07 NOV 2008 _______________________________________ *Lion Air plane skids off at Jalaluddin Airport *Express Air plane crash-lands in Fakfak *AI plane tilts while landing on runway *Recorders Found in Mexico Jet Crash *FAA Says WAAS Instrument Approaches Now Outnumber ILS *Two Russian pilots over the alcohol limit to fly *Pilots' concerns about ADS-B reflected in rulemaking committee report *Rise in Collision Hazards for Planes Spurs Changes *Angola: All Angolan airlines banned from flying to Europe *A380 wake 'no worse' than any other heavy jet: Airbus *************************************** Lion Air plane skids off at Jalaluddin Airport A Lion Air passenger aircraft carrying 167 passengers skidded off the runway before taking off at the Jalaluddin Airport, Gorontalo Province on Friday. Nunung Triatmoko, Chief of the airport, confirmed of the accident while added that the aircraft, which was scheduled to depart for Makasar, South Sulawesi Province, was still being repaired following the accident. "There is a team of mechanics provided to repair the aircraft. The aircraft is in a resonably good condition." he said. He also explained that all passengers had been evacuated safely from the plane and told to wait for the next departure for Makasar. Nunung refuted accusations, which said that most accidents on the runway were because the runway was not long enough to accomodate more modern planes. In the 2007, a Lion Air aircraft also experienced a similar accident at the airport. (anb) http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/11/07/lion-air-plane-skids-jalaluddi n-airport.html ************** Express Air plane crash-lands in Fakfak An Express Air Dornier DO-328 slipped when touching down on the runway at Torea Airport in Fakfak, Papua, breaking its left wing and landing gears, a police officer said Thursday. According to reports, the airplane touched down three meters from the runway's edge and collided with the tarmac, damaging the landing gears and breaking the left wing. The twin-turbo aircraft then veered to the left before stopping on the right side of the runway. The airplane, manned by pilot Josep and co-pilot Setia Darmawan, left from Domine Eduard Osok Airport in Sorong regency at 9:58 a.m. local time (7:58 a.m. Jakarta time) carrying four crew and 32 passengers. It landed in Fakfak at 10:27 a.m. local time. There were no fatalities in the accident but authorities closed the airport because the plane was blocking the runway. "The airline is coordinating with its head office and reporting the accident to the National Transportation Safety Committee in Jakarta," Papua Provincial Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Agus Rianto told The Jakarta Post. Police secured the area and assisted with the evacuation of passengers. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/11/07/express-air-plane-crashlands-f akfak.html ************* AI plane tilts while landing on runway MALAPPURAM (KERALA): Nearly 161 passengers and crew on board an Air India flight had a narrow escape on Friday when the aircraft's right wing grazed the runway while landing at Karippur International Airport in Malapppuram. According to airport sources, AI 962 from Jeddah to Karippur (Calicut), tilted while landing, resulting in the tip of its right wing rubbing the runway. However the pilot was able to stop the aircraft in time to avoid a major tragedy. All passengers were safe and the aircraft did not suffer any damage except some paint on the wing getting scraped, the sources said. A senior airport official said there was prima facie nothing wrong with landing parameters like weather, wind speed and visibility. Only a detailed probe, including the examination of Flight Data Recorder, could bring out the reason for the aircraft tilting while landing, the official said. The aircraft has been grounded and engineers from Mumbai were expected to arrive at the site for detailed check, he added. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/AI_plane_tilts_while_landing_on_run way/articleshow/3685363.cms ************** Recorders Found in Mexico Jet Crash MEXICO CITY - Two in-flight recorders retrieved from the wreckage of a small jet that crashed this week, killing Mexico’s interior minister, were being examined Thursday by specialists in a Washington lab, Mexican officials said. The black boxes have voice recordings and data from the final minutes before the jet crashed Tuesday in a busy area of Mexico City. The crash killed all nine people on board — including Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mouriño, Mexico’s top security official — and five more on the ground. The government has gone to unusual lengths to open its investigation to the news media, as it tries to play down speculation of sabotage. A transportation official said information from the recordings should be available in a week. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/world/americas/07mexico.html?ref=world *************** FAA Says WAAS Instrument Approaches Now Outnumber ILS And More GPS-Based Approaches Are Coming While the technology is still fairly new, many pilots have at least limited experience flying a Wide Area Augmentation System approach. It's one of the few tangible benefits seen so far in the Federal Aviation Administration's push towards its purported "NextGen" air traffic control system... and, in September it passed a major milestone. The FAA says the agency has now published 1,333 Localizer Performance with Vertical guidance (LPV) approach procedures, which are based on the WAAS space-based navigation system commissioned in 2003. The number of published approach procedures based on WAAS has now surpassed the number of approach procedures based on its ground-based predecessor, the Category-I Instrument Landing System (ILS). In addition to the greater precision and reliability over ground-based instrument approach equipment with WAAS, the FAA also notes there is no need for the FAA to install and maintain navigation equipment at an airport, unlike an ILS. Additionally, safety is improved as more aircraft are provided with vertically-guided approaches and improved flight planning options enabled by WAAS. "This is clearly a turning point for aviation and the way pilots navigate," the FAA said of the milestone. For the past 60 years, Category-I ILS has been used at airports throughout the National Airspace System (NAS) to guide aircraft to as low as 200 feet above the runway surface. WAAS, commissioned five years ago, now provides this same capability... but at more runway ends. The FAA says WAAS LPVs can currently be found at 833 airports... and that number of WAAS LPVs continues to grow, with the goal of 500 new WAAS procedures each year until every qualified runway in the NAS has one. WAAS has enabled a new approach capability which will be introduced in 2009, the FAA added. FMI: www.faa.gov aero-news.net **************** Two Russian pilots over the alcohol limit to fly Two Russian pilots were caught preparing to take charge of a plane from Manchester to Moscow after they had been drinking. Mikhail Danilstsev, 47 and 56-year old Andrey Lyubimov, 56, were arrested at Manchester Airport after staff noticed they were smelling of alcohol and "the night before". Tests showed the pair - who have 41 years aviation service between them - were seven points over the alcohol limit for flying. Father-of-two Danilstsev, a captain with Russian airline Aeroflot and father-of-three Lyubimov, a co-pilot, had each drunk four pints of beer the night before and assumed when they got up at 2am they would be safe to fly. Lyubimov claimed the beer the two men were drinking in a hotel tasted "very watery" compared to the type they usually drink in Russia. The Boeing 767 they were due to fly home was a ferry flight and had no passengers on board. The pilots claimed the flight would have been late taking off due to technical problems and they might have been under the limit by the time they were cleared to fly. At Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, yesterday Danilstsev and Lyubimov, both from Moscow admitted preparing to fly a plane at a time when their ability was impaired due to alcohol. They were each fined £2,500 each and ordered to each pay costs of £150. The airline - the national airline of Russia and at 85-year old one of the oldest in the world - have told both men they are out of a job. Passing sentence Judge Mushtaq Khokhar told the pilots: "You both have exemplary service record with your former employers - but the offence that you pleaded guilty to is a very serious offence indeed. "As you can well imagine given your experience of flying planes, any error by a person under the influence of drink can result in catastrophE. "In this case, when you arrived in Manchester on the 15th August you were well aware that time you had been given in so far as the flight for the morning is concerned. "You deliberately breached company policy, the rules, and consumed alcohol within the 24 hours prior. "It may be given the past experience in what is deemed as ferry flights, the flight in fact may not have taken off at the time you were given, but the fact remains that in so far as you reported for duty is concerned, it is at that time that you should not be over the limit. "In your favour this was not going to be a passenger flight but nevertheless, you could have endangered other flights if the flight had taken off at the given time. "I take into account that you will be losing your jobs, if you haven't lost them already. "And given your respective ages and the fact that your expertise in this area, aviation area that is, it may not be possible for you to get another employment in the same industry." Earlier the pilots who spoke through an interpreter to confirm their names listened as Justin Hayhoe, prosecuting, said they had travelled from London on the 14th August of this year arriving at Manchester Airport at about 5pm. They were intending to take a ferry flight back to Russia due to take off at 4am on 15th August. A staff member checking-in the crew who arrived by bus stopped them "She allowed the driver and one of the crew members through but while she was checking the identities of the remaining members of crew, she noticed an intoxicating smell," said Mr Hayhoe. "She was unsure of who of the three had taken alcohol. She described it as the morning after the night before smell. "She contacted her supervisor who travelled to the airfield. He spoke to the passengers who were staff on an Aeroflot flight that was due to take off at 4am. The police were contacted. Officers arrived and requested samples of breath from both. "Both of the samples of breath were positive and they were arrested." Samples from both pilots revealed the two pilots had not less than 27microgrammes of alcohol in 100 milillitres of blood. The legal limit for prescribed for aviation staff is 20mg. Lyubimov told officers: "I have committed an offence, I know I shouldn't have done it. I know that I have broken the law, not only the English law but the law in my own country." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3394041/Two-Russian-pilots-over-the-a lcohol-limit-to-fly.html ************** Pilots' concerns about ADS-B reflected in rulemaking committee report Emphasizing the need for affordable equipment along with services that deliver good value for general aviation operators, AOPA on Oct. 31 submitted comments formally expressing its support for key recommendations from the FAA’s Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) report on ADS-B. The ARC report echoed several points that AOPA has repeatedly made to the FAA: the cost of ADS-B equipment currently outweighs the proposed benefits to GA pilots; the FAA needs to provide more services to general aviation pilots and airports or remove GA from the mandate to equip for ADS-B; and the FAA should identify ways to reduce the cost of required avionics. “As it now stands, the FAA’s ADS-B proposal would be very expensive for GA operators and give them nothing substantive in return—a real waste of ADS-B’s potential,” said Andy Cebula, AOPA executive vice president of government affairs. “That is why the FAA needs to follow the recommendations from the rulemaking committee.” If the FAA will commit to providing better services to general aviation and lowering the cost of equipment, many GA operators will choose to participate in ADS-B. When the benefits of new technology are compelling, as they could be with ADS-B, and the equipment is affordable, general aviation pilots and aircraft owners readily adopt it, just as they have done with GPS navigation. ADS-B, which stands for automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, has the potential to allow pilots to receive weather and traffic information in the cockpit, even in areas without radar coverage. http://www.aopa.org/advocacy/articles/2008/081106adsb.html ************* Rise in Collision Hazards for Planes Spurs Changes By ANDY PASZTOR Concerned about a rise in midair-collision hazards facing jetliners on both sides of the Atlantic, regulators, air-traffic controllers and aviation-parts suppliers are devising new procedures and systems to reduce such dangers. Midair conflicts between planes in the U.S. have been most frequent in California and the Northeast, with the number of serious incidents in some of those areas nearly doubling since 2007, according to controllers. Just this week, a controller mistake put a Southwest Airlines jet and an Alaska Airlines jet on a collision course while both planes were maneuvering to land in San Diego. Onboard collision warning devices ordered the pilots to take evasive action, and both aircraft landed safely. Safety experts believe that growth in air traffic is a major cause in the rise of midair hazards, but mistakes by air traffic controllers and other factors also contribute. The FAA doesn't keep detailed statistics on midair conflicts averted by onboard warnings. But an agency spokeswoman said Thursday that the overall number of serious controller errors nationwide rose to 357 in fiscal 2008 from 289 the previous year. In Southern California, controllers said there have been six serious midair incidents in the past year An FAA spokeswoman said the agency takes midair-collision hazards "very seriously and is doing everything in its power to eliminate the risk." To reduce midair threats in busy U.S. airspace, controllers at many of the largest air-traffic centers nationwide now routinely keep certain aircraft farther apart than they did barely a year ago. The goal, according to controllers, is to provide an extra cushion of separation between planes -- particularly jetliners relying on instruments and pilots of smaller private aircraft using visual flight rules. "We have reacted to the increased number" of onboard collision-avoidance warnings in recent months "by increasing the vertical separation between aircraft," said Melvin Davis, a spokesman for the controller's union. As part of broader U.S. air-traffic control improvements, the Federal Aviation Administration is in the process of upgrading software at more than a dozen existing radar facilities so the agency will be able to better identify and analyze close calls when they occur. And aircraft suppliers such as Honeywell International Inc. are voluntarily developing new software to enhance the performance of the onboard collision warning devices they manufacture. In Europe, where some safety experts believe as many as eight serious midair near-collisions have occurred over the past five years, politicians and regulators are looking to mandate such software changes. Plane-maker Airbus has agreed to preliminary plans to start installing them on aircraft coming out of the factory by mid-2009. It's not clear how soon Boeing Co. would incorporate the changes in its production lines. Most hazards associated with midair collisions were supposed to have been resolved years ago, after the latest-generation warning devices were installed on all commercial jets and smaller planes flying in controlled airspace. But the issue flared up publicly at an international safety conference in Florida in June, when a representative of European airlines said preliminary data indicated dramatic spikes in anti-collision warnings around international airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Newark and elsewhere. The complaints prompted regulators and industry to take a closer look, but an FAA-sponsored study is still under way. The agency declined to comment. In a letter to Canadian air-safety officials in late August, Vincent de Vroey, a top official with the Association of European Airlines, said "senior FAA management has now acknowledged potential safety concerns related to" escalating anti-collision warnings. The letter also said FAA and industry experts launched "a comprehensive study" to "analyze the problems and to propose recommendations to mitigate" safety concerns. The safety debate comes at a time when FAA critics in Congress and elsewhere argue that the overall number of operational errors by U.S. controllers is climbing dramatically. In Southern and Northern California alone, according to unofficial figures provided by controllers, the total number of mistakes by controllers has doubled over the past year. The Southern California total rose to nearly 40 errors, though annual comparisons are difficult because the FAA earlier this year changed the way it categorizes controller slipups. For example, in March, an American Airlines Boeing 757 arriving into Southern California from Mexico and a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 taking off from John Wayne International Airport in Orange County were mistakenly put on a collision course by controllers over the Pacific Ocean. Three months later a wide-body jetliner flown by Air Tahiti, climbing past 10,000 feet after departing Los Angeles, had a close call with a twin-propeller aircraft following visual flight rules. In both instances, onboard warnings alerted pilots to take evasive action before controllers discovered the errors. Other parts of the country have shown year-over year increases of roughly 30%, according to controllers. The totals include midair close calls as well as close calls between planes moving on the ground. With the FAA and the controller's union locked in a bitter labor-management battle over wages and working conditions, controversy over controller fatigue and staffing levels is bound to confront the incoming Administration. Despite the heightened focus on midair hazards, no big U.S. passenger jet has been involved in a midair collision since 1978. And no major midair collision has occurred in U.S. airspace since the late 1980s. But foreign carriers have had at least three major midair crashes since then, including a July 2002 collision over Germany between a DHL cargo aircraft and a Bashkirian Airlines jet, which killed dozens of children aboard the passenger plane. Investigators determined that the pilots of the Russian-built Tupolev 154 failed to properly follow warnings from onboard collision-avoidance systems. The crash over Germany sparked controversy over how to improve the safety of air-traffic control management in Europe, and also prompted efforts to improve onboard warning devices. In September 2006, a Boeing 737 passenger jet operated by the Brazilian carrier, Gol Transportes Aereos, crashed after colliding with a business jet over the Amazon, killing all 154 people aboard. Investigators determined that the collision-avoidance system of the smaller jet wasn't operating. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122600460761406097.html?mod=googlenews_wsj *************** Angola: All Angolan airlines banned from flying to Europe Brussels, Belgium, 7 Nov – The European Union (EU) is to extend its ban on flying in Europe to all of Angola’s airlines, which had so far covered only TAAG, a community official said Thursday in Brussels. The EU’s Air Safety Commission, which met between Monday and Wednesday in the Belgian capital, agreed to a proposal from the European Commission to add to the “black list” all Angolan companies that were not yet part of it. The European commissioner responsible for Transport, António Tanji Thursday notified the European parliament of the position taken by the European specialists and the parliament is due to give its opinion on the matter before the ban comes into effect “in the next few weeks.” The same source also told Portuguese news agency Lusa that the EU had concluded that the safety problems found at Taag had not yet been corrected and that they were common to all air transport companies in Angola. According to a source from Eurocontrol, the European organisation responsible for air safety across the 27 member countries, Angola’s SonAir is the airline that carries out most flights into Europe. These are “non-scheduled” flights, mainly related to the transport of public figure to Europe. The list of Angola airlines, most of which only provide local or regional flights in Africa, are Aeronáutica, Aero Tropical, Air 26, Air Gemini, Alada, Angola Air Charter, Diexim Expresso, Planar, SAL and Transafrik International. On 4 July 2007, Brussels announced that Taag has been added to its blacklist of airlines banned from flying in Europe, for reasons of lack of safety, after the Air Safety Committee, a week before, had unanimously approved that decision. (macauhub) http://www.macauhub.com.mo/en/news.php?ID=6368 ************** A380 wake 'no worse' than any other heavy jet: Airbus Airbus claims unprecedented tests of conditions experienced by aircraft following the Airbus A380 in flight demonstrate that the wake turbulence it creates is no worse than that produced by any other heavy aircraft. Official standards, however, require that the A380 have its own 'super-heavy' category, extending separation for aircraft trailing the A380 by 2nm (3.7km) compared with 'heavy' category jets. Airbus senior vice-president for product safety Capt Claude Lelaie admits he does not see any indication that the ICAO-led steering group on the subject is likely to change that standard any time soon. At an international aviation safety seminar held in Honolulu by the Flight Safety Foundation, IATA and the International Federation of Airworthiness in late October, Lelaie revealed more details about the nature of Airbus's in-trail tests. The company flew types such as the Airbus A318 into the A380's wake - made visible by smoke streaming - and then compared the smaller aircraft's reaction with its behaviour when flying into the wake of an Airbus A340-600. Measurements were taken in the A318, says Lelaie, with the pilot flying stick-free - releasing controls on entry to the wake - and with the pilot allowed to use manual control inputs. Lelaie says they showed roll, pitch and altitude-deviation rates that, compared with those measured following the A380, were "so similar that the differences were of no significance". Rates measured following deliberate wake encounters 11-12nm (20-22km) behind the A380 were a 15° per second roll rate with negligible pitch impact. The A380's wake behaviour showed the disturbed air tended to dip by about 1,000ft (300m) at 12-15nm behind the aircraft, a figure considered normal for other heavy types. The number of light-detection and ranging scans of A380 wake behaviour on airport approaches now amounts to 280 runs, with 87 comparison runs for Boeing 747s and 39 for 777s. None of the information gained, says Lelaie, justifies a system like that which now exists, whereby an aircraft classified 'light' may fly 6nm behind a 747, but the same separation applies when a 747 is following an A380. A 747 can follow any other 'heavy' aircraft at 4nm. Lelaie says the problem with securing acceptance of changes to current standards is the need to persuade "a lot of experts to agree on a lot of data". Source: Air Transport Intelligence news **************