Flight Safety Information May 17, 2012 - No. 099 In This Issue FAA investigating corporate jet pilot's report of object over Denver Four pilots killed as two PAF planes collide Nepali pilot reported warning light problem before crash Rapid de-rotation following a hard landing causes Boeing 767 accident at Bristol PRISM CERTIFICATION CONSULTANTS Southwest Airlines to defer delivery on 30 Boeing jets Crashed Agni Air Dornier 228 recorders recovered Back to Top FAA investigating corporate jet pilot's report of object over Denver (CNN) -- The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating a corporate jet pilot's radio transmission that he saw a possible remote-controlled aircraft flying near his jet over Denver, authorities said Wednesday. "The FAA is investigating the incident and will try to positively identify the object the Citation pilot reported, where it came from and who was operating it," the FAA said in a statement. The corporate jet, a Cessna Citation 525 CJ1, was flying over Denver on Monday after coming in from Wichita, Kansas, reported CNN affiliate KUSA. The pilot made a radio transmission to air traffic control about the object, KUSA reported, citing LiveATC.net. "A remote-controlled aircraft, or what, but something just went by the other way. ... About 20 to 30 seconds ago, and it was like a large remote-controlled aircraft," the pilot said. Back to Top Four pilots killed as two PAF planes collide Islamabad, May 17 - Four pilots were killed Thursday when two Pakistan Air Force (PAF) trainer planes collided in the country's northwest, police said. The accident took place at about 10.20 a.m. when two trainer planes slammed into one another while on a routine training flight over the Rashakai area of Nowshera, a district some 100 km northwest of Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, reported Xinhua. Geo News said that two training airplanes crashed in the suburban area of Rashakai, killing four pilots. One plane crashed into a field while another fell on a house in a residential area of Rashakai in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Eyewitnesses said a huge fire erupted after a plane crashed into the residential area. The two planes had taken off from an air base in Resalpur, a town to the north of Nowshera. http://india.nydailynews.com/ Back to Top Nepali pilot reported warning light problem before crash The pilot of a Nepalese passenger plane that crashed into a mountain reported a problem with a warning light as he was about to land and decided to divert the plane, the Civil Aviation Authority said Tuesday. Prabhu Saran Pathak, who died in Monday's crash in north-western Nepal, told air traffic control that he feared the wheels of his Dornier Do228 turboprop might not unlock because of the problem, the aviation regulator said. The flight was about to land at Jomsom in the Mustang district, 360 kilometers north- west of Kathmandu, when Pathak decided to return to Pokhara, where the Agni Air flight carrying 21 people originated. As the German-made plane was making a sharp turn, its wing and nose hit a mountain near Jomsom airport, the authority said. Six on board survived: an Indian man, two Indian children, a Danish couple and a Nepali flight attendant. All but the Indian man were in stable condition at a Pokhara hospital. Tirumala Kidambi Sreekanth was in critical condition. The plane had been chartered by a local travel agency. Most of those on board were Indian nationals who were going to the Hindu temple of Muktinath in Jomsom, which is also a gateway to a number of trekking routes. Nepal has a poor air safety record. Seventy-one air crashes have been reported in the mountainous country's aviation history, which began in 1953, according to government statistics. More than 600 people have died in the crashes. Monday's accident was the fifth in the Jomsom region. http://india.nydailynews.com/ Back to Top Rapid de-rotation following a hard landing causes Boeing 767 accident at Bristol Buckling of skin between STA 610 and STA 632 An AAIB investigation revealed that a Boeing 767-300 landing accident at Bristol, U.K. was caused by rapid de-rotation of the aircraft following a hard landing. On October 3, 2010 a Boeing 767-300, G-OOBK, sustained substantial damage in a hard landing accident at Bristol Airport (BRS), U.K. Airframe stringers were cracked, bent or deformed and the skin was creased and wrinkled. Thomson Airways Flight BY519 departed from Cancún (CUN), Mexico on a scheduled flight to Bristol (BRS). There were 258 passengers and twelve crew members on board. The flight to Bristol was uneventful. It was raining and there was quite some turbulence during the ILS approach to runway 09. The aircraft was stabilised on the glide path at an average descent rate of about 680 ft/min (~11 ft/s), although there were fluctuations in airspeed, angle of attack and normal acceleration, indicative of turbulence. As the aircraft descended through 200 ft aal, the autothrottle and autopilot were manually disconnected because the ILS was unreliable below 200 feet. The airspeed was 141 kt at the time and the wind calculated by the FMC was from 138° at 25 kt. At a height of about 35 ft (just over three seconds before touchdown), the pitch attitude was just less than 1° nose up and airspeed was 142 kt. The descent rate was about 600 ft/min (10 ft/sec), with the wind, calculated by the FMC, from 116° at 20 kt. Aft control column was then applied and over the next three seconds the pitch attitude progressively increased to 3.5° nose up . However, there was only a gradual reduction in the rate of descent before the aircraft touched down on the main landing gear, registering a peak normal load of 2.05g. Coincident with the touchdown of the main landing gear, a momentary longitudinal deceleration of -0.27g was recorded. Both the commander and co-pilot were thrown forward during the touchdown, which resulted in the commander inadvertently moving the control column forward, to a nose down position. The spoilers also started to deploy at this time. The aircraft then became 'light' on its main landing gear whilst also de-rotating in pitch at about three degrees per second. At a nose down pitch attitude of just less than 1°, a normal load of 2.05g was recorded as the nose gear contacted the runway. The aircraft then rapidly pitched up and down, from between 3° nose up to just less than 0.5° nose down (indicating bouncing of the nose gear), before the aircraft eventually settled on the landing gear. Seven seconds after the initial touchdown, the thrust reversers were deployed, and the control column, which had remained in a forward nose down position since the initial touchdown, was progressively moved aft. Manual braking was then applied before the aircraft was taxied from the runway. The AAIB concluded that the damage to the fuselage occurred as a result of rapid de- rotation of the aircraft following a hard landing on the main landing gear. The runway profile, nuisance GPWS alerts and the meteorological conditions may have influenced the landing. Four safety recommendations were issued: It is recommended that the European Aviation Safety Agency: - publishes guidance information that assists operators and National Aviation Authorities in the production and auditing of procedures to prevent the loss of Cockpit Voice Recorder recordings in accordance with the requirements of EU-OPS 1.160 and EU-OPS 1.085. It is recommended that the Civil Aviation Authority: - should advise operators of the benefits of establishing, in conjunction with aircraft manufacturers, acceptable maximum rates within their flight data monitoring schemes for events such as hard landings, beyond which action should be taken to reduce the rate. - should advise operators of the benefits of analysing recorded flight data relating to landings not only by airport, but also by runway. It is recommended that Boeing Commercial Airplanes: - review archived training and safety information, to ensure that relevant safety information is promulgated, and continues to be promulgated, to operators. The same aircraft was involved in a similar accident in September 2000. It was registered S7-RGV then and suffered a hard landing at Ho Chi Minh City Airport (SGN), Vietnam. www.aviation-safety.net ********** Note: American Airlines experienced the same type of events: * October 1992 - Sao Paulo, Brazil (GRU) * September 2000 - London (LHR) Back to Top Southwest Airlines to defer delivery on 30 Boeing jets May 16 (Reuters) - Southwest Airlines Co said it has deferred deliveries of 30 Boeing Co 737-800 aircraft it was to receive in the coming two years, aiming to save more than $1 billion in capital spending. The airline told a shareholder meeting in Dallas that 20 scheduled plane deliveries from 2013 and 10 from 2014 had been moved to 2017 and 2018. "Until we hit our return on capital target we don't plan to grow our fleet," Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly told the annual shareholder meeting, which was carried over the Internet. Kelly said bookings for May and June were looking good and the airline expected 2012 results to improve over 2011. "With fuel as the obvious caveat, we have an encouraging earnings outlook for the rest of this year," Kelly added. Southwest reported a quarterly loss excluding items for the first quarter, pinched by higher fuel costs. The discount airline's cost advantage against rivals has narrowed in recent years as big airlines restructured in bankruptcy. The airline also said on Wednesday that its board raised the quarterly dividend to 1 cent per share from the prior level of less than half a penny, and approved an increase in the company's share buyback program to $1 billion from $500 million. Back to Top Crashed Agni Air Dornier 228 recorders recovered Search teams have recovered the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder of the Agni Air Dornier 228-200 turboprop that crashed in northwest Nepal on 14 May. They will be passed to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, which is setting up a committee to lead the investigation on the crash, says a police spokesman from Nepal. It is not clear whether the recorders will be sent overseas for analysis. The aircraft, registration number 9N-AIG, was operating on the Pokhara-Jomson route when the incident happened. The spokesman says that the pilot had told air traffic control about a minute before the crash that there was "something wrong with the aircraft indicators" on approach to Jomson, and that he was going to do a go-around and return to Pokhara Airport. However, one of the aircraft's wings slammed into a mountain while on the go-around. Jomson airport, which is located in a mountainous area, is a key trekking hub in Nepal. Fifteen people, including the pilot and the co-pilot, were killed in the crash. Six others survived. Agni Air, originally set up as an air taxi company in 2005, started regular services in 2008, linking the Nepalese cities of Kathmandu and Pokhara with other towns and cities in the country. This is the second crash involving a Dornier 228 operated by Agni Air. http://www.flightglobal.com/news/ Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP, FRAeS, FISASI CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC