Flight Safety Information April 12, 2011 - No. 074 In This Issue Taxiing Jumbo Jet Clips Other Plane at JFK Airport Pilots Recruited For SpaceShipTwo Pilots refuse flights to Goa for safety reasons (India) Pilots want restrictions on high-powered laser purchases (New Zealand) Weathering heights: FAA cockpit simulator to help airline safety China's older aircraft to be inspected in wake of US incident Odor forces plane to land at RDU FAA Operates From New Air Traffic Control System Command Center TSB critices Transport Canada on slow implementation of safety recommendation 737 collides with MD-82 at Jakarta airport FAA Blames Lynx Maintenance Lapse On Safety Processes AF447 Wreckage Promises New Clues For Investigators Taxiing Jumbo Jet Clips Other Plane at JFK Airport NEW YORK (AP) -- A wing of an Airbus A380, the world's biggest commercial passenger jet, clipped the tail of another plane while taxiing out to depart John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday night. There were no injuries when the Air France super jumbo jet touched the other plane at 8:09 p.m., Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters said. Air France Flight 7, bound for Paris, was taxiing on a runway when its left wingtip struck the tail of Comair Flight 6293, which had just landed from Boston and was taxiing to its gate at Kennedy, one of the nation's busiest airports, Peters said. Both jets were being towed to a ramp area for inspection, Peters said. The extent of the damage was unknown. The FAA didn't immediately say how many people were on the double-deck Airbus A380, which can carry 525 passengers in a three-class configuration or more than 850 in a single-class configuration. The Comair CRJ 700 Regional Jet was carrying 62 passengers and four crew members, said Betsy Talton, a spokeswoman of Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc., for which Comair operates regional flights. All the passengers were taken off the plane and into a terminal, she said. The most serious safety scare for the world's largest and newest jetliners occurred last year, when a Rolls-Royce engine on a Qantas A380 disintegrated shortly after takeoff from Singapore, prompting Qantas to temporarily ground its fleet. A preliminary report blamed the massive engine failure on an oil leak. Back to Top Pilots Recruited For SpaceShipTwo Virgin Galactic is looking for a few good pilots-very good pilots-to fly paying customers to the edge of space and back in its SpaceShipTwo rocketplane. The Virgin Atlantic space-tourism spin-off plans to hire another aviator by June to help David MacKay, its lone test pilot, get ready for the start of spaceflight as early as next year. Virgin wants to cast a wide net, because the jobs won't be easy to fill. The pilot selected- plus two to be hired later-must be able to handle both the air-launched SpaceShipTwo and its multi-engine WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft. A deft touch with the passengers will be a big plus as well, since they'll be in the same cabin as the flight crew. "The sort of person we're looking for is somebody with decent experience-not just a few flights but some proper background in large aircraft with asymmetric thrust-handling issues," MacKay says. "And for SpaceShip it needs to be somebody who's been in pretty dynamic, fighter-type vehicles. It's a big t ask, but we know there are people out there with that sort of background." Valuable Time MacKay has yet to take controls of the SpaceShipTwo as it moves from drop tests to powered flight. That job continues to be handled by Peter Siebold and Mark Stucky, the test pilots at Scaled Composites who are breaking in their company's new spacecraft. But MacKay is getting valuable time in Scaled's SpaceShip simulator, and he isn't asking for anyone more qualified than himself. A former U.K. Royal Air Force test pilot, MacKay has logged more than 12,000 hr. at the controls of more than 100 different aircraft types. After 16 years of military service, he joined Virgin Atlantic in 1995 and became a Boeing 747 captain before moving to the Airbus A340 in 2002. "I was brought in to act as a sort of technical liaison, if you like, between Scaled Composites and the rest of Virgin Galactic-the commercial team, the marketing team and the operational team, with a view to ensuring we were going to get what we expected to get, and working out how easy these vehicles would be to operate, and what sort of experience we would need in our pilots and what sort of training they would require." Influx of Applications Virgin Galactic will post its job offering for SpaceShipTwo pilots on April 11 at its http://www.virgingalactic.com/careers/website. Virgin Atlantic will help sift the expected influx of applications, and Scaled Composites also will have a say in the hiring once the applicants are winnowed. "What we want to do in this campaign is identify three candidates," MacKay says. "That's our minimum. We're looking at getting one person aboard round about June or as soon after June as we can manage it, then as the schedule demands maybe taking on another couple from those initial candidates. I wouldn't want to put a date on it, because it really is a research and development program. We haven't got a motor in the spaceship yet, so there's a lot to be done." With the space shuttle program down to its final few months, one group that is likely to include pilots both qualified and interested in the job is the U.S. astronaut corps. "Someone with a spaceflight background would be very interesting for us," MacKay says. "We're going to look for the best of the best," adds George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic's CEO. "We're not in a huge rush. We're going to put this out and we're going to see who applies. Obviously we want to hire these folks as soon as we get good qualified folks, but we don't want to rush it, because these are going to be among the most important hires that we make." http://www.aviationweek.com/ Back to Top Pilots refuse flights to Goa for safety reasons (India) AI pilots body asks all pilots to not to fly to Goa NEW DELHI: After six airlines including Air India broke rules, undertaking blind landings at the Goa airport, Air India's pilots body has issued a directive to all pilots asking them to not fly to Goa. Six airlines landed at the Goa airport without navigational aid between April 7 and April 10 2011, putting the lives of thousands of fliers at risk. The commercial pilots association has asked pilots to wait till the landing aids are fully functional. The Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) issued a letter on Monday stating , "All pilots are hereby directed not to undertake flights to VAGO (Goa) till the landing aids such as PAPI and GP are fully available and functional." Showing disregard for safety of flyers, no less than six airlines made virtually blind landings in Goa without any navigational aid for which they were pulled up by the DGCA. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ Back to Top Pilots want restrictions on high-powered laser purchases (New Zealand) Airline pilots want to see legislation passed to restrict the sale of high-powered lasers which have been causing havoc in aircraft cockpits. Police today were looking for a person who shone a green laser into the cockpit of a Pacific Blue plane as it was coming in to land at Auckland International Airport shortly before midnight last night. Air Line Pilots Association (Alpa) vice-president Glen Kenny said the laser incidents were becoming too common. "I understand there's been 16 in New Zealand alone this year," he told said. Mr Kenny said part of the problem was with high-strength lasers, or class three lasers, which Alpa wanted controls on. "There is no restriction on the sale and distribution of commercial-strength lasers in New Zealand. In Australia they do, they treat class three lasers or higher as a potential weapon," he said. Alpa put forward a proposal along these lines to the Government two or three years ago and though it seemed to be progressing, Alpa felt it should be given a higher priority, he said. The National Radiation Laboratory, which falls under the Ministry of Health, issued a warning in June last year, saying the public needed to take care with high-powered lasers. Senior adviser Martin Gledhill said there had already been a number of successful police prosecutions where people had carelessly or deliberately aimed lasers at vehicles or aircraft. Mr Gledhill said the Ministry of Health was working with Customs, Police, the Civil Aviation Authority and Consumer Affairs to look at what regulatory action was necessary to minimise the risk of harm from powerful lasers. A Ministry of Health spokesman today said the issue of further regulations on lasers was still being considered. Mr Kenny said the lasers could be a major distraction for a pilot at night and there was currently no eye equipment which could be used to counter it. "Nobody has died yet, but there was one incident in the United States involving a helicopter last year where a pilot lost control, and if these sorts of incidents continue it will only be a matter of time before there is a serious accident." http://www.odt.co.nz/news/ Back to Top Weathering heights: FAA cockpit simulator to help airline safety A level 4 fixed-base flight training device developed by the Federal Aviation Administration will play a part in a National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) project to boost safety for transoceanic flights. The FAA contribution - primarily geared towards next-generation air transport system (NextGen) studies later this year - is under the banner of "weather technology in the cockpit" and is intended to determine the most cost-effective and usable methods of bringing satellite-linked severe weather data to airline pilots in remote ocean regions. Although NCAR has been studying and testing methods of getting satellite-based strategic weather data to pilots since 2000, the June 2009 crash of Air France flight 447 over the South Atlantic on a flight from Brazil to Paris added urgency to the need for a solution. Little is known about the cause of the crash, because the flight data and cockpit voice recorders have been missing, but an NCAR reconstruction of satellite weather data in the intertropical convergence zone where the accident happened revealed an area of extreme convection in the flightpath. "Deep convection was clearly present and, with sufficient warning, the pilot could have diverted and thus avoided the area of cloud top heights in excess of 40,000ft [12,200m]," says NCAR. Although the Airbus A330 did carry weather radar, the equipment sometimes cannot penetrate the leading edge of the convection, highlighting the need for satellite weather products. "The pilot could have thought it was clear on the other side," says Tenny Lindholm, manager of aviation projects for NCAR. Work on such a product preceded the Air France accident by several years. Lindholm says NCAR worked with United Airlines for five years to bring satellite weather to widebody crews flying from the USA to New Zealand and Australia. "International carriers in the USA were interested in uplinked real-time weather to flightdecks for long flights, where fuel carry doesn't allow a lot of deviating around weather," says Lindholm. "They would depart [Los Angeles] for Sydney and by the time they'd get there, the weather would be 10h old." What NCAR developed was a way to use the thermal line printers already on the flightdeck for the aircraft communications addressing and reporting system (ACARS) to produce a character-based graphic of severe weather at 30,000ft and 40,000ft in the aircraft's path over the coming 2h window. Lindholm says the new study is designed to "explore a little more from the human factors standpoint" how pilots can best use the data. "We will use the simulator to sit and watch," he says. "We are hoping to learn a lot more about how we would do uplink of weather before we would put an operational system in place." The forthcoming simulations at the FAA's NextGen integration and evaluation capability (NIEC) laboratory will use an Airbus A320 cockpit with actual sidestick, rudder pedals, flight management system and ACARS thermal printer, but with reconfigurable displays that enable the user to model other avionics and hardware via touchscreen controls. A class 2 electronic flight bag will also be used to display colour graphical weather data. Built from commercial off-the-shelf equipment, the simulator uses Microsoft flight simulator for its graphics driver. With the character-based weather display, aircraft can use the ACARS printer already on board for weather alerts. "Pilots like pretty displays and aren't happy about character displays because it's not pretty," says Lindholm. "Is it good enough, though?" This year's one-week simulation effort will include at least two airline crews flying simulated 4h moonless night missions from Miami to Lima, Peru, crossing the intertropical convergence zone "where we see a lot of intense convection year round", says Lindholm. Baseline simulations, including two weather events per flight, will use traditional methods, including pre-flight weather combined with communication to dispatchers over ACARS. Other simulations would provide the pilots with various graphical weather updates during the flight, including convection alerts. "We are creating case studies at NCAR to ingest into the NIEC mission computer so it will look realistic on airborne radar as well as on uplink picture to the EFB," says Lindholm. "We will correlate the airborne weather radar with uplink of satellite data that shows weather well beyond the 150-180nm [280-330km] range of radar. Radar is susceptible to scattering if storms are intense. The crew may not see what is beyond leading edge due to attenuation of the signal. They need a strategic view." http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/04/12/355344/weathering-heights-faa- cockpit-simulator-to-help-airline.html Back to Top China's older aircraft to be inspected in wake of US incident The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) recently issued an airworthiness directive requiring domestic airlines to inspect older Boeing 737s following the emergency grounding of an aircraft in the United States. A Boeing 737 operated by U.S. carrier Southwest Airlines was forced to make an emergency landing on April 1 because of a hole in its fuselage. Shortly afterwards, the Federal Aviation Administration issued an emergency airworthiness directive requiring older Boeing 737 planes to be inspected, and Boeing Company urged operators of its Boeing 737-300, 737-400, and 737-500 planes to check lap joints carefully. For safety concerns, the CAAC issued an airworthiness directive ordering domestic airlines to inspect the mentioned Boeing 737 models. Airplanes that have accumulated between 30,000 and 35,000 total flight cycles (one takeoff and one landing equals one cycle) should be inspected within 20 days after receipt of the directive, and airplanes with 35,000 total flight cycles or more should be inspected within four days. A CAAC official said on April 10 that domestic passengers should feel reassured because most Boeing aircraft operated by Chinese airlines are new models and only have a small number of flight cycles. Domestic airlines said that no cracks have been found during checks of their Boeing 737 aircraft. A spokesperson for China Southern Airlines (CSA) said that most of its Boeing 737 fleet are new models, namely the Boeing 737-700 and 737-800. CSA does not operate Boeing 737-400 or 737-500, and the 737-300 aircraft it operates have accumulated fewer than 35,000 total flight cycles, so passengers can rest assured that CSA's flights are safe and secure. http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/7347574.html Back to Top Odor forces plane to land at RDU RALEIGH -- A Delta airlines flight from New York made an emergency landing at Raleigh/Durham International Airport Monday night after crew on board noticed a strong electrical odor, officials said. The pilots radioed ahead to request that medics meet them at the gate, RDU officials said, because some of the plane's crew members reported feeling ill. Delta flight 1415 landed safely about 9:30 p.m. and nobody was injured. The plane was traveling from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and was carrying 94 passengers. RDU officials said nobody had to be transported to hospitals for treatment. Delta officials were working Monday night on new flight arrangements to deliver the plane's passengers to their intended destination. www.newsobserver.com/ Back to Top FAA Operates From New Air Traffic Control System Command Center The "Conductor" Of The National Airspace System The new David J. Hurley Air Traffic Control System Command Center, located in Warrenton, VA, is fully operational, the FAA announced Monday. "If you think of our national airspace system as an orchestra, the Command Center's the conductor," said Deputy Secretary Porcari. "It's a 24/7 operation where the traffic flow is set for the entire day." "With 5,000 aircraft in the sky over the U.S. at any given moment, the Command Center plays a critical role in ensuring that all of that traffic is handled safely and efficiently," said FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt. The Command Center is responsible for managing the overall use of the national airspace system. Traffic management specialists balance air traffic demand with system capacity, working with aviation stakeholders to handle any constraints in the system, such as weather, runway closures and delays. They coordinate with air traffic controllers at facilities throughout the country to ensure that air traffic moves as smoothly as possible. The new Command Center is co-located with the FAA's Potomac Terminal Radar Approach Control, or TRACON, a consolidated approach and departure control facility that opened in 2002. About 600 employees work at the two facilities. FMI: www.faa.gov Back to Top TSB critices Transport Canada on slow implementation of safety recommendation A TSB investiation into a cabin smoke and passenger evacuation incident revealed that Transport Canada had not yet implemented an actual regulatory change after accepting a safety recommendation dated December 2007. The recommendation called for passenger safety briefings to include clear direction to leave all carry-on baggage behind during an evacuation. On March 23, 2010 an Air Canada Airbus A320-211 (registration C-FTJO), operating as flight AC433, departed Montréal/Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport, Québec, for Toronto/Lester B. Pearson International Airport, Ontario, with 98 passengers and 6 crew members on board. In cruise, 1 of the 3 hydraulic systems failed. The flight continued toward destination where the flight made an uneventful landing. While stopped on the runway awaiting a tow, smoke entered the cabin and an evacuation was ordered. Two crew members and 2 passengers received minor injuries during the evacuation. The TSB concluded that: 1.A leak from the number 1 yaw damper caused fluid to be ingested into the auxiliary power unit and sent through the air conditioning system, resulting in smoke entering the cabin. 2.When the crew ordered the evacuation as a result of the smoke, several persons received minor injuries while exiting the aircraft via the emergency slides. It appeared that many passengers deplaned with their carry-on luggage. It could not be determined whether this was due to the fact that they were not aware of the instructions given by the flight attendants and included in the safety card, or if they were aware, but chose to disregard them. Passengers would have been more aware of this restriction if information was included during the pre-takeoff and pre-landing passenger briefings, as per TSB recommendation A07-07. The few injuries that did occur may have been aggravated by the fact that the slides were wet from the rain, and the resultant speed of the exiting persons was higher than normal. While the baggage did cause some minor injuries and delays at the bottom of the slides, it did not appreciably increase the evacuation time. Were this a higher level of threat or emergency, however, even a slight delay could have resulted in more serious consequences. Transport Canada agreed with the Board's recommendation (A07-07) that called for passenger safety briefings to include clear direction to leave all carry-on baggage behind during an evacuation. However, to date, no regulatory change has been implemented. Due to the extensive delay between TC's acceptance of this recommendation and the implementation of actual regulatory change, identified safety dificiencies continue to persist. More information: * TSB Aviation Investigation Report A10O0045 www.aviation-safety.net Back to Top 737 collides with MD-82 at Jakarta airport A Boeing 737-300 operated by Indonesian carrier Kal Star Aviation collided with a Boeing MD-82 owned by Lion Air subsidiary Wings Air at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta Airport early Sunday morning. The 737 was reversing when it collided with the stationary MD-82, says a Lion Air spokeswoman. The elevator of the MD-82 was damaged in the incident, she adds. Reports quoting an official from the airport operator says that the 737-300 suffered damage to its rudder and that both aircraft have been grounded for further investigations. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top FAA Blames Lynx Maintenance Lapse On Safety Processes FAA is charging Republic Holdings' subsidiary Lynx Airways with a $350,000 fine for operating one of its Bombardier Dash 8-Q402 aircraft while out of compliance with federal aviation regulations. The agency alleges the operation's maintenance department had four opportunities to catch and remedy the lapses as well, but "failed to catch the problem through its own safety processes." Lynx Aviation and Frontier Airlines became Republic Holdings subsidiaries in August 2009, when Republic bought them out of bankruptcy. The status of the Lynx Dash-8 fleet has since been shaky, and Republic's business plan calls for phasing them out of service. The Dash-8 involved in the maintenance lapse, registered as N501LX, is one of a handful of aircraft operated by Lynx Aviation to cities in Colorado. The Ascend fleet database does not list aircraft N501LX among Lynx Aviation's current fleet; two other Dash-8s are listed as in storage, and one Dash-8, N502LX, is listed as in service. The aircraft that generated these allegations required engine maintenance in April 2010, when Lynx maintenance personnel removed and replaced its number two engine-driven hydraulic pump. But FAA says Lynx staff skipped steps in completing and documenting the tasks. First, the agency says, Lynx staff failed to accomplish two task cards associated with non-routine maintenance for this component per its own general maintenance manual and consequently did not sign off correctly on the work. Then, Lynx "did not create or keep a record necessary to show that all of the requirements for the issuance of an airworthiness release" pertaining to the number two engine hydraulic pump had been met, the agency says. Finally, FAA says Lynx did not properly audit its maintenance records, a safety guard that should have caught the maintenance lapse. Between maintenance on April 16, 2010, and June 3, 2010, when an FAA inspector took note of the discrepancies, Lynx operated the Bombardier turboprop on about 177 flights while it was in an unairworthy condition. http://www.aviationweek.com Back to Top AF447 Wreckage Promises New Clues For Investigators Investigators hope to tap AF447 cockpit voice, flight data recorders and other devices Despite more than 18 months at deep-sea levels, the wreckage of Air France Flight AF447 promises to yield important clues to unraveling the mystery of what brought down the Airbus A330-200 in midflight. Investigators may be able to extract useful information from memory in the CF6's full authority digital engine control system.Credit: BEA The circumstances surrounding the June 1, 2009, crash of the widebody en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris have confounded industry officials, in part because the little information gleaned until now has provided no cohesive picture of the sequence of events. That information was gathered from a set of Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (Acars) error messages broadcast by the aircraft before all contact was lost and from wreckage recovered immediately after the accident. What is more, the inability to find the bulk of the wreckage for over a year exacerbated industry anxiety that the safety reputations of Air France and the A330 could sustain lasting damage if a probable cause could not be established. That fear caused the airline and Airbus to help finance the last two search phases. But now that large parts of the wreckage of AF447 have been discovered, safety officials are optimistic they will be able to unlock more clues about what occurred. The wreckage was found about 10 km (6 mi.) north of the last known position of the aircraft by Remus 6000 submersibles operating off the Alucia vessel. It lies 4,000 meters (13,000 ft.) below the ocean surface, but safety officials note they have had a measure of luck because the debris field appears to be largely in a flat area, which should ease salvage operations; much of the seabed in that area of the Atlantic is ragged. The primary target for the recovery teams, once bodies have been recovered, will be the aft fuselage section where the cockpit voice and flight data recorders are located, although officials for the French air accident investigation office, the BEA, note that part of the aircraft has not yet been spotted. The recorders on the A330-200 are located behind the aft pressure bulkhead. Wreckage found includes at least one of the General Electric CF6-80E1 engines, parts of the landing gear, the topskin panel of the left wing and fuselage elements. While there is concern that the black boxes will not yield useful data, an industry official is confident that that is not the case. Even if the recorders have sustained some damage, they are likely to have retained much of their information. One reason, he says, is that the aircraft settled at a depth and area where there was apparently little oxygen, so the recorders are unlikely to have suffered corrosion-one of the greatest threats to data integrity. Furthermore, data is recorded on chips in such a way that the loss of one does not erase a whole block of time but merely cuts out information at certain intervals, facilitating determination of what happened during the time for which data is missing. In addition, he says, black box makers can use fine-precision tooling to restore damaged connections and extract more information. Although the cockpit voice and flight data recorders would be the primary sources of information, clues can also be gleaned from other devices, such as the avionics and the engines' full-authority digital engine control. Early examination of the newly found wreckage is providing BEA some first clues, including that its initial assumption that the aircraft hit the ocean surface intact is likely correct. A key question for investigators will be exactly how the crew and systems interacted once the A330-200 entered extreme weather conditions. The Acars messages indicate pitot tube icing caused the autopilot to disconnect, although that alone should not have led to a crash. Industry officials also have dismissed a tail stall as the cause. The accident has raised questions about the A330 flight management system's setup and degree of redundancy. Industry safety officials say that even if the data show there are equipment problems, they prefer to discover and fix them than have questions hanging over the widely used widebody. http://www.aviationweek.com Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC