17 JUN 2009 _______________________________________ *Entire Air France plane may never be found, investigators say *No French access to Brazil plane crash autopsies *Flight computers at heart of Air France crash? *Air Safety Experts: Improve Black Boxes *FAA to tell airlines to check pilots' test records *FAA to target pilot records and fatigue rules *India's Chennai airport to undergo runway repairs **************************************** Entire Air France plane may never be found, investigators say PARIS, France (CNN) — It is “virtually certain” that authorities will not be able to recover all the parts of the Air France plane that went down in the Atlantic this month, a French investigator said Wednesday. In addition, it is not certain that authorities will be able to find all of the 228 people who died when the Airbus A330 crashed June 1, said Paul-Louis Arslanian, director of the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses (BEA), the French accident investigation board. So far, 50 bodies have been recovered, according to Brazilian authorities. Air France Flight 447 went down in stormy weather while flying from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. The exact location of the crash has not been determined because ocean currents have moved the bodies and debris that have been found. The search area spans some 19,000 square kilometers (7,720 square miles), officials said. The cause of the crash is not known, but investigators are “getting a little bit closer” to determining it, Arslanian said. ************** No French access to Brazil plane crash autopsies PARIS (Reuters) - France's chief air disaster investigator said on Wednesday he was unhappy that a French pathologist had not been allowed to take part in autopsies in Brazil of bodies recovered after an Air France plane crash. Brazilian and French ships are still searching for wreckage and bodies from the plane that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, killing all 228 people on board. Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of the BEA agency in charge of investigating the crash, cautioned against speculation about the causes but said investigators were getting a little closer to understanding what had happened. "We are getting a little closer to our goal but don't ask me what the percentage of hope is," Arslanian told a news conference, stressing the conditions in a remote area of ocean were among the most challenging in an air crash investigation. He said a French pathologist sent to Brazil had not been authorized to take part in the autopsies of recovered bodies, and France had not had access to the Brazilian autopsy results. During his televised news conference he declined to say more on the subject, but afterwards he was pressed by reporters to say if he was dissatisfied with the lack of access given to the French doctor. "I am not happy. Eventually, I hope I'll have an explanation. For the time being it is a fact and nothing more. Please don't try to create problems between France and Brazil," he said. PATIENCE Almost equal numbers of French and Brazilian passengers died in the crash of the Airbus A330, and both countries have been keen to show they are doing their utmost to recover bodies and understand the causes of the disaster. Arslanian urged the public to show "a lot of patience" and to stick to known facts rather than engage in speculation. The investigation agency has so far said data transmitted from the plane before it crashed indicated unreliable speed readings from the aircraft's sensors, but that it was too early to say whether this contributed to the accident. In order to establish the causes of the crash, the worst in Air France's history, search teams must recover the plane's flight data recorders or "black boxes." But the seabed where the plane is thought to have crashed is mountainous, meaning the wreckage could be lying at a depth of anything between 1 km (0.6 miles) and 4 km, investigators say. The "pinger" locator beacons on the flight recorders send an electronic impulse every second for at least 30 days. The signal can be heard up to 2 km away. "The goal is to understand what happened and for that we need tools and these tools must be facts. The recorders are recorders of facts. If we had them we would have more facts at our disposal," Arslanian said. ***************** Flight computers at heart of Air France crash? Anomalies in on-board computerized controls have destabilized other A330 jets. Airbus sees no link between those cases and Flight 447. New York - As the search for the black boxes from Air France Flight 447 continues, some pilots are raising new concerns about the safety of the Airbus 330's computerized flight controls. French and Brazilian authorities said Tuesday they will search for Air France Flight 447 as long as there is hope of finding the flight data recorders. Several Brazilian military ships, a French submarine, and two Dutch ships towing high-tech US Navy listening devices are scouring the Atlantic for any signs of the pinger beacons from the flight data recorders, known as black boxes. The pinger signals weaken daily and are designed to last only another two weeks. "We'll continue doing this until the moment that, technically, we determine the searches are useless," Nelson Jobim, Brazil's defense minister, told a Brazilian press agency today. The black boxes hold data that can help unlock the mystery of what caused the Airbus 330 to apparently break up in flight and plunge into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Without that black-box data, lingering questions will fuel speculation about the safety of the A330 and other highly automated planes like it. Initial examination of some of the 49 recovered bodies indicates the plane broke up in flight, but there have been no signs of an explosion. That's prompted a new round of concern among some pilots and aviation analysts that the plane's computerized flight controls may have malfunctioned, initiating a chain of events from which the pilots could not recover. The reason for the concern is that A330 series jets have recently experienced a number of potentially disastrous computer anomalies. In one case, erratic computer commands caused an A330 to suddenly pitch nose-down until the captain could regain control, according to a report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau [PDF]. That incident occurred in October on an A330 operated by Qantas Airways. The plane diverted to the nearest airport and landed safely, but 11 passengers and one crew member were seriously injured. A similar incident occurred on a Qantas A330 in December. But other analysts and Airbus, which manufactures the A330, caution against such speculation, saying any parallels are superficial at best. The component responsible for the Qantas A330's erratic movements, a computer known as an Air Data Inertial Reference Unit (ADIRU), was made by a different manufacturer than the one installed in the Air France A330, says an Airbus spokesman. But that explanation does not assuage some A330 pilots, who say they have experienced other unusual computer anomalies in their years in the A330 cockpit. "The question isn't did the Air France plane have the same computers as Qantas, but [rather] could a computer fault bring down a modern jet?" one A330 pilot writes in an e-mail, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the press. "The answer is, yes, given the Airbus flight control system." In the past week, speculation about what caused the crash has centered around Pitot sensors, small tubes at the front of the plane that send information about airspeed to the plane's various computers. At high altitudes, certain older Pitot sensors can ice up and produce inaccurate readings about a plane's speed. Just prior to AF447's disappearance, the jet's computers sent out a flurry of error messages that included inconsistent speed readings from the Pitot tubes. In the past week, Air France has replaced all the Pitot tubes on its Airbus 330s as a precautionary measure. But the airline and sources within Airbus say problems with the Pitot sensors that could produce inaccurate speed readings would not, by themselves, be enough to bring down a plane. That has led pilots and some analysts to focus on the plane's computer systems. "The Pitot tubes are just part of an automated system, and if they're feeding wrong information to the autopilot, and the autopilot system itself has problems, you can see how this could just become a chain of cascading events," says Lee Gaillard, an aviation analyst in Saranac Lake, N.Y. The Airbus 330 is one of the most automated planes flying today. Like many newer planes, its flight controls are operated by a "fly by wire" system, which means the flight controls are not moved by pulleys and cables but are electrically controlled. Simply put, that means that when a pilot wants to move components such as ailerons – which are on the wings and control aircraft roll along the longitudinal axis – he or she moves the controls in the cockpit, which send an electronic signal to a hydraulic mechanism near the ailerons, which then moves the ailerons in the direction indicated by the pilot. At the center of this system is a computer that directs the flow of information between the pilot and the plane's components. Airbus has taken this system "a step further" than other manufacturers, according to the A330 pilot. That's because it also designed into the computer various "protection modes" that automatically move the plane's components if the aircraft is suddenly thrown off course by a powerful air current or some other natural event, or if a pilot simply makes a foolish error. "It's designed to limit the ability of pilots or nature to put the plane in a stall or over-speed situation" that could jeopardize the plane, says the pilot, who has 22 years in military and commercial aviation and is certified to fly in four types of Airbuses and four types of Boeing planes. "However, the problem with these systems is that once they're activated, they are designed so the pilot cannot easily override them. So, if the computers have bad information because of an electronic anomaly or because of nature (say, the Pitot tubes are frozen and sending bad information), these built-in protections are activated immediately, and they can make it difficult for the pilot to control the plane." In the Qantas mishap in October, the captain reported that he twice had trouble regaining control after the aircraft abruptly pitched nose-down. "The captain reported that he applied back pressure on his sidestick to arrest the pitch-down movement. He said that initially this action seemed to have no effect, but then the aircraft responded to his control input and he commenced recovery to the assigned altitude," according to the report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. Less than three minutes later, the plane again suddenly pitched nose-down for no discernible reason, and the pilot again had trouble regaining control, the report found. An Airbus spokesman says what happened to the Qantas flight has no connection to the Air France flight, because the ADIRU that was blamed for the Qantas problems and the one on the Qantas flight were made by "two totally different manufacturers with two totally different systems." He also notes that the European Aviation Safety Agency last week sought to discourage any speculation and emphasized that Airbus planes are safe. "I don't know what more to add to that. All Airbus aircraft and the A330s are certified by the world's air-worthiness authorities as safe," says Airbus spokesman Justin Dubon. "Our job now is to provide assistance" to the accident investigators. http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0617/p02s04-usgn.html *************** Air Safety Experts: Improve Black Boxes The Air France crash over the Atlantic highlights the importance of in-flight voice and data recorders. Why don't they relay their data in-flight? The message arrived at 2:14 a.m. GMT. It was encoded, no longer than a text message, and it was a portent of doom: 213100206ADVISORY. Last week, engineers at Air France (AIRF.PA) decoded the transmission to mean: "drop in cabin pressure." The message of the plane's impending demise was sent by the computer system on board the Airbus A330. Then the communication system went silent. Two hundred twenty-eight people died in the crash, but by Monday—after a long search—only 17 bodies had been found in a deep part of the Atlantic. The circumstances of the crash of flight AF 447, from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, seem almost sinister. An aircraft disappears, far from the nearest radar system, and no physical traces are found for days—except a computer-generated obituary, probably transmitted at the very moment of the catastrophe, thanks to a technology used in most modern jets called ACARS, or Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. In their last radio message, the pilots had reported flying through black, electrically charged thunderclouds. What happened after that remained a mystery, at least until investigators last week managed to piece together a vague explanation based on the last 24 ACARS transmissions, pinged by satellite to the control center in Paris. According to one message, 221002006AUTO FLT AP OFF, the autopilot system was switched off in the turbulence of the tropical storm. The first of the indicator panels in the cockpit failed a short time later. Captain Marc Dubois, a highly experienced pilot with more than 11,000 flight hours under his belt, was confronted with a fatal situation. On a pitch-black night, in the midst of a thunderstorm, with no view of the horizon or any other points of reference he could have used for orientation, the instruments he needed to show him the position of the aircraft began to fail. It is particularly difficult for a pilot, faced with such a situation, to no longer know what his air speed is. But this was precisely what one of the messages ACARS sent to the control center in Paris indicated: 341040006NAV ADR DISAGREE—an error message feared by pilots. Several sensors mounted on the fuselage below the cockpit measure the flight speed of the aircraft based on air flow. However, these sensors reported different flight speeds, presumably because at least one of them had iced over in the storm. Last Thursday, aircraft manufacturer Airbus explained, in an "Accident Information Telex" it sent to all airlines operating Airbus models, how pilots faced with such a situation can determine their correct speed. Last Friday evening, Air France announced plans to accelerate the replacement of air-speed sensors on its Airbus planes. But how did the 58-year-old captain and his two copilots react? Missing Pieces If search teams fail to recover the flight recorder, which consists of two metal devices that record flight data and cockpit conversations, this question may never be answered. "It would be a real shame for aviation," says Robert Francis, the former vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that investigates aviation accidents in the United States. "If we want to avoid dramas like this in the future, we have to know what went wrong," says the safety expert. For this reason, Francis wants to see all important flight data transmitted via satellite in the future, using ACARS technology. "This crash demonstrates how valuable this technology could be," he says. Significant upgrades to aircraft would not even be required, according to Francis. All that is needed, he says, is to reprogram the software in the communication system, turning it into a sort of online black box. Krishna Kavi, an engineer and professor at the University of North Texas in Denton, presented the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with a similar system 10 years ago. "The cost is low," he says. For the 256 parameters recorded by a black box, Kavi came up with a volume of data requiring transmission of four to eight kilobits per second. "This is a fraction of what mobile wireless devices transmit today," says Kavi. Airlines already use ACARS for a number of purposes. The system notifies mechanics on the ground of unusual vibrations in an aircraft's engines, so they can prepare any necessary repairs. Flight crews also use ACARS to send messages to their airlines about delays, or passengers with potential connection problems. Lufthansa has used ACARS to transform one of its intercontinental aircraft into a flying weather station. Once every 30 minutes, the onboard system reports the temperature, wind speed and atmospheric pressure to a central office in Germany. This very task was being performed by the ACARS system on board a jumbo jet traveling from São Paulo to Frankfurt during the night of the Air France crash. The data it collected show how quickly the disaster must have unfolded. "Our aircraft was flying through the area of bad weather only half an hour ahead of the Airbus, and the automatic weather data showed nothing unusual," explains Lufthansa spokesman Michael Lamberty. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, a satellite telephone provider called Iridium offered the FAA the use of its radio frequencies for the real-time transmission of flight recorder data. According to the company, "the Iridium system could have an important impact on flight safety." But transmission of flight data is expensive. It takes up satellite bandwidth. Former NTSB official Francis is familiar with these problems. But he argues that a constant flow of data during flight would not be absolutely necessary. "We would already gain a lot if the system would only transmit data the minute the aircraft entered an unusual situation," he says. Experts with Germany's Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Investigation in Braunschweig and the European Aviation Safety Agency in Cologne consider it "technically feasible" to report flight data on every flight to a central office via an online system. But pilots are the ones raising objections. "It would be tantamount to the full-scale monitoring of pilots," says Jörg Handwerg of Cockpit, a German pilots' association. Safety expert Francis knows his proposal affects the personal rights of pilots. For this reason, he says, data would have to be encoded to prevent unauthorized individuals from listening in on radio communications. He also advises against transmitting conversations in the cockpit. "People's last words before they die are part of the private sphere and should not be broadcast around," says Francis, who became known more than 10 years ago as a result of his investigation of the explosion of a TWA jumbo jet near New York. On the other hand, he says, nothing highlights the need for improved radio transmission of data than last week's desperate search for wreckage from the downed Air France jet. According to Francis, ACARS should always transmit an aircraft's position data, thus enabling rescue teams to search more effectively in an emergency. "This crash demonstrates, in a drastic way, that we must improve our monitoring systems," he says. In a world in which satellites perform monitoring and navigation tasks, says Francis, it should not be possible for aircraft to simply disappear. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jun2009/gb20090611_893199_page _2.htm **************** FAA to tell airlines to check pilots' test records WASHINGTON - U.S. airlines will be told they should check the private-plane flying records of pilots who are applying for jobs, part of an effort by regulators to boost regional carrier safety after a fatal crash near Buffalo. The Federal Aviation Administration, after an all-day meeting yesterday with industry, said it also planned to update rules designed to prevent pilot fatigue and to ask more carriers to voluntarily share data with the government to improve safety. The FAA wants "to make sure that people have the feeling that when they board a regional jet, it will be safe, and it will be flown by a pilot that's well-trained and well-rested," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said. The FAA is acting in the wake of the Feb. 12 crash of a Continental Express flight near Buffalo that killed 50 people. Pinnacle Airlines Corp., whose Colgan unit operated the flight for Continental, has said the flight's pilot, Capt. Marvin Renslow, did not disclose when he applied in 2005 to join Colgan that he had failed two flight tests in small planes. FAA test records for such pilots are not available to airlines unless applicants waive their privacy rights for prospective employers. The FAA in 2007 reminded carriers that they could ask pilots for waivers to gain access to the records. Now, the FAA will recommend that they do so, Administrator Randy Babbitt said. The FAA also may recommend that Congress change the law to make pilot records more accessible. Pinnacle has said it did not know whether Colgan would have hired Renslow had it been aware of his test failures. http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/48139667.html **************** FAA to target pilot records and fatigue rules The FAA will ask all airlines to begin reviewing pilot records held by the agency as it revises a November 2007 advisory circular in the aftermath of the fatal Colgan Air Bombardier Q400 crash. The current advisory circular suggests that carriers ask a job applicant to sign a consent form to grant airlines access to the prospective hire's entire airman certification file, including notices of disapproval for flight checks for certificates and ratings. But FAA administrator Randy Babbitt says the agency wants to ensure that carriers attempt to review all records of a job candidate and the administration "may well ask Congress to make that part of" the Pilot Records Improvement Act (PRIA) of 1996. PRIA currently does not mandate airlines to review FAA records of job applicants. It only requires any company hiring a pilot for air transportation to request and receive records from employers from the past five years. Asking for records access is among the voluntary measures Babbitt is pushing airlines to take as soon as possible while the NTSB completes its final report on the Colgan Q400 crash, which prompted Babbitt and US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to host a meeting with airlines, industry groups and labour today in Washington. Waiting for the NTSB to issue its report will delay changes too long, Babbitt told reporters this afternoon after the meeting concluded. But he acknowledges that there will be privacy and discrimination issues to address if PRIA were to be changed to include access to FAA records. Babbitt also revealed the FAA will ask all airlines to participate in voluntary safety reporting schemes such as the Flight Operations Quality Assurance Programmes (FOQA) and the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP). The ASAP is an agreement between FAA, a specific employee group and airline management that allows for the voluntary reporting of safety issues or concerns in exchange for the risk of penalties related to those incidents generally being eliminated. "I don't think October is too unreasonable to make public who chooses not to do those things," Babbitt says. Babbitt's remarks about ASAP and FOQA come as the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) has pressed Congress for legislation to provide protection against the misuse of information collected under those schemes. However, the union does have the goal of having 100% of its member carriers operating with ASAP. The FAA will also look into new pilot fatigue rules in "coming months" based on scientific research unavailable when arbitrary rules were previously created, Babbitt says. Fatigue rules should consider factors such as circadian rhythms and that there are different types of workdays for pilots, including days filled with a singular long-haul flight versus multiple short-haul operations, he adds. In the meantime, the FAA will send four teams to ideally visit every regional and major airline that was unable to attend today's meeting on training, cockpit discipline and other fight safety issues raised during the NTSB hearing on the Colgan crash last month. The meetings will be designed for information gathering and to explain FAA action, Babbitt says. As pilot training was among the targets of US Congressional hearings on regional airline safety last week as well as one subject of the NTSB investigation into the crash, Babbitt also encourages major airlines to adopt some type of pilot mentoring program for their regional partners and to consider ways to give regional partners access to their training programs as newer regional carriers are less likely to afford multiple, costly simulators. He also encouraged regional airlines to review starting pilot salaries because $24,000 a year is not going to attract the "best and brightest". On 12 February a Colgan turboprop stalled and went out of control on approach to Buffalo, New York. The aircraft crashed into a house about 9km (5nm) from the airport, killing all 49 on board and one person on the ground. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news ************** India's Chennai airport to undergo runway repairs Chennai Airport's main runway will undergo intermittent closures during July and August. The main runway will be closed during the afternoons on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays in July and August, says a source at Paramount Airways, which operates flights from the airport. The closures will allow work on taxiways that connect to the runway, says the source. During the closures flights will need to use the airport's second runway, says the source, adding that this may lead to some delays as the second runway is farther away from the airport terminal. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news **************** Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC