Flight Safety Information July 15, 2011 - No. 143 In This Issue Planes Collide On Boston Runway Jet evacuated after odor in cabin After 85 killed in crash, Congo yanks license of troubled airline NTSB announces 'comprehensive study' of experimental aircraft Man arrested for pointing laser at law enforcement aircraft Army private accused of trying to board plane with explosives Medvedev's Impossible Airplane Ban Fumes force Southwest flight to return to NM Continental may hire furloughed United pilots Emergency drill set Friday at Sea-Tac Airport Planes Collide On Boston Runway Wing Of Larger Plane Clips Regional Aircraft BOSTON -- The wing of a Delta Air Lines jet clipped the tail of another aircraft that provides regional air service for the carrier while both planes were on a runway in Boston. Boston Logan International Airport spokesman Phil Orlandella said one person is complaining of neck pain after a Delta Boeing 767 jet hit the Atlantic Southeast Airlines plane Thursday. "We're going to have to wait here for a moment," the captain of the Delta jet radioed. "I think we hot the RJ off our left with our wing." "Did he hit you with his tail? His wing?" air traffic replied. Orlandella said there were no other injuries following the incident, which took place about 7:30 p.m. Delta Flight 266, destined for Amsterdam, was taxiing to the runway when its wing clipped the smaller ASA plane. ASA Flight 4904 was destined for Raleigh, N.C. The vertical stabilizer of the smaller plane was badly damaged. The end of the wing of the 767 was sheared. "The tip of the wing just sheared right off. And I think the tail section, the tail fin, came off of the other plane," one passenger said. Passengers on board the planes said they felt a big bump, but there was not panic. "We were taxing slowly, and then, we felt a huge bump, suddenly felt a huge bang. It was terrifying," another passenger said. "It could have happened when in air or just as we were taking off, you know? It could have been a lot worse. I'm grateful nobody was hurt," another passenger said. "Flight 266 returned to the gate, and passengers deplaned without incident," Delta said in a statement. "Passengers on ASA Flight 4904 deplaned and were transported by bus to the terminal." There were 204 passengers and a crew of 11 on the larger 767. There were 74 passengers and three crew members on the ASA flight. The National Transportation Safety Board planned to pull the planes' black boxes and interview the crews. The incident is under investigation. Read more: http://www.wesh.com/news/28557667/detail.html#ixzz1SB14J73k Date: 14-JUL-2011 Time: 7:30pm LT Type: Canadair CL-600-2D24 Regional Jet CRJ-900ER Operator: Atlantic Southeast Airlines / Delta Connection Registration: N132EV C/n / msn: 15219 Fatalities: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 77 Other fatalities: 0 Airplane damage: Substantial Location: Boston-Logan Int. Airport, MA - BOS/KBOS, MA - United States of America Phase: Taxi Nature: Domestic Scheduled Passenger Departure airport: Boston-Logan Int. Airport, MA - BOS/KBOS Destination airport: Raleigh-Durham Int. Airport - RDU/KRDU Narrative: While taxiing out for departure, the winglet from Flight DL266 from Boston (BOS/KBOS) to Amsterdam (AMS/EHAM) made contact with the vertical stabilizer of Atlantic Southeast Airlines / Delta Connection Flight ASQ4904, also on departure from Boston to Raleigh-Durham Int. Airport (RDU/KRDU). There were 204 passengers and 11 crew members on the Delta 767 and 74 passengers and three crew members on the CRJ900, registered N132EV. Date: 14-JUL-2011 Time: 7:30pm LT Type: Boeing 767-332ER(WL) Operator: Delta Air Lines Registration: N185DN C/n / msn: 27961/576 Fatalities: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 215 Other fatalities: 0 Airplane damage: Minor Location: Boston-Logan Airport- BOS/KBOS, MA - United States of America Phase: Taxi Nature: International Scheduled Passenger Departure airport: Boston-Logan Int. Airport, MA - BOS/KBOS Destination airport: Amsterdam-Schiphol Airport - AMS/EHAM Narrative: While taxiing out for departure, the winglet from Flight DL266 from Boston (BOS/KBOS) to Amsterdam (AMS/EHAM) made contact with the vertical stabilizer of Atlantic Southeast Airlines / Delta Connection Flight ASQ4904, also on departure from Boston to Raleigh-Durham Int. Airport(RDU/KRDU). There were 204 passengers and 11 crew members on the Delta 767 and 74 passengers and three crew members on the CRJ900, registered N132EV. www.aviation-safety.net Back to Top Jet evacuated after odor in cabin Grapevine, Texas (AP) --An unexplained odor in the cabin caused an American Airlines jet to be evacuated. The MD 80, which was bound for Dallas from San Diego, landed at Dallas-Fort Worth International at 1:22 p.m. Thursday. The pilot stopped the jet on the runway after crew members reported a burning smell. All 140 passengers were evacuated on a runway and moved by bus to a terminal. No injuries were reported. It was not immediately known what caused the smell. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/07/14/state/n202458D46.DTL#ixzz1SB2G1M2W Back to Top After 85 killed in crash, Congo yanks license of troubled airline KINSHASA, Congo (AP) - Congo's ministry of transport has canceled the license of the country's largest airline after a crash last week killed 85 people. A ministry communique read on state TV late Thursday said that Hewa Bora's license "has been suspended until further notice" while the government investigates the crash. The company's plane crashed last Friday in a thunderstorm as it was attempting to land at the Kisangani airport in eastern Congo. In 2008 a DC-9 owned by the same company rammed into a market, killing at least 40 people. A few months later, one of its planes went down, killing 17. Congo has one of the worst air safety records in the world. Few passable roads traverse the country after decades of war, forcing the population to rely on ill-maintained planes and boats. Back to Top NTSB announces 'comprehensive study' of experimental aircraft The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that it will begin to look more closely at Experimental, Amateur-Built (E-AB) aircraft, which it says has "experienced accident rates greater than those of other comparable segments of GA" in recent years. The examination of safety in Experimental aircraft is part of a cooperative effort with the NTSB and the leading entity for experimental aircraft enthusiasts, the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). Later this month, the EAA hosts the annual AirVenture event, a week-long fly-in and air show that is the largest aviation gathering in the U.S. The EAA will conduct a survey with its more than 100,000 members about homebuilt aircraft -- both in terms of how they're built as well as how they're piloted -- in an attempt to gather data. Questions included in the survey establish flight hours, certificates held, types of aircraft built, and several more specific questions about individual aircraft, including landing gear configuration and the type of engine. Safety questions include inquiries about seatbelts and airbags, as well as information on how thoroughly a pilot trained in their homebuilt aircraft before flying in it, and whether or not their pilot's insurance required them to undergo additional training before they were able to obtain insurance for their new aircraft. Taken as a whole, the survey results could provide a good groundwork to see what's being modified, what kind of training is being undergone, and who's working on homebuilt aircraft, as well as what kind of help the typical experimental aircraft builder is getting from other sources and how well informed they are as to the technical specifications of all aspects of their aircraft. "Going all the way back to the Wright brothers, amateur aircraft builders have played a crucial and inspirational role in leading the way towards greater achievements in manned flight," NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman said in a press release announcing the new survey. "We are pleased to be working with EAA towards the shared goal of improving safety in this particularly innovative sector of general aviation." According to the NTSB, about 33,000 of the 240,000 general aviation aircraft in the U.S. are experimental or modified. A search of Amateur Built airplanes in the NTSB aviation accident database revealed nearly 200 accidents in 2010, out of nearly 1,500 total airplane accidents that year. The survey will continue for the rest of the summer, with the NTSB estimating that the results will be available by autumn 2012. If you are the owner of a homebuilt aircraft, take the survey here. http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/ntsb-announces-comprehensive-study- experimental-aircraft Back to Top Man arrested for pointing laser at law enforcement aircraft TUCSON - A man has been arrested for pointing a laser at a Pima County Sheriff's aircraft last night. Alama Jeffs was charged with two counts of endangerment. Deputy Byron Trappman was the pilot last night when the laser hit the cockpit just after 9:00. He said, "It did temporarily affect my eyesight. It blinded me a little bit I could actually feel the pain like when you walk out in sun after watching a dark movie you kind of feel the bright light in your eyes." Fortunately he didn't lose control of the aircraft. Aanother deputy managed to get a location from where the laser was coming from. While the green streak doesn't look dangerous from the ground Deputy Trappman says, "By the time it reaches the aircraft it can be several feet wide and illuminate the entire cockpit and it bounces around the instruments and metal and everything in the plane." He said it can make it distracting and dangerous. A deputy on board the aircraft was able to pinpoint where the laser came from. From the air, patrol deputies were directed to a house on Climbing Ivy. When deputies arrived, they say they found Alama Jeffs and three others on the balcony. Captain Don Kester says, "This individual in particular stated that he was pointing out stars to his friends and then the aircraft flew by and so he started to follow the aircraft with the laser." 20-year old Jeffs was arrested and booked into the Pima County Jail. Deputy Trappman says people need to think twice about shooting lasers at aircrafts because it puts a lot of people's lives in danger. He says three commercial airliners were flying in the same vicinity as the sheriff's aircraft when they were hit by the green laser. But it's not known if Jeffs was responsible. The case has been turned over to the FBI. http://www.kvoa.com/news/man-arrested-for-pointing-laser-at-law-enforcement- aircraft/ Back to Top Army private accused of trying to board plane with explosives Pfc. Christopher Wey said he found a half-ounce of C4 after being terminated from a training course and wanted to bring it home. Authorities said there were no indications of terrorism. A 19-year-old Army private was charged Thursday with trying to board a Los Angeles- bound commercial flight with a small amount of explosive material he had taken from a training session. Federal authorities said there were no indications of terrorism. Pfc. Christopher Wey told investigators he found the half-ounce of the explosive C4 after being terminated from a training course at the Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, court records said. No information was released about the cause of his termination. Wey hid the explosives in a tobacco container in the hopes of bringing it home, showing it off to his family and disposing of it, the court records said. "Authorities found no evidence to believe that Wey intended any harm with the small amount of explosives in his possession," the U.S. attorney's office in Arizona said in a statement. Airport security in Yuma detected the explosives as Wey tried to catch a Wednesday morning flight to Los Angeles International Airport. He was arrested and charged with transporting stolen explosives and trying to carry explosives on an airplane. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. Bill Waldock, who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz., said the amount of explosive that Wey purportedly carried could not have seriously damaged a plane. "It might mess up his own luggage" if detonated, Waldock http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-army-arrest- 20110715,0,3882844.story Back to Top Medvedev's Impossible Airplane Ban Two fatal plane crashes within weeks have prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to put on his tough face and call for the grounding of the Soviet-made aircraft involved in the accidents. But Medvedev neglected to say how the planes might be replaced. Soviet aircraft - such as the An-24 turboprop and Tu-134 twin-engine jet - provide the only connection to the outside world for hundreds of settlements in Siberia - a region that the Kremlin wants to make sure remains loyal amid fears of weakening ties with the rest of Russia. Chaos looms in the airline industry anyway because of earlier government orders that will require regional airlines to install expensive safety equipment on their aging aircraft that costs more than the planes themselves. The extra expense threatens to lead to the doubling of ticket prices, all but ensuring that residents are stranded in distant locales. A Tu-134 operated by RusAir crashed and exploded in what witnesses described as a "pillar of fire" as it attempted to land in thick fog in Karelia's capital, Petrozavodsk, on a flight from Moscow on June 20. Five of the 52 people on the plane miraculously survived. An Angara Airlines An-24 crash-landed in the Ob River on Monday after an engine caught fire during a flight from Tomsk to Surgut. Seven of the 37 people on board died. Medvedev ordered the Transportation Ministry in late June to "prepare for the accelerated decommissioning of Tu-134s" nationwide. Speaking after Monday's crash, he said the decommission plans should include An-24s as well. But the Transportation Ministry had to implicitly defy him, explaining Tuesday that only An-24s serving regularly scheduled flights would be grounded. With charter flights accounting for the bulk of air traffic east of the Urals, the impact of the ban will be significantly lessened. The ministry did not pass up the chance to remind airlines this week that outmoded Soviet-era aircraft such as the Tu-134, An-24, Yak-40 and An-2, as well as Mi-8 helicopters, must be equipped by January with traffic alert and collision avoidance systems, known in the industry as TCAS, and ground proximity warning systems, or GPWS. The ministry did not comment on the fact that the systems cost more than the planes themselves - a fact that Siberian-based airlines have long complained about. Valery Fisher, chief executive of the Krasnoyarsk region-based Katekavia airline, said by telephone that he does not plan to install the systems due to the exorbitant costs. Outfitting one An-24 would cost some 10 million rubles ($350,000), and Katekavia operates 14 An-24s and two Tu-134s, Fisher said in an interview. The total expenses of all Krasnoyarsk-based airlines would top 600 million rubles ($21 million) - a quarter of their annual turnover, he said. "Where will we find so much money?" Fisher asked. The answer is obvious, and Fisher admitted as much. "The airlines won't suffer as much as the passengers," he said. "We will have to cover the expenses through ticket prices." For an airline to remain profitable, a ticket for a Krasnoyarsk-Igarka flight, now priced at 8,000 rubles ($280), will cost 18,000 rubles - "an unaffordable sum for the local population," Fisher said. Even before the talk of price hikes, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the high cost of Siberian plane tickets during a trip through the region last year that was, incidentally, by car. No practical measures to reduce ticket prices followed the trip, which, analysts said at the time, was a reaction to slowly growing Siberian separatism. Katekavia is among three Siberian airlines that appealed to Medvedev in an open letter last week for a state program to renovate the country's outmoded aviation fleet. Obsolete aircraft handle more than 90 percent of flights in Siberia and the Far East, and the new safety regulations will "paralyze the transportation system" in a large swathe of the country where air travel is often the sole viable transportation option, the airlines said in the letter, which went unanswered. Granted, the new rules are in line with international standards. And yet the new safety systems are no panacea - they did not prevent, for example, the Tu-154 of Polish President Lech Kaczynski from slamming into a Smolensk forest last year, killing all 96 people on board. A possible solution could be patterned after the cash-for-clunkers program that helped thousands of car owners trade their obsolete vehicles for newer ones with government compensation, the airlines said in their letter. But no such program is currently in the works, and neither the Kremlin nor the Transportation Ministry has commented on the proposal to start one. The ministry could not be reached for comment Wednesday and Thursday. The An-24, which can seat 44 passengers, was produced from 1959 to 1979. About 100 of the planes still operate in Russia, mostly in Siberia and the Far East, where the rough climate and unpaved runways offer conditions few other aircraft are sturdy enough to handle. Magomed Tolboyev, a veteran test pilot and honorary president of MAKS, Russia's top air show, said most Soviet-built aircraft should have been decommissioned long ago. "Those planes should have been replaced some 10 years ago," Tolboyev said by phone. "They are outdated, and airlines are just exploiting them to the edge of their limits." But the problem is that there is nothing to replace some of the aircraft with, Tolboyev said. This goes in particular for the An-24, he said. The planned successor, the An-140, was designed in the 1990s, but only four have been built since 2005. All are operated by the Yakutia airline. "There are no other planes in Russia at the moment," Tolboyev said. The situation is similar with two other new models, the An-138 and An-148, which have been in development for years but are still not being mass-produced. Sukhoi designed the SuperJet 100 to replace the Tu-134, but it has not gone into serial production yet. Only two planes have been delivered so far: to Armavia and Aeroflot earlier this year. But both airlines will have to return the aircraft to the plant for follow- up work after flying 2,000 hours, RBC reported Wednesday. Meanwhile, Chinese plane makers are ready to fill the void with their MA60 - an updated version of An-24 that Fisher called "the perfect replacement." His Katekavia is currently holding negotiations to lease the MA60 for eight years at an interest rate of just 2 percent. "I'm a patriot and I want to use Russian aircraft, but there are none," Fisher said. But the MA60, produced since 2000, has not been certified in Russia, and it is not clear when it might be. Despite being newer and better equipped than the An-24, the MA60 suffered its first fatal accident in May, when an Indonesian aircraft missed a runway and plunged into the sea, killing all 27 people on board. Indonesian authorities have provided no official explanation for the crash but speculated that bad weather caused pilot error. Pilot error, not equipment malfunction, is also the cause of most plane-related incidents in Russia, including, tentatively, last month's Tu-134 crash. There are a host of similar examples, including a Katekavia An-24 that crash-landed near Igarka last August, killing 11 of the 15 people on board. The weather was bad, but crash investigators have placed the bulk of the blame on the pilots, who they say were poorly trained. The prevalence of pilot error highlights deep structural problems in the country's aviation, which is dominated by undertrained, underpaid and overworked staff and a lack of training facilities, industry insiders said at a round table held after the Tu-134 crash. Veteran pilot Tolboyev agreed that things have changed since his own training in the 1970s. "I've been visiting pilot schools all around Russia," he said. "There are no training systems for crews, no training planes, nothing." http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/medvedevs-impossible-airplane- ban/440554.html Back to Top Fumes force Southwest flight to return to NM ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A Southwest Airlines flight headed to California had to return to the Albuquerque, N.M., airport after the pilots smelled fumes in the cockpit. Albuquerque International Sunport spokesman Daniel Jiron says Flight 1566 took off for Los Angeles just after 7 a.m. Thursday and landed safely about 20 minutes later. The plane was met by airport fire crews, but it taxied to the gate and passengers got off normally. Jiron says he doesn't know how many people were onboard the Boeing 737. Jiron says the airline plans to use a replacement plane to get the flight's passengers to their destination. http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9OFGEG00.htm Back to Top Continental may hire furloughed United pilots CHICAGO - Continental Airlines plans to offer jobs to as many as 200 pilots who were furloughed by United Airlines. Both airlines are run by United Continental Holdings Inc., which is combining them into one carrier. An agreement between the pilots and the company allows hiring like that announced on Thursday. The company says it needs 100 to 200 pilots. United has 1,437 on furlough. On Sunday, United flight attendants rejected a company offer to shift some of them to Continental. The company has said that United will soon have too many flight attendants as almost 1,800 return from voluntary furlough, while it will be 900 short at Continental. The union for United flight attendants says the company can solve the problem by negotiating a joint contract that covers the combined airline. http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9OFMCGG1.htm Back to Top Emergency drill set Friday at Sea-Tac Airport The Port of Seattle plans an elaborate emergency drill for Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Friday but officials stress it is only a drill and will not affect any regular air travel. SEATAC, Wash. (AP) - The Port of Seattle plans an elaborate emergency drill for Seattle- Tacoma International Airport on Friday but officials stress it is only a drill and will not affect any regular air travel. The exercise will simulate two separate fictional scenarios - including a flight that is seized by a hostage taker and a mass injury situation. Dozens of King County-area police and fire agencies are expected to participate. KOMO says the westernmost runway will be closed during the exercise. The other two runways will be open as normal. The drill is set to begin at 6 a.m. and last through at least noon. Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC