22 OCT 2007 _______________________________________ *Pilot of doomed Garuda jet ignored 15 alarms *NASA Sits on Air Safety Survey *Skilled pilots' shortage worries Russian airlines *Australia's Qantas to buy 12 Bombardier Q400s *Airplane de-icer gets closer look *Flight hit with emergency *Flight forced to return to Midway after takeoff *GE Aviation Provides Flight Management Upgrade for Southwest Airlines’ B737 **************************************** Pilot of doomed Garuda jet ignored 15 alarms report finds THE pilot of a plane that crashed in Indonesia, killing five Australians and 16 other people, ignored 15 alarm bells as the plane came in to land too quickly, a report has found. The Boeing 737 exploded into flames in a rice field after skidding off the end of the runway in Yogyakarta, Central Java on March 7. Investigators have scoured the plane's black box cockpit voice recorder and data log for clues to the disaster. The final report stemming from the crash investigation found the pilot had landed, despite a flood of warnings. "During the approach, the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) alerts and warnings sounded 15 times, and the copilot called for the pilot in command to go around," the report found. "The aircraft was flown at an excessive air speed and steep flight path angle during the approach and landing, resulting in an unstabilised approach. "The pilot in command did not follow company procedures that required him to fly a stabilised approach, and he did not abort the landing and go around when the approach was not stabilised. "His attention was fixated or channelised on landing the aircraft on the runway and he either did not hear, or disregarded the GPWS alerts, and warnings, and calls from the copilot to go around." The investigation also found the copilot did not follow company procedures and take control of the plane when he saw the pilot repeatedly ignore the alerts and warnings. Garuda records also showed no evidence that the pilots had been trained to respond appropriately to the warnings. The investigation also found Yogyakarta airport's fire fighting service was unable to reach the accident site and some vehicles lacked necessary equipment. "The delay in extinguishing the fire, and the lack of appropriate fire suppressant agents, may have significantly reduced survivability," the report said. "The airport emergency plan and its implementation were less than effective." National Transport Safety Committee chairman Tatang Kurniadi said the report was aimed a preventing further accidents, and was not to be used as the basis for any legal action over the March crash. Kurniadi said the committee would not (not) hand over any evidence gained from the plane's flight recorders, to help the police investigation. Police are continuing to investigate the crash and have interviewed the pilots, who survived by scrambling out of the cockpit. "I would like to go back to the objective of this, the report was made by NTSC for safety purposes only, not for blaming," he said. "If any institution wants to ... follow up that accident, that's their own decision." He said the committee's report could not be used for legal purposes. "The report contained the results from the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, but according to international regulations on aviation these black boxes are not allowed to be used for ... liability purposes," Kurniadi said. "We will not give police or any institution (information) other than for safety purposes only - it's in international regulations and we want to follow those regulations." http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22628284-662,00.html ************** NASA Sits on Air Safety Survey MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. (AP) — Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized. NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly. Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers. The Associated Press learned about the NASA results from one person familiar with the survey who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss them. A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits. Luedtke acknowledged that the survey results "present a comprehensive picture of certain aspects of the U.S. commercial aviation industry." The AP sought to obtain the survey data over 14 months under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. "Release of the requested data, which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey," Luedtke wrote in a final denial letter to the AP. NASA also cited pilot confidentiality as a reason, although no airlines were identified in the survey, nor were the identities of pilots, all of whom were promised anonymity. Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. The survey also revealed higher-than-expected numbers of pilots who experienced "in-close approach changes" — potentially dangerous, last-minute instructions to alter landing plans. Officials at the NASA Ames Research Center in California have said they want to publish their own report on the project by year's end. "If the airlines aren't safe I want to know about it," said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., chairman of the House Science and Technology investigations and oversight subcommittee. "I would rather not feel a false sense of security because they don't tell us." Discussing NASA's decision not to release the survey data, the congressman said: "There is a faint odor about it all." Miller asked NASA last week to provide his oversight committee with information on the survey and the decision to withhold data. "The data appears to have great value to aviation safety, but not on a shelf at NASA," he wrote to NASA's administrator Michael Griffin. The survey's purpose was to develop a new way of tracking safety trends and problems the airline industry could address. The project was shelved when NASA cut its budget as emphasis shifted to send astronauts to the moon and Mars. NASA said nothing it discovered in the survey warranted notifying the Federal Aviation Administration immediately. Its data showed improvements in some areas, the person who was familiar with the survey said. Survey managers occasionally briefed the FAA during the project. At a briefing in April 2003, FAA officials expressed concerns about the high numbers of incidents being described by pilots because the NASA results were dramatically different from what FAA was getting from its own monitoring systems. An FAA spokeswoman, Laura Brown, said the agency questioned NASA's methodology. The FAA is confident it can identify safety problems before they lead to accidents, she said. In its space program, NASA has a deadly history of playing down safety issues. Investigators blamed the 1986 and 2000 shuttle disasters on poor decision making, budget cuts and improperly minimizing risks. NASA decided to go ahead with a 2006 shuttle launch and is moving ahead with one this week despite safety concerns by NASA engineers in both cases. Aviation experts said NASA's pilot survey results could be a valuable resource in an industry where they believe many safety problems are underreported, even while deaths from commercial air crashes are rare and the number of deadly crashes has dropped in recent years. "It gives us an awareness of not just the extent of the problems, but probably in some cases that the problems are there at all," said William Waldock, a safety science professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Phoenix, Ariz. "If their intent is to just let it sit there, that's just a waste." Officials involved in the survey touted the unusually high response rate among pilots, 80 percent, and said they believe it is more reliable than other reporting systems that rely on pilots to voluntarily report incidents. "The data is strong," said Robert Dodd, an aviation safety expert hired by NASA to manage the survey. "Our process was very meticulously designed and very thorough. It was very scientific." Pilot interviews lasted about 30 minutes, with standardized questions about how frequently they encountered equipment problems, smoke or fire, engine failure, passenger disturbances, severe turbulence, collisions with birds or inadequate tower communication, according to documents obtained by the AP. Pilots also were asked about last-minute changes in landing instructions, flying too close to other planes, near collisions with ground vehicles or buildings, overweight takeoffs or occasions when pilots left the cockpit. The survey, known officially as the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service, started after a White House commission in 1997 proposed reducing fatal air crashes by 80 percent as of this year. Crashes have dropped 65 percent, with a rate of about 1 fatality in about 4.5 million departures. NASA had begun to interview general aviation pilots and initially planned to interview flight attendants, air traffic controllers and mechanics before the survey was halted. In earlier interviews that helped researchers design the NASA survey, pilots said airlines were unaware how frequently safety incidents occurred that could lead to serious problems or even crashes, said Jon Krosnick, a survey expert at Stanford University who helped NASA create the questionnaire. Krosnick also led a Stanford team that paid for a joint AP-Stanford poll on the environment. "There are little things going on everyday that rarely lead to an accident but they increase the chances of an accident," said Krosnick. "It's the little things beneath the surface that cause the very infrequent crashes. You have to tackle those." NASA directed its contractor Battelle Memorial Institute, along with subcontractors, on Thursday to return any project information and then purge it from their computers before Oct. 30. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jKO38hKOG37Omy4Iv7Bi9q_L98bQ *************** Skilled pilots' shortage worries Russian airlines Russia's airline industry is growing rapidly, with rising passenger numbers and new aircraft on the way. But the business is facing a serious problem - there are not enough pilots around to fly the new planes. National airline Aeroflot says that of Russia’s 10,000 pilots, a thousand a year retire, or go overseas to work. And Russia's state-run training system, turning out just 120 a year, cannot replace them. Meantime, Russia is unique in not allowing its airlines to hire foreign crews for its planes, making the shortage even worse. Now Aeroflot plans to set up its own training school to turn out a fresh generation of pilots, trained to fly its new Boeing and Airbus airliners. One way to finance the renewed pilot training system is to make students pay for their own training in future. “Certainly we look for ways for the banks or some other financial institution to help the students, or maybe the company could pay for a certain number of students that it would be interested to have,” commented Lev Koshlyakov, Deputy Director General, Aeroflot. But while the industry welcomes new training schools, the real answer to the industry's problem is for the government to encourage the development of general aviation and flying as a sport. http://www.russiatoday.ru/business/news/15845 **************** Australia's Qantas to buy 12 Bombardier Q400s, options/rights for 24 more SYDNEY (Thomson Financial) - Australia's flag carrier Qantas Airways Ltd said Monday it will buy an additional 12 Bombardier Q400 aircraft for its regional airline QantasLink for 400 million Australian dollars. The 72-seater planes will be delivered from June 2008 and will boost QantasLink's Q400 fleet to 21, said Geoff Dixon, chief executive of Qantas, in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange. Qantas will also take options and purchase rights for another 24 aircraft. The new planes will replace QantasLink's 36-seat Dash 8-100 aircraft, which will be retired from service by 2010. QantasLink and Bombardier will finalize contracts for the order by the end of this month, Qantas said. (1 US dollar = 1.12 Australian dollars) http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2007/10/21/afx4243619.html ************** Airplane de-icer gets closer look FLUID: Liquid thought mostly harmless, but maybe not in quantity. A chemical used by Alaska aviators to prevent their aircraft from icing up in the winter is getting new scrutiny from environmental regulators. The state plans to adopt a rule that would classify the anti-icing fluid, sprayed on planes before they take off, as a contaminant that could require an industrial cleanup. State officials will not use the cleanup guidelines to regulate routine use of the honey-like fluid, called propylene glycol, at airports, they say. The fluid, sprayed from trucks, drips all over the runways at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport during the winter. Instead, the rules will apply to "significant" events, such as a several-hundred-gallon spill from an overturned truck that leaks into soil, said Bill Janes, a supervisor with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation's contaminated sites program. But some local aviators such as Mark "Woody" Richardson of Grant Aviation think the proposed rules are bizarre. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of the fluid, mixed with water, are sprayed on planes each winter, he said. "What's the difference between spilling and dripping?" Richardson asked in a recent interview. The Alaska Air Carriers Association, a trade group of airlines, also is critiquing the proposal, which is out for public comment this month. BENIGN OR TOXIC? Propylene glycol has enjoyed a benign reputation for decades. The fluid is considered much less harmful than another common fluid, ethylene glycol, which is used to melt ice and snow off aircraft. Propylene glycol is also used as an additive in cosmetics and such processed food as ice cream and carbonated drinks, prompting disapproval from some consumer activists. The Federal Aviation Administration requires air carriers to de-ice their planes to prevent accidents. Last year, air carriers at the Anchorage international airport sprayed more than 380,000 gallons of propylene glycol and about 114,000 gallons of ethylene glycol, according to airport officials. Most of the de-icing fluid drains to Cook Inlet or is mopped up, but some drains into Lake Hood, airport officials said Friday. Propylene glycol can harm fish when it leaks into streams or lakes. As the fluid biodegrades, it reduces the amount of oxygen in the water, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That is a likely culprit for a few fish kills that have occurred at airports, the EPA says. The fluid's aquatic harm isn't the reason state officials want to add the fluid to their list of regulated chemicals. The state wants to list the chemical and establish human health-based cleanup levels so it will know how much to remove from a contaminated area after a spill, Janes said. But the aquatic concerns are driving the EPA to consider new regulations of its own. THE EPA STEPS IN Federal regulators have informed the airline industry that they will propose to limit effluent from anti-icing and deicing fluids next year. The rules will likely be finalized in 2009, according to an EPA Web site set up to give background about the agency's research on the de-icing fluids and its decision timeline. Officials at the Anchorage airport said Friday they are trying to get out ahead of the new federal rules. Over the past few years, the airport has diverted most of the de-icing fluid that used to drain to Lake Hood, said Shane Serrano, the airport's environmental program specialist. The airport's water pollution permit doesn't limit the amount of de-icing fluid that drains to Cook Inlet, but the EPA's future guidelines could change how the airport is regulated, he said. Theoretically, the rules could also have a bigger impact on rural airports. Many rural air fields do not have a drain system for collecting the de-icing fluid or a system to mop it up, state regulators said. "We recognize that money is short and we cannot suddenly start requiring infrastructure at rural airports," Janes said. http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/9396709p-9310029c.html **************** Flight hit with emergency Alarm forces unscheduled stop after plane leaves London A plane carrying 26 people from London to Detroit made an emergency landing at a Michigan air base yesterday after a smoke indicator went off in the cockpit, an airline spokesperson said. "The crew didn't see any fire or smoke, but they took the precaution of landing the aircraft," Jim Herlihy told The Free Press. Flight NW 3055, which left London International Airport about 11:50 a.m., landed safely at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan, about 50 kilometres northeast of Detroit, about 12:30 p.m. "It was uneventful," said Herlihy. The Mesaba Airlines flight, operated under the name Northwest Airlink, was bound for Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Mich. Because it was an international flight that originated in Canada, U.S. customs and border protection officials were called in to screen the 23 passengers and three crew members before they could continue their journey, said Herlihy. After they were cleared, they were transported to Detroit in five vans, he said. If it had been a U.S. domestic flight, customs processing would have been unnecessary and the passengers would have been bused sooner to the Detroit airport, said Herlihy. The aircraft's indicator light was being examined to see if it was faulty, he said. Mesaba, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Northwest Airlines, that provides service to 72 cities in the United States and Canada through hubs in Detroit, Memphis and Minneapolis/St.Paul. It operates daily flights between London and Detroit. There were four scheduled flights each way yesterday and the rest of schedule wasn't disrupted by the emergency landing, said Herlihy. The passengers were travelling on a 34-seat Saab 340, a twin turbo prop aircraft with a cruising speed of 450 kilometres per hour that's used on short commuter flights. For longer flights, Mesaba provides service in 50-passenger and 76-passenger jets built by Bombardier. The larger jet was introduced into Mesaba's fleet this year. Northwest, the parent company, is the world's fourth largest airline in terms of scheduled passenger miles and the largest carrier of domestic cargo in the United States. Hit by low-cost competition, labour disputes and business fallout from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Northwest operated under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. between September 2005 and May 2007, when its shares began regular trading on stock markets again. http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/International/2007/10/22/4595236-sun.html ************** Flight forced to return to Midway after takeoff A Delta airplane bound for Atlanta, Ga., was forced to return to Midway Airport Sunday morning after the crew detected a problem with pressure in the cabin. The flight, carrying 63 passengers, took off at Midway at 9:54 a.m. The pilots were forced to turn around shortly after takeoff, according to Delta Director of Corporate Communication, Maria Schnabel. Upon arriving back at Midway at 10:26 a.m., the crew detected the back bin door had been improperly closed and two bags had fallen out, Schnabel said. After inspection, Delta decided to cancel the flight in order to get the back door fixed. All passengers were re-assigned to another flight, she said. It is unknown where the bags fell, and they have not been located as of Sunday evening, Schnabel said. A Chicago Department of Aviation spokesman declined comment on the incident. http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/613810,midwayflight102107.article **************** GE Aviation Provides Flight Management Upgrade for Southwest Airlines’ B737 GE Aviation has been awarded a contract from Southwest Airlines to provide the flight management system upgrade for more than 200 Boeing 737 Classic aircraft (Photo: Business Wire). GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--GE Aviation has been awarded a contract from Southwest Airlines to provide the flight management system upgrade for 200 Boeing 737 Classic aircraft. Deliveries will take place in 2008 and 2009. The system will be designed and manufactured at the GE facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan. John Ferrie, President of Systems for GE Aviation stated, “Our advancements in flight management technology for commercial and military aircraft are essential for the world's ever evolving airspace. Our system is a key part of our customer’s plans to conduct Required Navigation Performance (RNP) operations, and allows them to realize significant cost savings with lowered fuel consumption while simultaneously benefiting the environment with reduced emissions.” GE’s flight management system controls the aircraft track to an accuracy of 10 meters and the time of arrival to within 10 seconds to any point in the flight plan. Benefits include the ability to fly shorter flight paths and idle-thrust descents which reduces fuel consumption, thereby lowering emissions and community noise levels. Software and hardware updates provide the latest technology to continue to meet the needs of the world’s evolving airspace, offering safe and efficient improvements to aircraft operations. “Southwest is pleased to select GE to provide this key capability to our Classic aircraft, which will enable our entire Boeing 737 fleet to operate more efficiently in today’s air traffic environment,” stated Mike Van de Ven, Executive Vice President and Chief of Operations. Enhanced GE flight management computer system capabilities enable Southwest Airlines to take full advantage of state-of-the-art navigation procedures being designed with the support of Naverus for greater safety, efficiency and reduced community noise. The flight management computer is provided through the Systems division of GE Aviation, formerly Smiths Aerospace. GE Aviation, an operating unit of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE), is a world-leading provider of commercial and military jet engines and components as well as integrated digital, electric power, and mechanical systems for aircraft. GE Aviation also has a global service network to support these offerings. For more information, visit us at www.ge.com/aviation. ******************* Curt Lewis, PE, CSP WEB: www.fsinfo.org