De: Curt Lewis & Associates, LLC de la part de Curt Lewis & Associates, LLC Envoyé: lundi 17 septembre 2012 13:38 À: fgae@club-internet.fr Objet: Flight Safety Information [September 17, 2012] [No. 188] Flight Safety Information Flight Safety Information September 17, 2012 - No. 188 In This Issue Watchdog Calls for GE Engine Inspections Delta jet returns to Green Bay with smoke in cabin Era grounds aircraft: Cockpit voice recorders do not meet regulations FAA Operations Account Avoids Major Sequestration Cuts IATA Chief Calls EU Airline Ban 'Misguided' Approach To Safety PRISM Certification Support Aviation Experts Focus on Runway Safety @ ALAR Workshop in Vietnam Boeing trims vacated 787 delivery slots to reduce risk India Finally Allows Foreign Airlines To Invest In Domestic Operators Curt Lewis & Associates, LLC - Services Watchdog Calls for GE Engine Inspections By ANDY PASZTOR, JON OSTROWER and KATE LINEBAUGH (WSJ) Federal safety watchdogs on Friday called on U.S. aviation regulators to mandate stringent repetitive inspections of all General Electric Co. GE +0.41%engines used on Boeing Co.'s BA -0.42%787 and newest 747 models, citing a "threat of multiple engine failures on a single aircraft." The National Transportation Safety Board's urgent recommendation follows two previously reported safety incidents on the ground with GE's newest engine type, plus a third instance of a problem the board disclosed in its letter to the Federal Aviation Administration. The recommendation, among other things, indicates that investigators believe some sort of corrosion or "environmentally assisted cracking" was responsible for internal fractures detected in at least two of the three cases. Despite extensive investigation and checks of affected engines stretching back to late July-and close coordination between the FAA, Boeing and GE to try to resolve safety issues-the board determined that immediate further action is warranted. The decision was prompted partly by the fact that more than three dozen uninspected engines remain on 747-8 cargo planes currently in service. The board also called on the FAA to mandate inspections of engines on both models at "a sufficiently short interval" to detect tiny cracks before they spread and pose a potential hazard of in flight engine failure. The failures of GE's newest engine, dubbed the GEnx, are a black eye for the world's largest jet engine maker at a time when the aircraft market is booming and the battle among engine makers is fierce. Buyers of Boeing 787 Dreamliners can choose GE or Rolls-Royce RR.LN -2.26%PLC Trent 1000 engines. GE had hoped to put the safety issues to rest by relying on a series of voluntary inspections intended to reduce potential disruptions to airlines flying the affected engines. But now, the safety board wants the FAA to require inspections of engines on some planes before further flight. Boeing said inspections have been completed on 24 aircraft, including all Japan Airlines Co., Air India Ltd. and Ethiopian Airlines 787s, as well as all Deutsche Lufthansa AG LHA.XE -0.43%and Boeing Business Jet 747-8s. The plane maker says nine remaining four-engine 747-8 freighters will undergo initial inspections "over the next few days." To remedy the corrosion problem, GE is reverting to a type of coating on some internal parts that is used on its older GE90 engine, from which the GEnx engine is derived. GE used a new coating on certain parts of the GEnx to try to reduce lead content, but the new coating didn't seal out moisture that ended up creating cracks in certain shafts, according to a GE spokesman. All future GEnx engines will use the coating and lubricant process used for the GE90, the GE spokesman said. An FAA spokeswoman said inspections have been completed on all affected passenger jets. The agency "will soon issue an emergency airworthiness directive and will take appropriate action" to deal with the safety issues, according to the spokeswoman, while continuing to coordinate with the companies. It's unusual for the safety board to issue such urgent recommendations covering newly designed engines, which went through rigorous testing overseen by the FAA relatively recently. The move also is novel because two of the engines developed dangerous cracks or fractures of an internal shaft before they ever flew. The board went out of its way to say it hasn't found any evidence that the problems stem from fatigue fractures, which typically occur after years of use, basic design flaws, a substandard part or some sort of lubrication failure. Rather, in all three incidents federal investigators appear to be focusing on assembly procedures and material specifications-factors that sometimes can be more challenging to sort out. One issue that could complicate matters is the extended storage time for some shafts. As part of the investigation, GE has said it reviewed how long certain shafts remained in storage before being installed into finished engines. Boeing said it also reviewed its own storage practices, but has made no changes as a result. Shafts are typically produced well ahead of an engine's final assembly. Extended program delays on both the 747-8 and 787 caused a significant gap between the initial manufacturing of parts and their installation on the aircraft. GE said it expects the first round of inspections to be completed by Tuesday. The FAA, in conjunctions with the engine maker, will determine how frequently after that certain parts will need to be ultrasonically inspected. In any event, GE's nagging problems underscore the potential pitfalls of making even seemingly minor manufacturing changes involving the latest generation of large, high- powered jet engines. The incidents began in July, when a GEnx engine on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner failed during a taxi test at Charleston International Airport in South Carolina and ignited a small grass fire. An investigation by federal officials and GE found a cracked fan shaft in the rear portion of the engine had shifted backward, causing pieces to be ejected from the rear of the engine. Earlier this week, investigators started delving into a second failure of GE's newest engine, this one on a Boeing 747 jumbo freighter in Shanghai. Operated by Air Bridge Cargo, the cargo plane on Tuesday was forced to abort its takeoff at roughly 60 miles per hour after losing thrust in one engine, but nobody was hurt. The Air Bridge aircraft's engine hadn't gone through voluntary ultrasound inspection. On Friday the board said the damage in Shanghai was similar to what experts uncovered after the Charleston event, but detailed analysis is still pending. The GEnx engines on the 747-8 and 787 are built from the same technology with adaptations for each jet. The board on Friday also disclosed a third fracture found on a GEnx engine. About two weeks after the Charleston emergency, according to the board, inspections uncovered another engine showing similar signs of "environmentally assisted cracking." Back to Top Delta jet returns to Green Bay with smoke in cabin ASHWAUBENON - A Delta Air Lines jet was forced to return to Austin Straubel International Airport a half-hour after takeoff on Sunday afternoon after smoke was reported in the cabin. Delta Flight 5209, which left for Detroit at 4:45 p.m., circled back and landed safely at 5:15 p.m., airport director Tom Miller told WFRV-TV in Green Bay. The 65 passengers and four crew members got off the plane on a taxiway and were taken to the terminal. There were no injuries. Dozens of emergency personnel were called to the airport, but the only ones needed were medical personnel who examined the passengers and crew. Delta was re-booking passengers onto other flights, WLUK-TV in Green Bay reported. An investigation into the incident is under way. http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/ Back to Top Era grounds aircraft: Cockpit voice recorders do not meet regulations FAIRBANKS - Era Alaska announced Sunday that it grounded all of its aircraft this weekend upon learning that the fleet's cockpit voice recorders did not conform to federal regulatory requirements. Era stated in a news release that its senior management made the decision Saturday after learning of the problem. The airline was working to get its passengers booked on other airlines or on later Era flights once aircraft return to service. Era has flights to rural and urban communities in the Interior, including Fairbanks, and Southcentral, Southwest, and northern Alaska. "Our most important job is ensuring the safety of our passengers," said Steve Smith, Era Alaska director of sales and marketing, in the news release. "While this component does not directly impact the overall safety of the aircraft, the CVR is an important required component." "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this continues to cause to our customers," Smith said. "Our entire organization is working diligently to complete the upgrades and accommodate all customers impacted." Hageland Aviation, a separate airline of Era Alaska, is not affected. The company's news release said Era had acquired the components needed to bring the aircraft into compliance with Federal Aviation Administration regulations. The upgrade to some aircraft was expected to take "a few more hours," Era's Sunday afternoon news release said, "and perhaps a few days" for other aircraft. Smith said via email late Sunday that the fleet consists of 12 aircraft - six Bombardier Dash 8s and six Beechcraft 1900s. The Era news release said airline inspectors and technicians would review each aircraft in cooperation with the FAA before returning it to service. "That process will not be rushed or compromised," Smith said. "Safety is of utmost importance." The FAA in March 2008 finalized modifications required of cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders. The new requirements covered recording duration, power supply and location, among other things. The FAA then received several petitions from aircraft manufacturers and industry associations seeking delays in the effective date of the new rules or other relief from those rules. The FAA delayed implementation of some of the new rules until December 2010 and April 2012. Additional information was not available from Era Alaska late Sunday. It was not known in what way that the cockpit voice recorders used by Era were deficient. Era passengers could face a separate difficulty because of a major storm over Southcentral even with aircraft back in service, the company noted. The news release stated that routes in the storm area would be evaluated when aircraft are put back in service. Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - Era grounds aircraft Cockpit voice recorders do not meet regulations http://newsminer.com/view/full_story/20173841/article-Era-grounds-aircraft--Cockpit- voice-recorders-do-not-meet-regulations?instance=home_news_window_left_top_1 Back to Top FAA Operations Account Avoids Major Sequestration Cuts A large portion of the FAA budget will be exempt from mandatory sequestration cuts , set to take effect on Jan. 3, according to data released late Friday by the White House's Office of Management and Budget. An Aviation Week analysis of the report shows that 30% of the FAA 's operations account is exempt, a large percentage compared with exemptions applied to other government agencies. However, the agency's $11.5 billion operations budget, which in part pays for air traffic controllers and other safety functions, will be reduced by $377 million from 2012 levels. The cuts are part of a government-wide $1.2 trillion, nine-year deficit reduction mandated by Congress in August 2011. The administration's report , required by the Sequestration Transparency Act recently passed by Congress to obtain details on the budget penalty, looks only at the first year of budget cuts. Non-exempt items in the FAA 's $15.9 billion fiscal 2012 budget, which was the baseline for the proposed cuts , would reduce the agency 's spending power by $1.04 billion for 2013. Most impacted will be the airport and airway trust fund portion of the budget, which uses fuel taxes, landing fees and passenger taxes to fund about 20% of the FAA 's overall budget. The fund will be cut by 8.2% according to the analysis , falling $415 million to $4.6 billion from $5.1 billion. The FAA 's $168 million research, engineering and development budget, also funded through the airport and airway trust fund , would be cut by $14 million in 2013. Elsewhere in Transportation, only the federal aid highways line had a bigger sequestration exemption . Of the $40.2 billion in total budget authority, all but $739 million was exempt-less than 2%. http://www.aviationweek.com Back to Top IATA Chief Calls EU Airline Ban 'Misguided' Approach To Safety Tony Tyler , president and director general of the International Air Transport Association , is calling the EU's ban on foreign carriers a "misguided approach that does little if anything to improve safety." Speaking at a forum in Astana, Kazakhstan, Tyler said, "There is no transparency, no clarity on why some carriers are put on the list and no clear indication of what is required to get off the list." One Kazakhstan-designated carrier , Air Astana , is permitted into EU, and even that airline -which is 49% owned by European defense company BAE Systems -is only allowed to operate aircraft it flew prior to the 2009 ban . "Some aspects of how the list is administered are absolutely absurd," said Tyler, noting that with Air Astana , it makes no sense to prevent its newest aircraft from entering EU airspace. "How could that possibly improve safety ?" said Tyler. Tyler adds that the EU 's policy also stigmatizes a banned country's air transport industry. http://www.aviationweek.com Back to Top Back to Top Aviation Experts Focus on Runway Safety @ ALAR Workshop in Vietnam Airline safety professionals gathered in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam last week for an Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) workshop, jointly organised by the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA), Flight Safety Foundation (FSF), and Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV). The workshop reviewed and discussed the latest ALAR toolkit and the potential risks that aircrew and airlines may encounter in their daily operations. The workshop further addressed the mitigation and training strategies needed to reduce such risks. The ALAR toolkit, an internationally recognized safety tool developed by the industry, can reduce the potential risks of accidents during approach and landing. Welcoming delegates to the ALAR workshop, AAPA Technical Director Mr. Martin Eran- Tasker said, "Flying is already widely recognised as the safest form of travel, and AAPA is committed to further enhancing regional aviation safety performance. As a member of the Flight Safety Foundation we strongly support the use of safety management tools that assist airlines and other stakeholders to mitigate risk and improve safety performance." Mr. Eran-Tasker stressed, "In order to operationalise the ICAO global strategy to reduce major accidents, national airworthiness authorities, airlines, airports, and air navigation service providers are cooperating and collaborating in the establishment of Runway Safety Teams. Safety is a shared responsibility and we encourage all air carriers to review the ALAR toolkit recommendations and incorporate them within their established safety training programmes." Mr. Jim Burin, Director Technical Programs at FSF, said, "The FSF ALAR toolkit provides proven strategies and materials that will assist airlines in developing training programmes to significantly reduce the risk of approach and landing accident events ... The risk of accidents on landing can be significantly reduced by the wider use of precision approaches and corresponding operational disciplines." http://www.asiatraveltips.com/news12/179-AirlineSafety.shtml Back to Top Boeing trims vacated 787 delivery slots to reduce risk Boeing has trimmed the pace of future 787 deliveries to reduce the risk of over- burdening the production system as it executes a swift and critical ramp-up. Ray Conner, president of Boeing Commercial Aircraft, also is reviewing plans to ramp up to two 747-8 deliveries per month, and taking a less strident approach than his predecessor on speeding up delivery rates. But Conner remains "cautiously optimistic" that the company's across-the-board production increases can still be executed. The ramp-up is the basis for the company's guidance for revenue and profitability. "If we hit these ramp rates we're going to do very well, and we're going to hit them," Conner said at a Morgan Stanley conference on 14 September. Qantas Airways' decision on 23 August to cancel delivery slots for 35 787-9s created rare vacancies on Boeing's production skyline, but the airframer has chosen not to accept requests for those slots from other customers. "I've been getting calls all the time to get those positions," Conner says. But "we're using that as an opportunity to de-risk our rate ramp," he added. Making Boeing's task more of a challenge is the company's schedule to introduce the 787-9 variant in 2014, he said. By the end of 2013, Boeing plans to deliver 10 787s per month from three assembly lines and the engineering modification centre, or twice the output today. Only 3.5 787s were delivered per month less than a year ago. Over the same period, Boeing also is increasing monthly output on the 777 from seven to 8.3, and the 737 from 35 to 42. Jim Albaugh, Conner's predecessor, indicated in May that he wanted to push output even faster, complaining that a seven-year order backlog is "too much". Conner, however, declined an invitation by a Morgan Stanley aerospace analyst to echo Albaugh's philosophy. Instead, Conner spoke of maintaining rates for the 737 at 42 per month and for the 777 at 8.3 per month at least for a certain period. But Conner seemed less optimistic about prospects for maintaining plans to grow the 747-8 output to two per month. "The cargo market has flattened," he said. But he added that high fuel costs are driving cargo carriers to park less-efficient freighters, and continue taking delivery of 777Fs and 747-8Fs. http://www.flightglobal.com/ Back to Top India Finally Allows Foreign Airlines To Invest In Domestic Operators India has approved a long-pending policy reform allowing foreign airlines to buy stakes of up to 49% in the country's local carriers. Though Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was previously allowed in the aviation sector, foreign airlines were prohibited from investing in Indian carriers, says Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh. "Until now, foreign airlines were allowed to participate in the equity of companies operating cargo airlines, helicopter and seaplane services, but not in the equity of an air transport undertaking operating scheduled and non-scheduled air transport services," Singh notes. That restriction is now lifted, and foreign airlines can now own up to 49% of an Indian carrier. The decision is expected to pave the way for much-needed equity infusion into the country's cash-strapped airlines. "The issue of permitting FDI by foreign airlines in the equity of an air transport undertaking operating scheduled and non-scheduled air transport services has been under consideration of government for some time," says Singh. "There has been a need to consider financing options available for private airlines in the country, for their operations and service upgradation, and to enable them to compete with other global carriers. Denial of access to foreign capital could result in the collapse of many of our domestic airlines, creating a systemic risk for financial institutions, and a vital gap in the country's infrastructure," he adds. The total FDI inflows into the air transport sector from January 2000 to April 2012 totaled $434.75 million, constituting 0.25% of the total FDI inflows into the country . Indian carriers , such as privately owned Kingfisher Airlines and SpiceJet, have been urging the government to allow foreign airlines to buy stakes , saying it would enable Indian airlines to raise much-needed funds. IndigGo is the only airline in India to post a profit in the fiscal year ending March 31. "Removing the existing restriction on investment by foreign airlines would assist in bringing in strategic investors into the civil aviation sector ," says Singh , adding, "Higher foreign investment inflows are necessary at the present juncture, in order to strengthen the sector ." While relaxing investment rules, India still requires an airline 's chairman and at least two-thirds of the directors to be Indian citizens, and substantial ownership and effective control must be vested in Indian nationals. http://www.aviationweek.com Back to Top Back to Top Quick Links Products Services Training Contact us... Contact Information "Flight Safety Information" is a free service of: Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP, FRAeS, FISASI CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC (Targeting Safety & Risk Management) curt@curt-lewis.com www.curt-lewis.com www.fsinfo.org PH: 817-303-9096 Cell: 817-845-3983 Fax: 682-292-0835 Curt Lewis & Associates, LLC is an international, multi-discipline technical and scientific consulting firm specializing in aviation and industrial safety. Our specialties are aviation litigation support, aviation/airport safety programs, accident investigation, safety & quality assessments/audits, system safety (PRA), human factors, Safety Management Systems (SMS) assessment/implementation & training, safety/quality training & risk management, IS-BAO Auditing, airfield/heliport lighting products and Technical Support. Forward email This email was sent to fgae@club-internet.fr by curt@curt-lewis.com | Update Profile/Email Address | Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy. Curt Lewis and Associates, LLC | Post Office Box 120243 | Arlington | TX | 76012