Flight Safety Information February 21, 2011 - No. 038 In This Issue Engine damage forces Delta jet to return to Florida airport Malaysia Airlines A330 makes emergency landing Airplane slides off Flagstaff (AZ)...runway... Learjet 24 accident (Mexico Cessna Citation 525 Accident (Switzerland)... Indonesia grounds airline SMAC over safety concerns Ireland-bound flight diverted to Boston's Logan Airport ATSB investigates Qantas A380 partial power loss Aircraft automation issues raise safety concerns Senate wants FAA to study mobile telemetry Boeing faces three simultaneous certification campaigns Baffled engineers left A320 to fly on after severe landing Engine damage forces Delta jet to return to Florida airport Delta Air Lines Flight 1846 returned to the Fort Lauderdale Sunday after an indication of engine damage. (CNN) -- A commercial flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Minneapolis was aborted shortly after takeoff Sunday morning because of an indicator warning that one of the aircraft's engines had been damaged, according to airline officials. Delta Air Lines Flight 1846 returned to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport within minutes of its 7:45 a.m. takeoff without incident or injury to any of its 119 passengers or six crew members, according to an airline spokesman. All were rescheduled to take another flight to Minnesota later Sunday afternoon, said Delta spokesman Anthony Black. Black said Delta mechanics confirmed that parts of the twin-engine Boeing 737-800 had been damaged, though the spokesman did not know which ones. "Incidents like this are extremely rare, but the crew knows the protocol and it's clear the pilot took appropriate action," Black said. Broward County Aviation Department spokesman Greg Meyer told CNN affiliate WPLG-TV that pieces of what appeared to be parts of the jet's damaged engine were recovered near the airport. Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said an initial inspection of the aircraft revealed a "contained failure." "Engine turbine blades exited the rear of the engine, they did not penetrate the engine cover," wrote Bergen in an e-mail to CNN. Bergen said the FAA is continuing to investigate the incident. Back to Top Malaysia Airlines A330 makes emergency landing New Delhi: A Malaysia Airlines plane with 158 passengers and crew had to land under emergency conditions at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on Sunday after one of its engines developed a technical problem. The Delhi-Kuala Lumpur flight MH 173 took off from here at 1308 hours. After an hour of flying, the pilot of the Airbus 330 aircraft noticed a snag in one of the engines and decided to return. The plane landed safely at 1505 hours under full emergency conditions, with fire tenders and ambulances alongside the runway on which the aircraft was to land. "After discovering some problem with the aircraft engine, the captain immediately made contact with airport officials on the ground to alert them about the situation. "At Malaysia Airlines, the safety of our passengers and crew is our top priority. At no time was this compromised, thanks to the swift response of our pilots together with the close cooperation of the authorities," Azahar Hamid, Malaysia Airlines Regional Senior Vice President (South Asia) said in a statement. - PTI http://www.hindu.com/2011/02/21/stories/2011022162931500.htm Back to Top Airplane slides off Flagstaff (AZ) runway A US Airways flight from Flagstaff to Phoenix slid off the Flagstaff airport taxi-way on Sunday afternoon. According to US Airways Spokesperson Michelle Mohr, there were no injuries aboard Flight 2865, a Dash 9 aircraft with 26 people. Heavy snow is likely to blame for the slide just after 2pm. Passengers were put onto another aircraft before departing to Phoenix. http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/ Back to Top Learjet 24 accident (Mexico) Status: Preliminary Date: 18 FEB 2011 Time: 11:04 Type: Gates Learjet 24 Operator: Escuela de Aviación Rutas Aereas Mayas Registration: XB-GHO C/n / msn: 24-141 First flight: 1967 Engines: 2 General Electric CJ610-6 Crew: Fatalities: 2 / Occupants: 2 Passengers: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 0 Total: Fatalities: 2 / Occupants: 2 Airplane damage: Written off Airplane fate: Written off (damaged beyond repair) Location: Pachuca-Ingeniero Juan Guillermo Villasana Airport (Mexico) Phase: Landing (LDG) Nature: Unknown Departure airport: Pachuca-Ingeniero Juan Guillermo Villasana Airport () (MMPC), Mexico Destination airport: Pachuca-Ingeniero Juan Guillermo Villasana Airport (MMPC), Mexico Narrative: Crashed into a building that housed a military canine unit at the airport and burst into flames. www.aviation-safety.net Back to Top Cessna Citation 525 Accident (Switzerland) Status: Preliminary - official Date: 16 FEB 2011 Time: 08:53 Type: Cessna 525 Citation CJ1+ Operator: Swiss Private Aviation Registration: HB-VOV C/n / msn: 525-0665 First flight: 2008 Engines: 2 Williams International FJ44-1AP Crew: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 2 Passengers: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 0 Total: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 2 Airplane damage: Substantial Location: Grenchen Airport (ZHI) (Switzerland) Phase: Takeoff (TOF) Nature: Private Departure airport: Grenchen Airport (ZHI) (ZHI/LSZG), Switzerland Destination airport: Newquay-Cornwall Airport (NQY) (NQY/EGHQ), United Kingdom Narrative: A Cessna 525 Citation CJ1+ corporate jet plane, registered HB-VOV, sustained substantial damage in a take-off accident at Grenchen Airport, Switzerland. The airplane operated on a flight from Grenchen Airport. Takeoff was commenced from the start of runway 07 but the airplane failed to become airborne. It continued past the end of the runway and collided with several obstructions as it entered a meadow. The airplane became airborne and the crew decided to divert to Zürich for an emergency landing. www.aviation-safety.net Back to Top Indonesia grounds airline SMAC over safety concerns The Indonesian Directorate General of Civil Aviation suspended the AOC of Sabang Merauke Raya Air Charter (SMAC) following the fatal accident of a CASA C-212 Aviocar operated by SMAC on February 12, 2011. The CASA Aviocar operated on a test flight from Batam Airport (BTH), Indonesia to Tanjung Pinang (TNJ) after the replacement of an engine. Preliminary investigation results indicated that: 1.The pilot in command was not qualified for this kind of flight; 2.No permission was obtain to carry out this test flight; and 3.A spare engine was carried on board during the test flight. These findings led the DGCA to suspend the airline's AOC as a "preventive action", according to the official statement. The DGCA will conduct a special safety audit of the airline and the airline will remain grounded until further notice. The airline was added to EU list of banned air carriers on July 4, 2007. www.aviation-safety.net Back to Top Ireland-bound flight diverted to Boston's Logan Airport A Continental Airlines flight headed from New Jersey to Ireland was diverted to Boston tonight after pilots reported an electrical burning odor onboard. The Boeing 757, on its way to Shannon from Newark, landed without incident at 9:40 p.m. at Logan International Airport, according to Massachusetts Port Authority spokeswoman Lisa Langone. None of the 191 people on board was injured, she said. The cause of the odor remains under investigation. As of late tonight, it wasn't clear when the plane would depart for Ireland. http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2011/02/ireland- bound_f.html Back to Top ATSB investigates Qantas A380 partial power loss A Qantas Airways A380 experienced a partial power loss during a flight on 15 February after encountering problems with a component in the aircraft's Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is investigating the incident, which took place near New Delhi during a Singapore-London Heathrow flight. The aircraft's registration is VH-OQC. "During the cruise the crew observed a gradual decrease in the oil quantity for the number four engine. As a precaution the engine was reduced to idle for the remainder of the flight," says the ATSB. "A subsequent engineering inspection found that the fitting of the external HP/IP [high pressure / intermediate pressure] oil line had less than the required torque." The aircraft involved in the incident was built in 2008, according to Flightglobal's ACAS database. The Trent 900's HP/IP bearing module has been linked to last November's uncontained engine failure on a Qantas A380. In a report on the incident released last December, the ATSB says a manufacturing defect led to cracking within a stub pipe that feeds oil to the HP/IP structure, resulting in oil leakage and an engine failure. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top Aircraft automation issues raise safety concerns Gone are the days of the skilled stick and rudder pilot. Modern aircraft depend on computer automation to a greater degree, causing the pilot-in-command (PIC) to become more of an observer. When electronic systems fail, the results can be catastrophic if not handled promptly and correctly, according to a segment on All Things Considered, a National Public Radio program which aired on Thursday, February 17, 2011. Many aviation safety expects cite the crash landing of a Turkish Airlines (TK) Boeing 737-8F2, registration TC-JGE, operating as Flight 1951, at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS) on February 25, 2009, and the more recent mysterious disappearance of Air France (AF) Flight 447, an Airbus A320-300, registration F-GZCP, which crashed somewhere in the south Atlantic Ocean on a flight from Rio de Janeiro- Galeăo International Airport (GIG) to Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) on June 1, 2009, as two examples of fatal accidents caused by errent aircraft automation systems. Computers now do much of the work which pilots used to do, including such functions as course adjustments and controlling aircraft speed and altitude. This leaves pilots spending much of their time as programmers and observers. Preliminary findings from a study group report due out this spring, composed of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), industry and research members, will warn of problems with automated flight systems. Anyone whose personal computer has ever crashed can relate to these issues, which are much more complex aloft. What is involved is a reduction in pilots' manual flying skills, possibly from an over reliance on automated systems, as well as an incomplete understanding of such computerized controls. Another issue is called "mode confusion". That happens when pilots lose track of how automated systems are programmed. Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF), agrees, and in a PSB NOVA report, explains why he thinks airlines should put more emphasis on solving computer automation problems during pilot training. His comments may be heard at this audio link. Others agree. As Tom Peterson, a flight instructor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL puts it, "It's the difference between fiction and fact, what you what you wish for, and what you've got." He trains students to confirm their actions on an LCD display screen, rather than depending on the configuration of controls and dials. In a similar scenario, a business jet pilot had a harrowing experience on approach to Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) in November 2010. The pilot, Pat Veillette, relates what happened. "It was a fairly busy time of the day. A lot of other airliners were arriving at the same time, which means that air traffic control needed each of us on very specific routes at specific altitudes, very specific air speeds, in order to maintain this smooth flow of traffic," he says. Captain Veillette was instructed by SLC air traffic control to fly a particular course. He and the other pilot flying the jet set the flight automation system to comply. That's when things went wrong. "What I anticipated the aircraft to do was to continue this descent," he says. "Well instead, the aircraft immediately pitched up, very abruptly and much to my surprise. And both of us reached for the yoke, going, 'What's it doing?' and there's that shock of, 'Why did it do that, what's it going to do next?' " He was not alone in having experienced such a computer flight control glitch. NPR analyzed nearly 2,500 NASA safety alerts issued to aviators over the past 10 years, finding dozens of stories warning of systems that did not work as pilots had expected. In addition, NPR and members of the Investigative News Network (INN), have examined more than 150,000 reports filed by pilots and others in the aviation industry over the past 20 years, which reveal more than 130 safety breaches and close calls at local, regional and major airports throughout the country on an average day. Such data are based on reports pilots and others send to the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), a voluntary system run by the FAA. In one case, a pilot described an Airbus A330 that climbed on its own, regardless of pilot input. Another reported an incident similar to a home computer's Blue Screen of Death. The plane's navigation screens froze as two redundant systems failed. The flight crew navigated to an airport using a rudimentary compass. Basic flight skills are still important, and can save lives. The FAA study group found that manual flying errors happened on 1 in 4 normal flights, which were monitored by safety auditors. Most accidents had a manual flying error associated with it. The most common mistakes pilots made included not knowing that automation was disconnected, and failing to monitor or maintain their speed. Last November, Kathy Abbott, a human factors expert who is on the FAA flight safety committee, called problems programming the systems "fairly common", stating that "vulnerabilities" in programming and errors using the automated systems were more prevalent during times of high stress or workload. In the case of the Turkish Airlines flight that crashed in Amsterdam in 2009, assisting Dutch authorities, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the Boeing 737's automatic throttles were getting the wrong altitude information from one of the plane's instruments. As a result, the throttles idled back on their own, slowing down the plane until it stalled. The NTSB said the plane's two pilots should have been monitoring its speed, but neither of them detected the slowdown until it was too late. There is one basic premise on which all the expects agree. Pilots should know when to turn off the automated systems and fly manually. It appears to be another example of relying on basic skills and avoiding such excuses as "the computer made a mistake". http://www.examiner.com/ Back to Top Senate wants FAA to study mobile telemetry A study of aeronautical mobile telemetry will be undertaken by the US FAA if a key provision in the Senate's FAA Reauthorisation bill is retained when both the House and Senate reach a consensus bill. This week the Senate passed its version of FAA Reauthorisation legislation, which among other things would require the FAA administrator "in consultation with other federal agencies" to submit a report to various Senate and House committees "that identifies the current and anticipated need over the next decade by civil aviation, including equipment manufacturers, for aeronautical mobile telemetry services". The study would also analyse "the potential impact to the aerospace industry of the introduction of a new radio service operating in the same spectrum allocated to the aeronautical mobile telemetry service". According to non-profit organization MITRE aeronautical telemetry is a way to measure and analyze the performance and safety of aircraft. Available radio spectrum for this service has been an area of concern. Further details of the Senate's provision are not immediately available. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top Boeing faces three simultaneous certification campaigns Boeing is facing a challenge on three fronts in 2011 as it aims to complete certification on three major programmes simultaneously - the 747-8I, 747-8F and the 787 - the first time it has attempted such a demanding target. Delays on all three projects have caused the programmes to bunch into the same calendar year, but Boeing remains confident that it can hit its deadline for each aircraft. The 747-8I is the next programme to get under way. This will require a flight-test campaign of about 600h using two aircraft. It will start in late March, with flight-test completion in the autumn, followed by year-end certification, says Elizabeth Lund, 747 vice-president and deputy programme manager. The first 747-8I is set for a late 2010 handover to a Boeing Business Jet completion centre. Meanwhile, Boeing is aiming for mid-year certification of the 747-8F and a third-quarter completion of 787 flight tests. "The schedule is achievable, but aggressive," says Lund. "If we have a major discovery it's always a risk in a development programme, but given what we know and the learnings we've taken from the Freighter and what we've put into this programme, we believe this is a schedule we can meet. "Many of the tests on our freighter will also give us [certification] credit on the Intercontinental. We don't have to test everything from scratch," says Lund. Tests already completed on the 747-8F, and not required on the -8I, include the flight loads survey, artificial ice shapes testing, wake vortex, water spray and community noise testing. Still left to be completed are extreme weather tests at high winds and high temperatures. Boeing aims to leverage staff from across the company to assist in the flight-test effort, while hiring additional personnel "to ensure we have the critical skills necessary to execute on our test commitments". With 747-8F and 787 flight-test programmes ramping down "the size of test teams required for those airplanes decreases and we are able to redeploy test personnel to the 747-8Is", says Boeing. Boeing already has five 747-8Fs in its test fleet and will have up to four 747-8Is. This is in addition to seven 787 test aircraft, which could grow to as many as nine to support systems functionality and reliability testing. RC001, a future Kuwaiti government aircraft, is the first of two dedicated 747-8I test aircraft. It is fully instrumented and designed for flutter clearance, flight controls, ride quality, and stability and control evaluations. RC021, which will eventually be delivered to launch customer Lufthansa, will handle much of the interior testing. A non-instrumented third aircraft will perform electromagnetic interference testing, along with lighting and in-flight entertainment validations and a fourth aircraft may be used for additional interiors testing, or serve as a back-up if other test aircraft are in planned maintenance. Still outstanding for Boeing are the demonstration activities to show the Federal Aviation Administration how it intends to remedy the two biggest causes of its most recent schedule slip. The first is the incorporation of the outboard aileron modal suppression (OAMS) system to dampen out a 2.4Hz vibration in the wing that resulted in a deflection of ±2.5cm (1in). OAMS activates automatically, by using the fly-by-wire outboard aileron to dampen the vibration. Todd Zarfos, 747-8 vice-president of engineering, says: "We know it'll work and now we just have to go through the last aspects of certification associated with that. "We had long conversations with the FAA on whether existing [Federal Aviation Regulations] covered what we were already doing. I'll just be frank, we thought they did, they characterised it as something 'new and novel' and that resulted in the need for a special condition," he says. Further, an underperforming actuator was replaced due to inability to handle the 207bar (3,000lb/in) hydraulic system pressure, prompting its redesign. Once certification is complete at the end of the year, Lufthansa expects to take delivery of its first 747-8I - configured with 386 seats in three classes - in early 2012. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top Baffled engineers left A320 to fly on after severe landing Failure by ground engineers to understand data confirming an Airbus A320 had suffered a severe hard landing in the Azores allowed the aircraft to be cleared to continue flying despite sustaining structural damage. After the landing at Ponta Delgada, the captain of the SATA International flight told a ground engineer that he suspected a hard touchdown. But while they analysed a load report from the data management unit, they were "unable to clarify" the information, says Portuguese investigation agency GPIAA, and "suspected it might be inconsistent". In its final report into the incident GPIAA says the aircraft - which was barely two months old, with only 533h - had experienced a 2.13g touchdown on Runway 30 after a high descent rate. It then bounced to a height of 12ft (3.6m), before dropping and hitting at 4.86g. An impact above 2.6g is categorised as hard. Two figures were given on the load report, identifying the extent of the impact and the limiting vertical acceleration threshold. But because the engineering department was closed, owing to the late hour, the ground staff could not reach anyone to help interpret the report. The pilots and engineer visually inspected the A320, but could not see anything irregular, and the event was not written up in the technical log. "As they were unable to understand the load report, they concluded that the displayed data might be erroneous," says GPIAA. The aircraft was flown back to Lisbon, but a second attempt by engineers there to decode the load report was also unsuccessful. Time pressures meant the aircraft was prepared and cleared for its next flight without the report being decoded, and the A320 flew six sectors after the landing before an A-check revealed damage to the wing shroud box on both sides, as well as compression damage to the main-gear tyres. The aircraft subsequently underwent a dedicated full inspection programme. Both main-gear legs and their tyres were eventually replaced, for tests to be conducted on the originals, and the aircraft was returned to flight on 30 November 2009, nearly four months after the 4 August incident. While the ground engineers were qualified, they did not carry out the actions required by the aircraft maintenance manual, says GPIAA, which adds that SATA has retrained all ground engineers to ensure they can correctly read load report data. Flight-control logic in the A320 led the aircraft computer to deploy the spoilers as the thrust levers were retarded in mid-bounce, destroying lift and causing the heavy second impact. While Airbus recommends executing a go-around during a high bounce, the airframer in 2010 began to introduce a change to its spoiler control logic to aid pilots. The modification, SEC 120, enables a 10° spoiler extension on initial touchdown without retardation of the thrust levers, partly counteracting lifting forces and dampening any bounce. Introduction of this partial lift-dumping logic to the A320 line started from airframe 4472 having already been developed for the A330 and A340. GPIAA says that, had the SATA aircraft been similarly modified, the force of the second impact would have been reduced to 1.7g. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC