Flight Safety Information May 9, 2011 - No. 095 In This Issue Crews recover black box from Indonesian plane crash site New jumbo jet performs ultimate aborted takeoff San Diego-bound jet diverted after report of security threat Flight diverted after man tries to open door in air 2 US Muslims Removed from Airplane After Clearing Security Two Air NZ flights hit engine trouble Indonesian Plane Crash Hurts Country's Air-Safety Initiatives 3 accidents involving Merpati MA 60 airplanes since 2010 Solving an aviation mystery Subcommittee Evaluates FAA Commercial Space Flight Budget Crashed Merpati MA60 was trying to land in poor weather Krakowski's Ouster Creates Side Effects For FAA Crews recover black box from Indonesian plane crash site JAKARTA (BNO NEWS) -- A search team on Sunday afternoon recovered the black box from a Merpati Nusantara Airlines passenger plane which crashed in the sea off Indonesia's West Papua province on Saturday, officials said. All 27 people on board were killed. The accident happened at around 2.05 p.m. local time on Saturday when Merpati Nusantara Airlines Flight 8968 was preparing to land at Kaimana Airport in West Papua province. It was on a domestic flight from Sorong Airport, also in West Papua. According to the Ministry of Transportation, the procedures to land at the airport are 'quite unique' as planes have to fly over several mountains before turning left to attempt a landing. Contact was lost after the pilot reported turning left for the landing. The cause of the accident was not immediately known, but officials said there was heavy rain and strong winds at the time of the accident, significantly reducing the pilot's visibility. The plane had been circling above the airport for at least 15 minutes in hopes for better weather. A spokesman for the Ministry of Transportation said the pilot may have attempted a last- minute water landing, but the China-built Xian MA60 aircraft broke up and sank quickly after it crashed about 600 meters (0.4 mile) from the airport. On Sunday, search teams found the black box of the aircraft which might reveal the cause of the accident. "We want to know for sure what exactly caused the accident," an official at the country's National Committee for Transportation Safety (NCTC) said, adding that the wreckage is located about 15 meters (49 feet) deep. As of late Sunday, officials said a total of 17 bodies had been recovered while the remaining 10 are believed to be trapped inside the wreckage. The aircraft was carrying 18 adult passengers, one child, two babies, and six crew members. Saturday's accident was the worst aviation accident in Indonesia so far this year. In February, five people were killed when a small passenger plane belonging to local airline Sabang Merauke Raya Air Charter (SMAC) crashed during a test flight in western Indonesia. And in April last year, around 20 people were injured when a Boeing 737-300 belonging to Merpati Airlines crashed near Rendani Airport in West Papua Province. Back to Top New jumbo jet performs ultimate aborted takeoff There is no plane I feel safer in than a Boeing 747. Its sheer size and its apparent effortlessness offer something no other plane seems to manage: the ability for passengers to relax. And they don't seem to drop out of the sky all that often either. However, Boeing is introducing a new and more economical version of the jumbo jet, the 747-8. So, in order to test its capabilities and secure safety certification, Boeing conducted an experiment to see just how well the new plane could abort takeoff. They loaded it with almost 1 million pounds of weight and, just for fun, installed a set of Goodrich brakes that were simply 100 percent worn out. "They've got them machined down so there's basically no material left." Boeing's flight test manager, Andy Hammer, said on the company site. So all Captain Kirk Vining had to do was slam on the brakes at 200 mph. Oh, and he wasn't allowed to use the thrust reversers. I imagine Capt. Vining to be a man with relatively low blood pressure and an addiction to bungie jumping without the bungie part. For he managed to bring this huge machine to a stop earlier than the test team had imagined. But then they had to hope the brakes wouldn't catch fire. And they weren't allowed fire department assistance for five minutes, in order to simulate a real scenario at a real airport, with real chaos. After it was done, Hammer offered, with renewed confidence: "This was the worst case. So when the airplane is in service, you can be assured that at 975,000 pounds, with worn brakes, worst center of gravity, and worst cut speed that you actually can stop the airplane." Well, I couldn't stop the airplane. I would be too busy trying to jump out of the window. But you know what he meant. And it seems like a good thing. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20060716-71.html#ixzz1LpCFkTno Back to Top San Diego-bound jet diverted after report of security threat CHICAGO (Reuters) - A San Diego-bound flight was diverted to Albuquerque on Sunday after the FBI received a report of "a potential security threat," but no suspicious devices were found on the plane, authorities said. Delta Flight 1706, carrying 137 passengers and six crew members, landed at Albuquerque International Sunport shortly before 10 a.m., FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said in a statement. Fisher did not provide details about the nature of the threat to the plane, which left from Detroit Metro Airport. CNN reported that the flight was diverted after a flight attendant found a suspicious note in a bathroom. "Crew and passengers were interviewed, and a search of the plane was conducted," Fisher said, adding that no passengers were detained. "Nobody was injured, and no suspicious devices were found," he said. The plane was diverted "out of an abundance of caution due to a security concern," said Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant. The plane was slated to resume its flight to San Diego International Airport later in the afternoon, said Daniel Jiron, a spokesman for the Albuquerque airport. Back to Top Flight diverted after man tries to open door in air An unruly passenger forced a Continental pilot to divert his Chicago-bound flight from Houston to St. Louis on Sunday, after the passenger made an attempt to open an emergency exit door during the flight. Twenty-minutes after Continental Airlines Flight 546 left Houston's George Bush Intercontinental, witnesses told authorities the 34-year-old passenger from Burbank, Ill., walked toward the front of the cabin, claiming he had to get off the plane. There were loud screams on board as men throughout the cabin dashed toward the disturbance, said Sara Olkon, a former Chicago Tribune reporter who was on the flight. "It was the sound of terror," she said. The passenger attempted to open a door, said Lynn Lunsford, an FAA spokesman. He did not succeed, as opening a pressurized aircraft door during flight is unlikely. But the passenger's actions forced the pilot to contact air traffic controllers at 1:15 p.m. They diverted the airplane to Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and it landed safely at 1:25 p.m., Lunsford said. When law enforcement officers met the plane, two passengers and a crew member were holding the man down on the floor of the cabin of the Boeing 737. The man was in police custody Sunday and was being questioned about the incident, said Jeff Lea, a spokesman for Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The man had not been charged by late Sunday. There was no indication that the incident was related to terrorism, Continental Airlines spokeswoman Julie King said. Police removed the unruly passenger's bags and "they didn't find anything in the luggage that was anything they had to investigate further," Lea said. But law enforcement officers were continuing to investigate whether there were any terrorist ties to the incident, he said. "There was no indication of anything different about this passenger until the actual incident, 20 minutes into the flight from Houston," Lea said. None of the 160 passengers aboard the flight were injured. The flight arrived in Chicago at 3:24 p.m., 1 hour and 9 minutes behind schedule. Another flight was diverted Sunday because of suspicious activity. Delta Airlines Flight 1706 from Detroit to San Diego was diverted to Albuquerque, N.M., deplaned and thoroughly searched after a flight attendant found a suspicious note in a lavatory. After the search, "no suspicious devices were found," FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said in an email. The flight was later cleared to continue on its route. Officials declined to comment on the nature of the diversion and whether it was related to the Continental flight. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7555866.html Back to Top 2 US Muslims Removed from Airplane After Clearing Security Two U.S. Muslim men wearing traditional clothing were removed from an airplane on Friday after the pilot refused to fly them even though they had cleared security. The incident occurred at the airport in the southern city of Memphis, Tennessee, as the two Muslims were set to fly to a conference on prejudice against Muslims in the southern city of Charlotte, North Carolina. The pilot on the regional air carrier Atlantic Southeast Airlines had started to taxi away from the gate when he changed his mind and returned to the terminal. One of the Muslims, Masudur Rahman, a professor of Arabic at the University of Memphis, said the unidentified pilot told him that "I'm not going to take you." Rahman quoted the pilot as saying that some passengers "might be upset or uncomfortable" if he and the other Muslim, Mohamed Zaghloul, were on the flight. The U.S. government agency that handles airport security (the Transportation Security Administration) confirmed the men were removed by the airline. The agency said it had screened the Muslims and they were cleared to fly. Atlantic Southeast operates flights for a much larger U.S. carrier, Delta Air Lines. After the men were taken off the flight, Atlantic Southeast apologized to them and said it was investigating the incident. The men were offered compensation and Delta transferred them to another flight. http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/2-US-Muslims-Removed-from-Airplane-After- Clearing-Security-121438929.html Back to Top Two Air NZ flights hit engine trouble The Civil Aviation Authority has confirmed there will be an investigation after two Air New Zealand planes were forced to make emergency landings yesterday. One of the flights was on its way from Auckland to Wellington when the pilots were forced to shut down the right-hand engine after discovering it had low oil pressure. The plane made an emergency landing at Hamilton Airport about 10:30am yesterday, with 95 passengers on board. Engineers in Hamilton found evidence of oil leaking from the engine. The engine will be removed from the plane in the next few days and moved to Auckland for further investigation. The second flight from Gisborne to Auckland, operated by Eagle Air, was forced to return to Gisborne after pilots noticed incorrect power readings from the left hand engine. Air New Zealand confirmed today the plane's captain shut down that engine as a precaution to prevent any possible damage. The aircraft has been inspected, tested and is back in service after the engine was found to be without fault. There were nine passengers onboard the flight. CAA spokesman Bill Sommer says Air New Zealand will be obliged to carry out an investigations into the two separate incidents, along with the CAA. Sommer said the CAA will wait and see the results of these investigations before it looks further into the matter. The investigation process should take a few days. http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/two-air-nz-flights-hit-engine-trouble-4161591 Back to Top Indonesian Plane Crash Hurts Country's Air-Safety Initiatives By ANDY PASZTOR (WSJ) The crash of an Indonesian turboprop Saturday on a domestic flight -- with early indications of more than two dozen fatalities -- follows a string of accidents in recent years that have undermined international confidence in the safety of many of the country's carriers. Rescuers find several bodies following a plane crash in remote Papua province. Video Courtesy Reuters. Indonesian TV shows photos of Merpati airlines crash that killed 15. Video courtesy of Reuters. Preliminary reports said the Chinese-built, propeller-powered Merpati Nusantara plane slammed into the water amid fog and rain, less than half a mile from its intended runway in Kaimana, an eastern province. Agence France-Presse quoted a rescue official saying all 27 people aboard were killed. Reuters reported that 15 bodies recovered, and more victims appeared trapped inside the wreckage. It's too early to tell what caused the accident, and some recent Indonesian plane crashes have remained unsolved partly because onboard recorders malfunctioned or couldn't be deciphered after data was downloaded. But aviation safety experts said Saturday's crash threatens to undercut efforts by the Indonesian government, along with its flag-carrier PT Garuda Indonesia, to persuade U.S. and European regulators about the country's aviation-safety improvements. It also comes as Garuda prepares to join the SkyTeam group of international airline partners next year, as part of the airline's strategy to ramp up service to European destinations. In the summer of 2009, Garuda was removed from the European community's airline blacklist, allowing it to resume flights to the region. A few other, smaller Indonesian carriers, including some all-cargo operators, also have been taken off the same blacklist. Garuda, however, remains unable to significantly increase its service to and from the U.S. because of Indonesia's poor safety ranking by the Federal Aviation Administration. Other countries downgraded in the past few years by the FAA include Croatia, Ukraine and the Philippines. But India and Thailand, countries that also have suffered a number of high-profile commercial crashes in recent years, weren't downgraded by the FAA despite persistent warnings of oversight deficiencies by independent air-safety experts. Both countries, however, mounted extensive drives to hire and train dozens of additional inspectors, supervisory pilots and other aviation professionals. Indonesian regulators pledged to make similar improvements, which apparently helped persuade European regulators to take Garuda off the blacklist. The country's airline industry has enjoyed robust growth, with overall international traffic expanding by some 20% last year. Previously, Indonesia experienced the emergence of a score of low-cost airlines to serve primarily regional and domestic markets. Yet during just the past two years, there have been at least five other serious accidents in Indonesia on domestic flights. In July 2010, a different Merpati turboprop veered off a runway, blowing its main tires and collapsing its nose gear, while halting a takeoff roll from Bintuni. Investigators determined the pilots failed to receive proper training for such rejected takeoff situations. Three months earlier, a Merpati Boeing 737 jetliner ran off the end of a wet runway while landing in rainy conditions at Manokwari, ending up in a river. Two passengers received critical injuries. In the summer of 2009 a Merpati turboprop flew into terrain due to pilot error, according to Indonesian investigators, because the crew was trying to visually identify a gap through mountains obscured by clouds. A Garuda Boeing 737 landed on a taxiway in October 2008 at Palembang and blew some tires, a sequence of events investigators determined was caused by pilots failing to pay adequate attention to visually lining up with the runway. Six months earlier, another Boeing 737 flown by a low-cost carrier landed too fast and too far down a strip at Pangkalpinang, ending up some 150 feet off the end of the runway. Investigators determined the captain realized the aircraft wasn't on the required stabilized approach, but he failed to take control from the first officer or order the necessary corrections. Back to Top 3 accidents involving Merpati MA 60 airplanes since 2010 Three accidents involving China-made Merpati Nusantara Airlines MA60 airplanes have happened since 2010. Below is the list of those accidents based on tempointeraktif.com data: July 14, 2010 A Merpati MA 60 airplane was scheduled to fly from Selaparang, Mataram to Denpasar, but it was canceled due to short circuit in the cabin. No casualties. Feb. 19, 2011 A Merpati MA 60 aircraft skidded off the runway at El Tari Kupang airport. All passengers and crew members survived the incident. May 7, 2011 A Merpati MA 60 airplane crashed off the sea near Kaimana airport, West Papua. -The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network Back to Top Solving an aviation mystery The doomed Air France flight's second black box has been found. Will we get the simple answers we're looking for? By Patrick Smith Earlier this week, a search team dredged up the second of the black boxes from the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 -- the Airbus A330 that crashed into the Atlantic nearly two years ago during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing 228 people. With the voice and data recorders finally on hand -- provided that critical data remains intact after spending 23 months beneath two miles of seawater -- investigators are on the verge of solving one of modern aviation's most perplexing disasters. What makes this such a tough and perhaps unsatisfying story, however, is that the "cause" of the accident won't be anything simple. People want an easy, all-in-one explanation: Turbulence crashed the plane. A sensor malfunction crashed the plane. The pilots "lost control." But it won't be any of those things. Or, more correctly, it's liable to be all of them, laced together in a cascade of events that was as complicated as it was unlikely. The technical aspects alone are something we could talk about all day. The air data sensors on an Airbus A330 are not the same as those on a Cessna. Kudos, meanwhile, to reporter Wil S. Hylton, whose piece in Sunday's New York Times Magazine is one of the most thorough explorations yet of this strange disaster. One aspect of his story, though, needs to be pulled out and clarified. Hylton writes: "For a passenger jet like the A330, the ideal cruising speed is about 560 miles per hour. If you go much faster, the center of lift moves back on the wing, pushing the nose down and increasing velocity, until you soon approach the speed of sound. At that point, shockwaves develop on the wings, interrupting the flow of air and reducing lift. The nose of the plane then gets forced into a dive that the pilot may not be able to pull out of. Then again, if you go too slow, the airplane stalls and falls. A plane must maintain a minimum speed to generate lift, and the higher it travels, the faster it must go. At 35,000 feet, the gap between too fast and too slow narrows ever closer. Pilots call it coffin corner." In an earlier column on Salon, I described the same phenomenon like this: A plane stalls when, roughly put, the wing runs out of lift. Not only are there low-speed stalls, but high-speed "shock stalls" as well: As airflow over the wing nears the speed of sound, a shock wave builds, separating the airflow and disrupting lift. Thus, at upper altitudes, where the air is very thin, we find an aerodynamic paradox: The higher a plane flies, the faster it needs to go to maintain lift; but the faster it goes, the closer it gets to that shock wave. You're stuck between going too fast and too slow at (almost) the same time. Much has been made about "coffin corner" in the wake of the 447 disaster -- most of it misleading. A "Nova" special on the crash featured a pilot commenting that the buffet margin during cruise flight can be as thin as 10 knots. I've since received numerous letters from people wondering how this could be; they're both mesmerized and frightened by the idea that a jetliner at 35,000 feet is literally on the verge of disaster. Except that it's not. While it's possible that the A330 succumbed to a high-speed stall or partial loss of control -- in response to an upset brought on by severe turbulence and loss of instruments and control authority -- its margins at 35,000 feet would have been considerably greater than 10 knots, and the jet was nowhere near coffin corner. Jets are engineered to fly at high altitudes, and have been doing so safety for more than 50 years. This proverbial razor's edge is only relevant at a point well beyond the average jetliner's performance envelope. Coffin corner is not where commercial airliners hang around. Although the recorders have been found, we continue to hear about the supposed obsolescence of the traditional "black box." Considering the capabilities of modern electronic communications, why are planes unable to provide continuous transmission of voice and data to be recorded remotely? This is something I addressed a couple of years ago, but that bears repeating. For starters, developing this technology would be very costly and then seldom useful. Crashes are rare enough; crashes in which the recorders are unrecoverable even more so. Transmitting such data also would require tremendous bandwidth. "Two hundred and fifty six individual data streams are recorded by the flight data recorder of a modern jet," notes Christine Negroni, an aviation journalist and air safety specialist who has written a book on air crash forensics. "Plus the recording of the conversations and other sounds in the cockpit. "Given how quickly communication and digital technology are evolving, it's feasible that soon it would be manageable to transmit this information using VHF radio frequencies when an airplane is in radio receiving range, but what about flights over remote areas or over water [as the Air France flight was]? Communicating this data would require streaming via satellite, and that would be hugely expensive. "And where would all this information be stored? There are tens of thousands of commercial flights daily. And even for that one crash in 2 million flights, there's rarely a need for external recording." Negroni also points out that some essential parameters already are streamed, via an onboard communications device called ACARS. http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2011/05/06/air_france_black_box_found Back to Top Subcommittee Evaluates FAA Commercial Space Flight Budget Washington D.C. - Today the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics held a hearing to review the Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 budget request submitted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (also referred to as AST) and to examine new initiatives in the request to expand the office's roles and responsibilities. Speaking on behalf of the Administration was Dr. George Nield, FAA Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation. "The Office of Commercial Space Transportation provides an essential public service, ensuring that commercial launches are undertaken with the highest level of safety," said Subcommittee Chairman Steven Palazzo (R-MS). "Their record of achievement is significant, licensing over 200 launches without any loss of life, serious injury, or notable property damage to the general public." The AST budget request asserts that NASA- sponsored commercial cargo flights to the International Space Station that are scheduled to begin next year, plus the expected start-up of commercial human sub-orbital flights, places new regulatory demands on AST's operations. Subsequently, AST's FY2012 budget request seeks $26.625 million, a 74% increase over the FY2010 enacted level, and a fifty percent increase in the size of its workforce. The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 included two related provisions that were the subject of much of today's discussion: the first authorized AST to regulate commercial human space flight launch systems; the second prohibited AST from regulating commercial human space flight for eight years in order to give space tourism companies an opportunity to design, develop and operate new and experimental launch systems. December 2012 marks the end of the eight-year regulatory ban, and the debate centered around the need for extending the ban. Palazzo noted today that "The freeze was expected to allow the nascent (space tourism) industry to gain experience through experimental flights upon which AST could rely as it began to draft a regulatory regime." However, roughly six-and-a-half years have elapsed since the bill's enactment, and there is an effort underway in Congress to extend the regulatory prohibition another eight years. The Government Accountability Office (GAO)said there were many uncertainties associated with how fast the demands on FAA's resources will grow, and whether such a dramatic budgetary increase as proposed in their FY2012 request is warranted. Testifying today on behalf of GAO, Dr. Gerald Dillingham, Director of Civil Aviation Issues, noted that the number of commercial launches has actually declined over the last decade. However, R&D efforts have also been steadily increasing, as companies anticipate increased demand. Dr. Henry R. Hertzfeld, Research Professor of Space Policy and International Affairs at George Washington University, was optimistic about the potential of a commercial industry, but conceded that the industry can only grow if the Federal Government is the initial buyer of services. "The licensing of inorbit commercial activities will grow as governments contract with commercial firms for different services," Hertzfeld said. "However, it is unlikely that these services will grow without a large initial market funded by the traditional government space agencies as the prime customers." http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=33491 Back to Top Crashed Merpati MA60 was trying to land in poor weather Investigators have detailed the final moments of the Xian Aircraft MA60 which crashed in the sea while attempting to land at Kaimana's Utarom airport in West Papua. The Indonesian transport ministry says the effort to retrieve the flight recorders from the Merpati Nusantara Airlines turboprop involves dives to a depth of 15m. It identifies the airframe as bearing registration PK-MZK, and serial number 2807, and says that it was trying to land in poor weather on 7 May after a service from Sorong's Domine Eduard Osok airport from where it had departed at 12:45 eastern Indonesia time. Operating as flight MZ8968 the 56-seat aircraft, manufactured last year, was carrying 21 passengers - among them three children - and a crew of six: two pilots, two flight attendants and two technicians. While the aircraft was expected to land at 13:55, says the ministry, it had to wait for an improvement in the "very bad" weather at Kaimana airport, which included "heavy rain and strong winds". The MA60, inbound from the north-west, had been intending to land on runway 01. "The procedures for landing at the airport are unique," says the ministry. It says that flights arriving from Sorong must cross the mountains "to the left of the runway" - possibly a reference to the terrain east of Kaimana airport - then make a left turn in preparation for the approach. The pilot's final contact with air traffic control showed that the aircraft was ready to land. "But afterwards it lost direct communication," says the ministry, adding that the aircraft subsequently crashed into the sea, about 600m from the runway, at 14:05. It states that the aircraft had logged 615h in 764 flight cycles and, being relatively new, had not undergone any heavy maintenance. The ministry defends the Chinese-built MA60, stating that it meets Indonesian safety requirements and points out that the type is used in China, Myanmar, the Philippines, Laos and other countries. "We want certainly to know the cause of the accident," says the ministry. "It will all become known when we examine the flight recorder." Poor weather could hamper the recovery of the recorders, the ministry warns, as well as the retrieval of casualties. Seventeen of the 27 occupants had been retrieved by 8 May. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top Krakowski's Ouster Creates Side Effects For FAA Now that the dust has settled after the sudden resignation of FAA Chief Operating Officer Henry Krakowski, it is time to consider the long-term implications. It seems clear that the U.S. Transportation Department's main goal in forcing the issue was to send a signal that it is taking recent controller controversies seriously. But Krakowski's departure will have broader ramifications for the agency's operational arm. FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said on April 14 that he had accepted Krakowski's resignation as the head of the Air Traffic Organization (ATO). The consensus among industry observers is that Krakowski was pushed out rather than leaving of his own accord. The damaging revelations of controllers sleeping on the job and being caught in other unprofessional behavior apparently became too much for the administration, so a head had to roll. The FAA's chief counsel, David Grizzle, has taken on the job on an acting basis, and a search is under way for Krakowski's replacement. A major side effect is that the ATO could be without a leader for several months. It took the FAA eight months to hire Krakowski after his predecessor, Russell Chew, announced he was leaving the agency in 2007. And it took more than a year to fill the vacancy before Chew was hired in 2003. It may be tempting to think that it is no big deal if the ATO does not have a long-term leader. But this is a critical time for the organization: Controller work rules are being revised, funding is still in limbo, and major NextGen deployment is under way. Krakowski's treatment will hardly make the position any easier to fill. After all, he had done a good job fine-tuning the ATO's operations and getting important modernization programs on track, and was highly regarded within the aviation community. He had to deal with meddling from Congress and the past two administrations on many fronts, including labor relations. It certainly appeared that Krakowski's hands were tied when it came to negotiating with the controllers' union. The type of candidate eventually chosen by the Obama administration will give signals about the future direction of the ATO. Chew and Krakowski were both cut from the same cloth-former airline pilots who had risen through the operational and executive ranks. Their brief was to make the ATO into a performance-based and more businesslike organization. It would not be surprising if the next COO has less of an airline-focused background, and strong organizational oversight credentials. And if someone with more government experience is selected, that might signal that the ATO is being pulled further back into the FAA fold. After all, its position as a semi-independent body has never been an entirely comfortable fit. http://www.aviationweek.com Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC