29 DEC 2008 _______________________________________ *Continental Flight 1404 Pilot Released From Hospital *Airlines Work to Minimize Safety-Lapse Penalties *Cessna 208B Runway Excursion (Costa Rica) *Pilots in warning on blinding effects of lasers *Survivor recalls deadly 1978 Portland plane crash *"SMS and the Development of Effective Safety Culture" *************************************** Continental Flight 1404 Pilot Released From Hospital Two Passengers Still Hospitalized, In 'Fair' Condition The captain of Continental Airlines Flight 1404 has been released from the hospital, Continental spokeswoman Kelly Cripe announced on Friday, while a University of Colorado Hospital spokeswoman reported that two of the injured remain and are in fair condition. As ANN reported, Continental Flight 1404 crashed the evening of December 20 after aborting a troubled takeoff at Denver International Airport, injuring 38 of the 115 passengers and crew aboard the Boeing 737-500. The airliner careened off the side of runway 34 Right, crossing a field, a taxiway, and a service road, shearing off the landing gear and finally coming to rest at the bottom of a wide, shallow ravine nearly 2,000 feet off the end of the runway. Passenger Ken Kelley described the rough off-runway excursion, saying passengers were "flipping around like rag dolls" in the cabin when the plane hit the service road. "That's when I thought the plane would disintegrate," he said, amazed that the plane did not "catch a wing, flip and burn." Kelly, seated in Row 6 with his wife and daughter, said, "There was a huge ball of flames when we came to a stop." He praised the efforts of a flight attendant who, despite being injured herself, facilitated a rapid evacuation of the crippled plane. "It was unbelievably orderly," he said. After quickly opening the door and deploying the evacuation chute, "the flight attendant was yelling, 'Go! Go! Go!'" Because the right side of the plane became engulfed in a post-crash fire, the condition of much of the baggage and personal items still aboard is uncertain, the Denver Post reported. "We have been processing baggage and personal items, and we are communicating directly with passengers regarding their baggage," Cripe said. "We will work diligently to reunite passengers with their baggage and personal belongings." Friday, Bill English, the National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge, said he hopes to raise and move the plane from the crash site this week to facilitate further investigation. NTSB spokeswoman Bridget Serchak said initially the wreckage will be moved to a designated location on the airport ramp, and eventually to an off-airport location. The plan to move the plane is tentative and details still had not been finalized, she said. FMI: www.ntsb.gov, www.continental.com aero-news.net *************** Airlines Work to Minimize Safety-Lapse Penalties Southwest and American Revise Maintenance Procedures, but Question Whether Possible FAA Fines Are Too BigBy ANDY PASZTOR and PAULO PRADA Southwest Airlines and American Airlines have overhauled maintenance practices after a string of safety lapses disclosed earlier this year, but the carriers are now sparring with regulators over how much they should be fined for those mistakes. The moves underscore the complicated relationship that has emerged with the Federal Aviation Administration as the carriers seek to put the safety issues that emerged last spring and summer behind them. Both Southwest Airlines Co. and AMR Corp.'s American Airlines are paying closer attention to government safety mandates. At the same time, they are also trying to minimize their exposure to financial damages. Southwest sparked a federal enforcement crackdown when it acknowledged flying tens of thousands of passengers in 2007 on some four dozen jets that hadn't received mandatory checks for potential fuselage cracks. Those lapses led to massive flight cancellations, congressional criticism and erosion of public confidence in the FAA. Nicholas Sabatini, the FAA's top air-safety official at the time, expressed "outrage and shock" at what he called "the completely unacceptable situation" of missed inspections. Barely eight months after those revelations, Southwest is investing close to $1 million to rewrite and update its maintenance manuals. The largest U.S. low-cost carrier also has created a maintenance-compliance team, operating separately from line mechanics and managers, to alert senior Southwest executives about possible new slip-ups. "We've moved thoroughly and expeditiously to make sure that these types of problems don't ever happen again," said Ron Ricks, the airline's executive vice president for corporate services. But Southwest is also battling a record $10.2 million penalty the FAA initially proposed in March. Recently, Southwest has revved up its rhetoric attacking the agency. "It's not defiant to assert your legal rights and defend yourselves against a penalty that isn't fair or equitable based upon the facts," Mr. Ricks said in an interview last week. That is a shift from the way Southwest reacted when news of the safety lapses first emerged. Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly apologized to customers, made conciliatory statements promising to cooperate fully with regulators and said his team already had "approached the FAA to work with them to settle" outstanding enforcement issues. FAA officials say they are continuing to discuss the matter with Southwest, and haven't referred the case to the Justice Department for legal action. Notwithstanding its defensive comments, the carrier and its outside legal team may want to avoid such a fight because it would likely dredge up information about more than 1,000 passenger flights by Southwest jets that the agency later said hadn't been properly inspected. A similar dynamic is emerging at American, which has boosted its efforts to comply with federal regulations even as it prepares to argue that the size of future FAA penalties should be reduced. Over the summer, the FAA forced American to temporarily ground its entire McDonnell Douglas MD-80 fleet for failing to properly fix electrical wiring that government inspectors believed posed potential hazards of fires and fuel-tank explosions. Stung by the resulting public outcry and congressional criticism, American brought in a team of consultants to help revamp inspection and repair procedures across the company. The airline replaced a senior maintenance official last month and is warning mechanics they must now follow "verbatim" the language included in FAA airworthiness directives. Long before that occurred, American's in-house engineers began distributing guidance to make sure mechanics strictly carry out FAA safety fixes. "Now, the instructions are gone over with a fine-tooth comb before the work is even done," according to American spokesman Tim Wagner. Seeking to further ensure compliance, American has ordered mechanics to attend special training sessions stressing the importance of following federal regulations to the letter. Next month, some repairs also will require paperwork showing which part of the maintenance manual was used and that the supervisor who signed off on the work had the necessary credentials. The change already can be felt at American's hub at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Two mechanics there recently had their licenses temporarily suspended by the FAA for failing to properly replace an aircraft's nose-gear tire. According to union officials, several more mechanics are under investigation for the same mistake, which can result in excessive landing-gear vibration. "It amounts to a seismic shift," according to a mechanic, with both the company and the FAA "promoting full compliance and warning against shortcuts." Still, American could be hit with an unprecedented, large penalty in coming months. Based on preliminary calculations by local regulators and the airline's own experts, some American officials privately fret the penalty could end up between $20 million and $30 million. According to people familiar with the matter, American plans to argue that changes it has made should significantly reduce the amount. American and the FAA declined to comment on the matter. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123050697093538155.html?mod=googlenews_wsj ************** Cessna 208B Runway Excursion (Costa Rica) Date: 28-DEC-2008 Time: 1350 Type: Cessna 208B Grand Caravan Operator: SANSA Registration: TI-BAO C/n / msn: 208B0711 Fatalities: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 13 Airplane damage: Minor Location: San José-Juan Santamaria International Airport (SJO/MROC) - Costa Rica Phase: Take off Nature: Domestic Scheduled Passenger Departure airport: San José-Juan Santamaria International Airport (SJO/MROC) Destination airport: Tamarindo Airport (TNO) Narrative: Takeoff aborted, ran off the side of the runway. Sources: http://www.nacion.com/ln_ee/2008/diciembre/29/sucesos1824329.html (aviation-safety.net) *************** Pilots in warning on blinding effects of lasers The Irish Aviation Authority confirmed that since September there were close to a dozen attempts to dazzle or blind pilots flying in and out of Dublin airport. The British Civil Aviation Authority said that in the past six months there were at least five attempts to dazzle pilots with laser pointers in Northern Ireland. In Britain this year there were scores of such incidents. The most serious incident in Ireland happened at George Best Belfast City Airport in August, when the captain of a Boeing 737 was hit in the eye with a laser as he made his approach to land. On Halloween night this year several planes were targeted by a green laser at the same airport. Capt Michael McLaughlin of the Irish Airline Pilots' Association (Ialpa) said the use of high-powered laser pointers or beams was becoming an "enormous problem" in Ireland. "This is certainly a very, very serious threat to safety," he said. "The level of stupidity that you are dealing with is almost unfathomable that somebody would think that this is a reasonable thing to do. They are potentially risking the lives of vast numbers of people." Gardaí confirmed that it scrambled its helicopter three times at Dublin airport to try to catch those using the lasers. "While there were no arrests a file is currently pending in relation to one of the incidents. All incidents are treated very seriously," said a Garda spokesman. "We treat this very seriously and know the Garda [is] very keen to stamp it out," said a spokeswoman for the Irish Aviation Authority. "This is reckless behaviour that potentially could have very serious consequences." The use of laser pointers has become such a serious issue over recent years that the internet trading companies eBay and Amazon decided they would ban them from sale on their sites. The high-powered pointers can be used responsibly by people such as astronomers for star-pointing. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing malicious use of the lasers. One airline source said she was aware of a pilot in Australia who was forced out of work when a laser was beamed into his eyes. In November, 16 boxes of the high-powered lasers, which have a range of several miles, were seized by British trading standards officers from a container in Suffolk in England. They were judged illegal because their power rating of five milliwatt was more than the one milliwatt allowed. The lasers can be bought online for about £40 (€42) or through some gadget shops. In October an Ipswich teenager received a 20-week prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, for using a laser beam to dazzle the pilot of a police helicopter. Other reported use of the lasers have been at airports such as Heathrow, Newcastle, Exeter and Norwich, while at Cardiff Airport in August a pilot was temporarily blinded by a laser beam. The British Airline Pilots' Association said those using the lasers were "effectively playing Russian roulette" with passengers' lives. Anyone using them maliciously should be imprisoned, said a spokesman for the association. Capt McLaughlin said he understood that some people could use the beams innocently to identify stars and constellations. "But a lot of the use appears to be malicious, and people will be deliberately pointing them at aircraft in the same way that some people throw bricks off motorway flyovers." If you shine into the cockpit "you will probably blind both pilot and co-pilot", he warned. "Sooner or later somebody will be killed if this goes on." http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1229/1229728603490.html *************** Survivor recalls deadly 1978 Portland plane crash Thirty years ago, Paula Medaglia of Oregon survived the crash of an out-of-fuel DC-8 that plowed into an open swath of land near Northeast 157th Avenue and East Burnside Street in Portland. EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — You may have had a harrowing holiday travel experience. Odds are, Paula Medaglia can top it. It was 30 years ago Sunday that she survived the crash of United Airlines Flight 173, an out-of-fuel DC-8 that plowed into an open swath of land near Northeast 157th Avenue and East Burnside Street in Portland. Ten of the 189 on board died. Medaglia, 32, of Leaburg, Ore., escaped with an arm bruise. "People will ask: Did your life flash before your eyes when you knew you were going to crash?" she says. "No. I knew I was going to get out of there somehow." She had come to Eugene in 1976 to get a second master's degree, from the University of Oregon and was returning from a holiday visit with her parents in Boston. Approaching Portland, the landing gear made a terrible noise when deployed. "Instead of clicking into place, it crashed into place," Medaglia remembers. "There was this huge boom and the whole plane shook." She was seated near the rear. the pilot, she recalled, announced that they would circle while they checked out the plane. "Those were the days when you could still smoke on a plane, and nearly everybody, including myself, lit up," Medaglia says. "The woman next to me had two children on board, and as we were flying around I tried to keep it lighthearted for them." But the mother wasn't as low key. "She turned to me and said, 'If something happens and we get separated, will you take care of my little boy?' " At 5:44 p.m., the flight crew was told to brace the passengers for landing. But Medaglia says communication in the rear of the plane was poor. "We saw people up ahead putting on coats and getting out blankets, so we did the same." She said there was no panic in the tail section. "I remember looking out the window and seeing streetlights and houses and said to the woman next to me, 'Get in the crash position. I think we're pretty low.' You couldn't hear the engines; they'd gone out." Three miles short of the airport, the jolt of a wing hitting the roof of a vacant rental house shook the plane. "You heard this noise of the wing ripping the roof, and then boom, boom, boom, these lurches. I buried my head in my coat." Then the plane was still. When an exit slide was ripped by tree limbs, she found an exit at the back of the plane and jumped about 10 feet to the ground. She saw no casualties. Most of the victims were up front. Pilot Malburn McBroom survived and later was blamed for being so concerned about the landing gear, which apparently was fine, that he allowed the plane to run out of fuel. Medaglia and many other passengers, however, credit McBroom, who died in 2004 at 77, for setting the plane down in an open area and possibly saving their lives. They were taken to the airport by bus. "Someone had a bottle of Jack Daniels and we were passing it around," Medaglia says. She is now 62 and senior program services coordinator for the Lane Workforce Partnership. The biggest impact on her, she says, has been nervousness while, ironically, in a car, and the empathy she feels for passengers when she hears of other plane crashes. While her parents were alive, she continued to fly back to see them with a little help from Valium. But now that her folks are gone, she says, no way. "I haven't flown since 1999. I don't want to push my luck." http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008569503_webaccident29m.html ************** "SMS and the Development of Effective Safety Culture" Flight Safety Information Journal - October 2008 http://fsinfo.org/fsijournal%202.htm (Attached) ************