20 JAN 2009 _______________________________________ *Report: Engine Suffered Compressor Stall On Prior N106US Flight *NTSB Interviews Reveal Details Of US Airways 1549 Ditching *$5,000 to Each Passenger on Crashed Jet for Lost Bags *Backup System Helped Pilot Control Jet *Boeing 757 In-Flight Fire (Morocco) *Fokker 100 Runway Excursion (Iran) *Pepper-spray release found after jet returns to airport *Sacramento airport seeks bird-kill law for air safety *Global airline accident analysis for 2008 **************************************** Report: Engine Suffered Compressor Stall On Prior N106US Flight Passengers Heard Loud Bangs On Flight 1549 Two Days Before Hudson Ditching The US Airways A320 that lost engine power and ditched in New York's Hudson River last week experienced engine anomalies on the same route two days prior to the January 15 incident, according to passengers. CNN reports that two days before last Thursday's ditching in the Hudson River, passengers on the same route and flying onboard the very same aircraft -- N106US -- reported hearing a series of loud bangs. Steve Jeffrey of Charlotte, NC told CNN he was flying in first class Tuesday when, about 20 minutes into the flight, "it sounded like the wing was just snapping off. The red lights started going on. A little pandemonium was going on. "It seemed so loud, like luggage was hitting the side but times a thousand," he continued. "It startled everyone on the plane. The stewardesses started running around. They made an announcement that 'everyone heard the noise, we're going to turn around and head back to LaGuardia and check out what happened.' "About 10 minutes later when we never made the turn, we kept going, that's when the pilot came on and explained ... the air didn't get to the engine and it stalled the engine out, which he said doesn't happen all the time but it's not abnormal." Like many things in life, this was less traumatic to passengers who knew what was going on. Another passenger, John Hodock, e-mailed CNN to educate the news service about what likely happened. "About 20 minutes after take-off, the plane had a series of compressor stalls on the right engine," Hodock wrote, according to the network. "There were several very loud bangs and fire coming out of the engine. The pilot at first told us that we were going to make an emergency landing, but after about five minutes, continued the flight to Charlotte." In a later interview, Hodock said the pilot, "...came back on and said it was a stalled compressor and they were going to continue to Charlotte." As the term implies, a compressor stall occurs when airflow over the multiple turbine vanes inside a jet engine is disturbed. In many cases, the malady hardly registers on engine instruments... though in more dramatic cases, loud bangs are heard and flames may even shoot out the back of the engine, as the engine's fuel-to-air mixture goes suddenly over-rich. A complete engine flameout may also occur, requiring an inflight restart. What possible relation the incident reported January 13 had with Flight 1549 two days later remains to be seen... though given the pilots in Thursday's incident have already stated multiple bird strikes led to the dual engine failure, it seems unlikely at this point the two are related in any meaningful fashion. Then again... that's what NTSB investigations are for, and this one has just begun. FMI: www.usairways.com, www.ntsb.gov aero-news.net *************** NTSB Interviews Reveal Details Of US Airways 1549 Ditching Flight Recorders Recovered, Sent To DC For Evaluation Workers successfully raised the wrecked hulk of US airways Flight 1549 from the Hudson River Saturday night, placing it on a barge for transport to a suitable location for further examination. The A320's left engine, which was sheared off by the impact of the water landing, has been located on the river's bottom by sonar. Recovery of the engine from the icy waters is expected to commence as soon as possible. ABC News reports investigators have also located the plane's "black boxes" -- the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder -- and sent them off to the National Transportation Safety Board's Washington, DC labs for analysis. As ANN reported, US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the Hudson River last Thursday after losing power from both engines simultaneously minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport. Although the investigation is just getting underway, interviews with the crew and passengers have revealed much about their harrowing experience. Describing the series of events leading to the airliner's ditching, NTSB spokesperson Kitty Higgins said that First Officer Jeffrey Skiles was doing the flying as the plane took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport just before 3:30 pm last Thursday. As the Airbus climbed through 3,000 feet, Skiles noticed a formation of birds to starboard. Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger looked up just in time to see big, dark brown birds filling the windscreen. Sullenberger said his first instinct was to... "duck." Next, the crew smelled something burning and then both engines lost power. A flight attendant said the eerie silence was "like being in a library." It was then that Sullenberger took the controls and weighed his options. The pilot declared an emergency, telling controllers, "We have lost thrust in both engines; we are turning back to LaGuardia," but soon realized returning was not feasible. "The Captain decided no, too low, too slow, too many buildings, too populated an area," Higgins said. Another alternative Sullenberger considered was a small airport near Teterboro, NJ. "It was farther away," said Higgins. "He'd never been there, didn't think he could make it and was concerned that if he didn't make it, it was also a populated area ... the consequences would have been catastrophic." The best choice soon became clear. The captain told controllers, "We're gonna be in the Hudson." Higgins said, "He made a decision to land near a vessel to improve chances for recovery." Just prior to settling into the water, Sullenberger told his passengers to "brace for impact," as flight attendants called out, "Brace, brace, heads down." A flight attendant said the impact felt like a hard landing with no bounce. Flight attendants recalled shouting to passengers, "Leave everything, come forward, put on life vests." Then they opened the forward doors and deployed the evacuation slides - which also function as life rafts. A flight attendant was able to manually inflate one of the slides that did not automatically inflate. Sullenberger lauded the performance of his courageous crew. "He could not be more happy that everyone got off the plane safely," said Higgins. FMI: www.ntsb.gov aero-news.net *************** $5,000 to Each Passenger on Crashed Jet for Lost Bags Saying that luggage and other belongings might be stuck with investigators for months - or "unrecoverable" - US Airways sent $5,000 checks over the weekend to each of the 150 passengers on Flight 1549 to help compensate for items left behind when their plane crash-landed in the Hudson River. Times Topics: US Airways Flight 1549In a letter to passengers, Kerry Hester, an airline executive, said she was "truly sorry." The airline also reimbursed passengers for their ticket costs, a spokeswoman for the airline said on Monday. Barry Leonard, a passenger who suffered a cracked sternum and bruising during the splash landing, received his checks on Monday morning at his home in Charlotte, N.C. - the original destination of Flight 1549. Mr. Leonard, a frequent flier on the airline, said that he was grateful for the gesture and that US Airways had "bent over backwards" since Thursday, when shortly after takeoff from La Guardia Airport, the plane, an Airbus A320, apparently struck a flock of birds and was forced to land on the water. On Monday, the New Jersey State Police got sonar images of an object on the river bottom that the New York police had observed on sonar earlier. A spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, Peter Knudson, said investigators believed that the object was the plane's left engine, which was probably shorn off on impact. But there was still too much ice on the river to lower a camera to check, Mr. Knudson said. Ms. Hester's letter, which was read to a reporter over the telephone, explained that investigators, needing to verify the weight and balance of the aircraft, needed to hang on to "personal effects" in the cabin and cargo hold. The investigators need to weigh "all items in their current state, dry them for eight weeks and then weigh them again," a process that could take months, the letter said. Valerie Wunder, an airline spokeswoman, said the $5,000 checks were not intended to "shut down" any other claims, like lawsuits, that passengers might file. While Mr. Leonard and other passengers caught other flights home, Vallie Smith Collins chose to drive, saying, "The idea of strapping myself into an airplane seat was mentally more than I could get my mind around." So on Friday morning, she and her husband set out from Newark in a rented car, headed home to Maryville, Tenn. The trip took about 13 hours, with a stop to eat in Bristol, Tenn. But Ms. Collins barely touched her food. "I eat because I have to," she said on the telephone on Monday, describing lingering nerves from the ordeal. She said she had been feeling a wave of emotions since returning home - grateful to be reunited with her three children, but also shaken. "You realize all the things you would have missed out on if it hadn't been a perfect landing," she said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/nyregion/20plane.html **************** Backup System Helped Pilot Control Jet As the captain of US Airways Flight 1549 prepared to ditch his disabled jet in New York's Hudson River, he had some help from some last-resort equipment that apparently kept the plane's electrical and hydraulic systems working even as both engines nearly shut down. National Transportation Safety Board inspectors examine the tail section of US Airways Flight 1549 as it sits on a barge in Jersey City, N.J., Monday. The jet was moved Sunday night from a seawall at the southern tip of Manhattan, where it was lifted out of the Hudson River. After striking what is believed to be a flock of large birds, which disabled both of the plane's engines, Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III maneuvered the plane to glide some 3,000 feet without power and splash down as slowly as possible in the river Thursday. All 155 people on board the flight from New York's La Guardia airport en route to Charlotte, N.C., were able to escape safely, a feat air-safety experts consider one of the most difficult in aviation. The generators that routinely provide electricity weren't available because they are driven by the aircraft's engines -- which weren't putting out sufficient power after apparently having ingested several geese. But the plane's auxiliary power unit -- made by Honeywell International Inc. -- was operating during the descent and gave the pilot full use of the jet's flight-control system, according to a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board and other people familiar with the details. Crash investigations determined that a so-called ram air turbine -- which can be used to regain hydraulic pressure when both engines stop working -- also was deployed before the touchdown, board spokesman Peter Knudson said Monday. It isn't clear whether the crew deployed the turbine, or whether it deployed automatically because of the emergency. The device consists of a small propeller that drops out of the bottom of the craft, and then drives a hydraulic pump and also supplies backup electricity at certain speeds to help operate the plane's flight controls. A spokesman for the U.S. Airline Pilots Association, the independent union that represents US Airways Group Inc. pilots, declined to comment on the details of the accident. According to one person familiar with the investigation, Capt. Sullenberger was able to keep the nose of the plane up while flying at a reduced speed partly because his aircraft's so-called fly-by-wire system used computers to prevent the jetliner from stalling, or becoming uncontrollable and falling out of the air. Preliminary data indicate that these computer-controlled safeguards remained fully operational until touchdown, this person said. Gary Hummel, training committee chairman for the U.S. Airline Pilots Association, said Monday that the pilots do train for dual-engine failures in simulators, but at much higher altitudes. Mr. Hummel, who has flown the A320 in the past but now flies Boeing 767s for US Airways, says the carrier's pilots "do not practice ditching" in simulators. "Those procedures are covered in ground-school instructions," he said. "Ditching is so rare, such an unusual occurrence" that pilots don't routinely practice it except in ground school, the "chalk and talk" method of instruction as opposed to simulators. A spokesman said US Airways has its pilots practice dual-engine failure in the simulator. However, that training "includes successful ignition" of one engine. The company also said "ditching is not something easily replicated in a simulator." One possible fallout from the US Airways incident, according to safety experts, is that airlines now have specific data to feed into simulators to help pilots understand the flight-control movements and glide characteristics that saved Flight 1549. "Airlines that fly Airbus planes are all likely to be looking at eventually incorporating such data into their training," said John Goglia, a former NTSB member. But in addition to basic flying skills, the ditching also underscores another factor pilots should consider in surviving such emergencies: the need to quickly choose a course of action, even if it goes against normal procedures. Barely 30 seconds after his aircraft hit the birds and lost nearly all thrust from both engines, the captain disregarded the advice of air-traffic controllers and decided that ditching in the Hudson was the best option. "The timeliness of that decision gave the crew time to set up properly" for touchdown more than two minutes later, according to Richard Healing, a former safety board member. "Good judgment allowed them to use their skills to make that perfect landing." Investigators continue analyzing the A320's maintenance records to determine if there were any previous repairs or incidents that may be relevant to the current probe. But at this point, experts from the safety board and industry increasingly are convinced that until colliding with the birds, last Thursday's flight was routine and didn't experience any unusual events, according to one person who has discussed the matter with investigators. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123241485664396363.html?mod=googlenews_wsj *************** Boeing 757 In-Flight Fire (Morocco) Date: 19-JAN-2009 Time: Type: Boeing 757-204 Operator: TUIfly Nordic AB Registration: SE-RFP C/n / msn: 27219/596 Fatalities: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 239 Airplane damage: Minor Location: Casablanca - Morocco Phase: En route Nature: International Scheduled Passenger Departure airport: CPH Destination airport: BVC Narrative: TUIfly flight 723 diverted to Casablanca (Morocco) after a fire broke out in one of the galleys. Flight attendants were able to extinguish the fire quickly emptying two extinguishers, the flight crew still decided to divert as a precaution. (aviation-safety.net) **************** Fokker 100 Runway Excursion (Iran) Date: 19-JAN-2009 Time: 17:00 Type: Fokker 100 Operator: Iran Air Registration: EP-CFN C/n / msn: 11423 Fatalities: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: Airplane damage: Substantial Location: Tehran /OIII - Iran Phase: Landing Nature: Domestic Scheduled Passenger Departure airport: Ardebil/ OITL Destination airport: Tehran/OIII Narrative: Iran Air 498 while landing on RWY 29L veered off to right side of the RWY. Sources: http://www.postimage.org/image.php?v=aV39hiW9 (Aviation-safety.net) ************* Pepper-spray release found after jet returns to airport Pepper spray was detected in the cabin of a Southwest Airlines jet that returned to Sacramento International Airport late Sunday, fire officials confirmed Monday. Sacramento Fire Capt. Randy Thompson said a hazardous materials unit detected "pepper spray or a product similar to pepper spray" in tests of the air inside the plane Sunday night. Thompson said the device used in the test does not measure the quantity of pepper spray in the air. Transportation Security Administration officials have not yet determined what caused pilots of the Southwest Airlines 737 jet to return the craft to the airport after takeoff, said Gina Swankie, spokeswoman for the Sacramento County Airport Systems. They suspect the pepper spray was in checked baggage. Pilots of Flight 295, a nonstop flight scheduled to leave at 8:30 p.m. and arrive in Burbank at 9:40 p.m., said they smelled smoke or something burning in the cockpit, Swankie said. They reported the in-flight emergency at 8:58 p.m. and safely landed the plane at Sacramento International Airport a few minutes after that. Sacramento Fire Department hazardous materials crews "came out and detected pepper spray," Swankie said. Passengers were evacuated from the plane, and an estimated four people were examined by medical personnel. No one was injured or taken to a hospital, Swankie said. The flight was grounded for at least two hours while firefighters and officials investigated. "The alleged source of the issue is supposedly a case of checked baggage," Swankie said. According to the TSA's Web site, mace or pepper spray is allowed in checked baggage, but not in carry-ons. One 118-milliliter or 4-fluid-ounce container of mace or pepper spray is permitted in checked baggage as long as it is equipped with a safety mechanism to prevent accidental discharge, TSA's Web site states. http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/1557128.html *************** Sacramento airport seeks bird-kill law for air safety Calling bird collisions with commercial jets a safety threat, Sacramento International Airport officials this week are seeking a law allowing them to kill birds that can't be frightened from airport grounds by other means. The county's initiative came, ironically, just two days before a dramatic crash landing Thursday of a U.S. Airways flight into New York's Hudson River after the pilot reported a bird strike, apparently while flying through a flock. Birds and jets collide frequently, with 7,666 reported instances nationally in 2007, or about one known strike for every 10,000 flights. But it is rare for strikes to cause crashes, injuries or fatalities to passengers, federal officials said. Sacramento - which lies in the Pacific Flyway bird migration path - has the most bird strikes of any airport in the West, and sixth most in the country, the Federal Aviation Administration reports. Sacramento recorded 1,300 collisions between birds and jets between 1990 and 2007, causing an estimated $1.6 million in damage to jets. The collisions usually happen during takeoffs and landings. No crashes or passenger injuries have been recorded as a result of those strikes, Sacramento officials said. "Bird strikes are a problem for us," Sacramento airport spokeswoman Karen Doron said Thursday. "And we want to do everything we can to make this airport as safe as we can for passengers." Airport officials are working to draft legislation that will suit their needs and then will seek a lawmaker to sponsor it. The FAA requires airports to take ongoing steps to reduce wildlife on and around airports, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said. In Sacramento, that includes a federal permit to use guns, nets, pesticides, drugs, falcons and traps, permits show. Sacramento airport officials say they previously used shotguns to kill a small percentage of problem birds, but only when the birds could not be rousted by other means, such as booming noises played through loudspeakers. Sacramento officials were forced to stop in 2007 when the state Department of Fish and Game notified them they were violating state codes. Airport reports indicate officials killed 891 birds in 2007, less than 2 percent of birds that airport workers "harassed" or hazed. Attorney Jim Pachl of the Friends of the Swainson's Hawk group called that number "ridiculous" and unnecessary. "Occasionally, you have to remove a bird to protect human safety," Pachl said. "But this can be handled for the most part by hazing or other non-lethal methods. If this bill passes as written, I'm afraid airports are going to take it as carte blanche" to kill birds. Most local bird strikes occur during the December and March migration season. Eleven bird strikes were reported in Sacramento during the first week of December, and six planes were damaged, officials said. One Sacramento bird strike in 2005, listed as significant by the FAA, caused $200,000 damage to a jet. The pilot of a plane reported seeing a large white bird fly past the cockpit, then heard a loud pop. The left engine began to vibrate. The pilot turned around and made a safe landing. In another significant Sacramento incident in 2004, passengers reported seeing a flock of geese flying by. The subsequent strike dented and punctured a wing, causing the plane to make a precautionary landing. The FAA reports 82,000 bird strikes since 1990, mainly in the United States, but estimates that only 20 percent of incidents get reported. One out of seven bird strikes involves a bird being sucked into an engine, federal data show. If a jet engine becomes inoperable because of a bird strike, most twin-engine jets can fly long distances on one engine, the FAA's Gregor said. More frequently, birds hit the windshield or the nose of the plane, federal data show. In one notable instance, a bird that struck a jet taking off at Los Angeles International caused so much damage that the engine housing fell off and landed on a nearby beach, Gregor said. http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1546906.html *************** Global airline accident analysis for 2008 One of the themes that emerged from last October's Flight Safety Foundation International Aviation Safety Seminar was that, to advance safety, airlines need to move "beyond [regulatory] compliance", because rulemaking has done about as much as it effectively can. That theme, also embraced by the International Air Transport Association and the International Federation of Airworthiness, which organise the safety seminar jointly with the FSF, has since been given additional credibility by 2008's accident figures. These confirm that global airline safety has stagnated following a decade of steady improvement - airline fatal accident numbers have levelled out or worsened since 2003 (see graph). Simple figures paint the picture: in 2003 there were 27 fatal airline accidents causing 702 deaths, and in 2008 there were 34 fatal accidents and 583 deaths. In the interim years the figures show that the trend for fatal accident numbers and the fatalities total are tracking the horizontal almost precisely. Although the number of deaths last year was relatively low at 583, the best result in the past decade was 466 in 2004. CASE FOR STAGNATION The Flight International figures list jet, turboprop and piston-powered airline operations, scheduled and chartered, and include fatal accidents involving freight, positioning and post-maintenance test flights as well as passenger operations. For details of individual accidents see the list that begins on. IATA hull-loss accident rate figures for 2008 to 1 December tend to support the case for airline safety stagnation. IATA says that, having been improving steadily from 1998 to 2006, the Western-built jet hull-loss rate per million flights was 0.77 in 2008 up to 1 December, compared with 0.75 for 2007, but that the best-ever figure of 0.63 was recorded in 2006. The association says a levelling of safety gains is also showing in the accident rate for its own member carriers - now all required to have completed an IATA operational safety audit by the end of 2008. Although there were only 0.47 hull losses per million flights to 1 December 2008 compared with 0.68 in 2007, the IATA member airlines' best-ever year was in 2005, showing 0.43 hull losses per million flights. Preliminary IATA figures for world regions in 2008 show that the poor performers include the CIS countries, which have gone from a zero rate per million flights in 2007 to 7.92 in 2008, making it the worst regional performer of all for Western-built jet hull losses. Meanwhile, Latin America has worsened year-on-year from 1.76 to 2.77, the Middle East and North Africa from 1.18 to 2.22, Europe from 0.32 to 0.45, and North America from 0.1 to 0.48. The regional improvers are southern Africa, moving from 4.46 to 2.11, Asia Pacific, down to 0.32 from 3.01, and north Asia (not including the CIS), which has improved from 0.97 to a zero accident rate per million flights. According to IATA's analysis of accident causes and categories, runway excursion topped the list last year, being responsible for 26% of hull losses. Ground damage came next at 19%, gear-up landings plus gear-collapse events constituted 15%, and loss of control in flight 13%. Other categories such as hard landings, undershoot, controlled flight into terrain, in-flight damage and tailstrike were all in single figures. Returning to the detail of Flight International's analysis of fatal airline accidents, last year there were six involving scheduled commercial jet flights, in which 349 people died. Fatal accidents are usually - but not inevitably - hull losses, and in this case they all were. The number of jet fatal accidents last year was the same as in 2007, but with fewer fatalities. There were three fatal crashes involving chartered passenger aircraft, killing 49 people. None of these was a holiday charter, and none involved a jet. Commuter and regional airlines worldwide suffered eight fatal accidents that killed 120 people, but the commercial air transport category in which the largest number of fatal accidents occurred was non-passenger operations: that sector saw 17 fatal accidents in which 65 people on board were killed. See the pie charts for accidents broken down by category and type of operation. The US Federal Aviation Administration is sufficiently worried about the performance of crews on non-revenue flights - including ferry, positioning and post maintenance test sorties - to have sent a safety alert to operators urging them to pay particular attention to flight operational data-monitoring results from such trips. The agency says 25% of all accidents involving US-registered turbine-powered aircraft over the past 10 years have occurred during non-revenue operations. DISREGARDED PROCEDURES The common thread revealed by investigations into accidents affecting such flights is the relatively high proportion where the crew disregarded standard operating procedures. One such flight was the 2004 accident involving a Pinnacle Airlines Bombardier CRJ200 on a positioning flight. The aircraft stalled at maximum operating altitude, the engines flamed out and the crew could not restart them. Both pilots were killed. There is no indication that the US Federal Aviation Administration decision to release the safety alert has taken into account the accident involving an Airbus A320 that crashed out of control on a post-maintenance test flight off southern France on 27 November. French accident investigation agency BEA is only now beginning to analyse the recovered data, because the flight recorders had to be returned to the manufacturer, Honeywell, when the BEA found they were too badly damaged for normal data recovery measures to work. The year's worst single accident was the crash on 20 August during take-off of a Spanair Boeing MD-82 at Madrid Barajas airport in Spain. All six crew died in the accident, as did 154 of the 166 passengers. That accident happened when the crew failed to set the flaps to the take-off setting, but investigators will also be trying to understand the reason why the take-off configuration warning system did not alert the pilots to their omission. For details released so far about the crash, consult the accident list. In 2008 there have also been some serious accidents resulting in hull losses that, fortunately, were survived by all on board. Among these were the 17 January British Airways Boeing 777 crash-landing short of the runway at London Heathrow airport, the November Ryanair Boeing 737-800 that was badly damaged by a heavy landing at Rome Ciampino airport after hitting a huge flock of starlings on final approach, and the Continental Airlines 737-500 that ran off the runway at Denver airport, Colorado on 20 December during the pilots' attempt to abort the take-off. BREAKDOWN IN TRUST Meanwhile, a breakdown in trust between airline management and pilots in two major US carriers potentially threatens safety, according to both the US National Transportation Safety Board and the FSF. The pilots at American Airlines and US Airways have both, independently, suspended their participation in their respective carrier's aviation safety action programme (ASAP), a voluntary incident reporting scheme intended to encourage the reporting of mishaps of all kinds that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. In both cases the pilots allege that the schemes, intended to be operated by the carriers as non-punitive (provided that any mistakes revealed do not involve gross negligence or deliberate flouting of standard operating procedures), are being abused by the airlines. In both cases the pilots allege the airlines are disciplining some pilots who have filed ASAP reports, and in the US Airways case the pilots want immunity extended to include events the airline learns about from another source as well as ASAP. The NTSB says it "is concerned that these proactive, voluntary disclosure programmes, in which pilots, mechanics and dispatchers become additional eyes and ears dedicated to aviation safety, are no longer available at several major air carriers". Bill Voss, head of the FSF, says: "The entire industry is facing difficult times, and disputes are inevitable, but no-one should ever allow safety to become a bargaining chip." In addition, the NTSB has been carrying out a study on loss-of-control accidents which, over the past few years, have become the accident category that kills more people than any other. The agency is particularly interested in those caused by pilot spatial disorientation, including the Crossair (January 2000), Gulf Air (August 2000), Flash Airlines (January 2004) and Adam Airlines (January 2007) accidents, to determine what remedial actions might work. DISORIENTATION Potential solutions advanced by the NTSB's senior human performance investigatorDr William Bramble include an education for pilots about the physiological and psychological causes of disorientation, including the fact that distractions from instrument flying are frequently a precursor to disorientation. He points out that distractions during a turn at night or in instrument meteorological conditions were common to all the disorientation cases in the accidents mentioned. Additionally, training co-pilots to intervene if required is a vital component, says Bramble. In all four of the main accidents under study the captain was the pilot flying, and timely co-pilot intervention could have prevented the accident. At the FAA's December international aviation safety forum for regulators in Washington DC, the FSF's Voss said: "I can think of few problems I have seen in aviation safety where the solutions were not already known." The BA 777 accident was an exception to that rule, and no-one knows yet whether the A320 accident near Perpignan will also be. The rest of the year's accidents probably all come within the "known" category Voss describes. http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2009/01/19/321124/global-airline-accide nt-analysis-for-2008.html ****************