Flight Safety Information July 24, 2012 - No. 150 In This Issue Congress passes bill boosting pilots' rights Feds: Helicopter in fatal Arizona crash hit cable Report: US air safety program for reporting controller errors needs significant improvement FAA Error Reporting Gives Amnesty for Sleeping, Report Says ARGUS PROS Aviation Auditing WWII P-38, rescued from ice, draws crowd at EAA Your Airport Is a Petri Dish Worker charged with driving drunk at airport Private Spaceflight Industry, FAA to Start Safety Talks Next Month Congress passes bill boosting pilots' rights WASHINGTON (AP) - Pilots' rights when dealing with Federal Aviation Administration disciplinary proceedings would receive a boost under a bill passed by Congress on Monday - a measure written by a senator who was ordered to take remedial flying lessons by the agency after he landed his plane on a closed runway. The House approved the bill by voice vote. The Senate approved the measure last month. The bill now goes to the president for his signature. The bill was sponsored by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., who sent workers on the ground scrambling when he landed his plane on a closed runway marked with a giant yellow X at an airport in South Texas in October 2010. Inhofe said later he didn't see the workers and trucks on the runway until it was too late to safely abort the landing. The FAA didn't post a notice online warning pilots of the runway closure until days after the incident, he said. Afterward, FAA officials ordered Inhofe, who has been flying for more than 50 years, to take remedial training as a condition for retaining his license. The senator complained he wasn't treated fairly by the agency and the process left him feeling powerless. The bill requires the FAA to provide pilots with timely notice of actions that might affect their license. Pilots also could appeal FAA decisions in federal court if a first appeal to the National Transportation Safety Board fails. The bill also clarifies what information the FAA must provide pilots when the agency issues orders that deny, amend, modify, suspend, or revoke a license. FAA would also be required to improve its program for notifying pilots of changes or events that could affect their flight plans, such as closed runways. FAA officials didn't reply to a request for comment. The bill was supported by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and the Experimental Aircraft Association, the two largest groups representing private pilots. "Over the course of my years in Congress, I have helped an untold number of pilots facing the pressure of dealing with the FAA," Inhofe said in a statement. "This bill remedies many of the most serious deficiencies in the relationship between general aviation and the FAA, and ensures that pilots are, like everyone else, treated in a fair and equitable manner by the justice system." Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/23/congress-passes-bill-boosting- pilots-rights/#ixzz21XkW03yG Back to Top Feds: Helicopter in fatal Arizona crash hit cable CAMP VERDE, Ariz. (AP) - Federal investigators say a helicopter that crashed in Arizona, killing four people, struck a cable spanning the Verde River. A preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board says the helicopter had been flying low through a canyon on June 30 when it crashed near the town of Camp Verde. Investigators found the helicopter lying on its side in the center of the river. A cable pulley system that sits about 50 feet above the river was found north of the wreckage. The NTSB says the edge of the two main rotor blades had cable marks about three feet from the tips. A final report on what caused the crash isn't expected anytime soon. The 70-year-old president and chief executive of an Arizona restaurant group was among those killed. Back to Top Report: US air safety program for reporting controller errors needs significant improvement WASHINGTON (AP) - A safety program that encourages air traffic controllers to voluntarily disclose their mistakes in exchange for amnesty from punishment needs significant improvement before it can work effectively, according to a report released Monday. The program has been FAA's primary answer to the problem of controller errors that bring planes dangerously close together. It encourages greater reporting of mistakes by promising not to punish controllers who disclose errors within 24 hours of an incident as long as the errors aren't the result of gross negligence. The idea is to use the data gathered to better spot safety trends and take corrective action. The program - which FAA began to phase-in in 2008 - had collected more than 41,000 reports as of the end of last year, showing "promise as a tool to promote increased safety reporting," the report by the Transportation Department's inspector general said. But the FAA has only recently developed processes to analyze the data that has been amassed, the report said. Also, due to program rules designed to protect the confidentiality of controllers who file reports, much of the data collected isn't verified for accuracy, the report said And, the agency hasn't fully developed a process to effectively share the data that's been collected with individual air traffic control facilities around the country so that local improvements can be made, the report said. The FAA "will need to make significant improvements" before the program "will be able to effectively identify and address the root causes of safety risks," the report said. In one case cited by the inspector general, the program accepted a report from a controller who was watching a movie while on duty, protecting the controller from punishment. "We consider this a conduct issue that requires management attention rather than a safety issue appropriate for a confidential safety program," the report said. Mistakes and misconduct by air traffic controllers drew attention last year after a plane carrying first lady Michelle Obama was allowed to fly too close to a cargo jet and controllers at several airport towers and other facilities were caught sleeping on the job. FAA spokeswoman Brie Sachse, responding to the report, called the program "an effective safety tool" that has allowed the agency "to take swift, corrective action and enhance skills in the workforce." The National Air Traffic Controllers Association also disagreed with the inspector general's conclusions, saying the program has successfully identified and fixed local and systemic safety problems. "While there is always room for improvement, the ... program is a major leap forward," the union said in a statement. "It has boosted the number of reports of problems filed with federal authorities and increased the resolution rate of safety issues around the country. This is a direct result of the robust and comprehensive data analysis processes currently in place." The union has worked closely with FAA officials on the design and implementation of the program. A three-member committee consisting of two FAA officials and a union official decide which error reports to into the program. The rules of the program require their decisions be unanimous. While controllers who report errors aren't punished, FAA managers can recommend controllers to take additional training to improve their skills. The committee can accept, reject or modify those recommendations. In a case cited in the report, the committee rejected a manager's recommendation that a controller responsible for a Boeing 737 airliner and a small plane coming dangerously close together receive additional training. The committee said the recommendation wasn't justified because the controller lacked a history of making errors. But the controller had only been directing air traffic in that particular airspace sector for eight days, making it unlikely there would be any performance history. ___ Online: Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General http://www.oig.dot.gov/ ___ Back to Top FAA Error Reporting Gives Amnesty for Sleeping, Report Says A U.S. Federal Aviation Administration program created for early detection of safety problems has been used by some air-traffic controllers to escape punishment for sleeping on duty, a report said. Controllers have been allowed to report poor personal conduct rather than the kind of performance problems the program was intended to find, the Transportation Department inspector general's office said today. "The intent of the reporting program is to improve aviation safety, not to provide amnesty to controllers who like to watch movies or take a nap while on the job," said Representative John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The FAA program, known as Air Traffic Safety Action, was modeled on successful programs at airlines. It was intended to discover potential systemic safety risks before they become serious. The FAA encouraged reporting of performance lapses by preventing controllers from being punished as retribution for making reports. The program shows promise as a tool to promote increased safety reporting, the inspector general said. In a small number of the 41,000 reports filed through December, the FAA allowed employees to report falling asleep, viewing a personal video player while at their positions and refusing to take handoffs of responsibility for flights in a timely manner, making them immune from disciplinary action, the inspector general said. Amnesty Perception "Accepting reports of this nature may lead to the incorrect perception that ATSAP is an amnesty program where reports are automatically accepted," according to the report. More than 60 percent of the 21,462 U.S. air traffic control employees who are eligible to make reports have submitted at least one to the program, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association said in a statement today. "The bottom line is that since the beginning of implementation in 2008, no other safety program has identified and fixed more local and systemic problems," Steve Hansen, chairman of the labor union's safety committee, said in a statement that didn't address the criticisms about misuse of the program. At least five FAA air traffic controllers were reported to be sleeping on the job last year. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood pledged to fire three air traffic controllers caught sleeping in Seattle, Miami and Knoxville. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-23/error-reporting-gives-sleeping- controllers-amnesty-report-says Back to Top Back to Top WWII P-38, rescued from ice, draws crowd at EAA Aviation enthusiasts crowd around a World War II era P-38F Lightning named "Glacier Girl" at the EAA AirVenture at Whitman Regional Airport in Oshkosh. Forced to land on a glacier in Greenland in 1942, it sat for 50 years before it was recovered from beneath 260 feet of ice. Oshkosh - Twenty years ago a bunch of airplane parts displayed at the EAA fly-in drew huge crowds eager to look at something believed lost forever. The parts had been clawed from the Greenland ice, wiped clean and painstakingly carried to Oshkosh, where their incredible story of redemption struck a chord with aviation enthusiasts. Dubbed "Glacier Girl," the P-38F Lightning had crash-landed on Greenland in 1942 with five other P-38s and two B-17s. It never fired a shot during World War II. Over the decades ice claimed the aircraft until a crew of aircraft restorers found it 268 feet below the surface, where they burrowed down, dissembled it and carried the pieces back to daylight. On Monday the twin-tailed, olive drab plane so critical to the U.S. air war effort was the center of attention as EAA AirVenture started its weeklong run. "It's been a really good airplane," said Steve Hinton, the first to fly "Glacier Girl" when it made its second maiden flight, in 2002. "We have a love-hate relationship with P-38s because they're a lot of work, but it's also very rewarding." At an aviation convention that draws more than 10,000 planes, ranging from antique biplanes and World War II bombers to ultralights and the latest jets, some rare aircraft feature a unique back story. Aside from "Glacier Girl," AirVenture visitors can also see a Junkers JU 52 tri- motor visiting Oshkosh for the first time and an A-36A Invader fighter bomber, one of only three known to be left in the world. Only 500 A-36A Invader aircraft were built - mostly as a dive bomber for ground attacks in North Africa and Italy. On Monday afternoon a steady stream of visitors walking through "Mustang Alley" in the warbirds area stopped to check out the A-36A, wondering whether it was a P-51 Mustang. "It's getting a lot of response," said Vince Santorelly of New Smyrna Beach, Fla., who helped restore the plane for its owner, the Collings Foundation. "They're like, is it the predecessor to the P-51? Well, not exactly." This A-36A survived along with the other two known aircraft because they stayed in America for use as trainers. Of the three, two are in flying condition. Restoration of the A-36A visiting Oshkosh this week took seven years and finished shortly before it was flown to AirVenture. Though the surviving A-36A planes would have been simply painted olive green as training aircraft, the restorers painted this one with a red nose, yellow symbols on the side signifying kills and the name "Baby Carmen" in honor of an A-36A Invader flown in World War II. "Its claim to fame was it flew more than 200 combat missions before it needed a new engine," said Santorelly as he sat in the shade underneath the plane's wing. The Junkers JU 52 on display at AirVenture and also flying in the afternoon air shows looks like a corrugated tin shack with three motors on the front, much like the Ford Tri- Motor plane. But its non-flashy appearance belies its importance in German aviation history. Designed by Hugo Junkers and first flown in 1932, by the late '30s the JU 52 was flying three-quarters of all German air passenger flights. The JU 52 visiting Oshkosh on a tour of North America was built in 1939 and transferred shortly after it rolled off the assembly line to Switzerland, where it was used for sightseeing flights. The P-38 dubbed "Glacier Girl" spent most of its life encased in ice. Lockheed manufactured more than 10,000 P-38 Lightning aircraft in the 1930s and '40s, but nearly all of the planes that survived the war were destroyed or were quickly made obsolete by faster fighter planes. That made the six P-38s left behind in Greenland by their crews, who encountered bad weather and ditched them on the glacier when they ran low on fuel, very valuable - so valuable that aircraft enthusiasts spent much of the 1980s searching for them. They had no idea the planes were buried like bugs frozen in amber. "We believed the tails were sticking up out of the ice and we figured we'd brush off the snow and put some gas in the tanks," said Richard Taylor, founder of Greenland Expedition Society. Instead, searchers and restorers found themselves digging a really big hole in the ice and using high pressure hoses to carve out an ice cave where they found the P-38, its guns still loaded with ammunition. It took 14 weeks to pull up parts - some of which were flown directly to Oshkosh for the fly-in two decades ago - and then 10 more years to restore the P-38. Now it's back in Oshkosh, flying in some of the warbird shows and posing for pictures snapped by aviation enthusiasts eager to meet a legend. If you go What: EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2012 When: Continues through Sunday. Gates open at 7 a.m. each day. Exhibit buildings open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Air shows are held each afternoon. A night air show is scheduled to start about 8:15 p.m. Saturday, followed by fireworks. How much: Daily rates for non-EAA members are $41 for adults; $21 for students 6-18; and free for children 5 and younger. Parking is $9. For more information: Go to www.airventure.org. http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/world-war-ii-p38-draws-a-crowd-at-eaa- s767ndk-163475926.html Back to Top Your Airport Is a Petri Dish The part of air travel that gives you a cold (or worse) isn't usually the plane ride -- it's these leading disease-spreading airports. Most people don't associate jet bridges and moving walkways with swine flu. What really bothers us are airplanes: cramped, crowded aluminum tubes where a sneeze from across the aisle is enough to set off warning bells in our heads. In cultural mythology, airplanes are where superbugs are born and entire cabinfuls of passengers infected in a single trip -- offloading hundreds of new carrier agents at journey's end into vulnerable environments. It turns out, though, that the likelihood of actually catching something on a plane is kind of low. You'd basically have to be sitting on top of someone to become infected by their germs. According to Aaron Carroll, co-author of Don't Cross Your Eyes... They'll Get Stuck That Way!, airplane manufacturers have more or less gotten air circulation onboard their products down to a science. Between drawing in clean, fresh air from outside the cabin and passing old air through high-quality filters designed to catch 99.999 percent of germs, the air inside a cabin is replaced some 20 times an hour -- far more often than in office buildings or in houses, which exchange air every 12 and 5 times an hour, respectively. Add to that the fact that each row of an aircraft's air supply is recycled vertically rather than moving forward or backward through the cabin -- meaning airborne germs that survive the filters come back to the same row rather than spreading to other passengers -- and what you get is a system that's pretty hard to beat. Even if airplanes aren't the germy cesspools they might seem at first glance, airports are another story. They're tremendous incubators for disease. The constant flow of passengers all day, every day means that pathogens are deposited, picked up again, and ferried elsewhere at an incredible rate, without the procedures that keep aircraft interiors clean. Not all airports are created equal, though: some hubs are more conducive to spreading illnesses than others. Which ones are the worst offenders? That's what a team of MIT researchers decided to find out. Using a statistical model based on network theory, scientists at MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering have created a ranking of the top 40 U.S. airports in order of their ability to spread a disease that originated there. Leading the list: New York's JFK International, followed by Los Angeles, Honolulu, San Francisco, Newark, and Chicago's O'Hare and Washington's Dulles International Airport. Some of these results are startling; given its place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, for example, Honolulu might not seem like a big threat to anyone. But in fact, its relative isolation is precisely the problem: Hawaii is one of the only destinations in the area with enough infrastructure to support a great deal of traffic -- which, unsurprisingly, leads it to see a great deal of traffic. And even if it's physically removed from other locales, Hawaii shares a direct connection to many other gigantic hubs, a fact that only increases the risk of disease transmission. Connectivity, traffic, and geography: these make up the three elements that determine the extent of an airport's contribution to disease spread. Relatively little work has been done on the role of airports in the early stages of a crisis, the researchers say; more attention is generally given to the late stages of an outbreak. But this research is different. To illustrate their findings, the scientists put together a mesmerizing visualization: The role of U.S. airports in disease epidemics So if you were concerned about falling ill during your vacation this year, good news: you're probably more likely to get sick from the local cuisine than by sitting next to a mouthbreather on your flight. On the flip side, though, you might want to consider flying directly to your destination, to avoid as many airports as possible. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/your-airport-is-a-petri- dish/260228/ Back to Top Worker charged with driving drunk at airport MINNEAPOLIS (AP)-- A ground worker at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has been arrested for allegedly driving drunk on the tarmac. Fifty-four-year-old John Joseph Korab, of Inver Grove Heights, is charged with four counts including drunken driving and use of alcohol while operating a vehicle in the airport's operations area. The police report says Korab was driving a truck for the ground services company Servisair when he failed to yield to an AirTran jet that was being pushed back from the gate Thursday night. It says his blood alcohol level was 0.21 percent, more than double Minnesota's legal limit for driving. Korab did not immediately return a phone call Monday seeking comment. A man at Servisair who gave his name only as Kevin says Korab no longer works there. Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/07/23/4653095/worker-charged-with- driving-drunk.html#storylink=cpy Back to Top Private Spaceflight Industry, FAA to Start Safety Talks Next Month WASHINGTON - When suborbital adventure line Virgin Galactic launches the world's first commercial passenger-carrying spaceflight service next year, the U.S. government will still be barred from policing most of the company's activities. But federal safety officials here, eager to learn more about the private space companies they will soon regulate, have decided to open talks with industry in August. "We're going to be setting up monthly public telephone calls to ask [industry] about certain topics," Pam Melroy, former NASA astronaut and senior technical adviser in the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), said in a July 16 interview. "We do plan on having these once a month for the foreseeable future. We really want maximum participation, and we want technical people to really help us understand what the thinking is out there." The first of these public calls is slated for the first week of August, Melroy said. Just to open talks with industry, the AST has had to navigate a legal labyrinth. The massive FAA reauthorization bill Congress passed in January bars AST from writing human spaceflight safety regulations until October 2015 unless there is a serious accident or mishap involving a commercial flight before then. But a report accompanying that legislation, the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, also noted that "nothing in this provision is intended to prohibit the FAA and industry stakeholders from entering into discussions intended to prepare the FAA for its role in appropriately regulating the commercial space flight industry when this provision expires." Further complicating things for Melroy and AST, the Administrative Procedures Act, longstanding federal law that governs the process by which federal agencies make rules for the industries they regulate, is very strict about when and how officials may share their thinking about future regulations. "Under the Administrative Procedures Act, we cannot discuss what a proposed regulation might look like, and so that kind of hinders us in talking to industry," Melroy said. So even as AST prepares to tap industry experts for their take on launch, flight and passenger safety, the office has set certain ground rules to avoid running afoul of the law. "We can't propose anything, we can't tell people what we think the answer is, or anything like that," Melroy said. "But we can tee up a subject and then let people talk to us, and that will help us understand if we're on the right track or not." Periodically, AST will summarize its findings from these monthly dialogues and share the summary with the FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, a group of industry experts that makes policy recommendations to AST. Melroy said the first such "roll up" of AST findings will be shared with the committee in October. Dialogue needed AST's plan drew an enthusiastic response from the head of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a Washington trade group whose membership is stacked with entrepreneurial space companies such as Blue Origin, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and Virgin Galactic. "We enthusiastically welcome the dialogue that AST has initiated with the commercial spaceflight industry about a framework for discussing safety issues and sharing safety learning with and among industry," said Commercial Spaceflight Federation President Michael López-Alegría, also a former astronaut. He and Melroy flew together aboard the space shuttle Discovery on an October 2000 mission to the International Space Station. "We look forward to an active partnership to rapidly improve safety as we gain experience while avoiding imprudent regulation that could slow innovation and harm safety," López-Alegría added. James Muncy, an Alexandria, Va.-based space policy and legislative consultant who has lobbied on behalf of some of López-Alegría's members and who pushed AST officials to begin a dialogue with industry right away, said the office's approach "is proof that AST can creatively work with [industry] to advance safety much faster than bureaucratic paperwork can move in Washington. I'm glad we were able to help the Office of Commercial Space Transportation gain more flexibility to discuss key safety issues with our industry today, instead of fixating on when they can start writing formal regulations." Suborbital and orbital flights Although Virgin Galactic is expected to be the first company to fly passengers on a commercial basis, it is not expected to be the last. XCOR Aerospace of Mojave, Calif., said the week of July 9 that it plans to start launching suborbital spaceflights with its Lynx rocket plane as soon as the third quarter of 2013. Moreover, all of the companies competing to provide NASA with privately operated astronaut taxi services to the space station by 2017 plan to use the spacecraft they are developing to fly paying passengers to orbit. These companies include Alliant Techsystems (ATK), Boeing Space Exploration, Sierra Nevada Space Systems and SpaceX. The idea that astronaut taxis might also be used to carry private passengers has raised questions - and sometimes hackles - about which government agency, the FAA or NASA, would have jurisdiction over safety issues. That issue was at the heart of a memorandum of understanding that the FAA and NASA signed in June. The memo set out the roles of each agency in human spaceflight operations. Essentially, the FAA will continue to regulate the launch and re-entry of commercially operated spacecraft, as it has since 1989. That authority extends to NASA missions launched by commercial operators, according to the memo. However, NASA will be allowed to set safety standards for any spacecraft that carry astronauts or visit NASA destinations such as the space station. For flights that do not have a NASA component, the FAA will have complete jurisdiction - once the moratorium on issuing human spaceflight regulations ends. Whenever AST gets the go-ahead to begin a rulemaking process, Melroy said it could take a year or more before the office gathers the technical input it needs to write a rule. "Theoretically, we could issue a notice of proposed rulemaking after October 2015, and it would still be probably 2017 before we had anything that was in a final rule," Melroy said. http://www.space.com/16710-commercial-space-safety-faa.html Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP, FRAeS, FISASI CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC