Flight Safety Information October 08, 2012 - No. 203 In This Issue Fly Montserrat Airplane Crash in Antigua reported American Airlines flight makes emergency landing at LAX FAA unable to verify workers' jet-fuel safety complaints at Sea-Tac PRISM Certification Support Many foreign airlines let you use cellphones Wheelchair Fakers Skip Airport Security Lines Fly Montserrat Airplane Crash in Antigua reported Reports indicate that on Sunday October 7th at 4pm, a Fly Montserrat Britten-Norman Islander BN2 airplane crashed on takeoff from V.C. Bird International Airport,in Antigua. Available information also indicated that the pilot and one passenger were confirmed dead. Two other passengers are reported to be in a critical condition. The aircraft was headed to Montserrat when the crash occurred. Information as to the cause of the crash has not yet been obtained. http://www.anguillanews.com/enews/index.php/permalink/4408.html Back to Top American Airlines flight makes emergency landing at LAX An American Airlines flight from Dallas to Orange County made an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday morning after the crew discovered a problem with a wing flap, officials said. Boeing 737 with 162 people aboard landed safely at 10:30 a.m., according to LAX and American Airlines spokesmen. As a precaution, fire and rescue vehicles were deployed along the runway as the plane touched down, they said. After spotting the trouble with the flap, which helps control the speed of the plane, the flight crew decided to land at LAX because it has longer runways than John Wayne Airport in Orange County, American Airlines spokesman Matt Miller said. "If the flaps are impeded, you need a little more room to brake," he said. The passengers on American Airlines Flight 1805 were transferred to another plane and arrived at John Wayne at 12:45 p.m., Miller said. He said he had no details about the problem with the flap. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/10/american-airlines-flight-diverted-to- lax.html Back to Top FAA unable to verify workers' jet-fuel safety complaints at Sea-Tac Federal Aviation Administration inspected aircraft-fueling operations at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Friday and found none of the unsafe conditions alleged by employees, the FAA told airport authorities. Lynn Deardorff, an FAA certification safety inspector, wrote in an email to the airport that he and another inspector checked fueling operations and equipment of the airport's largest aircraft-fueling contractor, ASIG, in response to a demonstration Wednesday by supporters of a fueler who said he was suspended for complaining about safety problems. "None of the operations that we observed showed any negligence or unsafe practices," Deardorff wrote. He said ASIG operations had been inspected two weeks earlier "and no major violations were noted." ASIG fuels about 75 percent of the planes at Sea-Tac, including those flown by Alaska, United and Southwest. Inspectors on Friday visited aircraft-fueling operations, looked at several fuel trucks and carts, talked to fuelers and supervisors, visited the maintenance shop, a storage area and a fuel-vehicle staging area. They were accompanied by a Port of Seattle Fire Department fire-prevention inspector. Deardorff's email said the FAA looked for safety problems claimed on Wednesday by workers including Alex Popescu, who said he was suspended from his job as an ASIG fueler after repeatedly complaining about safety issues. Popescu, who spoke at a demonstration organized by Working Washington - a group with ties to Service Employees International Union - showed blown-up photographs of broken ladders, allegedly unsafe nozzle handles, spilled engine coolant and a gearshift panel held in place by electrical tape. Popescu also said he had complained to supervisors and the Port Fire Department about a truck's defective brakes, and has seen jet fuel dripping as passenger planes are being fueled. Workers said in a written message to ASIG they had voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike over safety issues, although they are not represented by a labor union. "Upon our inspection," the FAA's Deardorff wrote Friday, "it was determined none of the allegations made by this employee were evident." Popescu, reached by phone Friday, declined to comment on the FAA's findings. "This is the first I'm hearing about it," he said. "I don't know what they looked at. I can't speak on anybody else's behalf." "This is an assurance to the public that our operations are safe, efficient and that they don't have to have any worries about aircraft operations here at Sea-Tac," Port spokesman Perry Cooper said. If employees see a safety problem, Cooper said, "Let us know about it because we want to correct it. That's something we've been trying to re-emphasize to folks out here." Working Washington spokeswoman Thea Levkovitz said the FAA "never contacted any of the workers who had the safety issues" to ask their help in finding unsafe equipment. "There's a lot of equipment out there," she said. Popescu, addressing a Port of Seattle Commission meeting in August, asked commissioners to smell jet-fuel-stained clothing that he and others brought to the meeting and that he said was typical of the clothing fuelers take home every day to wash at home. He asked commissioners to work with airport vendors to create "good- paying jobs, safe jobs." http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2019355672_faainspection06m.html Back to Top Back to Top Many foreign airlines let you use cellphones Passengers on many foreign airlines have been talking and texting in the air for several years. "Misperception out there that it is dangerous," Emirates Airline spokesman says FAA concerned that cellphones could interfere with flight operations 6:09PM EST October 7. 2012 - Since May, passengers on some Virgin Atlantic flights from London to New York have turned on their cellphones in the air, typed out text messages or made calls - without getting in trouble for it. They're doing what hundreds of thousands of passengers on foreign airlines in parts of Europe and the Middle East have been doing for at least four years: using cellphones once planes have climbed past 10,000 feet. The airlines offer the service to benefit their customers with the blessing of their governments. But when Virgin Atlantic passengers get within 250 miles of the U.S. coast, the talking and texting stops. The practice is forbidden in the United States because of government safety concerns about cellphone signals interfering with communication networks on the ground and possibly interfering with the plane's communications and navigation equipment. U.S. airlines also worry that passengers don't want to have to listen to others yakking on their phones when flying. But a new report from the Federal Aviation Administration found no problems - with either flight safety or noise complaints - in talking or texting in the air on foreign airlines. The report is raising new questions about whether the U.S. ban on cellphone use is out of date. Many of the foreign carriers contend U.S. concerns are unfounded. "There is a misperception out there that it is dangerous," says Patrick Brannelly, spokesman for Emirates Airline, which began offering the service in 2008 and now has it on about 90 of 175 planes. "I think the real fear is people yabbering on the phone at loud volume, annoying people around them. That just simply hasn't happened." CONCERNS: SAFETY AND OTHERWISE Historically, polls have indicated U.S. airline passengers oppose using cellphones on flights because they don't want to listen to their seatmates' noisy calls. But that could be changing. Fly.com, a fare-comparison site, this summer surveyed 500 travelers and found two-thirds wanted to be able to talk on their phones. The Federal Communications Commission has prohibited using cellphones in flight since 1991 out of worries about network interference. Because phones send signals directly to towers, the concern is that planes could shower thousands of calls on ground stations and bog them down. The Federal Aviation Administration, meanwhile, is concerned that the radio signals that cellphones emit could interfere with a plane's communications, navigation and flight control. Dozens of scientific reports have warned that radio signals from phones and other electronics can interfere with cockpit instruments in unpredictable ways. "If it's a nice clear day out and I'm flying, I'm not nervous," says Bill Strauss, an aviation engineer who researched the subject in 2000 for a touchstone doctoral thesis. "If it's cloudy, rainy, bad weather, and the pilot's absolutely got to be sure where he is when he breaks through the clouds at 500 feet, I'm asking the guy next to me to shut his phone off." Anonymous reports from pilots to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System give credence to those concerns. Reports include: -- The crew of a DC-9 approaching Philadelphia in October 2003 got a warning on an instrument panel saying they were about to collide with a plane less than a mile ahead. After plane climbed from 6,000 to 7,000 feet, air traffic controllers said radar showed no other plane nearby. A flight attendant later said she caught a passenger trying to call her daughter about the time the plane started climbing. --A Boeing 737's instruments swung oddly during a flight descending into Baltimore in March 2003, and crew members found themselves a mile off course as they broke through clouds at 1,800 feet. The captain suspected several passengers used cellphones after an announcement about the war in Iraq. --The crew of a Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet heard what sounded like a fax machine at repetitious intervals interfering with instructions from air traffic controllers while climbing out of Charlotte in June 2005. After a repeated announcement to turn off cellphones and pagers, devices were turned off and the noise stopped. FAA found no reports of cellphones interfering with navigational equipment in its study of their use abroad on foreign airlines. advantage the foreign planes have is equipment installed on each aircraft to relay calls to the ground. Each plane basically has its own cellphone tower, which is called a base station, that is designed to avoid interfering with the plane's equipment. Aboard U.S. planes without base stations, cellphones squawk at their highest power while searching for relay towers on the ground. Higher power means greater risk for interfering with the plane's equipment. "You're going to be screaming, just like if you and I were far away from each other," says Strauss, the electrical engineer. But in the foreign planes, cellphones are so close to the base stations that their signals use as little as 1 milliwatt, or one-thousandth as much power as on the ground, according to Brannelly of Emirates. Foreign airlines and regulators such as the European Air Safety Agency studied the base stations to ensure they are safe for flying. Branchereau, a spokeswoman for OnAir, which provides cellphone service for 14 airlines, including British Airways, says the company works with regulators and airlines to ensure cellphone use doesn't interfere with a plane's electronics. In the United States, the FCC considered relaxing its cellphone ban in 2004. But it decided against a change in 2007 as airlines, manufacturers and phone companies continued their research. During the same period, the FAA asked a government advisory group to assemble a committee of experts to study whether using phones or other electronics on planes is safe. But in 2008, that committee, co-chaired by a Boeing executive, "concluded that the possibility exists that cellphone transmissions have the possibility for interference with on-board systems, like the navigation system," says Bret Jensen, a spokesman for Boeing. BROAD OPPOSITION IN U.S. The opposition to making cellphone calls in the air is substantial enough in the U.S. that the FAA won't consider the issue while it undertakes a newly announced review of what other electronic gadgets, such as tablets, can be used during flights. "It's annoying and irritating," says Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst who is co-founder of Atmosphere Research Group. "It's bad enough to overhear a noisy passenger talking to her or his seatmate - a tube full of people yakking on their cellphones at 35,000 feet would be enormously unpleasant.'' Many frequent fliers agree. Jim Pancero, a sales consultant from Carrollton, Texas, says he doubts using cellphones causes technical problems. But after 30 years of flying millions of miles as a professional speaker, he says he hopes the ban continues for the mental health of frequent fliers. I can't imagine how noisy and irritating it would be if they allowed phone calls on the plane," Pancero says. WIDE GROWTH OVERSEAS Overseas, phone service for talking and texting in flight is expanding rapidly. The company OnAir provides mobile-phone access to Aeroflot, Air New Zealand, British Airways, Egyptair, Emirates, Etihad in United Arab Emirates, Libyan, Oman, Qatar, Royal Jordanian, Saudi, Singapore, TAM and TAP Portugal. Another provider, AeroMobile, is now aboard 14 for Thai Airways, four for Virgin Atlantic, two for Gulf Air, one for Malaysian and one for Transaero in Russia. Five more airlines are committed to joining before the end of the year on a combined 350 aircraft: Lufthansa in Germany, Etihad of United Arab Emirates, Turkish, Aer Lingus in Ireland and Scandinavian. Singapore Airlines has committed to providing the service aboard 20 of its Airbus 350 aircraft due in 2014. We believe this is going to be standard in most airlines," says Pal Bjordal, chief executive of AeroMobile. "We believe that concerns once expressed about mobile-phone use and other forms of in-flight connectivity are proving to be unfounded." The service isn't allowed during takeoffs and landings, and it shuts off hundreds of miles before reaching the United States. The service starts at 13,000 to 20,000 feet, depending on the company. messages are more popular than voice calls. OnAir found that 47% of customers prefer sending texts, 42% checking e-mail and 11% making calls. There are probably a handful of people who need to be in touch," says Brannelly of Emirates. "I just put it on and leave it there." The FAA report, which surveyed airlines about how the services work, found complaints about the cost of service or uncertainty about its availability on some planes. Costs vary. One carrier charges $12 a minute, though the price typically is about $2.50 for an average two-minute call. "The vast majority of use has been to send and receive text messages rather than phone," says Josh Crouthamel, spokesman for Virgin Atlantic, which began offering the service limited to six phones on each plane. "We've received no complaints, and my trolling through the Twitterverse has surfaced nothing but positive comments." http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2012/10/07/airline-cellphones/1611079/ Back to Top Wheelchair Fakers Skip Airport Security Lines When long airport security lines become too much to handle, request a wheelchair. With the tactic some fully abled passengers are using to cut through the winding queues at airport security checkpoints, the New York Times reported. According to the 1986 Air Carrier Access Act, airlines are required to accomodate disabled travelers - who need not show any proof of disability - free of charge. Airport staffers recognize the deception occurs; they've learned to expect a large volume of wheelchair requests during periods when security lags. "When [travelers] see that the line is so long, they just ask for a wheelchair," Evelyn Danquah, an attendant for Delta Air Lines, told the Times. She said she has seen some wheelchair fakers stand and walk away as soon as they clear security. Wheelchair attendants - whose salaries range between $9 and $14 an hour, with tips, help to maintain a "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding the line-hopping strategy in hopes of bolstering their paychecks, the Times reported. practice has even spawned a new term among flight attendants: "miracle flights," in which passengers use wheelchairs to board but abandon them when their planes land. Kelly Skyles, the national safety and security coordinator for the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, told the Times she believes travelers shed their wheelchairs because passengers in wheelchairs are the last to leave the plane. Not only do we serve them beverages and ensure their safety - now we're healing the sick," said Skyles, who is also a flight attendant. Peter Greenberg, author and travel editor for CBS News, said he has noticed miracle flights on the rise as security has increased in rigor. He told the Times the scammers will eventually face unpleasant consequences. "I'm a big believer in karma," he said. "You don't put on a dress when the Titanic is going down so you can get in the first lifeboat." wasn't kind to one wheelchair faker in the past. The Telegraph reported in late August that Barry Brooks, who had pretended to be disabled in order to secure nearly $2.9 million in grants - which he then used to buy luxury cars, motorcycles and a penthouse in Spain - was sentenced to eight years in prison. It's unclear whether deceitful passengers will suffer any penalties in the future. Jean Medina, spokesperson for industry trade organization Airlines for America, wrote in an email to the Times that her organization hopes travelers would refrain from abusing the law. "We respect our passengers, and we trust their integrity when they seek wheelchair assistance," Medina said in the email. Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/10/08/wheelchair-fakers-skip-airport- security-lines/#ixzz28iCyOcEG Back to Top Tuesday 30 October Conference Building Fatigue Management into Safety Systems Fatigue Issues and Fatigue Management Solutions for an HF-Compliant SMS CONFERENCE OVERVIEW The conference provides information and guidance on the role of Human Factors (HF) as part of a Safety Management System, focussing on Fatigue and Fatigue Management tools (FRMS). This reflects increasing industry concern and regulatory activity, particularly Flight Time Limitations (FTL) provisions in OPS 0.55 which state that operators must establish a fatigue risk strategy as part of their SMS. Capt. Daniel Maurino, whose internationally recognized work at ICAO included more than ten years defining the authoritative ICAO SMS model, introduces the SMS concept and explains its relationship to HF and FRMS. Other speakers discuss specific Fatigue issues and risks in Scheduled. Charter, Corporate Operators, Military and General Aviation sectors, and examine specific FRMS applications. Speakers Confirmed speakers include: * Capt. Daniel Maurino (Safety Management Advisor, ICAO Technical Cooperation Bureau) * Dr. Rob Hunter (BALPA) * Kathryn Jones or Simon Roberts CAA * Douglas Mellor (FRMS Group) * Dr. David Stevenson (MOD) * Hannah Smith (Gama Aviation) * Claudia Cabaco (NetJets) * Dr. Shaun Helman (Transport Research Laboratories) * Speakers representing the UK Cabin crew Who should attend? The conference will be useful for anyone involved in SMS and FRMS implementation or having a specific interest in Fatigue in safety-critical environments, including: * Flight Ops * Safety Managers, * Risk Assessors * ATM * Fatigue reporting * CRMI/Es * HF Researchers (Applied Psychology, Ergonomics) * Safety-critical industries and professions (Health Care, Police, Power, Rail) concerned about fatigue and related issues Industry sectors involved include Flight/Cabin Crew (Scheduled, Charter and Corporate Operators, GA, Military) Emergency Services, Maintenance, Ramp and related transport industries (road, maritime, rail). Venue The conference is organized by the HF Flight Ops and Training committee of the Royal Aeronautical Society HF Group and hosted by Virgin Atlantic at The Base, Manor Royal, Crawley. For location and directions please see the conference event page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/events/443517415669232/ Booking HFG conferences are non-profit. The registration fee is £50+VAT for RAeS members and £60+VAT for non memebers and includes lunch, tea and coffee breaks and a delegate pack. Please see the Royal Aeronautical Society conference page for easy online booking: http://www.aerosociety.com/Events/Event-List/627/Fatigue-Issues-and- Fatigue-Management-Solutions-for-an-HFCompliant-SMS Links Human Factors Group Website http://www.raes-hfg.com/ : HFG Facebook Conference Event Page QR Code Royal Aeronautical Society Conference Booking online http://www.aerosociety.com/Events/Event-List/627/Fatigue-Issues-and-Fatigue- Management-Solutions-for-an-HFCompliant-SMS Curt Lewis