Flight Safety Information April 24, 2012 - No. 082 In This Issue American flight from Hawaii lands safely at LAX after engine trouble Powerful laser hits Toronto-area police helicopter PRISM CERTIFICATION CONSULTANTS Voss Says Pilots Must Back Up Automation American flight from Hawaii lands safely at LAX after engine trouble LOS ANGELES (AP) - An American Airlines flight from Hawaii has landed safely on one engine at Los Angeles International Airport after the pilot reported engine trouble. Sponsored LinksAirline spokesman Matt Miller in Dallas says instruments on Flight 246 showed trouble with the left engine about an hour before its scheduled arrival and the engine was shut down. He says the aircraft is designed to fly safely on one engine. The Boeing 757 jetliner landed at 5:19 a.m. from Kona and passengers got off at the terminal gate. The 147 people on board, including the seven crewmembers, were not injured. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor says FAA inspectors will work with the airline to determine the cause of the problem and ensure it is fixed before the plane is returned to service. Back to Top Powerful laser hits Toronto-area police helicopter A Toronto-area police helicopter was forced to land after it was repeatedly struck with a high-powered laser Saturday. Durham Regional Police said the pilot of the helicopter had to put his aircraft down on the property of the nearby police station. The helicopter returned to its home base at the Oshawa airport, 30 kilometres south of the police station, hours later, police said. Melissa Perry, 20, has been charged with mischief endangering life and assault with a weapon. She was also charged under the Canadian Aviation Act and the Aeronautics Act. The helicopter was flying over the train station in the village of Uxbridge - about 75 kilometres northeast of Toronto - looking for vandals, when the laser was pointed at it multiple times for several minutes, police said. Spokeswoman Sgt. Nancy van Rooy said the pilot was taken to hospital to ensure he hadn't suffered any eye damage from the laser. While he was released, it is possible that damage could take several days to emerge, van Rooy said. The spokeswoman said the helicopter was equipped with sensors to easily track down the source of the beam, but would not elaborate further. According to the World Health Organization, Class 3A lasers - the type used against the helicopter - can cause serious damage to eyesight with extended exposure. Class 3A lasers are the most powerful legally available in Canada. Perry was released Sunday after a bail hearing. Read more: http://www.canada.com/Powerful+laser+hits+Toronto+area+police+helicopter/6504206/story.html#ixzz1sxkVmexe Back to Top Back to Top Voss Says Pilots Must Back Up Automation "Five years ago we passed the point where automation was there to back up pilots," said Flight Safety Foundation CEO Bill Voss at last week's Flight Safety Foundation Corporate Aviation Safety Seminar in San Antonio. "Clearly today, the pilot is there to be the backup to the automation." Voss told AIN "This is simply a realistic assessment of the world today, except we are not training pilots to be backups to automation. We have to own up to the fact that we need develop new kinds of pilot training," he said. Voss added that human pilots too often lose the mental picture of the aircraft's automation. "If pilots have no idea of what the automation should be doing, they also have no idea of whether everything they observe on the panel represents a normal operation. That's what happened to Air France 447," he said. "This is not just about better stick and rudder skills though," he explained. "What you die from is not understanding what configuration will keep the aircraft in the air safely. If pilots don't understand that level flight means two-and- a-half degrees of pitch and 93-percent N1, they have no way of manually controlling that aircraft if something breaks. But the training department can't fix everything. This is also an operational problem out on the line." http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/ainsafety/2012-04-23/voss-says-pilots-must-back-automation Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP, FRAeS, FISASI CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC