09 JUL 2009 _______________________________________ *Frontier jet hits bird on landing, leaving large dent *Air France pilots demand probe into speed sensors *Turtles on runway delay NYC flights *FAA Publishes Updated Amateur Rocket Rules *CAA UK publishes Aircraft maintenance incident analysis 1996-2006 *American Air, UAE's Etihad sign code-share accord *Iberia chief executive Conte resigns ***************************************** Frontier jet hits bird on landing, leaving large dent A Frontier Airlines jet from Denver collided with a bird Sunday as the plane was landing at Kansas City, according to a news report late Tuesday. No injuries were reported. Frontier flight 825 from Denver was beginning its approach to Kansas City International when a bird struck its right wing, the Kansas City Star newspaper reported on its website, KansasCity.com. The plane -- an Airbus A319 -- landed safely but the plane sustained a "very large dent," the Star said. The jet did not continue on what was to have been the next leg of its flight, and passengers headed elsewhere were diverted onto other flights, the Star said, quoting an airport official. The Frontier jet flew back to Denver for repairs and was placed back into service Monday, the Star said. Plane-bird collisions are not uncommon, but they have received more attention from the public since a US Airways jet was forced to land in New York's Hudson River Jan. 15 after a collision with a flock of birds knocked out its engines. http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2009/07/06/daily38.html **************** Air France pilots demand probe into speed sensors PARIS (AP) — Air France pilots have asked French crash investigators for details of the airline's past problems with the speed sensors suspected of being a factor in the crash of Air France Flight 447. The Airbus A330 plane came down in the Atlantic Ocean on June 1 after running into thunderstorms en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 people aboard were killed, and the cause of the crash remains unclear. The pilot's union SPAF said in a letter Tuesday to France's air accident investigation agency BEA and to the French civil aviation agency that past problems with the sensors, called Pitot tubes, constitute "serious incidents" that require both agencies to open technical investigations. The union asked both agencies to give it information from those investigations. Officials at the agencies couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday. SPAF president Gerard Arnoux said if, as he suspects, the agencies haven't opened investigations yet into these Pitot tube incidents, then they are breaking their own rules. "We accuse them of not taking the necessary measures," Arnoux said. BEA last week issued its preliminary report into the crash, finding that problems with the plane's Pitot tubes were one of several factors in the crash. It said the plane hit the ocean intact and belly first at a high rate of speed. "It is an element but not the cause," BEA investigator Alain Bouillard said of the speed sensors. In another letter Tuesday, the SPAF pilots' union accused the European Aviation Safety Agency of not forcing Airbus to make modifications to its aircrafts' speed sensors, saying such changes could have prevented Flight 447's loss of control. Problematic speed sensors on Airbus A330-200 jets have been the focus of intense speculation since the crash. An automatic message sent prior to the crash indicated the plane was receiving incorrect speed information from the external monitoring instruments, which could destabilize the plane's control systems. Experts have suggested those external instruments might have iced over. On Wednesday, two ships slowly continued to troll the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of miles off the northeastern coast of Brazil, towing two U.S. Navy black box pinger locators, said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Lorenzo Harris, part of the American team helping to oversee the search. No signals from the plane's black boxes have been heard. BEA says the search for the flight data and cockpit voice recorders will continue until Friday. The boxes are believed to be in very deep water, and their signal beacons began to fade more than a week ago. French and Brazilian workers have also collected large amounts of Flight 447 debris and 50 bodies from the ocean to examine. Brazil lowered the body count to 50 after discovering one body was counted twice. Brazil has led the search effort while France is leading the crash investigation. Representatives from five of Air France's pilots unions, meanwhile, met Tuesday with Air France managers for the first time since the BEA findings. "We didn't learn anything new," said Francois Hamant, vice president of the Alter union. It was the third such meeting since the crash. He said a fourth meeting was promised, but no date has been set. **************** Turtles on runway delay NYC flights NEW YORK (Reuters) - The speed of the world's biggest jets was no match against the slow and steady pace of a group of turtles who delayed flights at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday morning. A runway that juts out into a bay was closed for 35 minutes while 78 diamondback terrapin turtles, each weighing 2-3 pounds (1-2 kilograms), were removed, said a spokesman for airport operator The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "They came up out of the water," the spokesman said. "It happens, but it doesn't happen a lot." The closure caused delays of 1-1/2 hours at the airport, which caters to about 48 million passengers a year. The turtles were taken away and released back into the wild -- away from the airport. ***************** FAA Publishes Updated Amateur Rocket Rules Clarifies And Moves Amateur Rocketry Out Of The "Balloon" Section The FAA has updated 14 CFR Parts 1 and 101 "Requirements for Amateur Rocket Activities", which corrects errors in the FAA regulations regarding amateur rockets, effective June 6th. According to the document: "A section concerning unmanned rocket activities was inadvertently placed in the subpart for unmanned balloon activities. This correction moves that section to the correct subpart, so all the information relating to unmanned rocket activities will appear in the same subpart. Additionally, we are making minor editorial corrections. On December 4, 2008 (73 FR 73768), the FAA published the final rule "Requirements for Amateur Rocket Activities." A new § 101.29 was added in the final rule. However, the section was inadvertently added to Subpart D—Unmanned Free Balloons. It should have been added to Subpart C—Unmanned Rockets, since the new section concerns amateur rocket activities, not balloon activities. Moving § 101.29 to the correct subpart will make it easier for readers to find all the information relating to unmanned rockets in one place. In § 1.1, paragraph (2) of the definition for Amateur Rockets, the word "statue" is changed to "statute". In the first line of § 101.25(b)(5), the number "8" (kilometers) is changed to "9.26" to correct the metric conversion when the word "statute" is replaced with the word "nautical". Lastly, in the second line of § 101.27(c), the word "statute" is again replaced with the word "nautical"." Got that? Balloon? Back in June, ANN reported that an ExpressJet pilot in Texas reported a "rocket or missile" flying near his airplane shortly after takeoff from Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. It was noted at the time that an area near the airport was often used by model rockety hobbiests, but it was not known if any were using the field at the time of the incident. FMI: www.faa.gov aero-news.net *************** CAA UK publishes Aircraft maintenance incident analysis 1996-2006 The objective of the CAA U.K. study was to analyse a selection of maintenance related events on jet aircraft above 5,700kg MTOW, captured and stored under the requirements of the CAA's Mandatory Occurrence Reporting (MOR) scheme to identify trends, themes and common causes or factors. A total of 3,982 maintenance related MORs for the period January 1996 to December 2006 was studied. In the results, just over half of the occurrences analysed were attributed to incorrect maintenance actions, a quarter to ineffective maintenance control and a fifth to incomplete maintenance. The data showed that the vast majority of MORs were related to ATA Chapter 25 (Equipment and Furnishings), escape slides in particular. (CAA) Report: http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/2009_05.pdf (aviation-safety.net) ***************** American Air, UAE's Etihad sign code-share accord TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- AMR Corp.'s American Airlines and the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, Etihad Airways, said in a statement Thursday they have agreed to share codes, enabling a customer transferring between the two airlines to purchase a single ticket for the whole trip. Etihad is "keen to grow further" in the U.S., the Middle Eastern airline's chief executive, James Hogan, said. The accord, subject to regulatory clearance, should come into effect as Etihad begins service to Chicago at the beginning of September. ***************** Iberia chief executive Conte resigns Spanish flag-carrier Iberia's chief executive, Fernando Conte, has resigned from his post. Iberia has confirmed that its board has "accepted the voluntary resignation" of Conte, in a statement to the Spanish stock exchange regulator CNMV. It has named Antonio Vazquez Romero as chairman and chief executive in Conte's place. Iberia, which is in merger talks with British Airways, has yet to detail the reasons for Conte's decision. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news **************** Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC