Flight Safety Information December 27, 2010 - No. 264 In This Issue Air Busan jet enters runway as plane approaches at Fukuoka airpor Europe Regulators To Curb Autopilots Air Safety Board Seeks Crash Prevention Airline safety systems to be inspected (Korea) No injuries reported after airplane rolled off taxi way New York's JFK Airport closes for snow storm FAA May Need to Pay $500 Million More on Behind-Schedule Lockheed Project Air Busan jet enters runway as plane approaches at Fukuoka airport TOKYO (Kyodo) -- An Air Busan jet that was waiting to depart from Fukuoka airport entered a runway Sunday when another jet was just minutes away from landing there, transport ministry officials said. The Boeing 737 bound for Busan entered the runway at around 11:35 a.m. when the incoming Japan Airlines domestic flight was about 5.6 kilometers south of the airport, the officials said. The JAL flight, a Boeing 737 from Sendai, was asked to make a detour and touched down some 20 minutes later than scheduled, they said. No injuries were reported among the 153 passengers and crew members aboard the aircraft of the South Korean low-cost carrier, which launched the Busan-Fukuoka service in March, or among the 108 people on the JAL flight, they said. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has judged the event was a grave incident that could have led to an accident and the independent Japan Transport Safety Board is poised to send two air accident inspectors Monday to the southwestern Japan airport, they said. According to the ministry, the Air Busan Flight 141 was told by a traffic controller to wait on a taxiway but crossed the stop line onto the runway without permission, prompting the controller to instruct the JAL Flight 3530 run by JAL Express Co. to go around and retry its landing approach. A similar incident occurred in March last year, with a departing All Nippon Airways jet entering a runway without permission at Osaka's Itami airport when a JAL Express plane was preparing to land. Back to Top Europe Regulators To Curb Autopilots By ANDY PASZTOR (WSJ) European air-safety regulators, stepping up warnings about excessive dependence on cockpit automation, have told pilots of two widely used Airbus jetliner models to avoid routinely using their autopilots in certain emergencies. The directive issued last week by the European Aviation Safety Agency, or EASA, specifically covers emergency procedures for more than 1,000 Airbus A330 and A340 jets in the event of major airspeed- sensor malfunctions. More than two-thirds of the two-engine, wide- body planes are flown by European or Asian airlines. More broadly, the move reflects growing concerns by international safety experts about the hazards of undue reliance by pilots on on- board automated systems, following a spate of incidents pointing to pilot mistakes and confusion stemming from improper use of automated safety aids. Safety officials believe many pilots flying a wide range of jets-across the U.S. as well as other regions-may need additional training to cope effectively with emergencies when autopilots or automated thrust- control systems are unavailable or can't be trusted. "Given the increasing dependence on automation" in the latest generation of jetliners, according to Deborah Hersman, chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, "you've got to have pilots who are prepared for all scenarios, especially those in which they have a lack of information" from typical flight-management sources. If two of the three external-airspeed indicators on the Airbus models singled out by last week's directive provide unreliable readings, autopilots and automated engine settings are designed to instantly disconnect. But instead of routinely re-engaging both at the first sign of trouble to try to control the aircraft, EASA now requires pilots to wait at least 30 seconds to determine if reliable information is flowing into the automated systems.EASA's directive also follows the recent release of a long-awaited U.S. air-safety study emphasizing that commercial pilots tend to abdicate too much responsibility to on-board computers, partly because most current training programs emphasize that automated systems generally are more adept at handling in-flight emergencies. Crews also must perform various other checks to ensure that the automated systems will issue appropriate orders once they are switched back on. When speed sensors feed unreliable data to flight-management computers, EASA said the result can be autopilots issuing abrupt and "inappropriate" climb or descend commands, which may "constitute an unsafe conditions." Regulators patterned the directive after a separate safety warning issued by manufacturer Airbus, a unit of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. The move comes after a series of dangerous airspeed-measurement failures and unpredictable or dangerous autopilot commands on Airbus A330s in recent years. The sequence of events that led to the June 2009 crash of an Air France Airbus A330 flying to Paris from Rio de Janeiro apparently started with unreliable airspeed indications and autopilot difficulties. No formal cause has been determined for the crash, which killed 228 people. Back to Top Air Safety Board Seeks Crash Prevention NTSB Wants Role Identifying Hazards Before They Can Cause Fatal Accidents. By ANDY PASZTOR (WSJ) Looking beyond its core mission to investigate accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board also is seeking a major role identifying aviation hazards before they can cause crashes. The new direction, outlined last week by Chairman Deborah Hersman, is a departure from the board's traditional job of dissecting the causes of fatal plane accidents and serious incidents, and then months-or years-later recommending ways to prevent repeats. With commercial-aviation safety steadily improving over the decades and current U.S. passenger accident rates at historically low levels, Ms. Hersman said the board needs to change part of its focus to remain relevant. "As the industry evolves, the safety board has to evolve, too," she said. "We can't be static." Under the change, the NTSB board's five members and staff of engineering and human-factor experts want to expand to analyze and combat developing safety threats. For example, rather than spending nearly all their time ferreting out factors that caused specific accidents, board officials would put a much higher priority on collecting and studying industry-wide data about what prompted recent dangerous incidents. They might include issues such as temporary loss of control by pilots, automation glitches, pilot errors during descent or landing, and cockpit or traffic-controller errors that put a pair of speeding jets too close together. By analyzing huge amounts of data spanning many years-but usually without being able to identify individual pilots or flights-the board hopes to issue sweeping safety recommendations geared at heading off recurrences that could lead to fatalities. At a time of escalating U.S. budget pressures, some industry officials see such initiatives partly aimed at justifying the board's nearly $100- million annual budget. But according to Ms. Hersman, the impetus follows heightened industry and regulatory emphasis on analyzing voluntary incident reports as the most effective way to enhance safety. "Government agencies, in general, are not very good at being dynamic and nimble," Ms. Hersman said in a year-end interview last week, but the board's relatively small size and cadre of experts provides "something in our favor." A more proactive approach, however, also will hinge on the board's ability to gain access to certain operational data closely guarded by U.S. airlines, as well as a more-aggressive stance when it comes to publicizing lessons learned from foreign accidents investigated by other governments. Expanding the board's reach could create concern among airlines and pilot-union leaders leery of sharing details about operational mistakes and serious incidents. Ms. Hersman said that the board has tried but failed to get unfettered access to certain broad-trend data collected by an industry-labor group under the auspices of the Federal Aviation Administration. "If this information is being collected for the purpose of accident prevention," she said, "we should absolutely have" freer access to it. In the international arena, where safety board officials typically adopt a low profile when assisting other countries in crash investigations, Ms. Hersman also envisions changes. With more of the board's resources devoted to foreign crashes, she said, a high priority has to be "what we can share" publicly and "how we can feed back all of those lessons learned" overseas to help improve U.S. aviation safety. To some extent, the agency previously tried to orient itself to be more forward-looking. Under Ms. Hersman, a former Capitol Hill staffer who came to the board with limited aviation experience, the board has tried to speed up hearings and completion of reports about high- profile accidents. For instance, three months after the Feb. 2009 crash of a Colgan Air Inc. turboprop near Buffalo, N.Y., that killed 50 people, the board held its first public session on the accident. In the past, that likely would have taken many more months. In addition, months ago the board issued rules mandating airlines to provide it with timely reports about midair near-collisions, information that in the past usually went directly to regulators. And in 2010, the agency held public forums dealing with controversial, industry-wide safety issues related to pilot professionalism, and a second one devoted to so-called codeshare flights operated by commuter carriers on behalf of larger airlines. Back to Top Airline safety systems to be inspected (Korea) The government will conduct a massive inspection of local airlines' safety management systems as part of efforts to prevent accidents, the transportation ministry said Sunday. The inspection, slated to start Monday till March, comes amid a recent outcrop of airplane breakdowns, flight cancellations and delays, though national flag carriers have not reported any accidents since 1999, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs. The government will check how the country's six airlines conduct and assess their own safety, and manage safety problems, the ministry said, adding their vulnerable areas of safety will also be subject to inspections. "The planned inspection is designed to help stem airplane accidents and improve airlines safety management systems," a ministry official said. Asiana Airlines, the country's second-largest airline, will be inspected from Monday, with top local carrier Korean Air scheduled to undergo an audit in January. Air Busan and three other budget carriers will undergo inspections in February and March, the ministry said. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/ Back to Top No injuries reported after airplane rolled off taxi way Sunday morning (Knoxville) An American Eagle plane rolled off of a taxi way on Sunday morning. According to Becky Huckaby with the McGhee Tyson Airport no one was hurt when the plane rolled off the taxi way by a few feet before departing at 8:15 a.m. on Sunday. Passengers on the plan where taken back to the terminal aboard a bus. Huckaby said officials with American Eagle handled the passenger's arrangements. American Eagle officials have not responded to requests for a comment. http://www.wbir.com/ Back to Top New York's JFK Airport closes for snow storm LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport issued a statement late Sunday that due to snow storms, it will be closed until Monday at 5 a.m. Eastern time. The closure added to the many travel delays around the region caused by the storm, as blizzard conditions gripped parts of the U.S. East Coast. Back to Top FAA May Need to Pay $500 Million More on Behind-Schedule Lockheed Project The Federal Aviation Administration may need to spend $500 million more to complete an air-traffic upgrade by Lockheed Martin Co. that is behind schedule and exceeding costs, a Transportation Department inspector said. Completing the En Route Automation Modernization project will take as many as six more years, compared with the original goal of finishing by the end of this year, Calvin Scovel, the department inspector general, wrote in a letter to lawmakers that was released today. "A cost escalation of this magnitude will affect FAA's capital budget and could force the agency to reallocate funds from other modernization projects to pay for" the Lockheed program, Scovel wrote. The ERAM project, which has cost $1.8 billion so far, will replace a 43- year-old system that directs aircraft at high altitudes in an effort to boost safety and efficiency in the world's busiest airspace. It was originally projected to cost $2.1 billion as one of the FAA's largest acquisition projects. The project will cost $70 million, or 53 percent, more than the FAA planned to spend in the current fiscal year to correct system flaws, Scovel said. The FAA said last April that the project may be delayed after computer flaws forced the system's removal five days after its first activation in Salt Lake City. The agency said at the time that cost overruns weren't yet projected. Schedule Update Sasha Johnson, an FAA spokeswoman, said in an e-mail today that controllers are now using the system to handle traffic 24 hours a day in Salt Lake City and that testing in other facilities "continues to go well." The agency will release an updated deployment schedule in coming weeks, she said. "Lockheed Martin continues to support the FAA in its work to fully implement the new en route air traffic control system," Keith Mordoff, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. "We are anxious to see the system achieve full operating capability as quickly as the facilities are comfortable with the transition." Lockheed is replacing the computers, which the FAA calls the "backbone" of the airspace system, that process radar data and send information to controllers' screens. The new system, replacing one in use since 1967, will let 20 traffic-control centers track 1,900 aircraft at one time rather than 1,100, Lockheed has said. "The current problems with ERAM are disconcerting," Scovel wrote in the letter to House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee lawmakers. "Delays in implementing ERAM will force FAA to sustain aging equipment longer than planned and retrain controllers so they are familiar with both the legacy and ERAM systems." http://www.bloomberg.com/ Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC