Flight Safety Information June 4, 2012 - No. 113 In This Issue Engine Trouble Reported in Nigerian Crash Crashed cargo jet landed in a pool of water: Ghana 2 pilots die as air tanker crashes while fighting wildfire near Nevada-Utah line PRISM Certification Consultants Nigeria plane crash: Was age of aircraft an issue? Double Blow for African Aviation Safety NTSB TO MEET ON MOTORCOACH CRASH AND AIRCRAFT INCIDENT GCAA works closely with industry to promote aviation safety management (UAE) Oman Air appoints new General Manager, Quality and Safety Engine Trouble Reported in Nigerian Crash A Nigerian airliner that crashed into a crowded neighborhood in Lagos, killing all 153 on board, reported engine trouble just before it went down, said Harold Demuren, director- general of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority. (NYT) "Two engines were having problems," Mr. Demuren said in a telephone interview Monday morning, shouting over the sound of police and ambulance sirens as he stood near the crash site. "That's what he told the control tower." he . The Dana Airlines plane was on its way from the capital Abuja when it smashed into the side of a building near the Lagos airport as it was attempting to land on a quiet Sunday afternoon, killing a so-far unknown number of people on the ground, Mr. Demuren said. Rescue workers struggled after the crash to get equipment to the site and they continued to fight fires and pull corpses from the rubble on Monday. The city's narrow, traffic-choked streets impeded the arrival of equipment. Thousands of onlookers gathered around the wreckage, and police had to take time clearing them from the area as well. A widely-followed Nigerian news Web site, Sahara Reporters, said Monday that the plane appeared to momentarily regain power, even as it was struggling, before crashing into the Ishaga area of Lagos. A leading Nigerian paper, The Guardian, reported that residents knew something was amiss when they heard loud vibrations and saw the plane buzzing low overhead. The plane's wreckage was strewn over a wide area, Sahara Reporters said. In the past Nigeria has had a poor aviation safety record, though in recent years it has improved. Sunday's crash was apparently the most serious since 1992. Still, with a proliferation of small regional airlines attempting to make up for the giant nation's poor road network, apparent near-misses and borderline safety are proverbial themes among those who must use the country's planes. Pilots who calmly announce to bemused passengers that they have missed their landing and must try again, or who begin singing over the intercom in mid-flight, are not unknown. Sahara Reporters also reported on its Web site Monday that an unnamed Dana Airlines official told Nigerian Channels Television that the airliner in Sunday's crash had experienced recent maintenance problems. But Mr. Demuren, of the Civil Aviation Authority, said that the plane had had no problems. Back to Top Crashed cargo jet landed in a pool of water: Ghana ACCRA (Reuters) - A Nigerian cargo jet landed in a pool of water during heavy rains before overshooting the runway at Ghana's Accra airport on Saturday, authorities said on Sunday. The Boeing 727-200, operated by Allied Air cargo, rammed through the airport fencing and crashed into two cars on a nearby street, killing at least 10. "What we know for now is that it was raining at the time and the plane landed in a pool of water and that created some challenges to the pilot," Doreen Owusu Fianko, managing director of Ghana Airports Company told reporters during a visit to the crash site by President John Atta Mills. Fianko said a joint team including external aviation experts would be announced later on Sunday to begin investigations into the crash. The plane which had taken off from Lagos in Nigeria, failed to stop at the end of the runway and crashed into a taxi cab and mini-bus on a nearby street just after 1900 GMT. Fianko said the plane was carrying general goods including textiles, perfumes and clothing from Nigeria to the Ivory Coast via Accra. All four crew, including two pilots survived the crash. "They are all in good health and are receiving treatment at the clinic," Fianko said. A Reuters witness saw a badly mangled minivan and ten bodies next to the crashed plane, which had parts of its nose, wing and undercarriage torn off. The airport perimeter wall near the road was smashed. Ambulances, police and military security had cordoned off the area. A doctor at the airport medical clinic near the runway said he heard "a loud bang and screeches" and then went outside, where he saw a plume of smoke rising from the accident site. Operations at the airport remained normal with all flights on schedule, Fianko said. Saturday's crash was the first in decades in Ghana whose airspace has a fairly high safety record, compared with other countries in the West Africa region. Back to Top 2 pilots die as air tanker crashes while fighting wildfire near Nevada-Utah line RENO, Nev. (AP) - A firefighting aircraft crashed into rugged terrain near the Utah- Nevada border as it dropped retardant on a 5,000-acre wildfire, killing the two Idaho men on board. The air tanker went down Sunday afternoon in the Hamblin Valley area of western Utah, Bureau of Land Management officials said. The two pilots were fighting the fire, which began burning Friday night after a lightning strike in eastern Nevada. The fire spread into Utah on Saturday night, but most of the blaze remained in Nevada, about 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas. A helicopter crew saw the crash and told ground crews that "it didn't look good," Iron County sheriff's Detective Sgt. Jody Edwards in Utah told The Salt Lake Tribune. BLM ground crews and air crew members worked to hold the fire back from the wreckage. Sheriff's deputies drove and hiked for more than an hour to reach the site and confirm that the pilots had died, Edwards said. The fire later overwhelmed the crash site, Edwards said. The sheriff's office identified the pilots as Todd Neal Tompkins and Ronnie Edwin Chambless, both of Boise, Idaho. Tompkins and Chambless were flying a P-2V air tanker that is owned by Neptune Aviation Services of Missoula, Mont. A medical examiner was helping authorities recover the bodies Sunday night. There was no immediate word on what caused the crash. The fire was burning in steep, rugged terrain featuring pinion-juniper woodlands, sagebrush and grasses. Crews were pulled off the fire lines after the crash. "To have them working on the fire lines after this is more than we would like to ask firefighters," said Don Smurthwaite, spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. "It's obviously a horrifying and tragic event." Firefighters didn't expect to have the fire fully contained until Saturday, BLM spokesman Chris Hanefeld said. Also Sunday afternoon, the crew of another firefighting P-2V air tanker reported it was unable to lower all of its landing gear and land at Minden-Tahoe Airport in western Nevada. That crew had been helping with efforts to fight a wildfire near the airport, which is about 50 miles south of Reno. Crew members flew the plane for another 90 minutes to burn off fuel before making an emergency landing on a cleared runway, Douglas County sheriff's spokesman Jim Halsey said. The aircraft sustained significant damage after it slid off the runway, but both crew members escaped injury, he said. Sunday's incidents come several months after a group of Western senators questioned whether the Forest Service was moving quickly enough to build up and replace the fleet of aging planes that drop fire retardant on wildfires. The agency hires a mix of large and small airplanes and helicopters each year to fight wildfires. They are generally privately owned and work under contract. Retardant dropped from planes is typically used to bolster a line cut by firefighters on the edge of a fire, and water dropped from helicopters is usually used to cool hotspots within a fire. The current fleet is made up of Lockheed P-2Vs, anti-submarine patrol planes dating to the 1950s that have been modified with jets to supplement the piston engines. More than half are due to retire in 10 years. The number of large aircraft has steadily dwindled since 2004, when the Forest Service grounded 33 air tankers after a number of high-profile crashes. In March, Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked the Government Accountability Office to evaluate whether the Forest Service has done a good job of analyzing the types and numbers of aircraft needed, the cheapest way to get them, new technologies and where the planes will be based. Back to Top Back to Top Nigeria plane crash: Was age of aircraft an issue? Nigeria plane crash: Nigerian law bans aircraft older than 20 years, but the average age of Dana Air's planes is 21.4 years. Sunday's Nigeria plane crash killed all 153 passengers and unknown numbers on the ground. Rescue workers search for bodies at the site of a plane crash in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, June 4. A passenger plane carrying more than 150 people crashed in Nigeria's largest city on Sunday, government officials said. A commercial airliner crashed into a crowded suburb of Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, Sunday, killing all 153 people on board and an unknown number of residents on the ground. The crash is the country's worst since September 1992, when a military transport plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Lagos, kill all 163 Army soldiers and crew aboard. The cause of the crash of the Dana Air flight - carrying passengers from Nigeria's capital of Abuja to Lagos - is still unknown, but questions have been raised about the age of Dana's planes. In 2010, Nigeria banned all aircraft over the age of 20 years. According to Planespotters.net, the average age of Dana's fleet of five planes is 21.4 years. Its youngest plane is 20.9 years old. A spokesman for President Goodluck Jonathan said that "every possible effort will be made to ensure that the right lessons are learnt ... and that further measures will be put in place to boost aviation safety in the country." "The president joins all Nigerians in mourning all those who lost their lives in the plane crash which has sadly plunged the nation into ... sorrow," Reuters news agency quoted from a statement from President Jonathan's office. Nigeria's government has made a number of improvements to its air-safety systems, introducing modern passenger-scanning equipment and improvements in its airport radar systems. In 2010, the United States gave Nigeria the Federal Aviation Administration's highest rating, a Category 1, allowing Nigeria's commercial carriers to land at US airports. Yet, despite these improvements on paper, Nigeria's upgrades still fail to meet standards when it comes to implementation. Frequent power outages - an odd occurrence in a country that is Africa's largest oil producer -- and failure of its backup generator systems often shut down air-traffic control systems for hours at a time, and delay the takeoff and arrival of flights. Nigeria's aviation Minister, Princess Stella Odua expressed her condolences to the families of those on board the plane, but she was quoted by Vanguard newspaper as saying, "I assure the nation that investigations are under way." Nigeria has also struggled with insurgencies in the past couple of years, both in the oil- rich Niger Delta region and among the impoverished citizens of the Muslim-majority north, where a Islamist militant group named Boko Haram has carried out a terror campaign that has killed more than 1,000 people in the past two years. No terror group has taken responsibility for Sunday's crash, however. Instead, speculation has turned toward the age of the aircraft. The plane that crashed on Sunday belonged to Dana Air, which uses older Boeing MD-83 jets. Many commercial airlines in Nigeria - and indeed throughout the continent -- purchase cheaper second- hand aircraft, often those that are no longer serviceable in richer countries. Such planes are safe only if they are rigorously maintained by the airline's ground crew. Unfortunately, there is a history of air crashes involving older planes. The Lagos-based Bellview Airlines Flight 210, which crashed shortly after takeoff on Oct. 22, 2005 at Lagos, was 24 years old. The Sosoliso DC-9 aircraft that crashed on Dec. 10, 2005 near Port Harcourt was 32 years old. It had been sold to Sosoliso by JAT airways because it no longer met European noise standards. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2012/0604/Nigeria-plane-crash-Was-age-of- aircraft-an-issue Back to Top Double Blow for African Aviation Safety Two crashes in two successive days set the stage of another year of high aircraft accident rates in Africa. Safety statistics for the continent are among the most erratic. The crash rate in in 2011, although higher than other regions, was relatively low for Africa, at 3.27 hull losses per million sectors (compared with an industry average of 0.37). That was down from more than 9 crashes per million sectors in 2009 and more than 7 crashes per million sectors in 2010 (the 2008 figure was better, at 2.12 western hull losses per million sectors), according to IATA figures. But the June 3 crash of a Dan Air MD-83 on takeoff from Lagos-Murtala Muhammed International Airport, following a day after the crash Allied Air 727 cargo aircraft on landing at Accra, Ghana suggest another difficult year in terms of crash figures. For Nigeria, in particular, the crashes will hark back to the difficult days several years ago when the country suffered a spate of accidents in 2005 and 2006. The Ghana crash originated in Lagos, too. The Dana Air flights 9J-997 struck a building. All 153 persons (including six crew) on board are believed to have died. It was not immediately clear if there were additional fatalities on the ground. The Allied Air flight, operating for DHL, overran the runway and struck a vehicle, killing all ten onboard (the four crew survived). The aircraft is reported to have landed during a thunderstorm. Both aircraft are over 30 years old, with the MD-83 having its first flight in 1990 and the 727 first flying in 1982, according to the Aviation Safety Network. In both cases information on the cause of the accident has yet to emerge. http://www.aviationweek.com/Blogs.aspx?plckBlogId=Blog:7a78f54e-b3dd-4fa6-ae6e- dff2ffd7bdbb&plckPostId=Blog%3A7a78f54e-b3dd-4fa6-ae6e- dff2ffd7bdbbPost%3A0b4bbad5-f6b6-43ee-972f-5b82eb68ad65 Back to Top NTSB TO MEET ON MOTORCOACH CRASH AND AIRCRAFT INCIDENT WASHINGTON, D.C. - The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will hold a meeting to determine the probable cause and consider safety recommendations for a highway collision and an aviation incident. The first item the Board will discuss will be the March 12, 2011, crash in New York City of a World Wide Tours-operated motorcoach. Fifteen passengers died in the collision. The second item is a December 29, 2010, incident in which an American Airlines B-757 ran off the departure end of the runway into deep snow after landing at Wyoming's Jackson Hole Airport. None of the 185 passengers and crew onboard were injured; the aircraft sustained minor damage. Event: Board Meeting Date/Time: Tuesday, June 5, 9:30 a.m. (ET) Location: NTSB Board Room and Conference Center, 429 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, DC Participants: NTSB Board Members www.ntsb.gov Back to Top GCAA works closely with industry to promote aviation safety management (UAE) The General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), Air Navigation and Aerodrome Department (ANA) held the 5th Annual ANA Safety Workshop from 29 to 30 May 2012, at the Al Marooj Rotana Hotel in Dubai. The event which was titled 'Integrated Aviation Safety Management' was supported by both national civil and military organisations, and was seen by many delegates as another successful major event in the UAE safety promotion calendar. A major sponsor of the event was SERCO Middle East. Over 100 participants from UAE air traffic control units, airports, airlines, military, government agencies and the wider industry attended the two day workshop which featured speakers from the GCAA, Abu Dhabi Airports Company (ADAC), Dubai Airports, Dubai Air Navigation Services, Fujairah International Airport, Sharjah Department Civil Aviation, SERCO Middle East and Emirates Airlines. The event was first held in 2008 when it involved only a small gathering of air traffic control units and has since continued to increase every year in both scope and relevance to encompass the many disciplines of the aviation safety industry within the UAE. The workshop was focused on Integrated Aviation Safety Management Systems and consisted of a comprehensive schedule of presentations and workshop exercises aimed at providing a strengthened understanding of safety management principles and culture, highlighting the importance of leading industry to mature from the isolated system towards the more effective integrated processes. Delegates took advantage of the opportunity to network and brainstorm during the workshop to determine ways to foster continuous improvements to safety within the industry. The GCAA is committed to empowering the UAE Aviation industry to lead the way in continually making improvements to safety to meet the ever growing demands from the expanding airline operators within the UAE and the Middle East region. Through numerous safety promotion activities, such as this valuable workshop and additionally numerous seminars, conferences and formal technical committee meetings the GCAA ANA Department continually promotes a sound healthy safety culture in all areas of industry, by obtaining aviation stakeholders' buy-in to the necessity to have effective Safety management Systems in place to enhance safety. Ismaeil Al Balooshi, the GCAA Executive Director of Aviation Safety Affairs Sector, stated, "We will continue to expand this important annual event to include more of the industry not only from the UAE, but also from regional and global aviation organisations. Next year our 6th Annual Event will be transformed into an International Safety Seminar, together with vital participation workshops, which will reinforce our Authority's Mission to continue to be a world leader in the aviation industry." http://www.ameinfo.com/gcaa-closely-industry-promote-aviation-safety-302638 Back to Top Oman Air appoints new General Manager, Quality and Safety Oman Air has appointed Janab Al Sayyid Captain Manin bin Khalifa bin Said Al-Said to the new position of General Manager, Quality and Safety. The role, which includes responsibility for Emergency Response Planning, was previously included within the duties of Oman Air's Chief Officer, Flight Operations. Welcoming Captain Al-Said to Oman Air, the airline's Chief Executive Officer, Wayne Pearce, said: "I am extremely pleased that we have been able to appoint Captain Manin to the role of General Manager, Quality and Safety and everyone at Oman Air offers him a warm welcome. He brings with him a wealth of experience gained over many years within the aviation industry and the position he is now taking up is vital to Oman Air's continuing success. "The safety of our customers is the over-riding concern of Oman Air and Captain Manin's undoubted and proven expertise in this area will serve us well. Furthermore, Oman Air's considerable international reputation has been built on, amongst a range of factors, the high quality of our products and services. We look forward to working with Captain Manin to reaffirm our commitment to quality and to deliver the best possible passenger experience for all our customers." Janab Al Sayyid Captain Manin bin Khalifa bin Said Al-Said responded: "I am delighted to be joining Oman Air and to be bringing the experience I have gained over 35 years in aviation to the benefit of Oman's national carrier. I very much look forward to working with the team in Muscat and across Oman Air's network of more than 40 destinations to deliver the highest standards of quality and safety within all areas of the airline's operations." Captain Al-Said began his career in aviation in 1970 and was commissioned into the Sultan of Oman's Air Force in 1974. He joined Gulf Air in 1979, initially as a pilot, and subsequently rose to the position of Head of Flight Safety and Quality Assurance. His most recent role prior to joining Oman Air included being an IOSA Qualified Auditor/Consultant with Aviation Quality Services in Frankfurt, carrying out IOSA and company audits on a range of airlines. Furthermore, Captain Al-Said was the co-founder and first Chairman, from 2005 to 2007, of the Gulf Flight Safety Committee, which now has more than 100 aviation industry, corporate and airline members. Captain Al-Said joins Oman Air following the airline's emergence over the last 30 months as an international airline with a deserved reputation for comfort, luxury and value. Oman Air was assessed in 2011 as an Official 4-Star Airline and was awarded Best Business Class Seat in the World by SKYTRAX at the 2011 World Airline Awards. In the same year, Oman Air was named Airline of the Year at France's Lauriers d'Or du Voyage d'Affaires and, more recently, Best Business Class Airline, Middle East, at the Business Destinations Awards. The acclaim has recognised the growth of Oman Air's fleet, including the introduction of luxurious Airbus A330 and Embraer 175 aircraft, the expansion of the airline's network to include exciting destinations across the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Africa, and the unveiling of an array of new products and innovations, including the pioneering of inflight mobile phone and wi-fi connectivity. http://www.ameinfo.com/oman-air-appoints-manager-quality-safety-302391 Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP, FRAeS, FISASI CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC