11 SEP 2008 _______________________________________ *For air controller, terror still vivid 7 years later *FAA Told to Audit Airline Safety Data for Accuracy *Plane cabin air quality comes under scrutiny *Small plane nearly landed wheels-up at Cal airport *FAA Moves to Improve Safety Oversight *WAEA2008: Aircell unveils user statistics on in-flight connectivity *Gol to focus fleet expansion on short field 737-800 *Independent team appointed by DOT weighs in on FAA oversight *************************************** For air controller, terror still vivid 7 years later By Alan Levin, USA TODAY OBERLIN, Ohio — He spent most of his life controlling airplanes. But on this day seven years ago, United Flight 93 was beyond control. Cleveland Center air-traffic controller John Werth had never heard anything like it — the sounds of an animalistic struggle crackling over his radio. He heard screaming, hollering and two guttural groans coming from the cockpit. The horror of one of the four 9/11 suicide hijackings was playing out, Werth tells USA TODAY in his first public recounting of the day that forever changed America. "I lost 40 people that day," Werth says of the desperate efforts he and his colleagues made to communicate with Flight 93 and keep other planes away from it until the jet crashed in a rural Pennsylvania field. Today, the story of that flight is well known — in books, movies and tales of heroism about the passengers who tried to retake the jet from four al-Qaeda terrorists, and probably prevented an attack on the White House or U.S. Capitol. For Werth, it's been a vivid — if largely private — reality. He was there. He heard it all. Werth's account provides new details about what happened as the hijacking unfolded and how the chaos in the skies caused alarm and confusion for controllers and national security forces. For seven years, Werth, 61, hasn't told his story publicly, initially because he was not allowed to because of a government subpoena related to the prosecution of al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, and later because Werth didn't want the attention. Now, Werth's ready to discuss it and set the record straight. It was Werth who heard the transmission from Flight 93 that suggested a bomb was aboard. The transmission, in a thick accent and broken English, likely was from hijacker pilot Ziad Jarrah, the 9/11 Commission determined later. The bomb was apparently a bluff, a threat the hijackers used to try to control the passengers. At the time, Werth says, it created a new level of alarm among the controllers clearing other planes out of the wayward path of Flight 93, which had departed from Newark, N.J., that morning and flown into Ohio before making a U-turn toward Washington. What if, Werth wondered, the hijackers had a bomb — maybe even a nuclear device? How far would Werth have to keep other jets from a nuclear bomb's shock wave? Twenty miles? Thirty? Every time Werth turned other planes away from Flight 93, the hijacked jet seemed to surge toward them, he recalls, raising questions about what the hijackers were trying to do. At the time, he knew that some passenger jets were missing and that one had hit a World Trade Center tower in New York. "I'm saying, 'What is he doing?' " Werth recalls. " 'Is this about a midair collision,' " an attempt to ram another passenger jet with Flight 93? All the while, uncertainty gripped the nation — and Cleveland Center, which oversees a wide swath of the nation's skies between Chicago and New York. 'Something was really off' That morning began routinely for Werth as he sat in front of his radar screen and radio, surrounded by maps and computers. Soon, the news began trickling down to him. Two jets were "lost" over New York. Someone said a small plane (actually a jet, it turned out) had hit the World Trade Center in New York. A supervisor told him to try to contact American Airlines Flight 77, which had gone missing over Kentucky. "That's when I knew something was really off," he says. He was also told to keep an eye on Delta Air Lines Flight 1989, which had taken off from Boston. Amid the confusion, controllers in Boston worried it was connected to the jets missing in New York. Those jets, American Airlines Flight 11 and United 175, also had departed from Boston. Finally came word that a second plane, a large jet, had hit New York's twin towers. The pilots of Flight 93, headed west to San Francisco from Newark, arrived at 9:24 a.m. in Werth's control sector, a roughly 100-by-100-mile patch in the Cleveland area that handles only high-altitude traffic. The Boeing 757 carried seven crewmembers and 37 passengers, including the four hijackers. Within four minutes of arriving in Werth's sector, according to The 9/11 Commission Report and other government documents, the hijackers had launched a violent takeover of the jet. During the struggle, one of the pilots tried to make a distress call or inadvertently switched on the radio's microphone, allowing Werth and other planes in the area to overhear what was happening aboard Flight 93. Werth says most of the sounds of the struggle were unintelligible. There were screams and groans. Werth recalls turning to another controller. "I looked at him and said, 'Dave, did that sound the same to you as it did to me?' He just kind of looked at me wide-eyed and nodded." He knew another flight was probably under attack, but which one? "Somebody call Cleveland?" he radioed. No one replied. Thirty-three seconds later came a second broadcast from the cockpit. It also had the sounds of a struggle, but this time Werth made out a few words: "Get out of here. Get out of here." About that time, Flight 93 descended about 700 feet. By then, Werth was pretty sure the flight had been hijacked. What were the hijackers up to? "Why do they want to be over Cleveland? Why are they this far west? I thought at first, well, you've got the Sears Tower (in Chicago) straight west," he says. There were no procedures or training exercises for such an emergency, Werth says, so he made it up as he went along. He asked other crews whether they had heard the scuffle over the radio. When they replied, he knew they were still OK. The hijacked jet became erratic. It sped up and started gaining on another United flight. Werth commanded the second jet to turn right. Seconds later, Flight 93 turned to the right, too. Minutes later, as Flight 93 climbed from 35,000 to 41,000 feet, Werth told Delta Flight 1989 to turn right to clear it away from the hijacked jet. Then Flight 93 made a 180-degree turn back toward the east, forcing Werth to move the Delta flight back out of the way. "Delta '89, we're gonna go the other way," he radioed. As Flight 93 passed over Akron, headed by that time in the direction of Washington, Werth heard a supervisor call out that a jet had just struck the Pentagon. 'It's the Delta!' Before United 93 had even checked in with Werth, a supervisor had asked him to watch Delta 1989, a westbound flight from Boston to Los Angeles. It was 60 miles east of his sector, flying behind the United jet. Werth has never been sure who called the facility to warn about the flight or why, and other accounts have been murky. The flight was a Boeing 767 like two other hijacked flights out of Boston. It would have been logical to suspect that it, too, might have been a target. As Werth struggled to keep other jets away from United 93, he had to turn the Delta flight several times. The pilots responded normally. He couldn't be sure of anything that day, but it seemed a safe bet that the Delta flight hadn't been hijacked. However, someone in the military seemed to have mixed up the Delta flight with the hijacked jet. A supervisor rushed up to Werth and said, "It's the Delta, it's the Delta!" Werth recalls. She told him that a military liaison on the phone had confirmed that the Delta jet was hijacked. Werth told her he was pretty sure United 93 had been hijacked, not the Delta one. A few moments later, she came back. "He's fine — at least for now," Werth told her. After consulting again on the phone, she returned again. "They said it's a confirmed hijack and a bomb threat," she told him. It was United 93 that had made the bomb threats, Werth thought. That convinced him they had to be confusing the two flights. "Tell them they're full of it!" Werth says he replied. "I thought, 'God, don't (have military jets that were being scrambled) go after the wrong plane.' " At 9:44 a.m., the Delta pilots requested a change of course from Werth. The same concerns about their safety had been passed on to the company, and dispatchers had ordered it to land as soon as possible in Cleveland. As it turned out, the military was in no position to shoot down Delta 1989, but Werth didn't know that. He followed the flight on radar until it landed safely. Flight 93 didn't make another radio transmission after 9:39 a.m. Werth watched on radar as the jet crashed near Shanksville, Pa., at 10:03. A bond with Flight 93 Werth retired in 2003 without ever having made an air-traffic error during his 32-year tenure, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, a remarkable record in an era when computers automatically track when planes get too close together. He says he has focused his life on his wife, Mary Kay, and his passion, golf. He says he has watched with occasional outrage as he has been portrayed in movies and books about 9/11 by people who had never spoken to him. Today, he will attend a memorial service in Shanksville for the crew and passengers of Flight 93. He's not sentimental or emotional about that day, but he feels a bond with the victims. "It's hard, when you're a controller, to lose an aircraft," he says. "When there is absolutely nothing you can do and you're not in control, it's doubly hard." http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-09-11-911controller_N.htm?loc=inter stitialskip ************** FAA Told to Audit Airline Safety Data for Accuracy The Federal Aviation Administration should audit information it receives from airlines on safety and maintenance issues to ensure its accuracy, a panel of aviation safety experts said yesterday. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters asked an outside panel earlier this year to review FAA safety policies in the wake of blistering criticism from Congress and the Transportation Department's inspector general that the FAA had grown too cozy with air carriers. The FAA relies heavily on self-reported data from airlines to spot trends that could lead to mechanical failures or plane crashes. The criticism stemmed from safety lapses in the past two years by American Airlines and Southwest Airlines. The government fined Southwest $10.2 million for flying 46 Boeing 747s that had not been checked for fuselage cracks. Panel members said they supported the FAA's strategy of working closely with airlines on maintenance and safety issues, citing the approach as integral to the nation's aviation safety system. Panel member William O. McCabe, a former aviation executive at DuPont, said the FAA had to focus on "leading indicators" by sifting through data. He called the system "looking for ugly." McCabe said safety officials can't depend on post-crash analysis for cues on safety given the small number of major incidents. The panel made 13 recommendations for changes at the agency, including implementing the audits, more training of inspectors and more consistency in inspection rules. Acting FAA Administrator Robert Sturgell said the agency would work "full throttle" to implement the changes. Peters and Sturgell used the panel's report to defend the agency. Sturgell said the report "validated" the FAA's overall safety approach. Peters said the FAA had a "determined and persistent" focus on safety that was the world's "gold-standard." The five-member panel was chaired by Edward W. Stimpson, a former Clinton aviation appointee and a past president of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/10/AR2008091003 499.html ************** Plane cabin air quality comes under scrutiny The air safety watchdog has set up a panel of experts to examine the quality of cabin air on Australian aircraft. Established in response to concerns about exposure to contaminants in aircraft cabin air leading to potential long-term health effects, the nine-member team will review existing research and take public submissions on air quality on Australian planes. Flight crews and individual passengers have reported a variety of symptoms associated with chronic exposure to contaminants, and an engineer was overcome by toxic fumes on a Qantas flight from the US last year. Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson said the body had become frustrated by the failure of overseas research in air quality to materialise and had thus decided to "do it ourselves". "It will review existing reports on cabin air quality, take submissions and deliver recommendations on future actions," Mr Gibson said. The panel consists of experts in toxicology, public health and engineering, including Chris Winder, the Professor of Applied Toxicology at the University of NSW. It will have its first meeting later this month and deliver a final report in 2010. http://www.smh.com.au/news/news/australian-plane-cabin-air-quality-under-scr utiny/2008/09/11/1220857720569.html *************** Small plane nearly landed wheels-up at Cal airport ONTARIO, Calif. (AP) —Quick action by an airline pilot and traffic controllers last week kept a single-engine plane from landing at Ontario International Airport with its wheels up, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The Cessna 210 Centurion was about a mile from the runway on Sept. 4 when a Southwest Airlines pilot spotted the problem and advised a ground controller who quickly relayed it to a controller handling arriving aircraft, the controllers involved in the incident said. In an audio recording released Wednesday, Bruce Bradigan, the controller handling arriving aircraft warned the pilot of the Cessna that his landing gear was not extended. The pilot immediately canceled his approach and went around for another landing. "My heart was pounding because he was at least 20 to 30 feet off the ground," ground controller Carlos Rodriguez recalled. The pilot could have been seriously injured in a crash or belly landing, he said. "The collaboration of an airline pilot and two air traffic controllers averted potential disaster," FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said. The Cessna was registered to Bill Otto, who commutes by plane from his home in Big Bear in the San Bernardino Mountains to his aircraft repair business near the airport. "For a lot of people, when they do the same thing day in and day out, sometimes they forget," Otto said. "Unfortunately for me, I forgot to get the gear down. Fortunately, the Southwest pilot saw it, called the tower, the tower reminded me and I put the gear down. It's very embarrassing." Otto said he got his pilot license in 1972 and flies frequently. "I was very grateful that the tower and the airline and everyone worked together to remind me of my forgetfulness," he said. The airport is about 35 miles east of Los Angeles. ************** FAA Moves to Improve Safety Oversight WASHINGTON -- The Federal Aviation Administration announced new steps to improve its oversight of aviation safety, after an expert panel raised concerns about persistent conflicts within the agency over how aggressively to police airlines. The agency said it would begin regular audits of its local offices and adopt a more proactive stance toward airlines when it comes to following complex safety directives, moves designed to prevent oversight lapses and costly groundings of aircraft. The FAA also said it would expand its use of industry-provided data to determine safety risks and study whether its inspectors are spending enough time physically inspecting aircraft. The changes were recommended in a report released Wednesday by an expert panel named by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, which conducted a top-to-bottom review of FAA safety operations over the summer. The panel's report offered significant praise for the FAA's evolving, risk-based approach to airline regulation. But it also pointed out areas of weakness and made 13 recommendations, several related to an incident last year in which an FAA manager in Texas allowed Southwest Airlines Co. to fly jets that were overdue for structural safety checks. Several of the Southwest jets in question had worrisome fuselage cracks. The revelations sparked a congressional outcry, ongoing federal investigations and industrywide reviews aimed at determining the scope of the problem. After interviewing FAA managers and inspectors across the country, the panel reported that certain observations "tend to confirm our fears that sharply conflicting regulatory ideologies not only exist, but are allowed to persist within the FAA with little or no attempt to resolve or manage them." In some FAA offices, they found, a "very high proportion of enforcement actions taken and penalties imposed result from the activities of a very small proportion of the inspection team." The report also said in at least one office, most actions against faulty airline behavior are initiated by one inspector. The report doesn't name the office. "Perhaps surprisingly," the report reads, "this situation apparently persists even now, long after the events of this spring provided the agency a rather serious opportunity to reflect on its methods, style, and regulatory decision-making processes." The panel, chaired by Edward Stimpson, former U.S. representative on the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization, came to these findings after separately interviewing managers and inspectors. The overarching concern is that differing views over how tough to be with an airline can lead to internal disputes and inconsistent regulation, as was evident in the Southwest case. To guard against this threat, the panel advised the FAA to step up its oversight and training of managers -- including regular audits of field offices -- so it can identify conflicts earlier, analyze their severity and take appropriate actions. Despite the concerns identified in the report, Mr. Stimpson said he is impressed with the FAA's overall commitment to safety and improving its oversight approach. He also praised the agency's cooperative approach to industry, which relies on airline-provided data in assessing safety risks. "A big concern is to make sure we keep a collaborative system where all parties are working together on the core mission of safety," he said in an interview. "The precursors for the next accident are in this data." Transportation Secretary Peters said the moves "will improve both the intensity and the integrity of the FAA's safety" programs. An FAA spokeswoman later said the "entire report showed the strength of the FAA infrastructure and how it will be further strengthened by the enactment of the recommendations." In a controversial decision, the panel declined to recommend that the FAA periodically rotate its supervisory inspectors to ensure they don't become overly cozy with airlines. It also decided against advising the FAA to establish an independent office charged with examining complaints raised by inspectors. Calvin Scovel, the Department of Transportation's inspector general, has vigorously argued for both ideas. "Our recommendations on those two issues remain open," said Madeline Chulumovich, a spokeswoman for the inspector general's office. "We'll await the FAA's formal response back on how to handle" them. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122109303393621683.html?mod=googlenews_wsj *************** WAEA2008: Aircell unveils user statistics on in-flight connectivity Three weeks into the trial of its Gogo in-flight connectivity offering onboard American Airlines Boeing 767-200s Aircell is seeing what its chief executive describes as a rapid rise in repeat users for the product. Company CEO Jack Blumenstein today at the World Airline Entertainment Association (WAEA) convention in Long Beach, California noted that Aircell's air-to-ground broadband communications system processes roughly 10 gigabytes of data per day that translates into roughly one million emails. The typical user session is about 3.5hrs as more than 5,000 MP3 files are downloaded per day, says Blumentstein. Since the trials began passengers have downloaded more than 250,000 videos, as roughly 200,000 websites are viewed daily. "People want to do in the air what they do on the ground," notes Blumenstein who says passenger use of PDAs and Wi-Fi-enabled Blackberries is already at a high percentage. He believed usage on those devices would grow at a slower pace. The number of repeat Gogo users regularly grows by double-digit figures on a daily basis, according to the Aircell chief executive, who declined to supply specific statistics. American is charging $12.95 for broadband on transatlantic flights, and Blumenstein claims that only one complaint has surfaced about the price among the thousands of passengers that have used the service. For its part American has previously said that it would examine how a variety of web services including browsing and file attachment perform during a live commercial flight. Aircell this week named Air Canada as its latest customer, who intends to offer Gogo on Airbus A319 aircraft operating on select transborder flights to the US west coast by Spring 2009. Delta Air Lines and Virgin America are also on Aircell's customer roster. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news ************** Gol to focus fleet expansion on short field 737-800 Brazilian airline group Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes is focusing fleet expansion on the short field performance (SFP) version of the Boeing 737-800 as it looks to capitalise on its strong position at Sao Paulo Congonhas and Rio de Janeiro Santos Dumont airports. Gol became the launch operator of the 737-800 SFP in 2006, initially acquiring 67 of the aircraft. The airline group, which includes Varig successor VRG as well as Gol, has since increased its commitment to 100 of the type with the last aircraft scheduled for delivery in 2014. The airline group's vice president technical, Fernando Rockert de Magalhães, says the SFP kit became particularly critical for Gol and VRG after new restrictions were put in place last year at Congonhas. Rockert says Gol initially acquired the 737-800 SFP mainly for Santos Dumont, which is located near downtown Rio de Janeiro and has a runway which is a little over 1,200m (4,000ft) long. But the aircraft all of a sudden came in handy for Congonhas following last year's fatal overrun of a TAM Airbus A320. After the accident, Brazilian authorities reduced the useable length of the only runway at Congonhas, which is located near downtown Sao Paulo, to 1,690m (5,543ft). When factoring in Congonhas' field elevation of 802m (2,631ft), the required performance for operations at Santo Dumont and Congonhas are now almost identical. "The SFP was meant for Santos Dumont and some medium range flights from Congonhas. Then it changed at Congonhas and thank god we had the SFP as it allowed us to operate in and out of Congonhas without restrictions," Rockert said in an interview with ATI yesterday. He adds Gol has since stopped operating the non-SFP 737-800 at Congonhas, which is the carrier's largest base, because "otherwise we would have to take out more than 30% of the seats on the aircraft". Gol still operates 19 737-800s without the SFP kit but these are only used at other Brazilian airports with longer runways. Gol and VRG, which are now in the process of integrating their operations, also continue to operate a combined fleet of 15 737-300s. But Rockert says Gol can now only use 110 of the 136 seats on the 737-300 when operating at Congonhas. This restriction is one of the reasons Gol decided earlier this year to phase out the 737-300. Gol's last 737-300 is now scheduled to exit the fleet in December. Gol also operates 737-700s, which are able to fly in and out of Congonhas and Santos Dumont without any payload restrictions. Rockert says the -700 has a higher cost per seat kilometre than the -800 SFP but the -700 will stay in Gol's fleet for the long term and be used for routes which are too thin to support the -800. Gol now operates 38 737-700s and will expand this fleet to 40 aircraft over the next few months. Gol's business plan envisions keeping the 737-700 fleet at the 40 figure over the longer term as it focuses on the 737-800 SFP as its main aircraft. Rockert says the 737-800 SFP needs to be the carrier's mainstay aircraft because "the majority of our operations was, continues to be and will be for as long as we see at Congonhas and Santos Dumont". In addition to operating at Gol's two biggest bases, Congonhas and Santos Dumont, Rockert says the 737-800 SFP is also being used on some international routes, including from Sao Paulo's Guarulhos airport to Caracas in Venezuela, Bogota in Colombia and Santiago in Chile. He says the SFP kit is needed for these flights in order to allow Gol to carry a full payload. "We'll operate a majority of the international network with the SFP and a few normal -800s," Rockert says. "To operate at full loads we need the more powerful aircraft." Gol and VRG currently operate a combined 737-800 SFP fleet of 32 aircraft. The group plans to take delivery of five more of the aircraft type this year, 15 more next year, 12 more in 2010, 10 in 2011, 11 in 2012, 11 in 2013 and 14 in 2014. Gol plans to gradually phase out its older non-SFP 737-800s as more -800s with the SFP kit are delivered. The last non-SFP -800 is now slated to exit the fleet in 2013. Gol for now is still adding non-SFP -800s and plans to have 28 of the type by the end of this year. But from next year it will begin returning the aircraft to lessors as their leases come up. Rockert says the SFP kit allows 737-800 operators to conduct approaches at slower speeds and an angle of approach that is three to four degrees higher. The ground spoilers also can be deployed faster and at an angle of up to 60 degrees, compared to 36 degrees on normal 737-800s, allowing the pilots to brake earlier in the landing process. The kit, which includes winglets, also improves takeoff performance and increases the 737-800's maximum takeoff weight by 1,500kg. The kit, which Boeing developed at the request of Gol although several other operators have also now acquired it, costs about $2.5 million per aircraft. "We are the largest [SFP] operator and were the first to request it," Rockert says. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news ************** Independent team appointed by DOT weighs in on FAA oversight The FAA remains committed to voluntary regulatory-violation disclosures by airlines as "the backbone of its safety culture," but has accepted an independent review panel's dozen odd recommendations to improve the system. DOT Secretary Mary Peters, told reporters today that voluntary disclosure can be improved "by more rigorous and systematic oversight" of the FAA's program "by greater clarity and discipline in the agency's Airworthiness Directives and through safeguards against FAA safety inspectors developing overly cozy relationships with the airlines they regulate". Peters appointed the independent review team after disclosures in March and April that Southwest Airlines had flown aircraft without performing required inspections and after American Airlines maintenance officials followed an unapproved method to comply with another FAA Airworthiness Directive. The FAA has already accepted the panel's recommendations that its headquarters perform audits of field offices where the managerial team has been in place for more than three years. DOT's independent review team was "impressed by the motivation and of the workforce and its culture of safety," says its chairman, former ICAO ambassador Ed Stimpson. However, Stimpson stresses that the review panel did not study the specifics of the Southwest or the American issues even though it interviewed the whistleblowers who had come forward in the case of Southwest. Review team member Carl Vogt, a former NTSB chairman, characterizes the disagreements between FAA whistleblowers and chief inspectors assigned to Southwest as "philosophical differences." The FAA has transferred several individuals assigned to the case, and others have resigned, FAA acting administrator Bobby Sturgell says. But the FAA viewed the review team's findings as an endorsement. Sturgell says, "I think this [report] generally validates the approaches we have taken." Source: Air Transport Intelligence news ***************