15 JUL 2009 _______________________________________ *Passenger jet crashes in northern Iran: report *Crashed Iranian jet came down minutes after take-off *168 reportedly killed in Iran plane crash *Plane crashes in Iran, 168 believed killed *168 Feared Dead After Plane Crashes in Iran *Emirates Pilot Tells Story About A340 Tail Strike *NTSB: Jet's design limited tear's damage *Indonesia relieved after EU flight ban lifted *New Commander for NOAA's Aircraft Operations ***************************************** Passenger jet crashes in northern Iran: report Iranian reports are stating that a passenger aircraft has crashed in the northwest of the country. Few details are available, although initial unconfirmed information suggests Tehran-based Caspian Airlines is the operator. Caspian Airlines uses Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft. Reports point to the aircraft's having come down in Qazvin province. There is no further information on passenger numbers or circumstances. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news **************** Crashed Iranian jet came down minutes after take-off Preliminary indications from Iran indicate suggest 150 occupants were on board the aircraft which crashed in the northwest of the country today. Iran's state media says the Caspian Airlines aircraft had been operating flight 7908, between Tehran and Yerevan, with 143 passengers and seven crew. It had been 16min into the service when it came down, at about 11:33 in the northwestern Qazvin province, 150km northwest of Tehran. The aircraft type is given simply as a Tupolev, but Caspian Airlines' fleet comprises Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft. At least one report, citing the Iranian media, puts the figure for those on board at 168. Images from the scene show widespread fragments of wreckage in the area, and there are no indications of survivors. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news *************** 168 reportedly killed in Iran plane crash Reuters - Jet crashes in Iran, all feared dead TEHRAN, Iran - An Iranian passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed a quarter-hour after takeoff Wednesday, smashing into a field northwest of the capital and shattering to pieces. State television said all on board were killed. The impact gouged a deep trench in the dirt field, which was shown littered with smoking wreckage in footage shown on state TV. It showed a large chunk of a wing, but much of the wreckage appeared to be in small pieces, and emergency workers and witnesses picked around the shredded metal for bodies. The Russian-made Caspian Airlines jet was heading from Tehran to the Armenian capital Yerevan near the village of Jannatabad outside the city of Qazvin, around 75 miles northwest of Tehran, state television said. It crashed at about 11:30 am, 16 minutes after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport, TV reported. The Qazvin emergency services director Hossein Bahzadpour told the IRNA news agency that the plane was completely destroyed and shattered to pieces, and the wreckage was in flames. "It his highly likely that all the passengers on the flight were killed," Bahzadpour said. Iranian Civil Aviation Organization spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh told state television that 153 passengers and 15 crewmembers were on board. State TV said all were killed. A Caspian Airlines representative told AP in Yerevan that most of the passengers were Armenians, and that some Georgian citizens were also on board. The representative spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to talk to the press. Also among the passengers were eight members of Iran's national youth judo team, along with two trainers and a delegation chief, who were scheduled to train with the Armenian judo team before attending competitions in Hungary on Aug. 6, state TV said. Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993. Iran has frequent plane crashes often because of bad maintenance of its aging aircraft. Tehran blames the problem in part on U.S. sanctions that prevent Iran from getting spare parts for some planes. Caspian Airlines, however, uses Russian-made Tupolevs whose maintenance would be less impaired by American sanctions. In February 2006, a Russian-made TU-154 operated by Iran Airtour, which is affiliated with Iran's national carrier, crashed during landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. Another Airtour Tupolev crashed in 2002 in the mountains of western Iran, killing all 199 on board. The crashes have also affected Iran's military. In December 2005, 115 people were killed when a U.S.-made C-130 plane, crashed into a 10-story building near Tehran's Mehrabad airport. In Nov. 2007, a Russian-made Iranian military plane crashed shortly after takeoff killing 36 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards. ***************** Plane crashes in Iran, 168 believed killed All 168 aboard believed to be dead in Iranian plane crash Plane is thought to have crashed near the Iranian city of Qazvin Qazvin is the largest city in the province of Qazvin (CNN) -- A plane crashed Wednesday in northwestern Iran, state television reported. All 168 aboard were believed to be dead. The passenger plane is thought to have crashed near the Iranian city of Qazvin, Iranian Press TV reported. The Russian-made Tupolev plane went down near Jannat-abad village near Qazvin at 11:33 a.m. on Wednesday, the station reported. All on board are "most probably" dead, the news station said, quoting Qazvin Police Chief Hossein Behzadpour. Qazvin is the largest city in the province of Qazvin and is its capital, with an estimated population of 330,000. It is about 140 kilometers (90 miles) northwest of the capital, Tehran. Watch images of crash site > The Iranian newspaper Hamshahri reported that the plane originated from Tehran and was headed to Yerevan, Armenia. The plane was from Caspian Air and crashed 16 minutes after takeoff, said the newspaper, quoting a spokesman from Iran's civil aviation organization. The flight number was 7908, the paper said, citing the spokesman. Footage of the scene of the crash site showed a huge crater in the earth scattered with pieces of the plane and tattered passports. Aviation analyst Kieran Daly told CNN many aircraft operating in Iran are ageing Tupolevs, some dating back to the 1970s. He described Tupolevs as "workhorses of the old Soviet aviation system." Watch Daly talk about air crash > The last plane crash in Iran involving a Tupolev plane occurred in 2006, according to the Web site airdisaster.com. That crash occurred in Iran Air Tour flight from the port city Bandar Abbas and crashed and caught fire in landing , the Web site reported. Twenty-nine of the 147 people on board died in that crash. ***************** 168 Feared Dead After Plane Crashes in Iran BEIRUT, Lebanon - A passenger plane bound for Armenia from Iran crashed Wednesday morning in northwest Iran, and all 168 people aboard were believed to have perished, Iranian state media reported. A video grab from the Iranian official English-language satellite television Press TV showing debris from the downed aircraft on Wednesday. The plane, made by the Russian company Tupolev, crashed near the city of Qazvin at about 11:30 a.m. local time after leaving Tehran on a flight to Yerevan, the Armenian capital, Hussein Behzadpour, the police chief of Qazvin, said in comments quoted by Iran's English language Press TV. The crash site was near Jannatabad, a village just outside Qazvin, Mr. Behzadpour said. The spokesman for Iran's Aviation Organization, Reza Jafarzadeh, told Press TV that the plane, Caspian Airlines Flight 7908, crashed 16 minutes after taking off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport. Qazvin is about 90 miles northwest of Tehran. The plane was carrying 153 passengers and 15 crew members, state television reported. The broadcast showed wreckage mingled with human body parts, and a fire brigade official was quoted as saying the debris was strewn over a broad area. Among the images was a crater gouged into farmland with mangled pieces of metal scattered about, Reuters reported. News reports said the pilot may have been trying an emergency landing after technical problems occurred. The Associated Press quoted a spokesman for the airline in Yerevan as saying that most of the passengers were Armenians but that some Georgians also were on board. Caspian Airlines is a Russian-Iranian joint venture founded in 1993, The A.P. said. Iran has been plagued by plane crashes in recent years, a record that aviation experts have attributed to the country's aging and outdated planes, many of them secondhand aircraft leased from Russia. In September 2006, a Russian-made Tupolev plane TU-154 apparently blew a tire while landing in Mashhad, Iran, slipped off the runway and burst into flames, killing 29 of the 148 people on board and injuring 47, state-run television reported at the time. More than 90 people, including 80 journalists, were killed in December 2005 when a military plane crashed into a building in Tehran. In February 2002, a Tupolev TU-154 operated by Iran Air Tours crashed in Khorramabad, Iran, killing all 118 people on board. With no domestic aviation industry, the country is dependent on foreign manufacturers for its planes. But trade sanctions in place for the past three decades have hampered access to spare parts as well as purchases of more modern aircraft, particularly from American manufacturers like Boeing. In 2005, the International Civil Aviation Organization, an arm of the United Nations, warned that sanctions flouted international treaties and placed civilian lives in danger. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/world/middleeast/16plane.html?hpw *************** Emirates Pilot Tells Story About A340 Tail Strike Narrowly Avoided A Disaster Down Under Officials say it was the closest thing Australia has had to a major air catastrophe, and after 4 months of silence, the pilot has finally told his story to the Australia Herald Sun... The A340 was fully loaded with 257 passengers and 18 crew on board. As it approached the end of the runway of Melbourne Airport on its takeoff roll, the pilot knew they were not fast enough to provide the required lift. He pushed the engines to 'Take Off And Go-Around' power and rotated, bouncing the tail of the Airbus three times off the pavement and hitting the REIL lights at the end of the runway as the airplane finally became airborne. After 30 minutes dumping fuel over Port Phillip Bay, they returned to Melbourne and landed safely, but the Emirates pilot was badly shaken. The pilot said he still doesn't know exactly how he managed to get the Airbus in the air. "I . . . sort of reacted on instinct," he told the Herald Sun. "I had a feeling that (something) wasn't working, but I couldn't find out what was wrong. I knew I couldn't stop. At that point I knew we just had to go. And we got it off the ground, miraculously." Safety investigators found that the First Officer was flying the plane when the Captain called "Rotate". When it failed to fly, he called "Rotate" again, which caused the first tail strike. It was then that he pushed the plane to Take Off and Go-Around power and hit the tail again as they became airborne. Once off the ground, they realized that the calculated departure weight was 100 tons lighter than the actual weight of the airplane. While the crew is not responsible for entering the takeoff weight, they are responsible for checking that it is correct. The typo meant incorrect calculations of takeoff power and requisite speeds. According to the Herald Sun, the pilot has left Dubai with his family and returned to Europe, where he is from. He reportedly had slept only 3 1/2 hours in the 24 before he was scheduled to fly, and both he and the co-pilot were handed prepared letters of resignation when they returned to Dubai after the incident. There were four pilots on board the aircraft, including two relief pilots, due to the 14 1/2 hour length of the flight from Melbourne to Dubai. FMI: www.atsb.gov.au aero-news.net ***************** NTSB: Jet's design limited tear's damage By Alan Levin, USA TODAY A Southwest Airlines jet that peeled open at 34,000 feet frightened passengers with a loud bang and forced them to breath through oxygen masks, but the plane performed as designed to limit damage, federal investigators said Tuesday. Flight 2294 from Nashville to Baltimore lost pressure Monday night when a 14-by-17-inch rectangle of the Boeing 737-300's skin ripped loose, said National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) spokesman Peter Knudson. Pilots made an emergency landing in Charleston, W.Va. Passenger Charles Overby, who was sitting at the front of the plane, said he heard a pop about 30 minutes after takeoff. Overby, CEO of the Newseum in Washington and chairman and CEO of the Freedom Forum, a non-partisan foundation dedicated to the First Amendment, said oxygen masks dropped but no one seemed to panic. The plane's three flight attendants reacted quickly, he said. "They went from being the casual, joking flight attendants that Southwest is known for, to being strictly business." He did not see flight attendants don oxygen masks and items did not fly about the cabin, indications that the jet did not experience the type of violent decompression that has caused severe damage in other cases. Federal regulations require that jets be built to withstand a tear in the fuselage without spreading or damaging other parts. A preliminary examination showed that "this safety feature performed as designed," Knudson said. Structural failures that lead to lost pressure are very rare; it's even rarer that they lead to passenger deaths. A flight attendant died on an Aloha Airlines 737 on April 28, 1988, in Hawaii, when 18 feet of the jet's skin peeled back at 24,000 feet. The NTSB ruled that undetected fatigue had weakened the jet. The accident prompted broad inspections of aging planes. Southwest Airlines inspected all 181 of its Boeing 737-300 jets after the incident Monday and found no other problems, spokeswoman Beth Harbin said. The damaged jet was delivered to the airline in 1994. In March, Southwest agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle charges that it operated planes that had missed required safety inspections for cracks in the fuselage. The inspections were prompted by the Aloha crash in 1988. The airline had made nearly 60,000 flights without the inspections. Southwest inspected the planes last year and insisted that safety had not been compromised. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-07-14-southwest-plane-hole_N.htm **************** Indonesia relieved after EU flight ban lifted JAKARTA (AFP) - Indonesia has welcomed the European Union's decision to remove flag-carrier Garuda Airlines and three other Indonesian airlines from its aviation blacklist. The EU's executive commission announced Tuesday that Indonesia had achieved "significant improvements" in safety since all Indonesian-registered aircraft were banned from EU airspace in June 2007, after several deadly crashes. "This is the fruit of our labour. We appreciate the passion, trust and technical cooperation which has been shown by the European Union safety unit," Transport Minister Jusman Syafii Djamal told reporters. "This was not an easy journey." The flight ban had angered Indonesia and complicated talks between the huge mainly Muslim country and Brussels over a partnership agreement. The European Commission said Garuda Indonesia, Airfast Indonesia, Mandala Airlines and Prime Air "can be taken off the list because their authority ensures that they respect the international safety standards." None of the airlines currently flies to European territory but Garuda is reportedly considering opening new routes to Europe. Garuda chief executive Emirsyah Satar plans to launch flights to Amsterdam in the first half of 2010 and will look at other European destinations after that, according to the Wall Street Journal. The airline also wants to inaugurate services to the United States, and plans to double its fleet to 116 aircraft in the next five years, including larger Boeing 777s and Airbus 330-200s, Satar was quoted as saying. The EU ban was enacted on the basis of a report from the International Civil Aviation Organization following a string of crashes which killed more than 100 people. Indonesia introduced new air safety regulations last year, incorporating international standards including the creation of a safety committee answerable to the president. Violators face tougher penalties up to five years' jail and fines up to 500 million rupiah (46,000 dollars). Djamal said other improvements had been made in airline staff numbers and training, as well as investments in equipment. Tourism ministry official Jordi Paliama, the deputy director of promotions for Europe, said the EU's move would boost the local tourism industry and encourage Europeans to holiday in the massive archipelago. "The EU's decision reaffirms that travelling with Indonesian airlines, especially the national carrier Garuda, is safe," he told AFP. "The lifting of the ban automatically increases people's trust in Indonesian airlines. It will automatically boost the number of incoming tourists from Europe." Despite its poor safety record and the global economic downturn which has savaged the airline industry, Garuda posted a 10-fold increase in profits last year thanks to increased revenue and passenger numbers. The company's net profit for 2008 surged to 670 billion rupiah (60.97 million dollars) from 60 billion rupiah the year before. ***************** New Commander for NOAA's Aircraft Operations Assuming command of the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center in Tampa, Florida, is Captain William B. Kearse, relieving Captain Brian Taggart who has served as the center's commanding officer since July 2007. Located on MacDill Air Force Base, this center is home to most of NOAA's fourteen research aircraft including the WP-3D Orion "Hurricane Hunter" and the Gulfstream-IV hurricane surveillance Jet. Captain Kearse has served on a variety of NOAA aircraft and vessels and has been a commissioned officer in the NOAA Corps* since 1986. He served for 14 years as an aircraft and mission commander and is the former chief of the NOAA Aircraft Operation Center's photo survey branch. Formed in 1970 NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)was born as a combination of the US Weather Bureau, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries and the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. NOAA is on the job daily with weather forecasts, severe storm warnings and hurricane alerts, providing up to the minute information for the protection of life and property. The NOAA fleet of aircraft and vessels is operated, managed and maintained by the NOAA Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, which includes civilians and officers of the NOAA Corps*. Yesterday's change-of-command ceremony was presided over by Rear Adm. Philip Kenul, director of NOAA's Marine and Aviation Operations Centers. http://www.examiner.com/x-8151-Charleston-Military-Community-Examiner~y2009m 7d14-New-Commander-for-NOAAs-Aircraft-Operations **************** Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC