20 AUG 2009 _______________________________________ *Tires blow out from jet before takeoff at airport *Greek pilots see red from laser pen pranks *2 dead in military chopper crash on Colo. mountain *A Revised View of Controller's Role in Collision *Investigator questions Papua air safety *Regulators Push for Fixes to Embraer Jets *Nigerian airspace managers launch safety management manual *Denver airport plans solar power for its fuel farm *Bomb Threat on Singapore Airlines Flight Sparks Probe **************************************** Tires blow out from jet before takeoff at airport EL PASO, Texas -- Passengers aboard a Lear jet had a scare Wednesday when two left tires blew out from the plane as it prepared to take off from El Paso International Airport about 1 p.m., airport spokeswoman Liz Bellegarde said. The plane came to a complete stop safely. The plane had about a thousand feet to go before it took off, Bellegarde said. No one was injured. Airport emergency crews assisted in removing the plane from the runway. The airport continued to operate normally during the emergency. http://www.kvia.com/Global/story.asp?S=10958156&nav=menu193_2 **************** Greek pilots see red from laser pen pranks (AFP) ATHENS - Greece's civil aviation pilots on Wednesday called for a crackdown on laser pen pranksters who have endangered a growing number of plane landings around the country. The pilots' association raised the alarm after a spate of incidents where teenagers flashed laser pens at incoming plane cockpits. "This has been going on for around two years, apparently it's become fashionable among certain youngsters and the incidents are increasing in frequency," association chairman Grigoris Constantellos told AFP. Around 30 laser pranks have been recorded this year, and the situation is more dangerous in summer when pilots need to be particularly careful due to seasonal high winds, Constantellos said. "Having the pilot blinded for three or four seconds during landing can really create a difficult situation," he said. The two last incidents occurred on the islands of Rhodes and Crete, two of Greece's main travel destinations which thousands of tourists visit every year. Police arrested two teenagers on Rhodes over the weekend after they forced a domestic flight to abandon its first landing approach. Another teenager in Iraklio, Crete, was placed under judicial supervision earlier this month. Incidents have also been reported on the island of Corfu -- another major travel destination -- and in the northern city of Thessaloniki, where in June the local prosecutor ordered police to step up patrols around Makedonia Airport. The sale of laser pens is nominally illegal in Greece but their use is particularly popular in sports stadiums where fans use them on rival players. Laser pens were also used against riot police in the youth protests that rocked Greece in December. ************** 2 dead in military chopper crash on Colo. mountain (AP) LEADVILLE, Colo. - A military helicopter crashed Wednesday near the peak of Colorado's second-highest mountain, killing two people, injuring one and leaving another person missing, authorities said. The Black Hawk helicopter from Kentucky's Fort Campbell was carrying out training exercises when it struck about 400 feet from the top of 14,200-foot Mount Massive, according to the Lake County Sheriff's office and the Federal Aviation Administration. The injured person was flown to a Denver hospital, while rescue teams searched for the missing person, said Sheriff spokesman Max Duarte. The condition of the injured was not immediately known. The helicopter was assigned to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) and was conducting routine training, according to the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C. Its Web site says soldiers from the 160th have carried out combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the Army did not elaborate on the purpose of the Colorado maneuvers. Sheriff's spokeswoman Betty Benson told The Gazette in Colorado Springs that the two who died were soldiers from Fort Campbell. Officials have not released any details on the identities of the four aboard. The Army statement said that rescue operations were under way but did not elaborate. The Denver Post reported that the two ambulance helicopters were at the scene. The newspaper also said the Black Hawk's flight recorder was recovered. The cause of the crash has not been released. Duarte said he did not know how long the helicopter was training in the central mountain region. Leadville, a town with a population of 2,600, is about 80 miles southwest of Denver and is surrounded by rugged wilderness and lofty peaks, several more than 13,000 feet high. U.S. Forest Service said its workers building trails with a youth group heard the 2 p.m. MDT crash but witness it. Fort Campbell spokesman Maj. Brandon Bissell referred questions to the special operations command. Soldiers in the 160th are known as "night stalkers" because they specialize in nighttime operations, according to the military. The MH-60 Black Hawk is frequently used for overt and covert infiltration missions, as well as to bring supplies to special operations forces in the field, according to the unit's Web site. The helicopter is also used for rescue and medical evocations, and an armed version is used for armed escort and fire support. **************** A Revised View of Controller's Role in Collision WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal air safety officials investigating a collision over the Hudson River changed their account of the accident on a key point Monday, saying that a helicopter struck by a small plane was not visible at first on the radar of an air traffic controller who had been handling the plane. 9 Dead After Copter and Plane Collide Over Hudson (August 9, 2009) The National Transportation Safety Board had said before that the controller at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey had not warned the plane's pilot of the potential for a collision with several aircraft in its path, including the helicopter, before handing off responsibility for the plane to Newark Liberty International Airport. Nine people - three aboard the plane and five Italian tourists and a pilot aboard the helicopter - were killed in the Aug. 8 accident. In a statement released Monday, the safety board said that although the Teterboro controller did fail to warn the single-engine plane of several aircraft in its path, the helicopter was not one of those on the controller's radar screen until seven seconds after the handoff to nearby Newark airport. Officials for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union, which represents the controller, said the safety board's report released Friday, which described controllers' handling of the plane, unfairly implied that the Teterboro controller could have prevented the collision. They pressed the board for a correction in news conferences on Friday night and Monday afternoon, and in conversations with the board's staff members during the weekend. In response, the board removed the union from its investigation. In a statement released shortly after the union's news conference on Monday, the board's chairwoman, Deborah A. P. Hersman, said that parties to investigations sign an agreement not to publicly discuss the information gathered by the board while the investigation continues. "Although we appreciate the technical expertise our parties provide during the course of an investigation," Ms. Hersman said, "it is counterproductive when an organization breaches the party agreement and publicly interprets or comments on factual information generated by that investigation. Our rules are set up precisely to avoid the prospect of each party offering their slant on the information." A union spokesman, Doug Church, said: "It's important that the N.T.S.B. has clarified this key point in the sequence of events. All we want to see is a factual account of the incident, and we continue to believe the facts show that our Teterboro controller could not have done anything to prevent this horrible tragedy." **************** Investigator questions Papua air safety PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- The lives of air passengers in Papua New Guinea are in danger because crash investigations are in shambles, according to an official investigator. Last week's fatal crash of a chartered Twin Otter plane belonging to Airlines PNG was his prediction come true, a report on New Zealand TVNZ said. Flight CG4684 carrying 11 passengers and two crew slammed into a mountainside at 5,500 feet as it approached Kokoda Airstrip. The dead were nine Australian trekkers, three Papua New Guineans and a Japanese man. Weather conditions were deteriorating at the time of the crash, according to local media reports. The last of the bodies were flown to the southern coastal city of Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea this week for identification. Airspace around the airport is off-limits while recovery operations take place, the government has said. The intense jungle and remoteness of the area, favored by hikers, has made salvage operations extremely difficult. A Black Hawk helicopter is carrying out wreckage, including the two engines, for inspection by crash investigators. The TVNZ report quotes Papua New Guinea plane crash investigator Sid O'Toole, an Australian national, in an interview in April 2008. He said Papua New Guinea's Civil Aviation Authority and Department of Transport have been starved of funds to properly carry out investigations. Investigators have no faxes, phones, computers or other resources. As a result no lessons are learned from crashes. "I feel for the families of all the victims," said O'Toole, who is in charge of the Air Crash Investigation Unit. "The situation is endangering lives. How can recommendations be made if there are no insights in why planes have gone down? There is no commission and any partial investigation is not legally binding." He said that the authorities had failed to investigate 19 fatal crashes since 2000. TVNZ said that the Australian Associated Press news agency recently put these statements to Civil Aviation Authority Director Joseph Kintau. "Let's focus on this investigation first," he told AAP. The investigation will take some 30 days, said Kintau, who has advised the government to spend millions of dollars upgrading the country's airports and runways. Earlier, PNG Police Commissioner Gari Baki said that the Kokoda crash inquiry would be the country's first full such investigation. Airlines PNG Chairman Simon Wild told media that his airline's pilots were among the world's most experienced at flying Twin Otters and are adept at coping with the local conditions. A report in the Australian Business newspaper last week noted that passengers have about a one-in-three chance of surviving a crash in a Twin Otter. The Flight Safety Foundation's accident database shows that more than 1,300 people have died in accidents involving the Canadian-designed and built plane since it first flew in 1965. Of about 20 serious aircraft accidents in PNG since 1999, eight have involved Twin Otters, the Virginia-based non-profit safety research organization said. The DHC-6 Twin Otter is a 20-passenger Short Takeoff and Landing utility aircraft with either fixed tricycle undercarriage or pontoons. Its STOL ability and high climb rate have made it a successful cargo, regional passenger airliner and MEDEVAC aircraft. Nearly 850 of the turbo-prop Twin Otter aircraft have been produced since it first rolled off production lines at de Havilland Canada in 1966. Viking Air, based in Victoria, British Columbia, bought the tooling and production blueprints from de Havilland in 2006 and a new plane, the Series 400, is now in production. http://www.upiasia.com/Emerging_Threats/2009/08/19/Investigator-questions-Pa pua-air-safety/UPI-96831250696984/ *************** Regulators Push for Fixes to Embraer Jets By ANDY PASZTOR Air-safety regulators in the U.S. and overseas are joining forces to require fixes to potentially defective cargo doors and emergency escape slides on hundreds of popular Embraer regional jets. The problems haven't caused injuries or crashes of widely used Embraer 170 and 190 aircraft, which are built in Brazil, but regulators cite significant safety issues in mandating enhanced inspections, modifications or overhaul of suspect parts. The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday proposed to mandate inspections and fixes to ensure that aft and forward cargo doors on the jets don't open during flight, which the agency said "could result in reduced structural integrity" and possibly rapid decompression. The FAA said there had been reports of two planes being dispatched with open cargo doors, but without any cockpit warning alerting pilots about the problem. The proposal indicates more than 150 aircraft operated by U.S. airlines would be affected. Also on Monday, European air-safety regulators embraced a Brazilian safety mandate targeting defective emergency evacuation slides installed in the forward doors of Embraer 190 models. The Brazilian directive, among other things, calls for repacking and modifying the slides, some of which failed to deploy properly in earlier ground checks. Such malfunctions could keep the doors from opening in an emergency. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125062899717041105.html **************** Nigerian airspace managers launch safety management manual Nigeria - The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) has approved the first edition of Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) manual on Safety Management Systems [SMS], produced in line with International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and national regulations, to enhance air safety in the country. This was disclosed by NAMA in a press release, signed by its General Manager, Public Affairs, Mr. Supo Atobatele, and made available to PANA here on Wednesday. Since 23 November, 2006, the requirement for safety Management System [SMS] implementation was incorporated into ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices [SARPS] for aircraft operations, air traffic services and aerodrome. Speaking at the formal presentation of the manual to the top management staff of the Agency in Lagos recently, Alhaji Ibrahim Auyo, the managing director of the agency, said the implementation of the document was not going to be optional, but mandatory for all staff in line with ICAO's strategic safety objectives. The aim of the SMS manual, according to the NAMA boss, ''is to provide air traffic services at an acceptable level of safety through a continuous process of hazard identification and risk management," adding that the main goal was to evolve a corporate safety culture in the aviation industry. Auyo appealed to the workers to ensure compliance with industry standards, especially by identifying priorities that promote safety in NAMA's service delivery and warned against any act of indiscipline that could derail the new safety culture being introduced at all levels of operation. The Director General of NCAA, Dr. Segun Demuren, who was represented at the launch by Mr. Popoola Adebiyi, General Manager, Airspace Standards, described the presentation of the manual as a good thing to happen to the country's aviation industry, noting that the safety manual, if followed to the letter, would raise the safety profile of the country to international standards. While encouraging the staff to be safety conscious always, the director general urged the agency to commence work immediately on operational manual for all the staff, as this, he noted, would equally assist the agency in its daily service delivery. The General Manager, SMS, Mr. John Onyegiri, and his team were commended by the NCAA boss for compiling the manual. http://www.afriquejet.com/news/africa-news/nigerian-airspace-managers-launch -safety-management-manual-2009081933657.html *************** Denver airport plans solar power for its fuel farm (AP) - DENVER - Denver International Airport wants to build a $7 million solar electric-generating system to power its fuel storage and distribution system. Airport officials said Wednesday they will ask the City Council for approval to sign a contract with two companies to develop the 1.6-megawatt project on about 9 acres north of the airfield. It would provide almost all the electricity needed to power the airport's fuel farm. The airport would buy electricity from the solar companies for about 90 percent of the rate charged by its commercial supplier, Xcel Energy Inc. The system is expected to be completed by the end of this year. The airport already has a 2-megawatt solar photovoltaic system near the terminal. *************** Bomb Threat on Singapore Airlines Flight Sparks Probe Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Australian police are investigating a bomb threat against a Singapore Airlines Ltd. flight to Melbourne today, the airline and police said. The carrier's call center in Mumbai received a telephone call from someone claiming there was a bomb on board a flight from Singapore to Melbourne International Airport, airline spokeswoman Susan Bredow said by telephone. Crew members on board flight SQ227 were alerted and carried out safety checks, she said. They determined the call was a hoax and informed passengers about an hour before the aircraft landed at 6 a.m. local time that a threat had been made, Bredow added. The Boeing 747-400 aircraft, carrying 190 passengers and 20 crew members, landed safely, she said. As a precaution, safety checks were carried out on a later Singapore to Melbourne flight, SQ237, which also landed safely, the airline said in an e-mailed statement. After both planes landed, "detailed security checks confirmed that the threat was a hoax," the airline said. The Australian Federal Police said it was notified of the bomb threat at about 2:15 a.m. and was investigating. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=a.ftcb.RhekY *************** Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC