Flight Safety Information March 15, 2013 - No. 057 In This Issue Dreamliner Fleet to Resume Flying 'Within Weeks,' Boeing Says Air Canada jet ignores orders to abort landing at Pearson airport PROS IOSA Audit Experts New Boeing Wing Brings Flight Simulator To Kansas Aviation Museum Dreamliner Fleet to Resume Flying 'Within Weeks,' Boeing Says TOKYO, March 15, 2013 Boeing's grounded fleet of 787 Dreamliners will resume flying within weeks, company executives said today, after Boeing engineers developed layers of additional safety measures to eliminate the risk of fire from a faulty lithium ion battery system. Speaking to reporters in Tokyo, Chief Engineer Michael Sinnett fiercely defended the Dreamliner, calling it "among the safest airplanes" in Boeing's history. He said engineers had spent 200,000 hours analyzing what caused batteries on two of its flights to overheat in January. In one incident, a lithium ion battery caught fire on a Japan Airlines flight parked at Boston's Logan Airport. Smoke from a battery system on an All Nippon Airways flight in Japan forced an emergency landing and prompted U.S. and Japanese regulators to ground all 50 Dreamliners indefinitely. "We may never get to the single root cause [of the problems]," Sinnett said. "But the process we've applied to understand what improvements can be made is the most robust process we've ever followed in improving a part in history." In Boeing's first detailed explanation of the proposed changes to the battery system, Sinnett said engineers had identified 80 potential problems that could lead to a battery fire and redesigned the system to eliminate any fire risk. Boeing plans to add a battery enclosure made of stainless steel, preventing any gas released from the batteries from spreading to the rest of the plane. Engineers also plan to add heat-resistant sleeving, and extra insulation spacers. Sinnett said he was "confident" a fire would not occur, but that he could not rule out battery failures in the future. "Parts fail. We know that some day a battery may fail," he said. "We need to make sure that there is no significant impact at the airplane level when it does." The new system has already gone through a third of the tests required for the certification process, and will likely be completed "within weeks," according to Boeing Executive Vice President Ray Conner, who also spoke in Tokyo. But Japanese Transport Minister Akihiro Ota failed to provide a timeline of the Dreamliner's return, saying the Transport Ministry still had to conduct tests and analyses with the FAA, to confirm the safety of the aircraft. Japan's two major airlines ? All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines ? are Boeing's biggest Dreamliner customers. More than a third of the aircraft's components are manufactured in Japan, including the lithium-ion batteries, made by GS Yuasa in Kyoto. http://abcnews.go.com/International/dreamliner-fleet-resume-flying-weeks- boeing/story?id=18735981 Back to Top Air Canada jet ignores orders to abort landing at Pearson airport What went wrong?. Officials are probing why an Air Canada jet ignored a warning from an air traffic controller to abort a landing when a van rolled across the runway. File photo MISSISSAUGA -A driverless van rolled across an active runway at Pearson International Airport on Monday night, prompting an air traffic controller to warn the pilots of an incoming jet to abort their landing. Now officials are probing how the van was left unattended and why the pilots of the arriving flight ignored the order from air traffic control to abandon their landing. The drama unfolded just before midnight when ground radar alerted an air traffic controller to a "target" near the threshold of Runway 24 Right with an Air Canada jet from Edmonton just minutes from touch-down. The controller twice instructed the pilots to abort their landing but the crew ignored the orders and proceeded to land. The controller then watched on radar as the mystery target proceeded off the runway, across a taxiway and then into the grass on the southeast side of the airport. "The tower controller requested an inspection and an unoccupied Sunwing Airlines van was found with the engine running, engaged in gear," according to a preliminary Transport Canada report. Airport staff investigated and found that the driver of the van had been servicing a Sunwing aircraft at a nearby gate. "The driver had come out of the aircraft to discover that the van was missing," the report said. The van caused minor damage to the engine cowling of the Sunwing Boeing 737 aircraft as it began its driverless odyssey. Asked later why they ignored the go-around commands, the Air Canada pilots told air traffic control they thought the order was for "someone else." However the report did say the crew saw nothing and landed without any problems. Scott Armstrong, a spokesperson with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority which operates Pearson, said such incidents are rare but that an ongoing review would see "what lessons can be learned." Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada are also conducting a preliminary probe with interviews of the air traffic controller and the flight crew. "We're looking at everything involved with this. We're still in the initial data-gathering phase at this point," spokesman Chris Krepski said. "We're assessing that information to determine whether we'll pursue a full investigation," he said. http://www.mississauga.com/news/article/1593122--air-canada-jet-ignores-orders-to- abort-landing-at-pearson-airport Back to Top Back to Top New Boeing Wing Brings Flight Simulator To Kansas Aviation Museum The Kansas Aviation Museum in southeast Wichita. The hands-on education experience is designed for students to work individually or in groups. The learning center has been five years in the making and features four learning stations with computers that will run interactive programs on things like flight and weather conditions. "One of the computers is set up primarily for high school students and it has a CAD program," says Lon Smith, the executive director of the museum. "That will allow them to design a wing foil and then they can take that wing foil and test it in a virtual wind tunnel." The centerpiece of the learning center is a Cessna 210 that has been converted into a flight simulator. "A child can get in and actually fly what feels like a real plane," Smith says. A mock control tower allows other students to communicate with the pilot in the simulator. Smith says he hopes students, including those who are home-schooled, will find the learning center both fun and educational. Saturday's opening event will be from 10 am to 5 pm at the Kansas Aviation Museum, 3350 S. George Washington Blvd, Wichita. http://kmuw.org/post/new-boeing-wing-brings-flight-simulator-kansas-aviation-museum Curt Lewis