Flight Safety Information March 5, 2012 - No. 045 In This Issue Pilot accused of flying plane recklessly Air India evaded mandatory cockpit training for pilots FAA Fines Colgan Air, Pilots/Fight Attendants Not Getting...Minimum Amount Of Rest Delta airplane knocks over parked bus at Metro Airport ARGUS PROS Global Auditing United hit by delays as glitches beset system merger Sikorsky Aircraft Sponsors Major Industry Safety Summit ICAO reveals chronic under-resourcing of safety oversight Abu Dhabi Air Expo kicks off tomorrow Emirates takes delivery of 1000th Boeing 777 jet Pilot accused of flying plane recklessly An alarm rang out in the cockpit of a Pacific Blue plane as it struggled to fly out of Queenstown with 70 people on board and a storm approaching, a court has been told. A Pacific Blue pilot is accused of flying the Boeing 737 recklessly and endangering the lives of passengers and crew on 22 June 2010 when he took off from the South Island resort town bound for Sydney. The 53-year-old has name suppression and has been suspended on full pay. At the time of the incident, there were no runway lights at the airport or radar and pilots had to be clear of the airport 30 minutes before twilight. The Pacific Blue pilot operated on instrument flight rules. Runway lights have since been installed at the airport. The Civil Aviation Authority told the Queenstown District Court on Monday that witnesses will describe a terrifying take-off procedure involving the flight. Fletcher Pilditch, the lawyer acting for the CAA, said the pilot took off, disregarding minimum safe daylight levels in crosswinds which exceeded the airport's safety requirements. The pilot was then forced to pitch the plane to a very low altitude to avoid cloud, essentially skimming over the top of the Kelvin Heights Golf Course. Warning alarms were sounding on the flight deck and the co-pilot had to tell the pilot that the aircraft speed was about to exceed the safe level for the flaps settings, the court was told. Mr Pilditch said the pilot acted carelessly and, had there been an engine failure shortly after takeoff, the plane may have crashed. "In effect, this is all about the decision to operate in circumstances where the reasonable and prudent pilot would not have operated. "Faced with the time of day, the various conditions reported to the defendant; the decision to go was a decision that fell below that standard, because it put the defendant in circumstances where he operated the aircraft in a manner that could be nothing but careless." The court was told the pilot was unable to engage the autopilot, which would normally happen just after takeoff. He unable to do that because the plane was operating outside the dynamic range for engaging the autopilot system and instead the captain was forced to wrestle the Boeing though the cloud before climbing out of the Wakatipu Basin. Defence denies safety breached The defence denies that the circumstances encountered on the day constituted a breach of safety. Lawyer Matthew Muir told the court the cockpit warnings were normal and that the takeoff was not careless and does not constitute recklessness on the part of the captain. Mr Muir says the defence will also call into question the operating manual used by Pacific Blue. The hearing is expected to take two weeks and will include evidence from expert witnesses, passengers on the plane, air traffic controllers and other pilots, and recordings between the pilot and air traffic controllers on the day. http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/top/100136/pilot-accused-of-flying-plane-recklessly Back to Top Air India evaded mandatory cockpit training for pilots Air India Ltd did not provide mandatory cockpit training to most of its international flight crew for over two years, violating regulatory norms and which could have potentially led to the Air India Express crash in 2010, according to an internal email. The inquiry into the flight IX-812 crash in Mangalore, on May 2010 which killed 158 people, pointed to poor crew resource management (CRM) as a key reason for the worst crash India had seen in a decade. CRM training for pilots is primarily meant to improve air safety and focuses on interpersonal communication, leadership and decision making. It was started in 1979 internationally after it was found that most aviation accidents occurred because of human error. In India, CRM training is to be done for all pilots every year, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), according to a Mint report by Tarun Shukla. "The court of inquiry into the Mangalore accident has published its report, wherein inadequate CRM has played a significant role," AS Soman, Executive Director of Operations and Customer Service, Air India, wrote in a June 3, 2011 email to then airline chairman Arvind Jadhav. "A comparison of the tables in the report forwarded herewith clearly indicates that practically no CRM training was conducted in the operations department between 2007 and 2010." The court of inquiry report directly attributes the crash to poor CRM and a lack of "assertive training" for the first officer of flight IX-812, who did not challenge any of the errors made by the commanding pilot. "...the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) recordings reveal low standards of CRM by both pilots... The pilots were not working in harmony..." the email said, quoting the crash report. Air India Express, the low-cost international arm of Air India, did not have a safety or a training department, and used Air India's facilities, calling into question if the crew that operated the IX-812 flight complied with all the requirements of the aviation regulator, said Mohan Ranganathan, an Air Safety Expert and Member of the government-appointed Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Council, which was established after the Mangalore crash to review air safety. "None of the mandatory training has ever been stopped," an Air India spokesman said. Ranganathan said the email points out that DGCA's rules for scheduled transportation was not followed. "How did this also pass muster with the IATA-certified audits?" the international benchmark for safety among airlines, he asked. The email also said there were indications that records were potentially fudged to portray better results. "Use of registers with no control over entries show instances of mismatching signatures (especially for training captains and senior executives), overwritten dates, altered entries and logging of navigation classes as CRM classes," the email said. "No CRM manuals were issued to crew. One manual with (outdated) first generation CRM material (was) maintained only for audit purposes." International and local audits were conducted recently and "we have not been found wanting in any training", the Air India spokesman said. "This is another example of a farce being played out by DGCA when they do safety audits. Every accident India has witnessed since 2000 has identified CRM failure as a major factor," Ranganathan added. "The two fatal crashes involved the Air India family-Alliance Air (in 2000) and Air India Express. Stating that DGCA has given them (Air India) a clean chit cuts no ice." He said he was curious why Soman, as the head of operations and safety, allowed such a serious lapse to take place during his tenure. An Air India official said that the airline was not inferior in any training aspect and dismissed the CRM findings as "petty political bickering between two factions within the airline". Air India Express flies typically to West Asia from southern Indian states. It is a subsidiary of Air India run under Air India Charters Ltd and operates 175 international flights and 15 domestic flights every week. The carrier ferried 2.5 million passengers in the year ended March 2011. An audit done last year by DGCA had found that Air India Express did not have a human resources department and needed to lean upon parent Air India for nearly everything, even in situations that required quick decisions, resulting in operational handicaps, Mint reported on 5 December. "It was surprising to note that even (for) the photocopier, (Air India Express) was dependent on Air India," the DGCA report said, warning that letters exchanged between Air India and Air India Express indicated "total interference in the working of Air India Charters, which is detrimental to the overall progress and directly infringes on air safety". The carrier did not have either a DGCA-approved chief of safety or deputy chief of safety. "The airline seems to have purposely overlooked some deficiencies," the report had said, citing at least three instances where a pilot made grave errors but was promoted to fly bigger aircraft instead of being penalised. http://www.travelbizmonitor.com/air-india-evaded-mandatory-cockpit-training-for-pilots-15833 Back to Top FAA Fines Colgan Air, Pilots/Fight Attendants Not Getting Minimum Amount Of Rest March 5, 2012 - The FAA alleges that between June 14, 2008 and Feb. 23, 2009, Colgan scheduled flight duty time for two captains, two first officers and six flight attendants on a seventh day after they had been on duty for the previous six consecutive days. The FAA regulations required the airline to relieve each crewmember from duty for at least 24 consecutive hours during any seven consecutive calendar days. One of the captains operated four flights without adequate rest. Each of the other flight crew members operated one flight without meeting this rest requirement. The FAA also alleges that Colgan failed to give three flight attendants a required scheduled rest period of at least eight consecutive hours after scheduling them on flights after their previous duty period. Two of the incidents took place on June 15, 2008 and the third took place on Sept. 16, 2008. Finally, the FAA alleges that Colgan scheduled a first officer for flight time on Nov. 7, 2008 when the pilot's total flight time in commercial flying exceeded eight hours between required rest periods. This civil penalty involves alleged violations predating the FAA's new pilot flight, duty and rest rules that were announced in December 2011. The new regulations will go into effect in December 2013. Colgan Air has 30 days from the receipt of the civil penalty letter to respond. You may remember Colgan Air when it made a name for itself when Colgan Air Flight 3407, marketed as Continental Connection under a codeshare agreement with Continental Airlines, a regional airline flight from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York crashed. The plane crashed into a house in Clarence Center, New York on February 12, 2009, at 10:17 p.m. The crash killed 50 people, including the two pilots, two flight attendants, 45 passengers (including an off-duty pilot), and a person in the house into which the plane crashed. It was the first fatal accident of a commercial airliner in the United States since the August 2006 crash of Comair Flight 191. The NTSB ruled one of the factors that lead to the crash were the pilots did not have adequate rest before the flight. Colgan Air, Inc. is a regional airline subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines Corp. The headquarters of Colgan Air are located in Memphis, Tennessee. Colgan Air's major hubs are Boston's Logan International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, and Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport. It has been operating as US Airways Express since 1999 and now serves almost 50 cities in the Northeast and Texas as a feeder for US Airways Express and United Express. Pinnacle Airlines Corp. plans to phase out the Colgan Air name. http://avstop.com/March_2012/faa_fines_colgan_air_pilots_not_getting_minimum_amount_of_rest.htm Back to Top Delta airplane knocks over parked bus at Metro Airport A Delta airplane knocked over a parked shuttle bus Saturday when one of its wings clipped the bus on the runway at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, officials said. There were no injuries. The Delta MD-80 had landed safely at the airport around 12:45 p.m. Saturday and was taxing on the north end of the McNamara terminal concourse when its left wing tip clipped a medium-sized airport shuttle bus, said Metro Airport spokesman Mike Conway. The shuttle bus tipped over. No one was inside the bus. There were 144 passengers on the plane. "We sent shuttle buses out to the aircraft to drive them the rest of the way to their gate," Conway said. "It wasn't very far away." The left wing tip of the plane sustained some damage. The Federal Aviation Agency and the Airport Authority Police will determine how the incident happened and if the airplane or shuttle bus were in the wrong spot, Conway said. http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120303/METRO/203030381/1409/metro/Delta-airplane-knocks-over-parked-bus- Metro-Airport Back to Top Back to Top United hit by delays as glitches beset system merger NEW YORK/CHICAGO (Reuters) - United Airlines battled service problems including flight delays, faulty kiosks and jammed phonelines this weekend as it worked through technical glitches during its combination of the United and Continental Airlines reservation systems. The airline on Saturday adopted the reservation platform of the former Continental Airlines after the companies merged to form the world's largest carrier, now known as United Airlines. It is owned by United Continental Holdings Inc (UAL.N). But after spending months preparing for the change -- including training about 15,000 employees on the new software -- United said on Sunday that technical issues had flared up at airports across the system, causing delays. In particular, problems with the company's airport check-in kiosks meant customers had instead to line up to see service agents, spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said. "We did have some issues with our kiosks and at times that slowed the check-in process," McCarthy said, adding that the airline's performance had improved by Sunday afternoon. By 2:30 p.m. CST (2030 GMT), 83.1 percent of domestic mainline flights were arriving on time, in line with the company's 80 percent monthly goal, McCarthy said. Earlier on Sunday only 75.5 percent of United's mainline flights were on time -- arriving within 14 minutes of their scheduled slot -- as were about 87.1 percent of its Express flights. The day before, just 75 percent of flights were departing within 30 minutes of their scheduled time. "Our IT department still continues to fine-tune our system," McCarthy said. The company's website said its call centres were "currently experiencing extraordinarily high call volumes" and that in some cases, hold times were more than an hour. Customers might be advised to call back another time, it said. Other issues that irked some customers included a delay in merging the airlines' air-miles programs. The airline said it had put up a notice on Saturday morning saying air miles could take up to 72 hours to be updated. United promised one customer, Daniel Woo, in its Twitter feed on Saturday morning that he would be able to see combined miles within 24 hours. But on Sunday, a Reuters editor flying United said the check-in computer had not recognized her frequent-flier number in a manual entry nor in a reading of a United credit card. KIOSK, AIR-MILE PROBLEMS Michael Boyd, an airline consultant at Boyd Group International in Evergreen, Colorado said his wife was waiting for her air miles to be transferred but added that two of his colleagues had travelled United without incident on Sunday. "It doesn't look like it's a major meltdown. It looks like a glitch," said Boyd, who says he has carried out no consulting work with United and is not working with any of its competitors. Boyd said arrival times seemed normal but added that kiosk problems would make travellers anxious, particularly as airlines tended to have much fewer check-out counters open since kiosks had become more prevalent. "When the kiosk refuses to talk to you, who do you yell at?" he said. Migration to a single reservation system comes with risks, as US Airways Group (LCC.N) learned in 2007 when it attempted to combine the reservation systems of the former America West Airlines and US Airways. The two airlines merged in 2005. A glitch in combining that system caused self-service kiosks to fail and forced passengers to stand in extraordinarily long lines. Thousands of travellers had to wait and about 500 at the Charlotte, North Carolina hub missed flights. Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) had a much smoother transition to a single reservation system following its 2008 merger with Northwest Airlines. Since the United transition, customers going to the Continental.com website are now directed to the United website. The United website said on Sunday afternoon that "the systems integration process is almost complete". It said the system conversion involved moving millions of reservations and re-establishing numerous communications links. Back to Top Sikorsky Aircraft Sponsors Major Industry Safety Summit Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. today announced its Platinum-level sponsorship of one of the industry's largest and most important safety conferences, the annual CHC Safety & Quality Summit. The three-day, internationally recognized event focuses on the human side of aviation safety, with last year's summit attracting more than 700 delegates from throughout the world. Sikorsky is a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX). This year's eighth annual summit will take place at the Westin Bayshore Resort & Marina in Vancouver, BC, Canada, from March 26-28. The theme is, "Improving Safety Culture through Talent, Training & Trust." "Sikorsky Aircraft has no higher priority than safety, and we are proud to continue our sponsorship of this superb gathering of experts from around the globe to share best practices for establishing, maintaining and continuously improving a safety culture for our entire industry," said Dr. David Eherts, Chief Safety Officer for Sikorsky Aircraft. CHC Helicopter initiated the summit in 2005 as an internal program for its safety and quality managers to learn from the world's best aviation safety experts. Word began to spread about the program, and in 2007 CHC expanded it into a public event open to the entire industry. "In the spirit of industry-wide collaboration where safety is our highest value, Sikorsky is consistently the first company to pledge its support for CHC's Safety & Quality Summit," said Gregory Wyght, Vice President, Safety & Quality for CHC Helicopter. "When safety is such a fundamental part of a company's culture, it makes a significant difference to our entire industry." Fred Brisbois, a member of Sikorsky's Qualification Assurance Board responsible for the system safety aspects of Sikorsky- certified aircraft, said, "Education, training and use of quality and properly maintained aircraft are all important for operational safety. Addressing human factors such as sound decision-making, knowledge and capability are vital to an effective accident prevention program. The CHC Safety summit is a unique and valuable forum where safety professionals and operators from a global cross-section of the industry join together to share knowledge and train each other for the common goal of preventing helicopter accidents. It is by far the most effective safety conference I have attended in my 40- plus years in aviation safety." He added, "This summit is invaluable in furthering the safety-consciousness of operators, maintainers and managers." Brisbois also serves on the International Helicopter Safety Team (IHST) as Co-Chairman of the U.S. Safety Implementation Team and is a Director on the Executive Committee. The IHST is dedicated to reducing the world-wide helicopter accident rate by 80 percent by 2016. Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., based in Stratford, Conn., is a world leader in helicopter design, manufacture and service. United Technologies Corp., based in Hartford, Conn., provides a broad range of high technology products and support services to the aerospace and building systems industries. SOURCE Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. Back to Top ICAO reveals chronic under-resourcing of safety oversight States are chronically under-resourcing the aviation safety oversight functions of their national aviation authorities, particularly in the European and North Atlantic region, according to ICAO. ICAO's safety officer at its Paris regional office, Nicolas Rallo, told the Flight Safety Foundation's European Aviation Safety Seminar in Dublin that it discovered this lack of resources at national level through its Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme. The cause, according to ICAO, appears to be government austerity measures, and it fears the under-resourcing could become even more severe, because many of the audits that revealed the deficits were evident before reaction to the global economic crisis started to kick in. Reports from the oversight audit programme indicate a "lack of effective [safety procedures] implementation" globally in 42% of states, and in 40% of European and North Atlantic countries, with this directly attributable to lack of financial resources. Such implementation deficits, caused by a lack of human resources, are an even greater problem, with 76% of states affected globally, but in the European-North Atlantic region it is even worse at 78%. Rallo says this is a combination of posts not being filled, or posts being staffed by people unqualified for the work. "Some governments have taken austerity measures through legislative means for all state bodies no matter what their function or funding mechanism," he says. He adds that the centre of the problem is "often at high political levels" and demonstrates a "lack of understanding of the consequences and a lack of political will". ICAO fears that, as safety management systems become mandatory in the European-North Atlantic region and elsewhere, governments may start to delegate industry monitoring and oversight to the industry itself, and reduce further regulatory oversight resources. http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/icao-reveals-chronic-under-resourcing-of-safety-oversight-369066/ Back to Top Abu Dhabi Air Expo kicks off tomorrow ABU DHABI -- The Abu Dhabi Airports Company (ADAC) will officially launch Abu Dhabi Air Expo tomorrow at Al Bateen Executive Airport. The expo running from 6th until 8th March, will be open daily from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, to visitors and exhibitors to witness exhilarating performances by the UAE's Al Fursan Aerobatic team, the Emirates Sky Diving team and daring aerobatic displays by the famous Captain Zoltan Veres, the recipient of five Guinness world records. The Airshow timings will be on Tuesday 6th March at 1:00 pm, Wednesday 7th March at 3:00 pm and Thursday 8th March at 3:00 pm. In addition to the public daily performances, the Abu Dhabi Air Expo will cover key developments and innovations relating to non-commercial aircraft, jets, helicopters, equipment, manufacturers, services, pilot training schools, accessories, avionics, insurance and financing. The three day event is expected to draw over 3,000 visitors, plus major aviation players from across the GCC, Levant, North Africa, and as far afield as Asia and South Africa. Yousif Hassan Al Hammadi, Chairman of the Organizing Committee for Abu Dhabi Air Expo, Deputy General Manager, Al Bateen Executive Airport, said: "ADAC is very pleased to host the first general aviation trade show for Abu Dhabi. The Company would like to thank all our partners from Abu Dhabi Police, UAE Armed Forces, Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority and Etihad Airways for all their support for the event. ADAC looks forward to welcome visitors tomorrow and for next few days to the show." The expo will include nearly 70,000 m2 of exhibition space, showcasing over 70 aircraft and will bring together nearly 100 distributors showcasing their products and services. The organizers believe that Abu Dhabi Air Expo will provide a platform for the major industry players to share their latest innovations. Key exhibitors at show include: Etihad Airways; Royal Jet; Mubadala Aerospace; UAE Armed Forces and Rotana Jet. As part of the show's programme, a number of industry related conferences have been scheduled around topics including general aviation, flight training and safety, helicopters, aviation fuels and engines, youth involvement, aircraft asset management, financing and insurance. The conferences will be held at the Gulf Centre of Aviation Studies (GCAS), which is located near the exhibition venue at Al Bateen Executive Airport. A number of esteemed speakers are confirmed to present these conferences, including: Jacques Callies, Aviation et Pilote Magazine; Bruce Landsberg, AOPA Safety Foundation, President, Flight Safety International; Dr. Heinrich Bulthoff, Max Plank Institute of Technology; and Dr. Daniel Lutolf, Managing Director, SAC Swiss Aviation Consultants GmbH. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayarticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2012/March/theuae_March124.xml§ion=theuae&col= Back to Top Emirates takes delivery of 1000th Boeing 777 jet Dubai: Emirates, the world's biggest customer of twin-jet Boeing777s, on Saturday celebrated the unveiling of the 1,000th Boeing 777 during a special event at the manufacturer's plant in Everett, Washington State. Emirates is the world's largest operator of the Boeing 777 and the landmark aircraft will become the 102nd to join the airline's 777 fleet when it is delivered later this month. The factory celebration was attended by more than 5,000 Boeing employees, suppliers and government officials, including Shaikh Ahmad Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation and Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates airline and Group, a delegation of dignitaries from the UAE and senior Emirates executives. "Emirates is honoured to be the recipient of Boeing's 1000th 777, an aircraft whose advanced, long range capacity has been instrumental to our success in becoming a truly global airline," said Shaikh Ahmed. "Emirates is already the world's largest operator of the Boeing 777 and our order for an additional 93 is further testament to our belief in the product and the role this aircraft will play as we build our fleet for tomorrow and further establish Dubai's position as one of the world's leading air travel hubs." "It is very fitting that Emirates is the recipient of our milestone 1000th 777 delivery. Emirates has set an industry high bar in providing excellent customer service and we are honoured that the 777 is central to its efforts to be a global airline leader," said Jim Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Emirates, the largest airline in the world in terms of international Revenue Passenger Kilometres, now flies to 122 destinations worldwide. In addition to the 1,000th Boeing 777 passenger aircraft, Emirates also received a Boeing 777 freighter, the eighth to join its fleet, on 1 March 2012. Source: gulfnews.com Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP, FRAeS, FISASI CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC