29 OCT 2009 _______________________________________ *Boeing Picks South Carolina Over Seattle for 787 Line *FAA: 2 jets were only about 82 feet apart at LAX *LaHood promises scrutiny of 'distracted flying' *How the FAA scolded the pilots *Panel: $11 million air safety study not worth much *American Airlines to Cut Back Aircraft-Maintenance Facilities *Lockheed Martin Increases Performance, Data Storage of FAA System Used For Oceanic Air Traffic Management *US Airways, American Airlines cut 1,700 jobs *Air France To Meet Pilots To Ease Tension **************************************** Boeing Picks South Carolina Over Seattle for 787 Line Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co. will build an assembly line for the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina, reaching for the first time outside its historic Seattle manufacturing hub to set up a new commercial-plane factory. The North Charleston facility, adjacent to a parts plant Boeing bought in July, will be used along with one in Washington state to build, test and deliver the aircraft, Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement today. "Establishing a second 787 assembly line in Charleston will expand our production capability to meet the market demand for the airplane," said Jim Albaugh, chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, in the statement. "We're taking prudent steps to protect the interests of our customers." The new line will augment one near Seattle and help Boeing recover from delays that have set the 787 back at least 2 1/2 years. The planemaker picked South Carolina, a less unionized state, after failing to reach a no-strike deal with Seattle-area workers. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers shuttered Boeing factories four times in 20 years with walkouts, including a two-month strike in 2008. "We are astounded that Boeing has chosen to compound the problems of the 787 program by further fragmenting the supply chain," said Ray Goforth, executive director of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace-IFPTE Local 2001 in Seattle. "There was no credible business case for this decision." 'Blaming Workers' Rich Michalski, vice president of the machinists union, said Boeing officials are "blaming their own workers for a decision to establish operations in yet another distant and high risk environment." Anything that would reduce the risk of another strike would more than compensate for the cost of setting up a plant in North Charleston, Richard Aboulafia, vice president at the Fairfax, Virginia-based Teal Group aerospace research group, said in an interview before the decision was announced. "The other unfortunate aspect for Seattle is that South Carolina really wants this and is willing to provide incentives to make that upfront cost less of an issue," he said. Boeing rose 88 cents to $48.10 at 6:06 p.m. after the regular close of New York Stock Exchange trading. South Carolina's legislature approved an incentives package today that would save Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars, the Associated Press reported. The package, which does not specifically name Boeing as the beneficiary, includes tax breaks on aviation fuel. Governors React Boeing's decision "represents not only enormously good news for our state's economy, but also a telling dividend from our state's continued efforts to better our business climate," South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford said in a statement. Washington Governor Chris Gregoire called it "obviously a very disappointing day" in her state. The 787's rear fuselage is already made in North Charleston, where Vought Aircraft Industries had a contract to ship sections to Boeing for final assembly in Everett, Washington. Boeing bought the operations from Vought in July, and workers there rejected membership in the machinists union last month. Unlike Washington, South Carolina is a right-to-work state and workers can't be forced to join a union. The Puget Sound area has been home to the planemaker's commercial operations since 1916, when lumberman Bill Boeing built a wooden float plane on the shores of Lake Union. The company moved corporate headquarters to Chicago in 2001, and its military operations are based in St. Louis. The industry supports more than 200,000 jobs and generates $36 billion for Washington state. Puget Sound Jobs "Everett will continue to design and produce airplanes, including the 787, and there is tremendous opportunity for our current and future products here," Albaugh said. "We remain committed to Puget Sound." Albaugh told U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, that the shift to South Carolina "would mean no immediate jobs lost in Puget Sound and that ultimately it would produce more jobs in the Northwest," John Diamond, a spokesman for Cantwell, said in an e-mailed statement. Boeing is the world's second-largest commercial-plane maker by 2008 deliveries, trailing Toulouse, France-based Airbus SAS. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aGNKDxdXo2H4 *************** FAA: 2 jets were only about 82 feet apart at LAX LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday a runway incursion put a taxiing jet about 82 feet from a departing airliner - less than half the separation required by aviation rules. The incident Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport involved a Midwest Express Embraer 190 that landed and taxied toward a runway on which a Northwest Airlines Boeing 757 was taking off for Honolulu. The Midwest Express jet, arriving from Milwaukee, landed on the airport's southernmost runway and was told to turn onto a taxiway and hold there. FAA spokesman Mike Fergus said the jet was supposed to stop 200 feet from the edge of a parallel runway but continued on. An alarm was triggered when the jet crossed the hold line marked by a bright yellow bar. A controller saw what was happening and ordered the Midwest Express aircraft to stop, Fergus said. It halted about 70 feet from the edge of the runway. Assuming the Northwest plane was in the center of the runway, the total distance between the Midwest Express jet's nose and the Northwest Airline's wingtip was about 82 feet. Fergus said the incident was considered a runway incursion because the Midwest pilot crossed the hold line. The airport has four parallel runways. Planes landing on the outer runways have to cross inner runways to reach the terminals. Last fiscal year, eight runway incursions occurred at the airport, the FAA said. In the spring, a warning system designed to prevent near accidents and other runway violations was installed at one runway and eight associated taxiways. Sunday's incursion occurred at a taxiway and runway that did not have the system, called runway status warning lights, the agency said. ************** LaHood promises scrutiny of 'distracted flying' Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood Wednesday promised more scrutiny of "distracted flying," a week after a Minneapolis-bound commercial jet overshot its destination airport by 150 miles. The Transportation Department is in the midst of a review of how distractions, such as text messaging, affect the safety of the U.S. transportation system. The department will expand the review to cover distractions in the cockpit, a spokeswoman said. The pilots told federal investigators Sunday that they each accessed laptops during a discussion about work issues, a violation of airline policy. It is unclear which Federal Aviation Administration rules, if any, the pilots violated by using laptops. The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday revoked the pilots' commercial flying licenses. In letters to each pilot, the FAA appeared to largely base the revocations on the pilots' inability to stay in radio contact with air traffic controllers and their deviating from their original flight plan without proper clearances. Former transportation safety officials said the incident touched a nerve with many Americans, who remain jittery about flying. The U.S. commercial aviation system had enjoyed two years -- 2007 and 2008 -- without a single death from a major airline crash. The trend ended in February when a commuter jet crashed into a house in upstate New York, killing 50 people. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/28/AR2009102803 824.html *************** How the FAA scolded the pilots The letters revoking the Northwest Airlines pilots' certificates had a word you don't usually find in a federal document: frolic. Here are two key paragraphs in the "determination of emergency" portion of the letters sent from an FAA attorney, Richard Lewis Faber, to Capt. Timothy B. Cheney, with an almost identical letter sent to First Officer Richard I. Cole: "You have demonstrated your lack of regard for or inability to adhere to your responsibility to exercise the highest standard of care, judgment, skill and responsibility as expected of an airman serving as Pilot in Command of a scheduled, passenger carrying flight in air transportation. Your lack of awareness that NW188 had overflown the airport to which it had been dispatched and cleared until the aircraft had reached Eau Claire Wisconsin (approximately 150 miles beyond MSP), is completely unacceptable. This is particularly true because your overflight resulted in NW188's failure to comply with its clearance as issued. Aggravating your overflight is the fact that you were not communicating with Air Traffic Control, and neither the Denver ARTCC, the Minneapolis ARTCC nor the Northwestern Dispatcher was able to communicate with NW188. "You engaged in conduct that put your passengers and your crew in serious jeopardy. NW188 was without communication with any Air Traffic Control facility and with its company dispatcher for a period of 91 minutes (over 1.5 hours) while you were on a frolic of your own. Failing to comply with ATC clearances or instructions while engaged in air carrier operations is extremely reckless. Not only did you not comply with clearances or instructions, you did not even monitor the aircraft's air-ground radios. You were disengaged and impervious to the serious threat to your own safety, as well as the safety of people for whom you are responsible. This is a total dereliction and disregard for your duties." Now, that was a thorough chewing out, wasn't it? Here's a more complete timeline, from the FAA revocation letter, all times CDT: 7:23 p.m. Denver Air Traffic Control notified Minneapolis ATC that NW188 was approaching Minneapolis airspace and not in radio contact. 7:24 p.m. NW188 acknowledged instructions from Denver ATC to contact Minneapolis ATC. 7:32 p.m. Northwest Airlines dispatchers made the first of eight attempts to contact NW188 and get it to contact ATC. 7:58 p.m. NW188 flew over MSP without amended clearance. 8:14 p.m. NW188 finally contacted Minneapolis Center. http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/10/how-the-faa-scolded-the- pilots.html *************** Panel: $11 million air safety study not worth much (AP) An $11 million air safety study sponsored by NASA that asked pilots to reveal mishaps and problems they encountered was so riddled with flaws that it could not provide useful insights about U.S. flight safety, according to a new review by a national scientific panel. The research project ran for nearly four years and involved telephone interviews that lasted about 30 minutes with 29,000 pilots. But it was so flawed in its design and how it was run that its results were useless for measuring safety problems or trends, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Research Council. The report is the latest critique of the now-defunct program. The project became known publicly two years ago when The Associated Press disclosed that NASA wouldn't provide the results despite a Freedom of Information Act request. NASA told AP that disclosing its sensitive findings could harm airline profits and public confidence in the carriers. When Congress demanded an explanation and expressed interest in continuing the project, NASA's then-administrator, Michael Griffin, said the survey did not meet the space agency's scientific and research standards and would not be resurrected. The pilot interviews were conducted from 2001 to 2004. NASA asked the National Research Council to evaluate the project's methodology and analyze what the pilots said. However, the panel declined to analyze the results themselves, citing the difficulty in working with the censored data that NASA turned over. NASA has said it censored parts of the data to protect commercial secrets and the anonymity of pilots. Their names were never included, but NASA officials worried someone could scrutinize information about plane types, flights and locations to identify pilots. "We would have liked to have had the opportunity to see the entire data set," said Clinton V. Oster, Jr., co-chairman of the National Research panel who is associate dean at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs. "We'll never know what might have happened if we had." But Oster said the research project's flaws extended beyond the censored data. "The extent and magnitude of these problems raises concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the data," the new report said. The expert who helped design the survey, Jon Krosnick, said the research council published "untested and unsupported speculations about possible flaws in the study design, with no direct evidence that the findings are unreliable or inaccurate." NASA shut down the project amid concerns by federal aviation regulators when early results appeared to show greater numbers of incidents than other government monitoring systems recorded. "While the survey team made mistakes, they were hampered by the agency's lack of support for the program, which effectively condemned it to failure," said Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., who led House Science and Technology committee hearings on the project. "We still cannot conclude that a survey would or would not help make the skies safer. All we know is that the agency wasted millions of dollars in a halfhearted effort." On the Net: National Research Council report: http://www.nap.edu *************** American Airlines to Cut Back Aircraft-Maintenance Facilities American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp., in the next year will close or downsize some U.S. aircraft maintenance facilities, cutting up to 700 jobs, or about 5% of its maintenance staff of 12,700, as the size of its fleet gets smaller. In a letter to employees, Carmine Romano, senior vice president of maintenance and engineering, said American will close its Kansas City, Mo., facility next September and will reduce work in San Francisco and St. Louis. The jobs include management and union positions, where employees are represented by the Transport Workers Union of America. Several smaller facilities for overnight maintenance also will be closed. A spokesman said the union planned to make a statement on the downsizing. Unlike most U.S. carriers, American Airlines doesn't outsource scheduled aircraft maintenance, and in recent years has brought work in-house from other airlines. But, across the industry, the trend has been to schedule routine maintenance offshore, in countries like El Salvador, where costs are lower. Spokesman Tim Wagner said American Airlines tried for 10 months to get work from other airlines to keep the Kansas City maintenance facility running, but "our bids weren't competitive with offshore facilities, because our labor costs are higher," he said. At American's primary maintenance facility in Tulsa, Okla., the company performs nearly all the regular maintenance needed on its own aircraft, and works on planes for "a number of other carriers," Mr. Wagner said. American, based in Ft. Worth, Texas, sends out about 9% to 10% of maintenance to the original manufacturer for specialty work, such as on cockpit avionics. In his letter to employees, Mr. Romano noted that, as the U.S. airline industry downsized capacity, the AMR fleet has shrunk from a high of 900 aircraft to about 600 today. As well, older planes that required more maintenance have been replaced by newer planes. American Airlines aims to "move toward a more flexible, cost-efficient operation that improves flow and takes into account the long-term impact of the recession on travel..." as well as changes American is making to its own route network, Mr. Romano told employees. Some U.S. legislators have raised questions about overseas plane-maintenance contracts. The loss of U.S. jobs is one concern but so is aircraft safety, they say, since the Federal Aviation Administration doesn't oversee foreign locations with the same scrutiny as domestic facilities. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704222704574501372269417390.ht ml?mod=googlenews_wsj *************** Lockheed Martin Increases Performance, Data Storage of FAA System Used For Oceanic Air Traffic Management ROCKVILLE, Md., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is increasing the performance, usability and data storage capacity of the system used by the Federal Aviation Administration for oceanic air traffic control. The recently completed technology refresh of the Ocean21(TM) system updates the Advanced Technologies and Oceanic Procedures (ATOP) program at air route traffic control centers in Anchorage, Alaska, Islip, N.Y., and Oakland, Calif. ATOP is the FAA's modernization program for oceanic air traffic control. It uses a satellite-based system that integrates flight and radar data processing, advanced digital surveillance and communication capabilities, and enhanced controller tool sets for all three oceanic air traffic control centers, combining common procedures, training, maintenance and support. ATOP significantly reduces the intensive manual process that has limited controllers' flexibility to safely handle airline requests for more efficient tracks over long oceanic routes. It also reduces the workload on controllers through the use of electronic flight strips, instead of the labor-intensive paper strip method used for decades to track transoceanic aircraft. A technical refresh of the system, based on the date the first site achieved initial operational capability (IOC), is a five-year requirement of the contract. "Refreshing the ATOP system was an incredibly challenging task because all major system components, such as processors, displays, network switches and storage devices, had to be replaced without stopping the 24/7 operations at each air traffic control center," said Sandra Samuel, vice president of Lockheed Martin's Transportation Solutions business. "I am extremely proud of this team's achievement. They completed their work consistently ahead of schedule, and without any service interruption to the user community. The project planning was detailed and precision-oriented, and the execution flawless." The refresh project's installation, testing, demonstration and certification cycle was completed at the air route traffic control center in Oakland first on June 24, followed by the New York center Aug. 21 and the Anchorage center Oct. 8. The William J. Hughes Technical Center maintenance lab's refresh work was completed this past February. SOURCE Lockheed Martin **************** US Airways, American Airlines cut 1,700 jobs NEW YORK (AFP) - US Airways and American Airlines said Wednesday they were cutting a total of 1,700 jobs as they face turbulence amid prolonged recession. US Airways said it would cut about 1,000 jobs during the first half of 2010 and reduce service to Europe as it hunkers down to battle weak demand. The airline will focus on the key network strengths at its three hubs in Charlotte, North Carolina; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Phoenix, Arizona; as well as in Washington and its shuttle service, the company said in a statement. "By concentrating on our strengths we will be better-positioned to return US Airways to profitability," said Doug Parker, chairman and chief executive. The Tempe, Arizona-based airline said it would suspend five European destinations served from Philadelphia, "given the weakness in trans-Atlantic revenue": Birmingham, England; London Gatwick; Milan, Italy; Shannon, Ireland; and Stockholm, Sweden. Among other realignment moves, the company said it would give back its Philadelphia-Beijing flight authority to the government and slash flights to Las Vegas from 64 to 36 daily departures by February. The announcement came after the airline reported last week a net loss of 80 million dollars in the third quarter as air travel slumps amid the recession and fuel prices rise. Separately, AMR, the parent of American Airlines, said it was slashing up to 700 management and union jobs in its maintenance and engineering operations to respond to restructuring changes undertaken to cope with the market turbulence. *************** Air France To Meet Pilots To Ease Tension A senior Air France official will meet with pilot representatives to quell anger over a letter the airline sent to remind pilots to follow procedures. The note suggested some recent Air France safety incidents were linked to pilots not properly following rules. The letter sparked outrage among pilots, particularly given the backdrop of the unresolved crash of Air France Flight 447. Gilbert Rovetto, the head of flight operations for the airline, plans to hold the meeting Nov. 4. http://www.aviationweek.com **************** Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC