Flight Safety Information August 19, 2011 - No. 171 In This Issue JAL to use Boeing's health monitoring programme on 787s U.S. Says Drone, Cargo Plane Collide Over Afghanistan Atlanta-bound jet turns off taxiway in Tulsa, gets stuck Air Force Lifts Flight Ban on Lockheed F-35 Fighter Jet NTSB APPLAUDS SURVEY RESPONSE FROM EXPERIMENTAL AMATEUR-BUILT (E-AB) AIRCRAFT COMMUNITY Aviation High School to launch at Seattle Museum of Flight The haboob returns! Another wall of dust hits Phoenix Airplane Plus Heat Plus Ice Equals Mystery Aviation safety to be enhanced with opening of GCAA laboratory in capital (UAE) JAL to use Boeing's health monitoring programme on 787s Japan Airlines (JAL) will expand Airplane Health Management (AHM) coverage with Boeing for its future 787 fleet. AHM is a software system that monitors, collects and analyses aircraft data to give customers valuable, real-time maintenance information. JAL has 35 787s on order, and has licensed AHM for these aircraft in addition to its existing fleet of 46 777s, said Boeing. The airline will use the AHM real time fault management module on their 777 and 787 aircraft to communicate in-flight information to ground stations for diagnosis and quick operational decisions by scanning troubleshooting and historical repair data. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top U.S. Says Drone, Cargo Plane Collide Over Afghanistan (WSJ) - An Air Force cargo plane collided with a drone in Afghanistan, a potentially serious mishap that could give ammunition to critics wary of allowing pilotless aircraft to operate in civilian airspace. Air Force Capt. Justin Brockhoff, a spokesman for the military in Afghanistan, confirmed that a C-130 cargo plane made an emergency landing Monday at a base in eastern Afghanistan after colliding with an RQ-7 Shadow, an unmanned aerial vehicle that is usually operated by the Army and the Marine Corps. A U.S. Predator unmanned drone armed with a missile stands on the tarmac of Kandahar military airport in Afghanistan in this June 2010 file photo. "The C-130 received light damage during the incident and the aircrew was unharmed," Capt. Brockhoff said. The drone, which was on a surveillance mission, wasn't carrying any weapons, he said. "We have no reports at this time to indicate any injuries or damages were caused when it [the Shadow] impacted the ground," Capt. Brockhoff said. The Shadow, usually employed by a brigade, is about 12 feet long with a 20-foot wingspan, and is typically unarmed. Launched by a catapult, it can stay aloft for more than five hours and has a range of about 30 miles. An Army official said controllers on the ground apparently didn't lose contact with the Shadow aircraft until it collided with the C- 130. "We were in complete control up until the collision," the official said. Over the past decade, the U.S. military has built a large fleet of remotely piloted aircraft, including armed Predators that can fire antitank missiles and Global Hawks that take detailed pictures from high altitudes. Even so, collisions between manned aircraft and pilotless spy planes have been rare. Drones-sometimes referred to in military-speak asUAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles-don't have specialized equipment on board to sense and avoid other aircraft, a point that has gained relevance as manufacturers envision civilian applications such as law enforcement and aerial photography. The military, companies and local governments have pressed the Federal Aviation Administration to clarify the use of small unmanned aircraft in U.S. civilian airspace. But the FAA has been wary about revising its rules to allow unmanned aircraft to operate more freely in civilian airspace. "One of the things that limits their use in civilian airspace is that there is no reliable technology right now that allows UAV operators to independently see and avoid other aircraft," said an aviation official. The U.S. military trains with remotely piloted aircraft within U.S. restricted military airspace but also negotiates with the FAA to open up areas of civilian airspace for drone operations. It also uses certain procedures-establishing temporary restrictions and route clearances-to avoid midair collisions. In some instances, FAA rules may require ground observers or a "chase plane" to keep visual contact with a drone. Speaking at a robotics conference in Washington on Tuesday, Army Col. Robert Sova said the military uses the same general collision-prevention procedures in Afghanistan as in the U.S. "We have used that methodology for years and years," he said, adding that the challenges are greater in a war theater given the density of aircraft there. Tim Owings, an Army project manager for unmanned aerial systems, said the military is studying various kinds of "sense and avoid" technologies for unmanned aircraft, including ground-based tracking radars that would direct pilotless aircraft away from other planes. Eventually, he said, drones may incorporate their own collision-avoidance sensors. Still, working with civilian aviation authorities has caused some friction with the military. Maj. Gen. Tim Crosby, the Army's program executive officer for aviation, said dealing with FAA clearances was at times a "frustrating process" for unmanned crafts' operators. "It's much easier to do it in theater," he said. "It's very difficult back home, as we think about now taking these systems and incorporating them and flying them in our FAA airspace." Back to Top Atlanta-bound jet turns off taxiway in Tulsa, gets stuck TULSA, Okla.(AP) - A jet turned off a taxiway at Tulsa International Airport, and its front wheel became stuck in the grass Thursday morning, an airline spokesman said. None of the 47 people on board the Delta Connection flight operated by Atlantic Southeast Airlines to Atlanta was injured when the plane tried to reverse course shortly after 6 a.m., said Atlantic Southeast Airline spokesman Jarek Beem. "Air traffic control requested the aircraft turn around on the taxiway," Beem said, adding that it was not clear exactly why controllers made the request but that there was no safety issue involved, such as another plane on the runway. "That will be part of the investigation," Beem said. The CRJ-700 jet carried 43 passengers and four crewmembers, Beem said. The passengers were taken back to the airport terminal and were to be booked onto other flights to Atlanta, he said. Airport officials called for a crane to remove the aircraft and no other flights were affected, according to airport spokeswoman Alexis Higgins. Back to Top Air Force Lifts Flight Ban on Lockheed F-35 Fighter Jet (Bloomberg) - The U.S. Air Force today lifted a two-week-old flight ban that had grounded Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT)'s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, following a power problem on a plane at Edwards Air Force Base in California. An investigation found there was a defective valve in the plane's Integrated Power Package, a turbo machine that provides power to start the engine, according to an Air Force statement. While the probe continues, engineers determined that it is safe to resume test flights, said Joe DellaVedova, a spokesman for the Joint Strike Fighter Program Office. The F-35 is the Pentagon's biggest procurement program at a planned $382 billion to buy 2,457 of the stealth F-35 jets in different versions for the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Flights will resume for 18 of the 20 fighters that the Air Force has been flying, DellaVedova said. Two planes based at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida will remain grounded because they lack the monitoring systems used in developmental test aircraft that can detect any problems in flight, he said. Flight operations will resume for the rest of the planes, which are based at Edwards and at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. Back to Top NTSB APPLAUDS SURVEY RESPONSE FROM EXPERIMENTAL AMATEUR-BUILT (E- AB) AIRCRAFT COMMUNITY; ENCOURAGES MORE PARTICIPATION WASHINGTON - More than 5,000 E-AB owners, operators and builders have responded to an invitation by both the National Transportation Safety Board and the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) to complete a survey on how E-AB aircraft are built and operated so safety issues in this sector of general aviation can be better understood. On July 14, 2011, the NTSB announced that it had undertaken a comprehensive safety study of E-AB aircraft with the support of the EAA, which is hosting the web-based survey, the results of which are being shared with the NTSB. "We are very encouraged by the impressive number of responses to the EAA survey," said Deborah A.P. Hersman. "The more information that is provided to EAA about how the more than 33,000 E-AB aircraft in the U.S. are built and operated, the better we'll be able to understand the safety issues that are so important to this innovative community." The EAA has announced that their survey will remain open through August 31, 2011. Owners, operators and builders of E-AB aircraft who have not yet completed the survey are encouraged to do so at: www.EAA.org/AB-Survey ***** www.ntsb.gov Back to Top Aviation High School to launch at Seattle Museum of Flight An artist's rendering of the new Aviation High School to be located adjacent to the Museum of Flight. Aviation High School will break ground on its new campus at Seattle's Museum of Flight next Tuesday, Aug. 23. As befits a college prep school that emphasizes science, technology, engineering and math, the event will have alumni flying in and landing in Boeing Field, a rocket launch and a student-built robot shoveling the first scoop of dirt. The small school, which offers grades 9-12, says its goal is to become the premier school of choice for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in the Pacific Northwest. According to information on the school's website, the project will cost an estimated $43 million and is funded by both public and private donations. The Highline School District dedicated $10 million to the school, the state of Washington provided $900,000 to fund design costs and private donors contributed more than $5 million. I've reached out to the school for more information on funding, as well as the number of students the new campus will hold. Aviation High School's future auditorium. Here's an excerpt from the school's vision statement: "AHS is a small school with a big vision - namely the belief that students can be simultaneously prepared for the rigors of college and the performance demands of a high- tech world and workplace. We believe that the work of school can be like the work outside the classroom and still be academically rigorous, and that with the right instructional approach it is possible for all students to be prepared for higher education and work in a knowledge-based, global economy." The high school has been in a transient state since its founding in 2004. Its new location, adjacent to the museum's airpark, is expected to open in 2013. http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/08/aviation-high-school-at-seattle-museum.html Back to Top The haboob returns! Another wall of dust hits Phoenix Storm delays flights, brings down power lines PHOENIX - For the third time this summer, a giant wall of dust swept over Phoenix and parts of central Arizona, turning the sky brown, delaying flights, and knocking out power to thousands. National Weather Service meteorologists said a thunderstorm packing winds of up to 60 mph pushed the dust storm toward the Phoenix area about 6 p.m. local time (9 p.m. ET) Thursday. Weather officials say such massive dust storms, also known as haboobs in Arabic, only happen in Arizona, Africa's Sahara desert and parts of the Middle East because of dry conditions and large amounts of sand. The billowing wall of dust cut visibility to a few hundred yards. Some incoming and departing flights at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport were delayed about 40 minutes because of the storm, according to airport spokeswoman Julie Rodriguez. She said take-offs and landings resumed at Sky Harbor about 6:50 p.m. (9:50 p.m. ET) The dust storm swept through Pinal County before it headed northeast toward Phoenix. "This storm hit during a very busy time for traffic, bringing down power lines over several miles on top of cars with visibility near zero," Pinal County Sheriff's Office spokesman Elias Johnson said in a statement. Power lines landed on top of several cars and one school bus in Pinal County. No injuries were reported, Johnson said. Salt River Project officials said that at the peak of the storm 3,500 of its customers were without electricity, mostly in the Queen Creek area southeast of Phoenix, but power had been restored to nearly everyone by 11 p.m. (2 a.m. Friday ET) It was the third major dust storm to hit the Phoenix metro area since last month. A storm on July 5 brought a mile-high wall of dust that halted airline flights, knocked out power for 10,000 people and covered everything in its path with a thick sheet of dust. Another dust storm hit July 18 reaching heights of 3,000 to 4,000 feet, delaying flights and cutting off power for more than 2,000 people in the Phoenix metro area. Pollution levels skyrocket during dust storms and create even more breathing problems for people with asthma and other similar conditions. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44200582/ns/weather/ Back to Top Airplane Plus Heat Plus Ice Equals Mystery by Jim Banke for NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate Washington DC (SPX) Aug 19, 2011 This Gulfstream 2 business jet is being outfitted over the next few months with special sensors to probe cloud properties during the High Ice Water Content experiments. Image credit: NASA It's difficult to believe that an airplane flying in the tropics in the summer could have an engine fill up with ice, freeze, and shut down. But the phenomenon, known as engine core ice accretion, has happened more than 150 times since 1988 - frequently enough to attract the attention of NASA aviation safety experts, who are preparing a flight campaign in northern Australia to learn more about this occasional hazard and what can be done to prevent it. "It's not happening in one particular type of engine and it's not happening on one particular type of airframe," said Tom Ratvasky, an icing flight research engineer at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "The problem can be found on aircraft as big as large commercial airliners, all the way down to business-sized jet aircraft." And it has happened at altitudes up to 41,000 feet. No accident has been attributed to the phenomenon in the 23 years since it was identified, but there have been some harrowing moments in the air. In most of the known cases, pilots have managed to restore engine power and reach their destinations without further problems. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there have been two forced landings. For example, in 2005, both engines of a Beechcraft business jet failed at 38,000 feet above Jacksonville, Fla. The pilot glided the aircraft to an airport, dodging thunderstorms and ominous clouds on the way down. Engine core ice accretion was to blame. Little is understood about ice crystal properties at high altitude and how ice accumulates inside engines. The engines may be toasty warm inside at such heights, but the air outside is frosty cold. The prevailing theory holds the trouble occurs around tropical storms in which strong convection currents move moist air from low altitudes to high altitudes where the local temperatures are very cold, creating high concentrations of ice crystals. But the properties of the ice crystals, such as their size and how many of them are in a given volume of air, are a mystery - one that an international research team led by NASA aims to solve. The FAA has proposed new certification standards for engines that will be operated in atmospheric conditions that generate ice crystals. The rules will take effect next year, just as the NASA team heads to Darwin, Australia, aboard an aircraft specially equipped with instruments to study cloud physics during the Southern Hemisphere summer. Analyses of the Darwin flight tests and additional tests in ground-based facilities in the United States and Canada will provide the FAA the means for ensuring compliance with the new standards. "We need to understand what that environment is out there and, even though it may be a rare case, be able to fly through those icing conditions unscathed. Or if we can find ways of detecting this condition and keep aircraft out of it, that's something we're interested in doing," Ratvasky said. Researchers explain the phenomenon this way: Small ice crystals found in storm clouds get sucked into the core of an aircraft engine, where the pressure is high and the temperature is warm. Some of the ice melts and covers the warm engine parts with a thin film of water that traps additional ice crystals. The super-cooled water chills the engine components enough that ice can accumulate on them. If the built-up ice breaks away in chunks it can damage compressor blades, reduce the power level, or snuff out the engine altogether. For the flight research, NASA is outfitting a Gulfstream 2 business jet with more than 20 meteorological sensors that will be used to probe cloud properties, such as water content and the size and concentration of ice particles, which can lead to engine and air data sensor failures that threaten aviation safety. The data gathered will aid scientists' understanding of cloud growth processes, help them create reliable detection methods and realistic ground-based simulations, and provide a foundation for possible new aircraft design and certification standards. FAA can use what the team learns over the course of its research project to verify the range of atmospheric conditions addressed in the new standards. The flight campaign has three primary goals: + Characterize the range of environmental conditions in which internal engine icing can take place, with an emphasis on how much water or ice is present in a given volume of air. + Determine how to identify geographic regions where such weather threatens and ways to detect the conditions in real time in order to develop guidance that pilots can use to avoid the hazard. + Collect enough data to enable researchers to simulate the weather conditions for aircraft engine tests in ground facilities such as Glenn's Propulsion Systems Laboratory. "Our plan is to study the weather patterns that lead to these conditions, not to test a particular engine configuration. We do not plan to intentionally cause our engines to have an icing event," Ratvasky said. The Propulsion Systems Laboratory recently underwent upgrades to equip it for ground- based simulations of high-altitude icing conditions. Work to transform the Gulfstream 2 into a working airborne science laboratory is under way at a NASA contractor site, Flight Test Associates in Mojave, Calif., and will be completed early in 2012. Engineers will mount six instruments on each wing and additional instruments on the fuselage to measure cloud particle size and shape and water content, whether the particles are liquid or crystal, and the speed of the updraft as cloud particles form. The research team - with representatives from FAA, The Boeing Company, the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Environment Canada, the National Research Council of Canada, Transport Canada, Airbus and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology - will conduct trial runs during the monsoon season in February and March 2012, develop findings and address lessons learned, and then return in January through March 2013 for the primary flight campaign. The team chose Darwin for several reasons: its ground-based weather observing systems are the best in the tropics, there will be plenty of storms to sample, there is plenty of data from previous atmospheric characterization efforts with which to compare, and the Southeast Asia region has seen a large number of engine power-loss events. http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Airplane_Plus_Heat_Plus_Ice_Equals_Mystery_999.htm l Back to Top Aviation safety to be enhanced with opening of GCAA laboratory in capital (UAE) ABU DHABI: Saif Mohamed Al Suwaidi, director-general of the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), officially opened the Air Accident Investigation Department's comprehensive Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) laboratory, on Monday at the GCAA headquarters in Abu Dhabi. The laboratory is managed by the Air Accident Investigation department, headed by the executive director Ismaeil Abdel Wahed. Suwaidi said on this occasion that the GCAA investigates every civil aviation accident in the UAE or outside UAE if the accident was related to one of our national airlines. The GCAA Aircraft Accident Investigation Department investigates the accident or serious incidents findings, causes and contributing factors that lead to determining the probable cause of the accident or serious incident. "This modern laboratory will not only be an essential tool for air accident and incident investigations, but it will also reduce the cost and time and dependency on other investigation bodies, which will in turn lead to enhancing the aviation safety in the UAE," Suwaidi added. "The GCAA will then issue safety recommendations intended to enhance aviation safety by preventing the reoccurrence of the factors that cause such accidents. The addition of a flight recorder lab will significantly improve the ability to fulfill this primary responsibility," he added. Ismaeil Abdel Wahed, executive director of Aviation Investigation explained, "Modern aircraft are complex, the aircraft systems record significant amounts of flight data and technology advances have made flight data analysis and playback a widely accepted, necessary, and practical activity for all aviation authorities charged with investigation responsibilities." "The GCAA laboratory provides the capability to download readout and analyse flight data and cockpit voice recorders information for all aircraft types on the UAE civil register, using the state-of-the-art analysis tools provided in the CAE/flights cape flight data analysis laboratory," he added. http://gulftoday.ae/portal/fc9f5a9f-2808-4b3b-be2e-c21a765c20fa.aspx Back to Top Boeing Said to Win 747-8 Freighter Approval After Two-Year Delay (Bloomberg) - Boeing Co. (BA)'s new 747-8 jumbo jet, the biggest plane it's ever built, will be certified for cargo service today by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, two people familiar with the matter said. The announcement will be made this morning, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details aren't public. Doug Alder, a spokesman at Boeing's commercial headquarters in Seattle, declined to comment. FAA approval will cap a two-year delay to the jet's entry into service and put the 747-8 ahead of the 787 Dreamliner, which has finished flight tests though it hasn't yet been certified. The jumbo jet was set back in part because engineers were diverted to the even-later 787. Boeing expects to receive FAA certification of the 787 next week, with a ceremony scheduled for Aug. 26, said a separate person familiar with that matter who declined to be identified because the plans haven't yet been announced. Luxembourg's Cargolux Airlines International SA will receive the first 747-8 freighter. The first delivery originally was set for the third quarter of 2009. Flight trials continue on the 747-8 Intercontinental passenger version, due to begin service in early 2012 with Deutsche Lufthansa AG. (LHA) The 747-8, with a stretched hump on top, new engines and the longest wings ever built by Chicago-based Boeing, underwent 18 months of flight tests that discovered some problems from the redesign, including flutter in the wings. The functionality of the new flight- management computer had to be scaled back to avoid further delays, with a software upgrade planned later. The Dreamliner, the world's first composite-plastic airliner, is more than three years behind schedule. The FAA is reviewing its certification paperwork, and Boeing has said it expects to deliver the first one to Japan's All Nippon Airways Co. next month. Back to Top MTSU, Army will team up on drones First-of-its-kind partnership may produce jobs for grads WASHINGTON - Middle Tennessee State University is partnering with the U.S. Army to research and develop drones, officials announced Thursday. Officials say the partnership - the first between the Army's drone office and a university - will allow the Army to more easily recruit MTSU graduates for jobs and will help soldiers who want classroom training in operating drones. "This agreement is another in a series of bold steps forward that we've taken to provide the very best in facilities, training and service in this important area," MTSU President Sidney McPhee said Thursday at a conference of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International in Washington. No money will be exchanged in the agreement, but the Army may loan three drones and two control stations to MTSU in the fall, according to university officials. "To the degree that the Army can promote independent research and development at the university level, develop student interest in what the Army does in unmanned aircraft systems, and then ultimately hire many of these students, it's a win-win situation," said Tim Owings, deputy project manager at the Army's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office, based in Huntsville, Ala. MTSU's location, less than two hours from Huntsville, is part of its appeal to Army officials, said Kyle Snyder, director of the university's unmanned aircraft systems operations. The short distance simplifies recruiting and communications, he said. The university is developing curriculum for a new unmanned aircraft concentration for students entering as freshmen in 2012 and beyond. It's also creating a center to train students in drone operations and research new ways to use drones in military and commercial contexts, officials said Thursday. Use of drones is growing Drones are big business for the military, which received $4.5 billion for the equipment from Congress in fiscal year 2010. But non-military use is growing, too. Some law enforcement agencies already use drones for surveillance, and businesses may soon be able to use them to survey large pieces of land or the exteriors of tall buildings, Snyder said. Air traffic laws prevent most unmanned aircraft from flying in commercial airspace - although exceptions can be made for institutions such as universities - but the Federal Aviation Administration is reviewing those rules. MTSU is part of the group that's helping the FAA set new standards, which may pave the way for commercial use of drones within the next few years, Snyder said. Drones are smaller than traditional planes and helicopters, so they are cheaper to operate and maintain, he added. And because they don't carry a pilot, they can fly into dangerous conditions such as storms or war zones. "We're seeing this as such a growing market. There are so many millions of dollars the Department of Defense is pumping into this," he said. "Five years from now, we should be able to produce students who are ready for jobs in the commercial markets." Snyder said he's already started getting calls from companies interested in working with MTSU on drones. Establishing the university as a hub for unmanned aircraft research could encourage companies to invest in Middle Tennessee, he said. http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110819/NEWS04/308190074/MTSU-Army-will-team- up-on-drones Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC