28 JUL 2009 _______________________________________ *Jet Blue plane makes unscheduled landing *More Cockpit Conversation from Flight 3407 Released *Settlement in deadly 2007 helicopter collision *Southwest flight grounded by coffee maker aroma *Despite 2009 Accidents, Flight Safety Is Improving *FAA seeks rapid overhaul of rules that govern pilot training and scheduling for regional airlines *Runway scare as jet wheel snaps *NTSB to consider 2008 bird collision that killed 5 *Delta pilots outline ASAP progress *************************************** Jet Blue plane makes unscheduled landing NASHVILLE, Tenn.(AP) — Jet Blue maintenance personnel are checking an airliner Monday after it made an unscheduled landing in Nashville because a trouble light came on. Flight 1068 from Austin, Texas, to New York City made the stop Sunday night at Nashville International Airport with 73 passengers and a crew of four on board. The plane was towed to the gate. No one was hurt. The passengers were put up in Nashville hotels overnight and continued traveling Monday morning on another Jet Blue plane. Jet Blue spokeswoman Alison Croyle said Monday the indicator light signaled a control malfunction but no other details were available pending a check of the plane. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6549322.html *************** More Cockpit Conversation from Flight 3407 Released BUFFALO, NY (WBFO) - The National Transportation Safety Board has released addition information about the crash of Flight 3407 in Clarence last February. The NTSB says the information includes an extended version of the cockpit voice recorder. It includes the release of the conversation between pilot Marvin Renslow and co-pilot Rebecca Shaw. Shaw complained that she felt ill and would have liked to have skipped the flight. Throughout the written transcript, it indicated where there were sounds of a sniffle and the sound of a sneeze. The conversation began while the flight was being delayed in Newark before it left for the Buffalo region. The transcript also indicates that Shaw complained about poor treatment by Colgan Air. She discussed how little she was earning from the airline. But the NTSB says the information being released is factual in nature and does not provide analysis or the probable cause of the accident. The docket includes investigative group factual reports, interview transcripts, and other documents from the investigation. The plane crashed into a house on Long Street in Clarence Center in February 12, killing 50 people. http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wbfo/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1535081/WBF O.News/More.Cockpit.Conversation.from.Flight.3407.Released *************** Settlement in deadly 2007 helicopter collision An attorney who brokered a legal settlement in the 2007 Phoenix television news helicopter collision that killed four local journalists urged federal authorities to adopt regulations restricting aviation reporting. Phoenix-based personal injury attorney Patrick McGroder announced Monday that the families of Channel 3 (KTVK) pilot Scott Bowerbank and cameraman Jim Cox settled for an undisclosed amount with US Helicopters Inc., the company whose Channel 15 (KNXV) aircraft was involved in the collision two years ago over Steele Indian School Park. Bowerbank, Cox, and two Channel 15 employees died in the collision in July 27, 2007. Federal authorities concluded in a January report that "both pilots' failure to see and avoid each other" caused the tragedy. McGroder released an animated recreation of the collision which showed the Channel 3 aircraft hovering in place as the Channel 15 helicopter slammed into it. He planned to announce the settlement Monday with a representative of Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., and members of the National Photojournalists Association to press federal authorities to adopt stricter regulations on reporting while flying. "One of these tragedies is enough, and one of these tragedies should be enough to signal the alarm on the type of news gathering that's allowed from an aeronautical standpoint but also from a moral standpoint," McGroder said. In June, the family of Channel 15 pilot Craig Smith filed a wrongful-death lawsuit challenging an earlier suit over the cause of collision. The complaint alleged Channel 3 Bowerbank was at fault in the crash, according to Maricopa County court records. Last summer, lawyers representing the 15-year-old son of Channel 15 photographer Rick Krolak made a wrongful-death claim that Smith caused the midair collision as the helicopters jockeyed for position over a Phoenix police chase. http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/07/27/20090727helic opter0727-ON.html **************** Southwest flight grounded by coffee maker aroma NEW YORK (Reuters) - The electrical smell that caused a Southwest Airlines Co flight to make an unexpected landing Sunday was caused by a coffee maker in the back of the aircraft, a company spokesman said on Monday. The coffee maker was in the back galley of the Boeing 737 plane. The aircraft was examined and put back into service by 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT) Sunday, said Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz. "Anything that might have touched the burner might have caused the electrical smell," Mainz said. He added that the problem was "fairly unusual," although it was not the first time it has happened. Flight 693 bound for Orlando, Florida, departed from Bradley International Airport in Connecticut at 7:21 a.m. EDT Sunday. The plane, which held 131 passengers and 5 crew members, landed at Long Island Islip MacArthur Airport shortly before 8 a.m. http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE56Q2WZ20090727 **************** Despite 2009 Accidents, Flight Safety Is Improving A flurry of deadly plane crashes recently has passengers questioning airline safety. But statistics show that flight is safer than it ever has been. The global airline industry isn't having a good year. A half-dozen crashes in the first half of 2009 have killed 582 people worldwide -- more than the total for all of 2008. In many parts of the world regulatory oversight of airlines is minimal, notably in Africa and parts of Asia. For European and North American carriers, which have built enviable safety records in recent years, the risks of flight are receiving new attention just as the airlines struggle with a recession that has decimated revenue and kept profitable business travelers at home. Safer than ever before: Despite the statistics, it is feared that recent air disasters could discourage potential customers. The high-profile accidents, including an Air France Airbus A330 that crashed off the Brazilian coast on June 1, killing all 228 people on board, have raised questions about airline safety. Yet despite this year's tragic events, industry experts reckon improvements in aircraft technology, better training for pilots and ground staff, and an expansion of global maintenance standards have made the industry progressively more safe. Tougher regulation, particularly from US and European authorities, also has clamped down on airlines with less than stellar track records. "You can't judge the industry on a spate of tragic accidents in a short period of time," says Paul Hayes, director of air safety at London-based consultant Ascend, which produces an annual report on airliner loss rates for insurance companies. "It's at least 200 times safer to fly now than it was in the 1950s." Indeed, the number of fatal accidents in 1950, when only 31 million travelers took to the skies, totaled 39 and led to 799 people losing their lives, according to data from Ascend. That compares with 13 crashes and 460 casualties last year, despite airline-passenger numbers jumping to 2.6 billion worldwide. Strict Government Standards Are Key The abundance of high-quality new jets, particularly from Boeing and Airbus, has played a major factor. While the earliest version of the Boeing 737, which entered service more than 40 years ago, tops the list of the world's most accident-prone planes (based on Ascend's figures), the company's latest offering, the 777, has never had a fatal accident since entering service in 1995. The Airbus A340, which has been around for 16 years, also has a perfect flight record after flying 13 million hours. Boeing says it works with governments and the airline industry to "advance safety in all aspects of the global air transportation system." Government oversight has similarly helped to improve global airline safety. Since 2006 the European Union has published a quarterly blacklist of carriers that don't meet its safety standards. The carriers, predominantly from Africa and Asia, are refused entry into EU aerospace. They must comply with maintenance spot checks and upgrade their fleets if they want to access the European Union's nearly 500 million potential customers. In the US, the Federal Aviation Administration also has stringent safety requirements. Some airlines from countries including Bangladesh, Nicaragua, and even Croatia don't meet the FAA's minimum standards. Unfortunately, the improvement in airline safety over the last 50 years hasn't stamped out accidents altogether. On June 30 an Airbus A310, which has been mostly phased out of service by major airlines, operated by Yemenia Airlines crashed en route to Comoros from Yemen, killing all but one of the 168 passengers on board. On July 15 a Russian-made Tupolev TU-154 operated by Caspian Air crashed while heading to Armenia, causing 153 fatalities. Investigations into both accidents are ongoing. "We comply with the most stringent air safety laws in the world," says an Airbus spokesman. Tupolev didn't return calls for comment. The accidents are a reminder that air travel -- though by far the safest way to travel in the world -- always will come with a level of risk, however low. But according to Ascend's Hayes, travelers shouldn't be overly concerned: "With some many people now flying, the number of fatal accidents is exceeding small." http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,638455,00.html *************** FAA seeks rapid overhaul of rules that govern pilot training and scheduling for regional airlines CLEVELAND -- Michael Zaite learned a lot when he flew as a co-pilot for Cleveland-based CommutAir, but it wasn't the education he was expecting. Zaite, 30, saw how grueling schedules at the regional airline left crew members sleep-deprived, with bags under their eyes, "not thinking straight." He attended in-house training sessions where instructors skimmed over safety procedures. He sat in the cockpit next to rabid BlackBerry fans who text-messaged friends while the plane was taking off. "They've got themselves deluded into thinking they have sufficient safety and sufficient training," said Zaite, a Garfield Heights resident who resigned from CommutAir in October rather than take a transfer to Newark, N.J. He now works for his family's business building musical amplifiers. Zaite and other current and former pilots discussed their experiences with The Plain Dealer at a time of increasing national scrutiny for regional airlines, which have expanded rapidly and now account for half of all domestic flights. Safety improvements Senior airline officials, pilot unions and the Federal Aviation Administration have agreed on several steps to improve safety and pilot training at airlines. In a meeting in June, they decided to: • Expand pilot record checks to include all records the FAA maintains on pilots, in addition to records airlines already receive from past employers. • Rewrite rules for pilot fatigue and duty time to address recent scientific research on sleep deprivation. The FAA will meet July 15 to recommend new crew rules by Sept. 1. • Review existing pilot training programs over the next several months to see how they can be strengthened. • Pair pilots from major airlines with pilots from regional airlines in a mentoring push to expose new pilots to a culture of safety and professional standards. • Ask airlines to collect and analyze flight safety data, and to adopt no-fault methods for employees to report safety violations. In Cleveland, half of the passengers and three-fourths of the departures are on the smaller regional planes, often branded with the names of mainline carriers. Four regional carriers, for example, fly under the names Continental Express and Continental Connection, often serving the smaller markets where Continental Airlines' bigger planes don't fly. Continental and its regional carriers say their planes are safe and their training thorough. A Continental spokeswoman declined to comment specifically about its affiliates but said safety is Continental's top priority "and we expect the same from our regional partners." Nevertheless, the Federal Aviation Administration is seeking a rapid overhaul of rules that govern pilot training and scheduling because of concerns about a Colgan Air plane, flying as Continental Connection, that crashed in February in Buffalo, N.Y., killing 50 people. Investigators say the pilots were tired, insufficiently trained and poorly paid. Legislation to require more stringent screening and training standards for pilots who fly for commercial air carriers is scheduled to be introduced Tuesday in the House. A Plain Dealer review shows an increased rate of deadly incidents at regional airlines since 2002. Regionals doubled their annual flights between 2002 and 2008. But fatalities increased at a much faster rate, with 156 deaths in six crashes. U.S. mainline and low-cost carriers during the same period had three fatalities. A decade ago the situation was the opposite, with fatalities at regional airlines a rare occurrence and major carriers marred by catastrophes that took 365 lives from 1999 through 2001 - aside from 265 killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks. Regionals during the same time had two fatalities. "The statistics flipped," said Mary Schiavo, an aviation attorney and the Department of Transportation's inspector general during the 1990s. Schiavo thinks major airlines cut their accident rates in part by modernizing their fleets. The airlines got billions in federal subsidies after the Sept. 11th attacks and used some of the money to buy new jets, she said. Commuter airlines expanded their reach as major airlines cut capacity and outsourced less profitable routes. CommutAir Chief Executive John Sullivan said his airline surpasses FAA rules on training and safety and pays on a par with other regional airlines. "By any measure that is reasonable, the air transportation system, including the regional sector of it, is very safe," he said. However, interviews with current and former pilots for regional airlines that serve Cleveland Hopkins International Airport reveal a startling picture of sometimes minimal training and experience of men and women in the cockpit. The pilot flying a commuter plane out of Cleveland might be as young as 23. The co-pilot could be 18. They may be weary from a tight schedule, limited sleep and lousy food. Amy Vidovich, a pilot for Colgan from 1999 to 2001, described a relentless schedule flying short hops throughout the Northeast. On a single day she might go from Boston to Augusta, Maine, then to Rockland, Maine, then back to Boston for refueling. She'd fly out again, perhaps to Rutland, Vt., before heading to Augusta, then back to Boston, then repeat the sequence again. The weather was often foggy, and some days she flew 10 legs -- 10 departures and 10 landings. "I remember being so tired at the end of the day that I couldn't do basic math to fill out the flight time in the log book," she said. Dan Morgan, Colgan vice president of safety and regulatory compliance, said the airline's policies allow for rested and fit flight crews. The airline limits flying time to 7½ hours in any 24-hour period. Colgan pilots average four hours 44 minutes of flying time per day and as much as six hours, he said. "It would be highly doubtful that anyone could fly 10 legs in a day," he said. Federal rules now limit pilots to no more than eight hours of scheduled flight during one shift. But pilots can be on duty a total of 16 hours, with nonflying time spent on duties such as checking weather and dealing with paperwork. They must have eight hours off between shifts, but the minimum break includes waiting for a hotel shuttle and going through airport security. The National Transportation Safety Board has linked fatigue to more than 250 fatalities in aviation accidents in the past 15 years. A military consultant at a recent FAA symposium on fatigue and performance said 80 percent of regional pilots surveyed said they nodded off during a flight. The first skills to go are vigilance and attention, researcher say. They liken the effect of deep fatigue to being drunk. An examination of pilot training and experience are part of the post-Colgan-crash probe into regional carriers. The FAA pushed to require "one level of safety" in the 1990s, requiring commuter airlines to comply with more stringent rules that applied to major airlines. But FAA rules provide only general subjects to be covered in training and minimums on flight hours. And as the majors assigned more marginally profitable routes to regionals fighting for the work, two levels of safety resurfaced, Schiavo said. Zaite, the former CommutAir co-pilot, said the airline's in-house training wasn't rigorous. "They go through the motions, repeat the power points as fast as they can and go home," recalled Zaite, who was hired with just 507 flight hours, 25 hours of it on multiengine aircraft like the twin turboprops at CommutAir. Inexperience shows up in the cockpit, said a CommutAir captain, who asked not to be identified because he feared repercussions for talking to the press. "It's very exhausting for me to monitor [co-pilots] because I have my own duties," he said. The climb after takeoff, for example, requires multiple tasks in quick succession. Co-pilots raise the landing gear and wing flaps, talk on the radio to air traffic control and open the "air bleeds" at about 1,000 feet to pressurize the cockpit so it doesn't lose oxygen. Some co-pilots are sharp; others seem "overwhelmed" and "frazzled," the captain said. And things get missed. "You feel the popping of your ears and you look up and the air bleeds aren't on," he said. Passengers shouldn't expect quick fixes to the regional airline industry, officers of the Air Line Pilots Association warn. One stubborn issue is a business model that pits regional airlines against one another to win contracts with mainline airlines, said Capt. John Prater, ALPA president. Airlines that spend more on safety or pay higher wages risk being penalized in the marketplace, Prater said. Weekly take-home pay for beginning pilots of $300 to $350 forces some to take second jobs to support their families. Schiavo blames safety differences between mainline and regional airlines on the relative inexperience of pilots at smaller airlines and the rapid turnover -- when economic times are good -- as they move to more lucrative and prestigious jobs at the major carriers. Salaries at many regional airlines changed little as they ramped up, "meaning many pilots who can find better jobs do so," Schiavo said. "The experience level has fallen." A statistical analysis to see if there is a link between accidents and pilot experience and pay is part of the government's post-Colgan accident review. For all the talk about the stresses of flying, pilots say today's highly computerized cockpits relieve some of the cognitive demands of their job. Veteran United pilot Frederick Dubinsky says he taught his son to "fly" a Boeing 777 in a simulator in 45 minutes. "Airplanes are big computer games, is all they are," he said. "Anyone who's sat in front of a Nintendo can do it." But learning to fly and learning to be a pilot are not the same. "When the picture goes bad," Dubinsky said, "these kids have nothing to fall back on." http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2009/07/regional_airlines.html *************** Runway scare as jet wheel snaps PASSENGERS on a Melbourne-Sydney flight could have been seconds from disaster after a wheel broke off as their jet was about to take off. Virgin Blue flight DJ-821 - the 8.40am service - was fully loaded with fuel and set to roll on Saturday when the pilot of a nearby plane warned the flight crew their jet was missing its right front landing wheel. Virgin Blue yesterday sought to dismiss the incident as a minor mishap, but skilled aviation engineers said there could have been serious consequences. The federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, Stephen Purvinas, said it was fortunate the aircraft had not become airborne. He said other aircraft could have slammed into the wheel in an incident resulting in consequences similar to the July 2000 disaster in Paris when 113 lives were lost after an Air France Concorde exploded after striking tyre debris on a runway. "In this case we were lucky that the failure occurred on the ground - the release of the wheel assembly in flight could have seen a loss of aircraft. Unless action is taken, future incidences could be much more serious," Mr Purvinas said. Virgin Blue's head of corporate affairs, Heather Jeffery, said the Boeing 737-700 returned to the terminal and passengers were transferred to another aircraft. She said an axle shear was a rare occurrence on the Boeing 737, an aircraft with an excellent worldwide safety record. "We are satisfied that there was no immediate risk to safety and we commenced immediate investigations with Boeing and the safety authorities as to why this part failed and this incident occurred," Ms Jeffery said, noting that Boeing had documented a limited number of similar incidents with other airlines. The aircraft was last inspected in December last year, within the required service time frame. The incident, which is being investigated by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, follows a near mishap by an Emirates jet in March when the tail of its long-haul A340 aircraft struck the tarmac on take-off. Safety bureau technical director Julian Walsh said it had taken possession of the wheel and other parts from the aircraft in Saturday's incident and would subject them to scientific checks to determine why the axle was corroded and it sheared. Mr Purvinas yesterday called on Virgin Blue to conduct pre-flight safety checks before all flights. He said that, unlike Qantas, Virgin planes were checked only once a day. Ms Jeffery said Virgin Blue strongly rejected claims by the Aircraft Engineers Association that the incident could have been identified in pre-flight checks. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25844287-661,00.html *************** NTSB to consider 2008 bird collision that killed 5 WASHINGTON (AP) — For the five men who took off from a small Oklahoma airport aboard a business jet that ran into a large bird, there was no miracle river landing. The twin-engine Cessna Citation 500 had climbed to 3,100 feet and was passing over a corner of Oklahoma City's Lake Overholser on March 4, 2008, when it collided with a white pelican, one of North America's largest bird species. Witnesses said they heard a noise that sounded like an engine stall, and then saw the plane plunge nose down trailing a plume of gray smoke about four miles from Wiley Post Airport. Pilots Tim Hartman, 44, and Rick Sandoval, 40, and business executives Garth Bates Jr., 59, Frank Pool Jr., 60, and Lloyd Austin, 57, were killed. The National Transportation Safety Board is scheduled to meet Tuesday to consider the safety implications of the accident and whether more should be done to prevent similar tragedies. The dangers of bird-aircraft collisions have received extensive scrutiny since US Airways Flight 1549 ditched into the Hudson River in January after striking a flock of Canada geese following takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport. The incident was dubbed the "Miracle on the Hudson" when all 155 people aboard survived. Where Flight 1549 became celebrated for what went right, the Oklahoma City accident is illustrative of the many things that can go wrong. Although bird populations generally are declining, nearly all large bird species have been increasing since the enactment of environmental protections in the 1960s and 1970s. Air traffic has also increased dramatically, and even though traffic is currently down due to the poor economy, annual takeoffs and landings in the United States are forecast to surpass 1 billion a year by 2020. "We have birds and planes that are literally fighting for air space," said Richard Dolbeer, an expert on bird-aircraft collisions. One resurgent species is the white pelican, which averages about 16 pounds but can weigh up to 30 pounds. "I don't want to be an alarmist, but in my view something has got to be done about this," NTSB acting chairman Mark Rosenker told an aviation club in Wichita, Kan., this spring. Wiley Post is sandwiched between two lakes and adjacent to a wildlife refuge. The Federal Aviation Administration recommends "wildlife attractants" be no closer than five miles from the outermost edge of an airport. FAA also requires airports receiving federal aid that are surrounded by wetlands or water to assess the risk of wildlife collisions. Though Wiley Post would appear to meet those requirements, airport officials didn't conduct a risk assessment and had no plan for reducing the risk of collisions, according to NTSB documents. Documents also suggest the airport may not have been diligent in reporting bird collisions to a national database maintained by FAA and the Department of Agriculture. From 1990 to June 2008, Wiley Post reported eight bird strikes to the database. Will Rogers World Airport, Oklahoma City's largest airport, reported 364 bird strikes during the same period. NTSB recommended a decade ago that airports and airlines be required to report all bird strikes to the database, but FAA has kept reporting voluntary. Only an estimated 20 percent of bird strikes are reported to the database. The agency is just now commissioning a study to see if reporting should be mandatory. Former NTSB Chairman Jim Hall said mandatory reporting would identify where the problem is the most serious and where countermeasures have been the most effective. Radar records in the Oklahoma City crash show 19 blips believed to be a flock of birds passing over Lake Overholser in the path of the Cessna Citation minutes before the collision. But while the birds are identifiable in hindsight, there were nearly 6,000 blips in the general vicinity of Oklahoma City minutes before the crash. FAA has been testing bird-detecting radar at a handful of airports. The technology is still primarily useful as a tool for wildlife biologists who track birds on airport property and employ measures to drive them away. Some experts believe the ultimate solution may be equipping planes with some kind of technology designed to drive birds away — perhaps flashing lights or noise that birds find particularly irksome. FAA, however, has no such research under way. "I'm sure that if we had more resources thrown at it we would develop more effective uses of the technology than we have," said John Goglia, a former NTSB board member. "Until we give it the right focus, (the problem) is going to continue to grow." On the Net: National Wildlife Strike Database: http://wildlife.pr.erau.edu/public/index.html **************** Delta pilots outline ASAP progress Four months after reinstating the aviation safety action program (ASAP), pilots at Delta Air Lines estimate that more than 1,200 reports have been filed. ASAP is an agreement forged among an airline's pilots, management and FAA to allow for voluntary reporting of safety issues or concerns in exchange for risk of those penalties generally being eliminated. Pilots at a Delta terminated ASAP in December 2006, and earlier this year opted to reinstate the program. Delta merged with Northwest Airlines in October 2008, and shortly after the ASAP was relaunched at the merged carrier. In addition to the more than 1,000 reports being filed since the restart of ASAP, the Delta pilots union in an update explains "the incentive element of ASAP has protected over two dozen pilots from potential certificate action". Pilots at both American Airlines and US Airways have restarted the program this year after pilots at each carrier suspended the scheme in 2008. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news **************** Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC