10 MAR 2009 _______________________________________ *Jet safely returns to Austin after engine noise *Runway safety improvements lag at busy airports *Italian Ministry of Justice will improve cooperation with ANSV *Ministry staff to speed aviation infrastructure (Indonesia) *ICAO tells NKorea to retract aviation threat: ministry *Belgian police probe airplane maintenance errors *FAA Grants Additional STC for ALERTS System *Ilyushin 76T Accident - Uganda **************************************** Jet safely returns to Austin after engine noise AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - An American Airlines jet en route to Los Angeles safely returned to Austin after the pilot heard a loud engine noise shortly after takeoff. Nobody was injured Monday as Flight 311 returned to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. American spokesman Tim Smith told the Austin American-Statesman, for its online edition, that the pilot declared an emergency and the MD-80 made a normal landing. Smith says the flight was in the air 20-30 minutes. The jet has been taken out of service to be inspected. The 123 passengers were being rebooked on other flights. The jet carried a crew of five. *************** Runway safety improvements lag at busy airports WASHINGTON - Six-year-old Joshua Woods was singing Christmas songs on Dec. 8, 2005, when a runaway plane at Chicago's Midway Airport crashed through a fence and collided with his family's car, killing the boy. The tragedy underscores what the government says is an urgent safety problem. Eleven major airports are struggling to meet federal requirements that runways be surrounded by safety areas that give runaway planes extra room to stop, according to a new report from the Transportation Department's inspector general. The airports account for nearly one quarter of the nation's air passenger travel. All the airports have been working for years to come up with solutions, but often there's no place to send runaway planes because the airports are hemmed in by highways, water, buildings or other obstructions. The airports are located in Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, N.C., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco and Washington. Midway made safety improvements two years after Woods' death. Between 1997 and 2007, 75 aircraft overran or veered off runways, resulting in nearly 200 injuries and 12 deaths, the report said. In just three of the accidents cited in the report, 80 injuries and Woods' death could have been prevented if safety improvements to runways made after the accidents had been in place beforehand, report said. Safety areas typically are 1,000 feet long and 500 feet wide at each end of a runway, plus 250 feet along both sides of the runway. The Federal Aviation Administration has allowed some airports that don't have enough room for full-size safety areas to install crunchable concrete beds called "engineered material arresting systems" at the ends of runways. The beds are designed to stop or slow planes, not unlike the way gravel-covered ramps on highways stop runaway trucks. The beds are typically about 600 feet long instead of 1,000 feet, saving space. Beds at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport have already halted three runaway planes. But even that requires more room than is feasible at some airports. The report said some of the 11 airports may not be able to meet a congressional deadline of 2015 to put runway safety areas in place. Putting safety areas in place can require filling in wetlands, requiring environmental reviews that can take as long as 12 years to complete. Community opposition to airport expansion because of noise concerns has also been a factor. "Until these challenges and problems are addressed, aircraft will remain vulnerable to damage and, what is more important, their passengers remain at risk of potential injury from flights that undershoot, overrun or veer off a runway lacking a standard (runway safety area)," the report said. "Improvements need to be made at the 11 large airports sooner rather than later." The FAA has already spent $2 billion helping hundreds of airports put runway safety areas in place, said Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the agency. In addition to the roughly $300 million budgeted annually for the program, the economic stimulus plan pushed by President Barack Obama contains millions of extra dollars, she said. "We're working with all these airports to see if we can do all these things as quickly as possible," Brown said. Chris Oswald, vice president for safety and technical operations at the Airports Council International-North America, which represents airports in the United States and Canada, said runway safety areas are one of the most difficult problems facing urban airports. "You are talking about very significant geographic impediments to expanding runway safety areas," Oswald said. Reagan National Airport outside Washington, for example, is sandwiched between the Potomac River and the George Washington Parkway. The airport has been reluctant to install a crunchable concrete bed because periodic flooding could damage the system, the report said. __ On the Net: Transportation Department's inspector general: http://www.oig.dot.gov/ Federal Aviation Administration: http://www.faa.gov/ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090310/ap_on_go_ot/runway_overruns *************** Italian Ministry of Justice will improve cooperation with ANSV The Italian flight safety board, ANSV, received a positive response from the Ministry of Justice regarding safety recommendation ANSV-10/888-06/1/A/08, issued following the accident involving a Piper PA-31 (I-POMO) on November 6th, 2006. In particular, the Ministry of Justice invited the Directors of Public Prosecutions within the Appeal Courts to stipulate that, in the case of an accident involving an aircraft and immediately following the event, in compatibility with search and rescue activities, there shall be no tampering with or alteration of evidence before the arrival of the assigned ANSV investigators, in order not to compromise acquisition of evidences necessary to determine the cause. The ministry has also stated that, following any examinations, in compatibility with public safety requirements, the subsequent recovery of wreckage is also to be coordinated with ANSV personnel. Nevertheless, the FDR/CVR data of the fatal Cessna Citation accident currently under investigation are still exclusively in the hands of the responsible judicial authority. (ANSV) (aviation-safety.net) *************** Ministry staff to speed aviation infrastructure (Indonesia) The Jakarta Post, JAKARTA The new Transportation Ministry director general for air transportation was appointed on Thursday, to speed up infrastructure developments and develop air safety in the industry. As well as completing key projects, the ministry hopes the newly appointed director general, Herry Bakti S, will ensure the implementation of the new aviation law, Transportation Minister Jusman Syafi'i Djamal said recently. Herry replaces Budhi Muliawan Suyitno. "I hope the new director general can finish the construction of Kualanamu International Airport in North Sumatra this year," said Jusman, adding that construction was being accelerated to meet the government's economic stimulus plan. The government had planned to build Kualanamu airport since 2007, replacing the existing Polonia Airport in the North Sumatra capital, Medan. Kualanamu was now 30 to 40 percent complete, Jusman said. The project has been estimated to cost around Rp 930 billion (US$77 million) and is being funded by the state. As part of the Rp 73.3 trillion stimulus package set aside by the government to help cushion the impacts of the global economic crisis, it allocated Rp 12.2 trillion for infrastructure projects. "The [Kualanamu's] runways are still under construction, but the terminal and some other facilities have been completed," Jusman said. Before assuming the position, Herry was an expert staff to the minister and chief administrator of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. "Herry's job is to ensure the implementation of the Law No. 1/2009 on Aviation - a law that had been successfully delivered by Budhi," Jusman said. In response to international pressure, the new law stipulates tougher terms for air safety. After a string of airline accidents in Indonesia and the failure of local authorities to provide adequate safety assurances, in 2007 the European Union (EU) imposed a blanket ban forbidding any Indonesian airlines from entering its air space. The minister said he had also ordered Herry to develop safety management in every Indonesian airline, to bring it in line with the ministry's Road Map to Zero Accidents and, hopefully, end the EU ban. The road map includes recommendations to increase the budget for air transport regulations, and to allow the National Transportation Safety Committee to report directly to the President. Commenting on the task, Herry said, he would prefer to use a technical approach through discussions as his strategy toward lifting the EU ban, as opposed to legal action. http://old.thejakartapost.com/detailbusiness.asp?fileid=20090310.L04&irec=3 **************** ICAO tells NKorea to retract aviation threat: ministry SEOUL (AFP) - The UN body for aviation safety has urged North Korea to retract a threat to South Korean passenger aircraft, Seoul's foreign ministry said Tuesday. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) "unanimously" decided Monday to send North Korea a letter calling on it to withdraw its March 5 announcement, the ministry said in a statement. The North last Thursday announced it "can no more assure the safety of South Korean passenger flights" over its east coast, in protest at a joint US-South Korean military exercise that started this week. Flag carriers Korean Air and Asiana immediately began re-routing flights away from North Korean-controlled airspace, leading to longer journey times and higher fuel bills. Some 200 flights will be diverted during the March 9-20 exercise. The ICAO letter calls the North's announcement a "grave threat" to the safety and security of international civil aviation and urges it to abide by global aviation rules, the ministry said. The communist state's announcement was the latest in a series of threats that have raised tensions in recent weeks. The ministry said 28 of the 32 members of the ICAO council, including China and Russia, made comments in support of the letter at a council meeting. The headquarters of the Montreal-based body could not immediately be reached for comment. Mokhtar Awan, Bangkok-based regional director of the ICAO, told AFP he had no information on the matter. *************** Belgian police probe airplane maintenance errors BRUSSELS: (AP) Belgian police are investigating two serious errors in airplane maintenance which a government minister says could amount to sabotage. Transport Secretary Etienne Schouppe says mistakes at Brussels-based Sabena Technics "could not just be the result of neglect but could have had serious consequences." He did not give details about the type of errors or the planes that were involved because the probe is still ongoing. He told VRT network early Tuesday that authorities are investigating whether foul play was involved. Sabena Technics said it would comment later Tuesday. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/03/10/europe/EU-Belgium-Airplane-Probe.p hp *************** FAA Grants Additional STC for ALERTS System Appareo Systems, LLC is pleased to announce that it has received an additional Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) for the ALERTS Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) system. The FAA has granted the STC for Eurocopter AS350 and EC130 helicopters and has granted earlier STC's for Bell 206 and 407 aircraft. ALERTS - Aircraft Logging and Event Recording for Training and Safety - is a comprehensive FOQA and Flight Data Management (FDM) system designed for light and legacy aircraft where more traditional flight data recorders are too large and costly to be viable choices. As a comprehensive system, ALERTS makes an effective FOQA/FDM program available to operators of any size. "We're very pleased to have received this additional STC for the ALERTS system," said Ben Wright, Appareo Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "Appareo Systems is continually evolving the capabilities of ALERTS, and with this certification for the popular AS350 and EC130 models, operators around the country will now be more easily able to enjoy the safety and training benefits of the ALERTS system. The STC applies to the airborne portion of the ALERTS System, the GAU 2000. The GAU 2000 is a lightweight unit that gathers flight data with an integrated GPS and a sophisticated inertial sensing suite. Requiring only aircraft power and ground and weighing roughly two pounds, the GAU 2000 can be mounted in nearly any type of aircraft. The gathered flight data is recorded to an SD memory card and an internal crash hardened memory and is later transferred to the software portion of ALERTS, which automatically analyzes the data for any events that are outside of standard operating procedures. These events are then forwarded to the system administrator for further action. Additionally, all recorded flight data is stored in a database that can generate detailed reports on any aspect of the fleet's performance, further improving safety, pilot training and efficiency. As a leader in FOQA/FDM solutions for light and legacy aircraft, Appareo Systems will continue to advance the ALERTS system's capabilities and seek additional aircraft certifications in the future. About Appareo Systems, LLC Founded in 2001, Appareo Systems, LLC is a vibrant and growing company with significant experience in electronics design and engineering. Appareo creates high-value commercial products and custom engineering services through the innovative application of cutting-edge technology. Appareo's innovations have been lauded by industry associations, independent media outlets, university programs and private pilots alike - they have charted new territory in flight safety by bringing innovative products designed for light and legacy aircraft to a market where none have existed in the past. http://www.rotor.com/Default.aspx?tabid=510&newsid905=60879 *************** Ilyushin 76T Accident - Uganda Accident description languages: Status: Preliminary Date: 09 MAR 2009 Time: ca 05:40 Type: Ilyushin 76T Operator: Aerolift Registration: S9-SAB C/n / msn: 073410301 First flight: 1977 Crew: Fatalities: 4 / Occupants: 4 Passengers: Fatalities: 7 / Occupants: 7 Total: Fatalities: 11 / Occupants: 11 Airplane damage: Written off Location: Lake Victoria (Uganda) Phase: Initial climb (ICL) Nature: Cargo Departure airport: Entebbe Airport (EBB/HUEN), Uganda Destination airport: Mogadishu International Airport (MGQ/HCMM), Somalia Narrative: The IL-76 cargo plane was chartered by Dynacorp to transport tents and water purification equipment for the African Mission to Somalia (AMSOM). Russian media said the pilot and copilot were Russian citizens and the navigator and flight engineer were Ukrainians. Among the passengers were three Burundian army officers of the African peacekeeping force in Somalia. The airplane crashed into Lake Victoria shortly after takeoff. Weather reported about the accident time (02:40 UTC): HUEN 090200Z 25005KT 9999 FEW018 FEW020CB OVC110 21/19 Q1016= [Wind 250 deg at 5 kts, few clouds at 1,800 ft., few clouds with cumulonimbus at 2,000 ft., overcast at 11,000 ft. Temperature 21 deg C, Dew point 19 deg C] HUEN 090300Z 35005KT 9999 FEW018 FEW020CB BKN110 21/19 Q1016= [Wind 350 deg at 5 kts, few clouds at 1,800 ft., few clouds with cumulonimbus at 2,000 ft., broken clouds at 11,000 ft. Temperature 21 deg C, Dew point 19 deg C] (aviation-safety.net) *************** Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC