fuel crisis The Mobil oil company and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) have agreed to meet again next week to discuss compensation and other issues linked to the aviation fuel contamination crisis. The two groups today held their first meeting since the grounding of around 5,000 piston engine planes affected by contaminated fuel from Mobil's Altona refinery. AOPA president Bill Hamilton says Mobil agreed to consider a proposal put to it at the meeting. "The AOPA did put a proposal on the table for Mobil to finance a trust fund to run what amounts to be an industry-based clearing house [or] project team," he said. "[It would] quantify all of the problems, whether they be the technical ones with aircraft, who's really affected, who can be got back into the air quickly." Tests delayed There is no immediate end in sight to the fuel crisis, with Mobil and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) still perfecting a test which could determine whether some planes are safe to fly. The test was carried out on five aircraft at Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne yesterday, and the results have been described as promising. CASA director Mick Toller says it could be at least a week before the test is independently verified, and it still might not be the solution. "There is an outside possibility that this test is not the answer, let's recognise that," he said. "We cannot definitely say that this test that we've developed is the absolute answer, and that's why we're just holding off at the moment until we've got that independent verification and until we've got the results of the secondary testing in the nuclear laboratory." Fees deferred Meanwhile, light plane owners and operators affected by the contamination have been given more time to pay their aviation fees. Airservices Australia says accounts issued in January, February and March do not need to be paid until the end of April. The organisation's Richard Dudley says interest charges on those accounts have also been waived to ease the financial burden. "Even though general aviation customers make up a small number of our customers, we've been monitoring the fuel crisis situation quite closely and are certainly aware of the potential impact on their operations," he said. "It's our way of trying to provide some sort of relief to them in terms of extending the time for payment of normal charges." ------------------------------------------------------------- CASA seeks independent check on Mobil fuel test By AMANDA HODGE 14jan00 AUSTRALIA'S aviation crisis deepened yesterday when the industry watchdog warned it would not authorise Mobil's fuel contamination test without independent verification. Civil Aviation Safety Authority director Mick Toller said the body had yet to appoint an independent laboratory to double-check the test under development and was looking as far afield as Europe and the US for an expert. The new delay, which will cost many operators another week of flying time and millions of dollars in lost revenue, is a critical blow to the aviation industry, which had hoped to begin testing for fuel contaminants in grounded light aircraft from today. During a visit to Melbourne's Moorabbin Airport, Mr Toller said the results of trial tests on five aircraft there on Wednesday had proved less conclusive than hoped. He also warned CASA could not guarantee that the test designed by Mobil to identify any fuel contaminants in aircraft engines was right. "I would hope we would have (a test) by the middle of next week (but) these are hopes rather than knowledge," Mr Toller said ------------------------------------------------------------- From the ABC Fri, 14 Jan 2000 8:02 Airports consider legal action over fuel crisis Airport operators are seeking legal advice on whether they will be able to claim compensation from Mobil over the aviation fuel contamination crisis. The Airport Owners and Operators Association says its members are facing financial ruin if the problem continues to drag on. Association chairman Peter Byrne says it is not just pilots and aircraft owners who are being affected. "There are a couple of airports in particular, which I can't name naturally, who are suffering daily losses that are quite significant as time goes on the problem is exacerbated," he said. ------------------------------------------------------------- Mobil News releases on http://www.mobil.com.au/news/media.htm