Flight Safety Information October 21, 2011 - No. 217 In This Issue Flight diverted to Boston after electrical smell F-16's Escort Aircraft To Centennial Airport MTSU fleet grounded by hailstorm damages Passenger on US Airways Flight 20 to Honolulu ran for cockpit MEMORY CARDS AND COMPONENTS YIELD NO INFORMATION Airbus A320 Air Interruption - Acrid Smell in Cabin Malaysia Airlines's first A380 completes maiden flight Yak-42 inquiry shrugs off cockpit design queries FAA: LightSquared quandary stalling early NextGen implementation The San Francisco Chapter...of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators Meeting Flight diverted to Boston after electrical smell BOSTON-US Airways says it is investigating after a flight bound for Europe was diverted to Boston when crew members noticed an unusual electrical smell in the back of the plane. Flight 710 from Philadelphia to Zurich landed safely at Logan International Airport Thursday night. No emergency was declared. None of the 192 passengers on board were injured, but four crew members who reported feeling ill were taken to a Boston hospital as a precaution. The passengers were later put on another plane to Switzerland. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/10/21/flight_diverted_to_boston_after_electrical_smell/ Back to Top F-16's Escort Aircraft To Centennial Airport F-16 fighter jets escorted an aircraft to land at Centennial Airport. Two F-16 fighter aircraft under the direction of North American Aerospace Defense Command intercepted a civilian aircraft that was out of radio communications today at approximately 5 p.m. MDT. The plane is a private aircraft from the Cleveland area. The aircraft landed without incident at Centennial Airport, which is located near Denver, Colo. The pilot was to be met by local authorities. NORAD's mission - in close collaboration with homeland defense, security, and law enforcement partners - is to prevent air attacks against North America, safeguard the sovereign airspaces of the United States and Canada by responding to unknown, unwanted and unauthorized air activity approaching and operating within these airspaces, and provide aerospace and maritime warning for North America. NORAD may be required to monitor, shadow, divert from flight path, direct to land and/or destroy platforms deemed a potential threat to North America. NORAD is the bi-national Canadian and American command that is responsible for the air defense of North America and maritime warning. The command has three subordinate regional headquarters: the Alaskan NORAD Region at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska; the Canadian NORAD Region at Winnipeg, Manitoba; and the Continental NORAD Region at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla. The command is poised both tactically and strategically in our nation's capital to provide a multilayered defense to detect, deter and prevent potential threats flying over the airspace of the United States and Canada. http://www.kktv.com/home/headlines/132281268.html Back to Top MTSU fleet grounded by hailstorm damages Flight controllers ordered student-pilots to land minutes before storm hit Matt Taylor of the MTSU Aerospace program looks across the wing of one the MTSU airplanes at Murfreesboro Municipal Airprot for hail damage from Tuesday's storm. MTSU has grounded its fleet until a closer look can be done by a team of maintenance technicians during an inspection this weekend. MURFREESBORO - Quick thinking by flight controllers at the Murfreesboro Municipal Airport landed MTSU student- piloted airplanes safely minutes before golf-ball sized hail pounded the university's fleet Tuesday afternoon. If hail had struck the planes while they were still airborne, said MTSU Department of Aerospace Chair Wayne Dornan, "no one would have (likely) survived." Even so, the planes have been grounded pending safety inspections after damages they received. "It must have been a micro-burst that came over the airport and increased the velocity of the hail," he said. "We have a dispatch center that monitors the weather and they instructed planes in the area to get on the ground. It was definitely the efficiency of our flight dispatch center that saved some lives." Unfortunately, the property of the MTSU flight school and several other universities was not spared. MTSU's Aerospace Department, the National Collegiate Flight Association and Murfreesboro Municipal Airport were hosting a flight and ground school competition that involved two to four planes from five different universities across the U.S. when the hail began falling. "We had planes from five different states on the ramp when this happened," Dornan said, adding the damage was unlike anything he or anyone else had ever seen. Now the university is awaiting an inspection of its fleet by trained professionals from the Diamond Company and other aircraft companies, according to Dornan. In the meantime, no MTSU-owned airplanes will be taking to the air. "We made the decision based on safety that we needed to ground the entire fleet," Dornan said. "We don't want to take chances at all, but we hope, and are working around the clock, to get these planes back in the air because we've got hundreds of students that are depending on us to finish their flying this semester." Dornan said it is likely that the university will have to lease planes to continue training its students, but no official decision had been made on that as of Thursday afternoon. He added it is just too risky to take any of the planes from MTSU's fleet - which include Diamond D40s and D20s, Piper Arrows and Piper Seminoles - into the air. "You have to have nice, smooth airflow over the wings to fly," he said. "If there is any type of damage, the planes are immediately deemed not air-worthy. Following FFA guidelines, we have maintenance technicians who must go out and certify each plane is safe to fly and, until that happens, none can fly." Luckily, the Murfreesboro Municipal Airport (KMBT) remained fully operational following the hail storm, according to manager Chris Gehrke. "It didn't really affect the airport, the runways or the navigational aids," he said. "We still have operations today and we weren't nearly as impacted as MTSU's flight school and the teams visiting for the competition." Some airplane hangars suffered broken windows, but that was about the worst of the damage, according to Gehrke. Since the airport is owned by the city, it is self-insured. "We have folks out here working to catalogue all the items that need to be repaired or replaced, but it hasn't affected operations," he said. Like Dornan, he praised the quick thinking of flight controllers who got the warning out about the approaching hail storm, he said. "That's the great thing about these aviators and people in the field here with the university - it's all about safety," he said. "And part of safety is watching the weather. They were on top of things and understood severe weather was coming our way." http://www.dnj.com/article/20111021/NEWS01/110210318/MTSU-fleet-grounded-by-hailstorm- damages?odyssey=nav%7Chead Back to Top Passenger on US Airways Flight 20 to Honolulu ran for cockpit, wanted to jump out of plane: hero cop When a hysterical passenger aboard a Hawaii-bound flight made a dash for the cockpit, two Jersey City police officers heading to a wedding tackled and guarded him until touchdown before turning him over to authorities, officials said. "They are two fine, outstanding officers and they carry on in the fine tradition of the Jersey City Police Department," said South District Commander Charles Nierstedt of officers Paul Fennel and Robert Taino Jr., who were on U.S. Airways Flight 20 from Phoenix, Ariz., to Honolulu when the man "apparently went crazy." Taino said the flight was about two hours out of Honolulu at about 6:30 p.m. yesterday when they realized there might be a problem and they told the crew that they were cops. Flight attendants were scurrying about and no one was being served, Taino told Lt. Edgar Martinez. Moments later flight attendants ran to the back of the plane with an oxygen tank for the man, Martinez said. Next, the cops saw a man in a sweater having a panic attack and saying he had to get off the plane and was going to try to get off at 40,000 feet, Martinez said Taino told him. All of a sudden the head flight attended had other flight attendants station themselves at all exit doors and by then, the man had no shirt on, was waving his hands in the air and screaming "He's got a gun. Who's gonna shoot me me?" Martinez said. "Stop him!" yelled the head flight attendant as the man bolted toward the cockpit and the two Jersey City officers, along with two passengers, tackled him at the front of the plane and held him down, Taino told Martinez. A flight attendant gave Taino a set of plastic wrist restraints and the cops cuffed the man and led him to the rear of the plane, where they watched him until the wheels touched down, Martinez said. They turned the man over to agents of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the Honolulu Sheriffs Department at the gate, Martinez said. The cops were on their way to Honolulu to attend the wedding of a Jersey City police sergeant, Martinez said. Today all three officers are visiting the Pearl Harbor Memorial. Taino is a recipient of the police department's Combat Cross award and Fennel is a recipient of an departments Excellent Police Service award, Martinez said. U.S. Airways spokesman Andrew Christie said the airline has no comment on the incident, which is in the hands of law enforcement. The FBI has not replied to an email seeking information on the man and whether charges have been filed against him. http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2011/10/passenger_on_us_airways_flight.html Back to Top MEMORY CARDS AND COMPONENTS YIELD NO INFORMATION ABOUT LAST MONTH'S AIR RACE CRASH WASHINGTON - While the investigation into the September 16, 2011 crash of a vintage P-51D Mustang aircraft at the Reno Air Races in Reno, NV remains ongoing, today the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reported that they were unable to retrieve any on-board video from the badly damaged components and memory cards found in the debris field. A memory card taken from the on-board telemetry unit of the accident aircraft is still being examined to determine if data can be retrieved. Additional telemetry data that was transmitted from the accident aircraft to the race crew on the ground is also still being examined. Any information recovered from the card, and any telemetry data will be included in the public docket. NTSB investigators continue to review the dozens of videos and hundreds of photographs provided to them by spectators at the air race. Additional updates of factual information will be provided as it is developed. www.ntsb.gov Back to Top Airbus A320 Air Interruption - Acrid Smell in Cabin Date: 21-OCT-2011 Time: ~8:00 LT Type: Airbus A320-211 Operator: Lufthansa Registration: D-AIQD C/n / msn: 202 Fatalities: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 91 Other fatalities: 0 Airplane damage: None Location: Overhead Lac Leman at FL360, about 80nm southwest of Zurich - Switzerland Phase: En route Nature: International Scheduled Passenger Departure airport: Frankfurt am Main Airport - FRA/EDDF Destination airport: Madrid-Barajas Airport - MAD/LEMD Narrative: An Airbus A320-211 performing Lufthansa flight LH1110 from Frankfurt am Main Airport - FRA/EDDF to Madrid-Barajas Airport - MAD/LEMD, Spain, diverted to Zürich Airport - ZRH/LSZH, Switzerland after the crew noted an inexplicable acrid smell in the galley. Aircraft landed safely, but hree crew members were taken to hospital with respiratory problems. www.aviation-safety.net The Airbus was overhead Lac Leman at FL360 when the crew decided to divert to Zürich Airport. Back to Top Malaysia Airlines's first A380 completes maiden flight Malaysia Airlines's first Airbus A380 has carried out its maiden flight at the airframer's headquarters in Toulouse. The aircraft, fitted with Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, performed a 5h initial sortie on 20 October during which it underwent preliminary systems tests. Malaysia Airlines has six of the type on order, with initial deliveries planned to begin in the second quarter of next year. The double-deck aircraft, MSN78, will be transferred to Airbus's Hamburg plant for cabin fitting and painting. Malaysia Airlines will become the eighth carrier to operate the A380. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top Yak-42 inquiry shrugs off cockpit design queries Russian investigators have dismissed suggestions that cockpit design might have contributed to the Yakovlev Yak-42 accident in Yaroslavl last month. The Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) is still trying to understand the braking force on the aircraft which emerged during the take-off roll, as the Yak-42 struggled to become airborne. While local reports have queried whether the crew inadvertently activated the brakes, MAK has yet to publish its conclusions, having carried out tests with a sister aircraft in the fleet of Yak Service, the carrier involved in the 7 September crash. MAK said that the Yak-42 fleet had accumulated 2.3 million hours in 1.1 million flights, and there had not been an accident connected with the ergonomics of the cockpit. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top FAA: LightSquared quandary stalling early NextGen implementation John Hickey, the US Federal Aviation Administration's deputy associate administrator for aviation safety, says the uncertainty on implementation details of broadband wholesaler LightSquared's new L-band 4G network is having a "chilling effect" on operators considering equipping with next generation air transportation system (NextGen) avionics. Those avionics include the automatic dependent surveillance - broadcast (ADS-B) units that airlines must install by 2020. The FAA is pushing for early adoption of ADS-B by operators. But Hickey warned, "operators will wait several years down the road to see what happens". Speaking at the Air Traffic Control Association annual meeting recently in Washington, DC Hickey stated: "This is the most intractable problem I have been involved with in 31 years in aviation. Technology can solve this, but the real problem is time and cost." Hickey says the problem extends past US borders. "There are 2,000 aircraft that fly into the US daily and weekly. They will be significantly impacted if we can't solve the GPS issue," Hickey said. LightSquared in January gained US FCC conditional approval to deploy an L-band (satellite-based) broadband network, pending the results of what turned out to be a massive four-month investigation of potential GPS interference by industry, government and LightSquared. The FCC's January decision allowed LightSquared to roll out, pending the interference analysis, a full-time nationwide network based on an existing "ancillary terrestrial component" (ATC) provision that, in all other cases, allowed for rebroadcasting L-band signals only as gap-filler for land-based networks. The final report in June showed that the LightSquared final deployment plan featuring an "upper" 10MHz channel near the GPS band operating simultaneously with a "lower" 10MHz band had a devastating effect for aviation's certified receivers, precision receivers (including WAAS and certain ADS-B ground station components) and general purpose receivers (non-certified airborne units). An internal FAA report, which Hickey said had been "inadvertently released" this summer, estimated a cost of $70 billion and loss of 800 lives if the network were to be deployed as planned. Simultaneous with the June report however, LightSquared modified its operating plan, offering to use only the lower 10MHz channel and cutting ground transmitter power from an estimated 40,000 transmission towers. LightSquared has put plans for the upper 10MHz on hold, but has not relinquished the spectrum. A new round of "targeted" testing on the lower 10MHz requested by the FCC in September is underway, set to be completed in November. In parallel, Hickey says the FAA has been meeting with LightSquared on a weekly basis since June to analyse the impact of a lower 10MHz deployment on certified aviation receivers, the only aviation GPS units required to conform to a minimum performance standard. "We don't always agree with them when we make assumptions on how to analyse [the interference]," said Hickey, adding, "It wouldn't surprise me if the [final] report will be that we agree to disagree". Hickey said the FAA is making "an honest effort to find perhaps a win-win solution" that will allow both GPS and LightSquared operations, a nod to the White House's initiative to expand broadband coverage in the US. He notes that analysis so far shows that precision timing and general use aviation GPS units "have to some degree a significant impact even on the lower [10MHz] band". LightSquared earlier this month announced that it had "solved" the interference issue for precision GPS units in the lower band using filters developed by several suppliers, some as cheap as $6, though company or independent testing has not yet confirmed how well the filters might work. Even with a favourable outcome of the lower 10MHz testing with or without filters, there's still concern in the industry about introducing the upper 10MHz channel at some point in the future. "The at-play business case is operations in the lower band," said Hickey, "though I do think there is significant concern over the long term use of the upper band. LightSquared has not given that band back to the FCC." "If we have in any way a compromise to the [GPS] system, we compromise the future of NextGen", Hickey said. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top The San Francisco Chapter of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators presents Investigating a Major Aviation Accident Where: Oakland Aviation Museum, Oakland Airport When: Friday, October 28th, 2011 from 1300-1500 Cost: $5 (to offset the museum entrance fee) This round table discussion will feature: Ron Schleede - NTSB retired - Ron Schleede served the NTSB for more than 28 years as a field investigator, human factors investigator and manager of Major Investigations - 2002 ISASI Jerry Lederer Award Recipient. John Purvis - Boeing retired - John Purvis had a 41 year career with the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company and served as its Director of Air Safety Investigation for 17 years - 2001 ISASI Jerry Lederer Award Recipient. Toby Carroll - Director Flight Safety, Continental Airlines - Toby Carroll has led Continental's Flight Safety Department for over 25 years. Toby also serves as President of the US Society of ISASI. Important Notes: * Program begins at 1300, but you are free to visit the museum before or after the program. * Attendance is NOT limited to ISASI members. You are encouraged to bring friends and colleagues. * A door prize will be given to the person who drives the furthest to attend. * Refreshments provided. Please RSVP by email Susan.Rivers@RTIforensics.com or (510) 921 5357 Fee waived for first 10 people to RSVP Oakland Aviation Museum 8252 Earhart Road - Bldg. L-621 Historic North Field Oakland Intl. Airport (510) 638-7100 www.oaklandaviationmuseum.org Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC