Flight Safety Information July 20, 2011 - No. 146 In This Issue Maintenance work blamed for El Al 777 landing gear failure Aircraft runs out of fuel, lands on closed runway (India) CRJ-600-2C10 Runway Excursion (India) FAA Reauthorization Bill Extension Coming Down To The Wire Passengers file suit over 2008 Continental flight NTSB Recommends MD-11 Pilot Training Upgrades Expedited Crew Screening To Include Flight Attendants American splits record narrowbody order US-India to cooperate on flight navigation systems National Aerospace Foreign Object Debris (FOD) Prevention Conference Gulfstream Re-Brands G250 To G280 Maintenance work blamed for El Al 777 landing gear failure Israeli investigators have blamed overhaul work performed in Singapore for the 23 May "severe structural failure" of the main landing gear on a Boeing 777 operated by El Al. A 20 June statement from Israeli accident investigators said they were focusing on the MRO work as the likely cause of the incident. The latest report, produced by Yitzhak Raz, the Israeli ministry of transport's chief accident investigator, said that laboratory tests prove that the failure followed surface grinding of components in the MRO centre. It recommends that the US Federal Aviation Agency issues a warning on similar processing of the metal involved. Raz said that the data collected so far cannot rule out similar failures being produced by other MRO operations. Non-destructive tests on landing gear overhauled in the same MRO centre in Singapore and in other facilities over the last two years are therefore recommended. The aircraft, with 279 passengers, departed Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport for Newark, New Jersey, on 23 May but turned back after the left main gear failed to retract. The aircraft's crew dumped fuel over the Mediterranean and an Israeli Defence Force Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter conducted an air-to-air inspection of the landing gear before the airliner eventually landed safely. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top Aircraft runs out of fuel, lands on closed runway (India) CHENNAI: A Kingfisher aircraft from Colombo that ran out of fuel landed on a runway closed for maintenance at Chennai airport, on Tuesday. The plane, carrying 132 passengers and six crew members, was scheduled to land at 4.30 pm. But its pilot took special permission from Air Traffic Control (ATC) for the early landing. A senior AAI official said the pilot of the plane reported the fuel crisis to the ATC and asked for permission to make an early landing. The ATC officials gave the permission and immediately alerted officials at the apron area, where the runway maintenance work was under way," the official said. "The permission to land was given because the aircraft had no fuel to make several rounds above the Chennai region till 4.30 pm," he added. Airport director EP Hareendranath said that it was a safe landing and that all security measures were in place. The runways at the Chennai airport runways are closed from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm on Tuesdays and Saturdays for routine maintenance work. Soon after the message from the ATC, a senior airport official said, the ongoing maintenance work on the runway was stopped at 4.15pm and all the workers were evacuated. The official spokesperson of Kingfisher Airlines said an investigation had been launched into the matter http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/Aircraft-runs-out-of-fuel-lands-on- closed-runway/articleshow/9292277.cms Back to Top CRJ-600-2C10 Runway Excursion (India) Date: 20-JUL-2011 Time: Type: Bombardier CRJ-701ER (CL-600-2C10) Regional Jet Operator: Alliance Air, on behalf of Air India Regional Registration: C/n / msn: Fatalities: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 54 Airplane damage: Minor Location: Kanpur/Chakeri Airport - KNU/VIKA - India Phase: Landing Nature: Scheduled Passenger Departure airport: Indira Gandhi International Airport - DEL/VIDP Destination airport: Kanpur/Chakeri Airport - KNU/VIKA Narrative: Passengers on board an Air India plane had a miraculous escape, Wednesday, after the plane skidded on the runaway while landing at Kanpur airport. The AI flight 9801 had 54 passengers on board. The plane, after it touched ground did not stop within the safe distance and overshot into the slush at the end of the airport. The cause was a tyre burst. www.aviation-safety.net Back to Top FAA Reauthorization Bill Extension Coming Down To The Wire While the White House and Congress continue to wrangle over the debt ceiling, the House and Senate now are so at odds over the latest extension to the FAA reauthorization bill proposed by the House, that the top Senator dealing with transportation issues says the extension may lapse. The latest stumbling block is over a change to the extension that zeroes in on a provision that is of top importance to U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the Senate Commerce, Transportation and Science Committee. The provision adds a $1,000 per-passenger cap on subsidies to the Essential Air Service (EAS) program to rural communities that would effectively eliminate the service at three airports, including one in the home state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-Nev.). If the House sends over the bill as originally written, the Senate would strip out that provision and send it back to the House, according to a top Senate aide. If the House fails to pass that version by the July 22 deadline, then aviation taxes could lapse, and the aviation trust fund could suffer. "The collateral damage to the airports community will be substantial," says the aide, who spoke at an American Association of Airport Executives conference Tuesday. "The collateral damage to the trust fund, the long-term viability of the aviation system will be substantial." Underlying this recent tiff over the extension are larger divisions over the actual reauthorization bill. The top issue among them are changes to the National Mediation Board's (NMB) rules that would make it easier for airline and rail employees to unionize. The House added the EAS policy riders as a way to extract concessions on the NMB provisions, according to Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who also spoke at the conference. "It's just a tool to try to motivate some action to get this resolved," Mica says, adding that the NMB issue is being moved "at the highest leadership levels of the House and Senate and beyond my ability to resolve." If the NMB provision were resolved, "the rest can fall into place within 20 minutes," Mica says. But the NMB provision, which Delta Air Lines has lobbied to overturn, is a non- starter in the Senate, which already voted against the provision. It also faces a veto threat from the president. "We're going to risk everything, because the CEO of Delta Air Lines is throwing himself a world-class hissy fit over the NMB provision and having to deal with the fact that his workers might want to unionize," says the Senate aide. Along with that controversy, the leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee sent a letter to House Majority Leader John Boehner asking him to appoint members of a House conference committee. To date, all negotiations on the bill have taken place outside the formal conference process. Boehner is prepared to appoint conferees but is waiting for a "pre-conference agreement" on the NMB provision, according to Mica, who spoke later Tuesday during a House Rules Committee hearing. Despite all the acrimony, if the opposing sides on Capitol Hill can agree on one thing, it's that the future funding outlook for airports and aviation in general is lousy. They also appear to agree that airports are going to have to look beyond the government going forward. Realizing the bleak fiscal outlook for the transportation sector, the Senate Commerce, Transportation and Science Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow to bring in officials from Wall Street who can talk about establishing funds with grants, guaranteed loans and private investment. "It is not a silver bullet, but probably just one more tool in an arsenal," says the aide. Mica says he is probably not the right chairman to bring about an increase in passenger facility charges that could assist airports with infrastructure improvements. "Try it with the next bill and the next chairman," Mica says. But he adds that he believes airports should have more flexibility, but that the "political winds have dramatically changed," that there's just not going to be enough money and likely less in the future. In the future, airports are going to have to get creative -work with the airlines, or install pay toilets as a way of raising revenues, Mica says. And he can't resist going after his perennial whipping post, the Transportation Security Administration, saying that it should look at recouping security costs from "that disaster going on in your airports, TSA." That's just what Gina Marie Lindsey, the executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, has in mind. During a speech at the Aero Club yesterday, Lindsey called on airports, airlines and the FAA to work together to wean the aviation system off the federal budget process. "We can sit in our respective dark corners and curse the darkness," Lindsey says, "or we can light a candle." Separately, Mica plans to lash out at the European Union on Wednesday, to retaliate against the EU's emissions trading system, which would fold U.S. carriers into its cap- and-trade scheme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mica, along with the transportation committee's top Democrat, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), will introduce a bill to challenge the EU's plans to impose fees or emissions credit on airlines using European airports. "We want to give them a little shot across the bow," Mica says. "We will not accept this lying down." http://www.aviationweek.com/ Back to Top Passengers file suit over 2008 Continental flight that crashed taking off at DIA Twenty-one passengers on a Continental Airlines flight that crashed during takeoff at Denver International Airport in 2008 have filed suit against the federal government, arguing that air-traffic controllers were to blame for the accident. The passengers allege that controllers understated the wind speed to the flight's pilots and broke Federal Aviation Administration rules in allowing the plane to take off. "There was wind information available to air traffic control that, if known to the Continental crew, would have prevented this accident," the passengers state in their complaint. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Denver. Continental Flight 1404 skidded off the runway while attempting to take off in December 2008. It bounced over rough terrain, losing an engine and its landing gear, before coming to rest with its fuselage cracked in two and on fire. All 110 passengers and five crew members escaped, though several people, including the pilot, suffered serious injuries. A National Transportation Safety Board report released last year pinned the blame on the pilot, who the report said failed to make the proper rudder adjustments to keep the plane on the runway while dealing with gusting cross winds. The NTSB report cited air- traffic controllers' failure to provide "key, available" information about the wind as a contributing factor. Each of the passengers who are plaintiffs in the case suffered "physical assault, acceleration and deceleration, rolling, pitching, yawing, bumps, lifting off, crashing down, impact with the aircraft and its interior" during the crash, according to the complaint. The lawsuit also argues the passengers suffered emotional distress. A receptionist at the office of Bruce Lampert, a Broomfield attorney who is representing the passengers, said Lampert was traveling Monday and not available for comment. Jeff Dorschner, a local spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, which will represent the government in the case, declined to comment. http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_18503778 Back to Top NTSB Recommends MD-11 Pilot Training Upgrades The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is recommending enhanced operational guidance and better recurrent training for MD-11 pilots to reduce the risk of landing accidents. In its view, the FAA should require Boeing "to revise its MD-11 Flight Crew Operating Manual (FCOM) to reemphasize high sink-rate awareness during landing, the importance of momentarily maintaining landing pitch attitude after touchdown and using proper pitch attitude and power to cushion excess sink rate in the flare, and to go around in the event of a bounced landing." The recommendations come in the wake of the July 27, 2010, crash landing of a Lufthansa Cargo MD-11 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At the time, the aircraft touched down hard (at 2.1 G) after the vertical speed increased when the pilot-flying should have flared. The aircraft bounced twice, the third and final impact was at a G-force in excess of 4. The aircraft's fuselage collapsed and caught fire. The two pilots were injured, but survived and fly again. The NTSB says it has 14 severe MD-11 landing accidents since 1993 in which the aircraft was substantially damaged, in four cases the aircraft were written off as hull losses. It states that in spite of earlier recommendations "MD-11 crews continue to have difficulty in judging the flare maneuver and in making appropriate pitch and power changes after hard landings." The NTSB adds that "the frequency of MD-11 hard landing accidents suggests that generic guidance on these concepts is not sufficient or effective." The Lufthansa Cargo captain stated in the investigation that "what came after the touchdown was shocking" and "much beyond experience." Because of its relatively small wing, the MD-11's typical approach speeds are much higher than for most other commercial transports making the aircraft more difficult to fly. http://www.aviationweek.com Back to Top Expedited Crew Screening To Include Flight Attendants House Homeland Security Committee and transportation subcommittee members in general are backing the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) announcement last week that it is moving forward on a risk-based passenger screening system, but some demands will be made by Capitol Hill staffers in the near future concerning various security aspects. Tom McDaniels, Democratic staff director for the House Homeland Security Committee's transportation subcommittee, says because the TSA has endured much bad press concerning pat-downs, it may have "rushed it" in announcing this risk-based program without fully providing details to Congress, he told a small gathering of airport executives in Washington today at the American Association of Airport Executives' legislative issues briefing. On the subject of expedited crew screening, which the TSA also backs, the subcommittee is concerned that there is no biometric component to the program being put forth by the Air Transport Association and the Air Line Pilots Association, but perhaps more importantly, "we want all crew in this process," he says. Flight attendants will be a part of the crew screening solution, he stated. Saying that staff has been briefed more by the industry than the TSA, Jennifer Arangio, senior counsel for the full committee, said "the devil is in the details," and she cannot comment more until those details are known. However, she added that the TSA finally has an administrator who "gets it," that there is only so much money to go around, and there is no sense in screening all passengers the same way. As for TSA funding and staffing, Arangio anticipates action on a TSA authorization bill shortly, and said the industry will not see any grandiose restructuring of the agency, but more of a "streamlining or refinement of this bloated bureaucracy." She says the hope on the Hill is to mark up the bill in subcommittee next week, which is likely the "only thing we get through before the [August] recess." McDaniels says that on the Democratic side, a concern with the bill is that it lacks focus on surface transportation security, so there will be a move to attach or move at least a portion of a surface transportation security act (H.R.1900) into the bill. Arangio says the DHS authorization bill may move first in the Senate, in which case, "we'll just pull that in," meaning although there may seem to be no movement on the House side with no DHS reauthorization bill, the House is working through the issues and meeting or talking with the TSA almost daily. McDaniels was more skeptical, saying, "The FAA reauthorization bill doesn't bode well for other bills. I think this is a complicated process, and we couldn't get it done last year when the Democrats controlled both the House and Senate." As for TSA reauthorization, he said, "we may not get to the finish line on TSA ... we'll see." http://www.aviationweek.com Back to Top American splits record narrowbody order between Airbus and Boeing American Airlines has kept its allegiance to Boeing while ordering its first Airbus narrowbodies through a massive order for 460 aircraft. American has pledged to purchase 200 Boeing aircraft, spilt between current Next Generation 737 models and "Boeing's expected new evolution of the 737NG, with a new engine", which will the CFM International Leap X. Deliveries of the current model aircraft begin in 2013. The Airbus order includes 260 A320 aircraft with flexibility to convert its delivery positions into the A319 and A321. Deliveries of 130 current generation A320s start in 2013, said American, followed by deliveries of 130 A320neos beginning in 2017. "Under the new agreements, American plans to acquire 460 narrowbody, single-aisle aircraft from the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families beginning in 2013 through 2022 - the largest aircraft order in aviation history," touted American. Key to the deals is $13 billion in financing committed by Airbus and Boeing in lease transactions covering the first 230 deliveries. Coinciding with American's revelation of the massive narrowbody order, the carrier posted net $286 million loss for the second quarter, and is the only major US network carrier expected to lose money for the April-June timeframe. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news ******** American's big jet order may spur rivals to upgrade DALLAS (AP) - American Airlines plans to announce a major order of new planes Wednesday that is likely to include aircraft from longtime supplier, Boeing Co., and from Europe's Airbus, a person familiar with the matter said. The move to acquire more fuel-efficient planes could put pressure on other airlines to upgrade their fleets. American, whose fleet of more than 600 planes averages about 15 years in age, is weighing competing bids from Boeing and Airbus. The final order will likely include planes from both aircraft makers, according the person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made. The board of American parent AMR Corp. met Tuesday night, and last-minute negotiations could still affect American's decision. The airline could order 400 planes, according to published reports. It is especially interested in replacing more than 200 fuel-guzzling McDonnell Douglas MD-80 aircraft that form the bulk of its domestic fleet. The choice comes down to the Airbus A320 or the Boeing 737. American has an all-Boeing fleet, although it operated a small number of Airbus jets until grounding the last one in 2009. Back to Top US-India to cooperate on flight navigation systems New Delhi - US aviation watchdog Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday said it would cooperate with the Airport Authority of India (AAI) on developing the ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) used for flight navigation. "AAI has shown keen interest in strengthening and developing GBAS. We will cooperate with them," J. Randolph Babbitt, chief administrator of FAA, said at an industry event. GBAS is a critical safety system that uses the global positioning system (GPS) for efficient and safe navigation and flight operations like landing, departure and surface operations within its area of coverage. According to Babbitt, aviation safety was a key area in which FAA would increase its cooperation with the Indian authorities. "We are also looking at runway safety and new technologies like satellite-based navigation system which will increase safety," he said. Babbitt is a member of the delegation led by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is on a three-day visit here. Babbitt praised India's very own GBAS -- the GPS-aided geo augmented navigation (GAGAN) system which helps in better navigation. "India's aviation sector is poised to grow, with the overall traffic last year growing by 23% and domestic traffic alone growing at 12 percent. This trend will continue and safety is an important part of it," Babbitt said. FAA further said that over the next five years, Indian aviation sector was set for an estimated 25% annual growth. "Airport upgradation and new airport projects will present business opportunities in excess of $5 billion," FAA said in a statement. The statement said aircraft sales to India were one of the largest contributors to US exports, with Air India and Jet ordering Boeing aircraft. http://www.hindustantimes.com/US-India-to-cooperate-on-flight-navigation- systems/Article1-722918.aspx Back to Top Gulfstream Re-Brands G250 To G280 Gulfstream will re-brand its new G250 super-midsize jet as the G280, the company announced on Monday. The change was prompted by the company's "sensitivity to the varied cultures of its international customer base," according to the news release. "Since introducing the Gulfstream G250 in 2008 and presenting it to customers around the world, we determined that G280 is a more amenable number sequence in certain cultures," said spokesman Larry Flynn. "This change reflects our commitment to understanding the diverse cultures of our global business environment." Asked for more details, company spokesman Jeff Miller told AVweb that "in certain Asian cultures, numbers can be interpreted in various ways ... The previous name was a distraction from what is important about this new aircraft, so we elected to make a change." According to Wikipedia, 250 may be considered an "inauspicious" number in China because the Mandarin characters that form it can be read in a certain way to convey an insult implying that someone is foolish or idiotic. An expert in Mandarin who was contacted by AVweb said he couldn't confirm that interpretation, because the ancient language is steeped in "so many theories and stories and legends." Aviation reporter Molly McMillin at the Wichita Eagle noted that the numbers 2 and 8 are traditionally considered lucky by the Chinese. "The word for '8' sounds similar to the Chinese word meaning 'prosper' or 'wealth'," she wrote. The G280 can fly up to Mach 0.85, with a range of up to 3,400 nm. Three aircraft are now flying in the test program and a fourth aircraft has been completed. First delivery is expected later this year. AVweb's editorial director Paul Bertorelli spoke with Gulfstream's Pres Henne about the G250 when it was introduced at NBAA in 2008; http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/GulfstreamRebrandsG250ToG280_204990- 1.html Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC