Flight Safety Information October 29, 2012 - No. 217 In This Issue FSF Planning To Release Results Of FOQA Analysis Snake on a plane! Glasgow airport gets a surprise Airplane makes emergency landing at Myrtle Beach International NASA applies deep-diving text analytics to airline safety More than 100 airline employees have tested positive to drugs or alcohol over 17 months (Australia) Report: British pilots asleep on the job PROS IOSA Audit Experts Nigerians top list of private jet owners in Africa SpaceX Dragon completes 1st commercial cargo flight Graduate Research Survey FSF Planning To Release Results Of FOQA Analysis NBAA Convention News Early next year, the Flight Safety Foundation (Booth No. 3532) expects to publish operational guidelines for its members on the conduct of stabilized approaches, according to COO Kevin Hiatt. The guidelines arise from analysis of trends gathered from corporate flight-operational quality assurance (C-FOQA) data. NBAA describes C-FOQA as "a data-management program that collects, scrubs and processes flight data and generates reports flight departments can use to analyze their operations. The ability to predict high-risk operations or to pinpoint operational areas that need attention can be a hugely important tool." Analysis of C-FOQA data can highlight exceedances of prescribed performance parameters and thus stimulate remedial measures such as training to enhance operational safety. FSF has handed over management of its C-FOQA program to data-processing specialist Austin Digital (ADI), which this year was acquired by GE Aviation (Booth No. 3900). Hiatt describes FSF's experience, which began with about 12 initial operators and now encompasses about 60 aircraft flown by nearly 30 companies, as having been "very successful." Although C-FOQA was never planned to be a long-term FSF program, the organization had found itself beginning to compete with its own members, who were offering analysis services to operators, and ADI was seen as a natural home for continuation since the Texas company had been providing analytical services under contract. Companies participating in the exercise have been advised to stay with ADI's C-FOQA Centerline program or to make alternative arrangements. C-FOQA Centerline is claimed to provide flight-data analysis "without the expense of specialized hardware, software, expert staffing and IT overhead required for in-house installations." A business-aircraft FOQA program was first developed by the NBAA safety and FSF corporate advisory committees in 2004, and C-FOQA was developed with ADI in the following year. The initial phase of operation began in late 2005 with two Gulfstream IVs and a Dassault Falcon 900 flown by ALCS Aviation, part of the client-services division of tobacco company Altria, and healthcare provider Merck Sharp & Dohme's aviation department. Altria has led efforts to establish a C-FOQA steering committee, comprising users and other interested stakeholders, which resulted in an initial meeting in June 2011. The C-FOQA Centerline users' group flight data is processed through ADI's eFOQA event-measurement system, which by late 2010 already had data gathered from 20,000 flights and was generating highly accurate and useful reports. The FSF international and European aviation committees have been involved in "good discussion" that resulted in many documents on stabilized and missed approaches, said Hiatt. The approach guidelines have been prompted by analysis that showed tailwind approaches were an issue, typically revealed by consideration of factors such as touchdown point and groundspeed. Maintenance Also Studied Aside from flight operations, Hiatt noted that analysis of data, usually gathered using quick-access recorders (QARs), has led to several maintenance topics being studied. "The biggest point to make is that technology is not totally understood." He emphasized that C-FOQA programs can provide good data from all areas of aircraft operations with clear trends emerging from analysis. The latest product from Avionica (Booth No. 2657), which introduced the first miniature QARs in 1999 and now has more than 5,000 installed in almost 100 civil and military aircraft types worldwide, is the MiniQAR Mk III, launched two years ago. The MiniQAR Mk III permits operators to record Arinc 717 channels and up to three high- and/or low-speed Arinc 429 channels to supplement other data that might be insufficient to support a comprehensive flight-data monitoring or FOQA program, according to Avionica vice president Stylian Cocalides. Last year French manufacturer Sagem, which is part of Safran group (Booth No. 2579), launched its Cassiopée modular service, offering services such as safety and risk management, maintenance performance, flight operations and operating cost reduction. Sagem said a good example is its iPad- based C-FOQA service for business aircraft and helicopter operators. Cassiopée is based on Safran's global data services application, which aims to ensure worldwide security and availability of data from flight recorders and other onboard systems. According to NBAA, recent safety committee action includes continued development of a data-driven safety agenda for business aviation, via its membership in the FSF C-FOQA steering committee and participation in the C-FOQA pilot project. As an example of the viability of C-FOQA, a presentation at last year's convention by NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman suggested that Hewlett Packard's flight department had already seen a return on investment from such a program on its Gulfstream V fleet. Operational results following data analysis included improved takeoff profiles, better approach criteria and stabilized approaches. http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/nbaa-convention-news/2012-10-29/fsf-planning-release- results-foqa-analysis Back to Top Snake on a plane! Glasgow airport gets a surprise LONDON (AP) - Scottish airport staff got a slithery surprise when they stumbled on a Mexican serpent stowaway under a seat. The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says quick-thinking workers at Glasgow Airport remained "remarkably calm" when they discovered the 18-inch (45-centimeter) snake Tuesday under seats in the passenger cabin of a flight from Cancun, Mexico. It says the young snake was taken to its Glasgow animal center, and has been named Furtivo, Spanish for "sneak." It said Friday that Furtivo, a member of the Dryadophis family of snakes, was non-venomous but "feisty." The snake may have snuck onto the plane before take-off, or hitched a ride in a passenger's hand luggage. The society says Furtivo will remain in its care until an expert home can be found. http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121029/NEWS7035/121029192/- 1/FOSNEWS0416 Back to Top Airplane makes emergency landing at Myrtle Beach International Around 10:25 a.m., Sunday an aircraft made an emergency landing at Myrtle Beach International Airport. United flight 4364 using an Embraer aircraft experienced hydraulic system issues and landed safely, according to airport marketing director Kirk Lovell. The 26 passengers on board are safe, according to Lovell. According to United records, flight 4364 left Newark at 8:42 a.m. and was scheduled to land in Myrtle Beach at 10:28 a.m. http://www.carolinalive.com/sports/story.aspx?id=818341 Back to Top NASA applies deep-diving text analytics to airline safety NASA's Aviation Safety Program has been applying a powerful, emerging data tool to the business of making the skies more friendly, using text analytics to scan hundreds of thousands of unstructured text reports made by pilots, mechanics and other workers to find patterns that may help improve airline safety. "We've been developing and implementing different text mining algorithms for analyzing aviation safety reports as well as other safety-related reports over several years," Ashok Srivastava, project manager for the System-wide Safety and Assurance Technologies project for the Aviation Safety Program, told GCN. "By doing these kinds of analyses we hope to get a better understanding of what is going on in the aviation system with respect to different safety concerns." Airline flights generate a lot of data, but it tends to be scattered in different formats, from maintenance logs to air traffic reports to a plane's "black box." When something goes wrong, investigators pore over this data after the fact to look for the cause. The idea behind NASA's program is to collect and analyze all that data on a regular basis and identify potential problems before they occur. Specifically, the focus is on the reports submitted to the Aviation Safety Reporting System, a NASA program that collects incident reports from pilots, air traffic controllers and others. "It's a remarkable database," Srivastava said. "If you look at these reports you can find discussions from pilots about certain incidents, you can also see issues that are coming up that are mechanical, or passenger safety concerns. One of the key issues that we are interested in addressing is, why do aviation safety incidents occur? What are the precursors? What are the drivers to different safety incidents? The technologies are giving us new ways of developing that insight." Before Srivastava's team started applying text analytics, the data was reviewed only by human analysts. And while humans haven't been taken entirely out of the loop, they can't catch patterns that occur across and between disparate reports as effectively as text analytic programs. Text analytics uses algorithms to search for words, phrases and patterns in unstructured text documents, using linguistic and/or statistical techniques to mine data on a large scale. The team's initial analysis efforts employed natural language processing (NLP) techniques. "That got us to a certain point," Srivastava said. "But we started to make a shift toward using more statistical methods for analyzing the data based on machine learning." NLP methods involved tagging a lot of words and phrases using human-built rules that were encoded into the computer system, he said. And then that information is used to analyze the text and determine what type of anomaly it was describing - a runway incursion, a bird strike, etc. The problem is that writing all those rules is very human labor intensive. "The machine-learning approach is very different," Srivastava said. "It takes all of the data and a few examples of the way different reports are categorized and then we developed statistical techniques to take documents and predict which category they fell into. So it didn't require the same degree of rule building as in natural language processing. It reduced the amount of cost involved in analyzing the data because it didn't require the handcrafted rules." Srivastava said the project is not entirely without controversy. "One of the things that we are really interested in doing in the future is analyzing in tandem the text documents with the numerical data that come from the flight data recorder," he said. "But the carriers don't let text reports get linked with the flight data recorders. I think there are number of issues. There are privacy concerns." Nevertheless, Srivastava's team is making a mark. Southwest Airlines, for example, uses NASA's data in its safety program. "Our technology has been transferred to major carriers in the United States and to a number of agencies, including the Federal Aviation Agency," he said. http://gcn.com/Articles/2012/10/26/NASA-applies-text-analytics-to-airline-safety.aspx?Page=1 Back to Top More than 100 airline employees have tested positive to drugs or alcohol over 17 months (Australia) The tests included 80 positive drug detections and 24 alcohol breaches. MORE than 100 airline industry employees have tested positive to drugs or alcohol in internal tests over a 17-month period, data from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority has revealed. The tests, which included 80 positive drug detections and 24 alcohol breaches, are those taken by air and cabin crew, maintenance personnel, air traffic control staff, ground and baggage workers, refuellers and security screening employees who have a direct effect on air safety. The results of internal tests, administered by commercial airlines and private aviation firms, have previously not been made public but were released by CASA for transparency reasons on the basis they did not identify individual operators or personnel. CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said despite the positive results, they reflected breaches by 0.41 per cent of the 19,402 drug tests and 0.087 per cent of the 27,459 alcohol tests. While CASA said any positive results for people operating in "safety sensitive" aviation positions was concerning, it is believed only two breaches were recorded by pilots or flight crew with most instances relating to ground staff, baggage handlers or cabin crew. In a two-tier testing system introduced in 2008, random testing by CASA turned up a further 45 positive drug or alcohol results from 51,000 tests, of which 18 were subsequently overturned following medical reviews that identify prescription medication breaches. The second tier of testing sees industry operators undertaking internal testing of SSAA (safety sensitive aviation activity) personnel for alcohol and drugs including amphetamines, cannabis, heroin, LSD, Ecstasy, cocaine, sleeping pills and PCP (Phencyclidine). The legal alcohol limit for airline staff is 0.02 per cent. A Qantas captain suspected of having consumed alcohol was stood down from the controls of a Boeing 767-300 shortly before it was due to take-off from Sydney on July 30. It is believed cabin crew raised concerns about the pilot amid suspicions the captain had been drinking prior to the flight. Eight cabin crew tested positive, five aircraft engineers, one refueller, a security guard, four baggage handlers and two foreign staff. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/more-than-100-airline-employees-have-tested-positive-to- drugs-or-alcohol-over-17-months/story-e6frg6n6-1226505683021 Back to Top Report: British pilots asleep on the job LONDON, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- Two pilots working for British airlines fell asleep at the controls during separate flights, a common problem, the British Airlines Pilots Association said. The incidents were uncovered through a Freedom of Information request submitted to the Civil Aviation Authority by The Sun in Britain. The authority declined to name the airlines involved in the incidents, saying it would breach confidentiality, The Sun reported. In one occurrence, the captain left the cockpit momentarily and got no reply from his first officer when he tried to call him on a radio link. When the captain returned, he found the first officer "slumped over the controls," the documents said. In the second incident, a captain returned to the cockpit to find his first officer was asleep and had to be shaken awake, The Sun reported. The British Airlines Pilots Association said 43 percent of members polled admitted to sleeping in the cockpit. A third of those said they woke to find the other pilot also asleep. Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/10/29/Report-British-pilots-asleep-on- the-job/UPI-46271351514689/#ixzz2Ah0MWYWD Back to Top Back to Top Nigerians top list of private jet owners in Africa WITH Nigeria holding the record of a country with the highest private jet ownership in Africa, the aviation sector has brought into sharp relief the paradox of a nation that is endowed with huge oil resources but where only a few are wealthy. In a country where the average Nigerian lives on less than $1 a day, there is a super rich class of business moguls, bankers, preachers, politicians and oil magnates whose private ownership of jets is more than that of any other country. While the rich can afford such luxuries, the economic crisis in the nation is seen in a situation where the aviation sector needs financial succour from the Federal Government. Indeed, worried about the critical state of the nation's aviation industry, the Federal Government is proposing a fresh round of intervention for airlines. The new intervention fund would be different from the N100 billion given to airlines three years ago to help them boost their operations. While some judiciously used the funds, others reportedly diverted them. Also, government has ensured that access to the funds from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) would be on the basis of a single digit interest and it is for a long term. A top official of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) told The Guardian that the ownership of the state-of-the-art jets in Nigeria had grown to over 200 in 2012 from 50 in 2008. Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State had on October 7, 2012 acquired a brand new Bombardier Global 5000 (N565RS) for his exclusive use. He is said to glide all over Rivers State while holding the throttle levers himself. The jet was primarily bought from Bombardier in Canada for $45.7 million through the Bank of Utah Trustee account. Sources said Amaechi traded off the state's current Embraer Legacy 600, saying it was too expensive to maintain. The sources said $5 million was added to the proceed of the traded plane that enabled the government to buy the latest airplane. The oil-rich Rivers State already owns an AW139 helicopter, which it leased to a commercial airliner. The state then turned around to patronize the airline's VIP Sikorsky S76C helicopter. Last year, the state government sold its Dash 8-Q200 aircraft to Cross River State for $6 million. Cross River State then leased the plane to Aero Contractors to undertake commercial flights to and from Obudu airstrip in the state. Amaechi is just one of many state chief executives that own airplanes. Aircraft manufacturers like Bombardier, Gulf Stream, Embraer, Hawker Siddley and Challenger have made Nigeria their huge market because of the demand for these aircraft types by wealthy Nigerians. The common brands of private jets in Nigeria are Hawker Siddley 125-800 and 900XP, Gulfstream 450, 550 and 650; Bombardier Challenger 604, 605; Global Express; Embraer Legacy and Falcons. According to an official of Bombardier, the Canadian aircraft manufacturer, Nigeria ranks behind the United States, United Kingdom, and China among countries that top their orders for the supply of the aircraft type; just as there are indications that N1.30 trillion may have been expended in the last seven years. Nigeria is said to top the market for private jet ownership. The Managing Director of Aero Airlines, Captain Akin George, had recently spoken on the increasing number of private jets being parked at most of the aprons of Nigerian airports. He was particularly piqued that most of the private jets carry foreign registration credentials rather than Nigerian registration. decision to register the jets in foreign countries, particularly in South Africa, is said to be informed by the notion that in case the owners want to resell the jets, they would warrant a bigger value from buyers. He had subsequently called on the authorities concerned in the country to make registration processes in Nigeria friendly and attractive. The economic downturn in Europe and the United States had made Nigeria and China to become two of the fastest growing private jet markets in the world. There are many factors that have encouraged the rise of acquisition of customized jets, which cost between N2.4 billion and N9 billion. Chief among these is the fact that flight schedules in the aviation industry are no longer flexible. Again, the dearth of aircraft and the huge passenger traffic that is not commensurate with the capacity of the airlines has made air travel difficult for those who wish to travel by air. In a situation like this, wealthy Nigerians would opt to acquire their own private jets to save time that would have been wasted waiting for flights whose times of departure are not known. According to Aviation and travel expert, Olumide Ohunayo, the flight schedules of most commercial airliners that are not flexible have made it attractive for those who can afford private jets to acquire them. Recurring delays and an inherent socio-political and economic system that thrive more in spontaneity rather than rigorous planning, according to Ohunayo, are other contributory factors. His words: "Worldwide, they are taxed and made to pay higher charges to fund the civil aviation system and to reduce congestion, but that is not the case here." The new intervention fund of the Federal Government for the aviation sector is about a 16-year facility, which is expected to boost domestic aircraft operations. This time around, the fund whose exact amount is yet to be disclosed would be paid to aircraft manufacturers or lessors for airlines to acquire newer fleet. Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah-Ogiewonyi made the disclosure in Abuja at the weekend in an exclusive interview with The Guardian. She said the intervention fund given to the carriers did not grow aviation, adding that, "we wanted a direct growth for a better impact than what we currently have in place and our strategy to utilising it is to have a tripartite, triangular if you like, system where the CBN with the approval of the Ministry of Finance pays directly to aircraft manufacturers of the leasing company. "The leasing company would in turn bring the aircraft to our airline operators. The airline operators would now have access to brand new aircraft. If not brand new, but relatively brand new aircraft. You and the passengers will have access to functional airline that can take you to where you want to go safely and aviation remains the preferred mode of transportation," she added. She explained that a thorough audit of the airlines was carried out when she assumed office, stressing that there were airlines which were half-dead, financially weak, ineffective, inefficient and predicted that they (airlines) would collapse in six months because of their poor standards. Airlines in Nigeria have shown signs of ailment, as all of them are heavily indebted to banks, aviation agencies, fuel marketers to the tune of over N250 billion. Piqued by the development, the apex bank in September sent a circular banning financial institutions from extending further credit to Nigerian airlines. According to the CBN, this will prevent the airlines from further escalating their huge debt profiles by borrowing more money. Unlike in Nigeria, the United States gives bankruptcy protection like the chapter 11 protection, just as stakeholders call for more support for the carriers. They noted that the domino effect of a crisis-ridden sector would lead to pain for operators and passengers Oduah-Ogiemonyi regretted that Nigeria- airlines were yet to benefit from the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) with other nations. minister stated that for the country to tap into the air pact, the government would go into Joint Venture (JV) with airlines it has BASA pact with. Nigeria has 85 BASA agreements that are completely unutilised and could not be utilised because none of the nation's carriers has the capacity to reciprocate or operate into destinations as provided for in the air agreement, as they are very small and fragmented. words: "We are not getting the commercial benefits. We have not been benefiting commercially from the relationships and we say we can do that. Now is the time to look at them so that we can empower them. We have viable routes that we cannot utilise because we lack the capacity. "We proposed to have a marriage, a joint venture between the bigger airlines and us. In doing so, airline operators were given the opportunity to work with the big ones and the big ones will domesticate their activities as it applies to Nigeria; meaning they will do the Nigerian route and still have access to our international route. "You can see the opportunity we are giving them access to, which ordinarily on their own, they would not have direct access to. For instance, they can do Nigeria-London; they can do Nigeria-New York and Nigeria-Dubai." http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=103117:nigerians- top-list-of-private-jet-owners-in-africa-&catid=1:national&Itemid=559 Back to Top SpaceX Dragon completes 1st commercial cargo flight (CNN) -- The SpaceX Dragon has splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a three-week flight to the International Space Station, completing the first commercial cargo mission to Earth's orbit, NASA announced Sunday. The unmanned capsule came down about 250 miles west of Baja California at 3:22 p.m., the space agency reported. The craft was launched October 7, the first of a dozen flights to the space station planned under a contract with NASA. The craft carried nearly 900 pounds of supplies to the station and returned with nearly 1,700 pounds of freight, mostly used hardware and scientific research material. The reusable craft has been loaded onto a ship and was carried back to shore Sunday afternoon, SpaceX said. NASA chose SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Dragon spacecraft to resupply the space station in 2008. The space agency has retired its fleet of space shuttles and plans to turn much of its focus toward exploring deep into the solar system. "With today's mission, we've closed the loop and demonstrated that American industry is ready to step up to the plate and meet our needs for transport to low Earth orbit," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement issued after splashdown. "This work will transform our relationship to space, save money and create jobs. America remains the leader in space and technology development." A new era in commercial space flight Another company, Orbital Sciences, is expected to launch its own demonstration flight to the space station within months under a contract with NASA. And SpaceX is one of three aerospace firms now vying for a contract for manned flights into orbit, along with Sierra Nevada and Boeing. The mission was completed despite the failure of one of the nine engines on the Falcon 9 booster rocket that carried it into orbit. SpaceX said the engine failed 79 seconds after liftoff, but the remaining engines kept the craft headed for the space station as flight computers made the necessary adjustments. However, a prototype communications satellite that the Falcon 9 carried as a secondary payload did not end up in its designated orbit. The satellite's builder, New Jersey-based Orbcomm, said controllers were able to successfully test the device's systems before it fell out of orbit and plans to launch two more of them aboard SpaceX rockets by 2014. SpaceX said it was studying flight data with NASA to figure out what happened, "and we will apply those lessons to future flights." Back to Top Graduate Research Survey Fellow Pilots, As I work through a Graduate Research Project from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, I request your assistance to gather data about airplane tire pressure checks prior to the first flight of the day. The purpose of the research is to determine whether or not pilots check tire pressure prior to the first flight of the day, illuminate reasons why some pilots do not check tire pressure, and gather pilots' attitudes and feelings about the task. Your assistance and data that you provide is critical to the project and completely anonymous. The survey is open to all pilots who fly airplanes with inflated tires. The 13-question survey takes only four minutes to complete, but is only open from October 26, 2012 to November 16, 2012. Please answer honestly and do not include your name anywhere on the form or in the comments area. All responses are submitted electronically into a database where confidentiality and anonymity will be maintained. I will release findings only as analyzed data summaries and will not be able to identify any individual. Please complete the survey now by selecting this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/tire_pressure If you are interested in contacting me, you may do so by email at wardj9@my.erau.edu. For participants who are interested in reviewing the data collected, data analysis, or the overall project, I will release all information upon completion of the project December 20, 2012. Jeff W. Ward Chief Fixed-wing Pilot, Wilson Construction Company Graduate Student, Master of Aeronautical Science; Safety and Management Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Curt Lewis