Flight Safety Information April 9, 2013 - No. 073 In This Issue Allegiant passengers make emergency landing after engine gives out NTSB Probes Case of Texting Helicopter Pilot Victims Of Collinsville Plane Crash Identified Jury awards $26M to families of victims killed in plane crash north of Arlington Airplane crash mystery solved FAA fines New York airports $3.5M for rescue training Boeing Completes Final 787 Battery Test, Awaits FAA Approva PROS IOSA Audit Experts Airbus breaks ground on Alabama jet plant Berlin airport fiasco an embarrassment for Germans Allegiant passengers make emergency landing after engine gives out KNOXVILLE (WATE) -Passengers on an Allegiant Air flight from Knoxville to St. Petersburg, Florida feel lucky to be alive to talk about some terrifying moments in the sky. Shortly after they were in the air Monday afternoon, passengers reported hearing a loud boom coming from the right side of the plane. Shortly after that, there was an emergency message from the pilot. "The pilots came on and said the engine had failed. It was a mechanical failure. And we would need to do an earlier landing," described Martha McKeon, who was onboard the aircraft. She was one among many who didn't know if they were going to live or die. McKeon began texting final messages to her two daughters. "Telling her that I loved her. And to take care of her sister," she said. "Praying , reciting Bible verses, holding hands," McKeon said, describing what some of the other passengers were doing. Finally, they were on the ground, and a few hours later they were put on another flight that made it safely to Florida. "It won't happen twice to the same person. So it's the best time to fly," she said, when we asked her how she had the guts to get on another plane the same day. A few passengers 6 News spoke to praised the good work the pilots did. They told us they gave them a standing ovation once they landed. The airline fed them pizzas and coke for what they had been through. http://www.wate.com/story/21914025/allegiant-passengers-make-emergency- landing-after-engine-gives-out Back to Top NTSB Probes Case of Texting Helicopter Pilot Evidence gathered in an investigation of a fatal medical helicopter crash has raised questions about whether the pilot was distracted by personal text messages when he failed to refuel the helicopter before taking off and misjudged how far the aircraft could fly without more fuel. The case, scheduled to be considered at a meeting Tuesday of the National Transportation Safety Board, underscores concerns the board has already expressed that use of cellphones and other distracting electronic devices has increasingly become a factor in accidents and incidents across all modes of transportation - planes, trains, cars, trucks and even ships. The Aug. 26, 2011, accident near Mosby, Mo., which killed four people, appears to be the first fatal commercial aircraft accident investigated by the board in which texting has been implicated. The pilot, James Freudenbert, 34, of Rapid City, S.D., exchanged 20 text messages with an acquaintance over a span of less than two hours before the helicopter crashed into a farm field a little over a mile from where he hoped to refuel, documents made public by NTSB show. At least three of the messages were sent and five received while the helicopter was in flight, although not in the final 11 minutes of the last leg of the flight, according to a timeline prepared by investigators. The timeline indicates Freudenbert also exchanged text messages at the same time he was reporting by radio to a company communications center that the helicopter was low on fuel. The helicopter was on the ground at the time waiting for the patient, who was being transferred from one hospital to another, and a nurse and a paramedic to board. Although the pilot wasn't texting at the time of the crash, it's possible the messaging took his mind off his duties, interrupted his chain of thought and caused him to skip safety steps he might have otherwise performed, experts on human performance and cognitive distractions said. People can't concentrate on two things at once; they can only shift their attention rapidly back and forth, the experts said. But as they do that, the sharpness of their focus begins to erode. "People just have a limited ability to pay attention," said David Strayer, a professor of cognitive and neural science at the University of Utah. "It's one of the characteristics of how we are wired." "If we have two things demanding attention, one will take attention away from other," he said. "If it happens while sitting behind a desk, it's not that big of a problem. But if you are sitting behind the wheel of a car or in the cockpit of an airplane, you start to get serious compromises in safety." In October 2010, two Northwest Airlines pilots overflew their destination of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by 100 miles while they were engrossed in working on flight schedules on their laptops. A text message - especially one accompanied by an audible alert like a buzz or bell - interrupts a person's thoughts and can be hard to ignore, said Christopher Wickens, a University of Illinois professor emeritus of engineering and aviation psychology. If the subject of the email is especially engaging, or especially emotional, that also makes it hard to ignore, he said. The helicopter was operated by a subsidiary of Air Methods Corp. of Englewood, Colo., the largest provider of air medical emergency transport services in the U.S. The company's policies prohibit the use of electronic devices by pilots during flight. Freudenbert apparently didn't check the amount of fuel on board the helicopter before taking off from the company's base in St. Joseph, Mo., even though he had been briefed that the aircraft would be low on fuel because it had been used the night before for training exercises. He radioed that he had two hours of fuel shortly after the helicopter was airborne. But when the helicopter landed less than 10 minutes later in Bethany, Mo., to pick up the patient, Freudenbert radioed the communications center again to report that the copter was lower on fuel than he had initially thought. He estimated he had about 45 minutes worth of fuel, and said he didn't want to use any of the 20 minutes of reserve fuel federal regulations require be maintained. Investigators calculate he actually had 33 minutes worth of fuel left at that point. Freudenbert opted to continue the patient transfer to a hospital in Liberty, Mo., changing plans only enough for a stop at an airfield a few miles closer than the Liberty hospital. The helicopter stalled and crashed at 6:41 p.m. CDT on a clear summer evening before reaching the airfield. A low fuel warning light might have alerted Freudenbert to his true situation, but the light was set on "dim" for nighttime use and may not have been visible. A pre-flight check by the pilot, if it had been conducted, should have revealed the light was set in the wrong position, investigators were told. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ntsb-probes-case-texting-helicopter-pilot- 18911539#.UWQEWOO4p5Q Back to Top Victims Of Collinsville Plane Crash Identified COLLINSVILLE, Oklahoma - We now know the identity of the two men killed Sunday, when their small plane crashed into a Collinsville home. Both victims were from Kansas. No one on the ground was hurt, even though the crash happened almost downtown. Witnesses said the plane came down at a sharp angle, and in the small yard where it crashed, only one tall tree had broken limbs. The wreckage burned on impact, and pieces of the plane were thrown into the surrounding neighborhood and street. Two men died in the crash: 71-year-old Ron Marshall was the pilot and 40-year-old Chris Gruber was his passenger. Monday, investigators with the Federal Aviation Administration and the National transportation safety board started the investigation. They report no unusual radio communication from the pilot, who had filed an instrument flight plan bound for Manhattan, Kansas. "Really, what we've got is an impact crater, a post crash fire, and a lot of scattered small parts. That's kind of an indication that when the aircraft hit the ground, it was really out of control, and at high speed, so that's a clue of what we'll be looking at when we look at the airplane," said NTSB Air Safety Investigator Craig Hatch. The NTSB investigator said one piece of the plane was found almost a mile away, and at least one witness described pieces coming off of the plane. "We saw it in the air when it popped--something, a couple of things it looked like, fell off, and the wings looked really strange, like they folded in, and it nosed dived, straight into the house," said Stephanie Coldren. The radar track showed the plane left Tulsa International Airport and flew north just past Collinsville, made a 90-degree turn to the east, and then turned around just before the crash. The plane was a 1984 Mooney, a four-seat, single-engine plane. Investigators will look for any clues to the crash in the wreckage, but say they'll start with the human factors. "We'll start off with the pilot. We'll look at this ratings, his training, his experience in the aircraft," Hatch said. The pilot was a retired doctor. The passenger worked for the Kansas State University Foundation and was director of development for the university's veterinary medicine college. They flew into Tulsa Sunday morning, and the crash was on the return flight. http://www.newson6.com/story/21909067/two-victims-of-collinsville-plane-crash- identified Back to Top Jury awards $26M to families of victims killed in plane crash north of Arlington SEATTLE - A defective carburetor is blamed for the 2008 crash of a small plane north of Arlington that killed three people. A King County Superior Court jury awarded two families $26.1 million for the deaths of Dr. Tory Becker, an Auburn spine surgeon, Enumclaw airline pilot Brenda Houston, and her 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Crews. The jury awarded both compensatory and punitive damages against the engine manufacturer. The single-engine Cessna was flying from San Juan Island to Auburn when its engine failed, causing the airplane to crash into a heavily forested area north of Arlington. Investigators at the scene discovered that the carburetor float, an accessory which supplies fuel to the engine, had leaked and was full of fuel. "Once we analyzed the defects in the carburetor, our investigation focused on the carburetor design, manufacturing process, and failure history," said Robert Hedrick, an attorney with Aviation Law Group in Seattle who represents the Becker family. "Sure enough there was a significant history of similar failures for years before this accident," Hedrick said. Attorneys said the manufacturer implemented a fix for the carburetor problem more than two years before the crash but the fix was not implemented for thousands of aircraft already operating the field, including the Cessna that crashed. The trial took place in February and March in Seattle. After hearing testimony and arguments from both sides, the jury awarded compensatory damages to the families. In a second phase of the trial, the jury awarded $6 million in punitive damages. Becker was in private practice in Auburn and was a staff surgeon at Auburn Regional Medical Center. Brenda Houston was an experienced airline pilot with United Airlines. http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/jury-awards-26m-families-victims-killed-plane- cras/nXGTh/ Back to Top Airplane crash mystery solved When Curly Anderson of Choteau read an article in Thursday's Tribune about an old plane crash, Anderson knew he had the answers one man was looking for. In fact, Anderson was with Arden Van Horssen when they found the crash site in 1969. Van Horssen was visiting Montana from Minnesota for a hunting trip when he came across a the wreckage of an airplane deep in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Van Horssen heard there was a family on board the plane when it crashed, flying from Great Falls to the West Coast for the Christmas holidays. Van Horssen, now 95, wanted to know what happened to that family, whether they survived the crash. He's spent a lot of time in recent years wondering about their fate. Van Horssen's memory of the crash site has been clouded by time and age, but Anderson remembers it clearly and was able to fill in some of Van Horssen's missing pieces. Van Horssen remembered the crash site being located closer to Augusta and had forgotten what year he found it. In reality, it was near White River in the Bob Marshall on the backside of the Chinese Wall. Outfitter Art Weikum had a hunting camp set up near White River, and Anderson was working for Weikum as a hunting guide. Van Horssen, Anderson and Anderson's wife were out hunting on a September day in 1969 when they spotted the wreckage through their binoculars. As they hiked closer to crash site, they started to find debris from the plane. "It had come in straight down and spinning," Anderson said of the airplane. The four passengers inside were likely killed on impact. Van Horssen's initial memory of the crash site was that the plane was largely undamaged. Van Horssen, who was a pilot himself, likely came across more than one crash site in his life, or at least read about others, and may have been confusing them, Anderson said. After reading the article in Thursday's Tribune, Anderson called Van Horssen and the two discussed the crash they found together, painting a clearer picture for Van Horssen. The plane discovered by Anderson and Van Horssen was a Piper PA-24 Comanche being flown by Leslie Kottsick of Lynwood, Wash. Also on board was his wife, Emilie Kottsick, originally from Glasgow, and their two children, Stephen Kottsick, 10, and Lorenna Kottsick, 7. Leslie Kottsick took off from the Great Falls Airport on Sunday, Jan. 5, 1969, bound for Everett, Wash., according to a crash report from the National Transportation Safety Board. The next day, the Great Falls Tribune published a short article saying a plane, with four people on board, was reported overdue and "inquiries into the plane's whereabouts had proved negative by midnight Sunday." The following day, another article identified the missing family and said officials where checking airports along the route to see if the plane landed somewhere unexpectedly. Later that week, "three Montanans, outfitted for arctic conditions, trekked into the Bob Marshall Wilderness" in an attempt to located the plane, according to an article in the Tribune on Jan. 9, 1969. Their search was hampered by a snowstorm and cold weather. That was the last of the news on the plane crash until Sept. 22, 1969, when an article in the Tribune reported that the plane crash had been discovered 5 miles west of the Continental Divide in Powell County. The next day, a team recovered the bodies from the wreckage, according to the Tribune. In reality, there wasn't much left to recover, Anderson said. Claw marks from a bear made it appear that the bodies had been drug from the plane after it crashed. The only remains Anderson could locate were some finger bones and the waistband from a pair of underwear, which he found in a pile of bear scat. The NTSB report says conditions includeding sleet, freezing rain, turbulence and thunderstorms were a factor in the crash. It also list spatial disorientation as a factor. Anderson said a cable in the tail of the plane broke, causing the airplane to malfunction. By happenstance years later, Anderson ran into Emilie Kottsick's father while visiting Morony Dam. The two struck up a conversation about photography equipment and eventually learned how they were connected. They had quite the talk, Anderson said. More than 40 years later, Anderson hasn't forgotten Van Horssen. "I guided him on four different seasons, I believe," Anderson said. In all the years of guiding, Van Horssen was one of his favorite hunters. "He was the truest sportsman I've ever guided," Anderson said. http://www.greatfallstribune.com/article/20130408/NEWS01/304080024/Airplane- crash-mystery-solved Back to Top FAA fines New York airports $3.5M for rescue training The Federal Aviation Administration has fined New York area airports $3.5 million for failing to train firefighters and aircraft-rescue personnel. The settlement announced Monday with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey covers JFK, LaGuardia and Newark. The problems documented in a 25-page agreement between the FAA and the Port Authority focused on how the authority instructed the agency's police department to oversee rescue and firefighting. Under the settlement, the Port Authority will create a separate chain of command and training for rescue and firefighters. Every day during 2011 and the first half of 2012, JFK failed to ensure that rescue and firefighting personnel were adequately trained, according to the settlement. For a month in May and June 2012, JFK had 77 police officers serving 357 rescue and firefighting shifts without proper training, according to the settlement. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, the Port Authority also failed to ensure proper training for rescue and firefighters for 341 days at LaGuardia and 378 days at Newark, according to the settlement. "These violations were egregious, and they will not be tolerated," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said. The Port Authority adopted new operating procedures and training after an FAA inspection revealed the training lapses. The Port Authority hired its first chief security officer, Joe Dunne, and recruited a former New York City fire commissioner, Tom Von Essen, to review rescue and firefighting operations, according to Lisa MacSpadden, a port spokeswoman. "We are also launching a nationwide search for a new fire chief and fire captains to lead a stand-alone" firefighting force, MacSpadden said. Fines for the violations, which are similar to those found a decade earlier at the airports, could have reached nearly $15 million, according to the FAA. But the Port Authority agreed to pay its fine within a month. If there is another violation, the FAA will impose a $1.5 million fine and $27,500 fines daily for each violation. "We expect all airports to comply with our safety regulations and to correct any deficiencies immediately," LaHood said. Under the agreement, the Port Authority will: * Create a force of personnel for aircraft rescue and firefighting, without additional duties as police officers. * Assign to the force a fire chief, who reports directly to the Aviation Department, by March 31 2014. * Develop 75 hours of training to join the force and 40 hours of recurring training annually. "We expect the Port Authority to have trained safety personnel to ensure the safety of the traveling public and airport personnel, just like we have at all airports in the United States," FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/08/new-york-airport- fines/2063399/ Back to Top Boeing Completes Final 787 Battery Test, Awaits FAA Approval Federal Aviation Administration officials flew aboard a Boeing 787 for a test of the airliner's new battery system that included "normal and non-normal flight conditions" and went off without a hitch. The "non-normal" flight conditions included "simulating failed engines, generators, pumps and other equipment on the airplane," Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said. The rigorous 1 hour, 51 minute flight up and down the Oregon and Washington coast was meant to show the FAA that Boeing has solved a battery problem that led to "thermal runaway" aboard aboard 787 Dreamliners in Boston and Japan. All 50 Dreamliners in service worldwide have been grounded since January 16 because of the problem. Boeing has spent weeks designing and testing improvements to the 63-pound lithium-ion battery after problems arose aboard a Dreamliner at the gate at Logan International Airport and another in flight over Japan. In both cases, the batteries were severely damaged by heat, but damage to the planes was limited to the area immediately surrounding the batteries, one of which is located in the nose of the 787, the other near the middle of the aircraft. The redesign includes improved separation of individual lithium-ion cells to minimize the chance of what Boeing is calling thermal propagation but the National Transportation Safety Board characterized as thermal runaway. The added insulation is designed to minimize the chance of an overheated cell propagating when one of the eight cells experiences a short circuit. The new design also houses the battery in a heavy-duty sealed stainless steel box vented directly to the exterior of the fuselage. Boeing believes the new system eliminates the chance of a battery fire. At a press conference in Japan last month, the company even showed a test where propane was purposely ignited inside the steel box, which easily contained the small explosion. Boeing has tested the new design in the lab and on the ground aboard a flight test aircraft, and in the air aboard a 787 built for LOT Airlines of Poland. Ground testing included "battery failure venting in the containment housing," Birtel said. The FAA will now examine the data from Friday's flight as well as information gleaned from other tests. It is widely expected to approve the redesign, which would allow the aircraft to resume passenger service soon. Although the Dreamliner has garnered widespread attention for its use of composite materials and fly-by-wire technology, the aircraft is no less groundbreaking for its extensive use of electrical systems instead of hydraulics. The two large lithium-ion batteries aboard each 787 power some systems while on the ground, including starting the auxiliary power unit, as well as serving as back-up power in the event of a loss of power during flight. The battery's original design was criticized by some experts, including Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, as being overly simplistic. The NTSB also was critical of the meltdowns, noting they happened far more frequently than Boeing's initial prediction that we'd see one for every 10 million flight hours. Both occurred after roughly 50,000 hours of flying time. Boeing says it has several mechanic teams ready to deploy worldwide to retrofit the new batteries in each of the 50 grounded Dreamliners. The teams are drawn from Boeing's AOG (aircraft-on-ground) mechanics, a sort of "special forces" team that is always standing by to assist Boeing customers anywhere in the world. The mechanics will install the new batteries and boxes, as well as drill a small hole in the fuselage of each airplane to allow for the venting of gasses should a battery fail in the future. There is no timetable for when the analysis will be completed by the FAA, or if more testing will needed. A best case scenario would likely include FAA approval this month and then several weeks for to retrofit the grounded aircraft. United has indicated it plans on flying the 787 again by May 31, and world-wide service is expected by June. Boeing is about to run out of parking space outside its factory in Everett, Washington where the 787 along with the 747, 767 and 777 are also built. The company is renting space all around Paine Field, including an unused runway that currently has several partially finished Dreamliners parked nose to tail towering over the smaller, general aviation aircraft at the airport. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/04/boeing-787-final-battery-flight-test/ Back to Top Back to Top Airbus breaks ground on Alabama jet plant MOBILE, Ala. - Airbus broke ground on its first U.S. airplane-assembly plant Monday with a ceremony marking the start of a project that could help transform Alabama's coast into an aerospace center. Top company executives and state leaders were in the Gulf Coast city for the event at the Airbus site at Brookley Aeroplex. A jetliner parked behind the stage served as a backdrop. Mayor Sam Jones recounted how it took seven years to bring aircraft manufacturing to the Alabama coast after a series of starts and stops. "Our future and Airbus' future are tied together, and we're extremely proud of that," said Jones. Gov. Robert Bentley said the start of work marked a "great day for Alabama." The $600 million factory is expected to employ 1,000 once assembly of the Airbus A320 jet begins around 2015. "This represents the real transformation of Airbus into a truly global company," Airbus CEO Fabrice Bregier told the crowd under a sprawling tent on the tarmac alongside a JetBlue A320, the Mobile Press-Register reported. Adding a U.S. factory to its jet plants in Europe and Asia means that "thanks to Mobile, the sun will never set on Airbus," Bregier said. Keivan Deravi, an economist at Auburn University Montgomery, compared Airbus' decision to locate in Alabama to the decision by Mercedes-Benz in 1993 to build its first U.S. assembly plant west of Birmingham. The Mercedes decision "made Alabama a global powerhouse in the automobile industry," and Airbus could do the same for aerospace, he said. The ceremony came as the state's first major Airbus supplier, Safran Engineering Services, opened its new office in Mobile. The company plans to employ about 50 people at an engineering-support facility. Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defence & Space had planned to build an Air Force refueling tanker in Alabama, but Boeing won the contract in 2011 and will build the planes in Everett. Airbus nonetheless announced last year it would erect a jetliner assembly line near downtown Mobile. At the groundbreaking, Airbus sales chief John Leahy said he expects substantial orders from U.S. airlines, which have the oldest fleets in the world. Having an assembly line in the U.S. market will help win orders, said Leahy, who plans to visit several potential customers this week, "With a final-assembly line here, that lets us become a U.S. manufacturer of aircraft with U.S. jobs," he said. The Mobile plant will initially assemble the A320 and later the A320neo. Local leaders hope the Airbus plant, being built at the 1,650-acre Brookley industrial park, will make Alabama the heart of aerospace work along the northern Gulf Coast. "Brookley is situated right in the center of the Gulf Coast aerospace corridor, and the Airbus facility sets us up to be the nucleus of that corridor," said Bill Sisson, executive director of the Mobile Airport Authority. North Alabama already has a strong aerospace industry with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville and a Delta rocket factory operated by United Launch Alliance at Decatur. http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020736647_airbusmobilexml.html Back to Top Berlin airport fiasco an embarrassment for Germans BERLIN (AP) - Rabbits scamper over quiet runways. Only the call of a crow disturbs the silence around a gleaming, empty terminal that should be humming with the din of thousands of passengers. Willy Brandt International Airport, named for Germany's famed Cold War leader, was supposed to have been up and running in late 2011, a sign of Berlin's transformation from Cold War confrontation line to world class capital of Europe's economic powerhouse. Instead it has become a symbol of how, even for this technological titan, things can go horribly wrong. After four publicly announced delays, officials acknowledged the airport won't be ready by the latest target: October 2013. To spare themselves further embarrassment, officials have refused to set a new opening date. The saga of Berlin's new airport has turned into a national joke and a source of humiliation for a people renowned for being on time. Yet it is just the highest profile in a string of big-ticket projects - including a concert hall in Hamburg, railway tunnels in Munich and Leipzig, a subway line in Cologne and a Stuttgart underground train station - that have been plagued by huge cost overruns and delays. The airport fiasco presents a staggering picture of incompetence. German media have tracked down a list of tens of thousands of technical problems. Among them: Officials can't even figure out how to turn the lights off. Thousands of light bulbs illuminate the gigantic main terminal and unused parking lots around the clock, a massive energy and cost drain that appears to be the result of a computer system that's so sophisticated it's almost impossible to operate. Every day, an empty commuter train rolls to the unfinished airport over an eight- kilometer-long (five-mile) stretch to keep the newly-laid tracks from getting rusty, another example of gross inefficiency. Meanwhile, hundreds of freshly planted trees had to be chopped down because a company delivered the wrong type of linden trees; several escalators need to be rebuilt because they were too short; and dozen of tiles were already broken before a single airport passenger ever stepped on them. The airport itself points to problems with the fire safety system as the immediate cause of the delays: The fire safety system incorporates some 75,000 sprinklers, but computer programming glitches mean it's not clear whether all of these sprinklers would spray enough water during a fire. And the system's underground vent system, designed to suck away smoke, isn't working. Here, again, technology's getting in the way: It's so advanced that technicians can't figure out what's wrong with it. Critics say that the difficulties with handling today's complex technology have been compounded by hasty, negligent work due to the intense time pressures. Underlying these problems appears to be a culture of political dishonesty. "Many politicians want prestigious large-scale projects to be inseparably connected with their names," said Sebastian Panknin, a financial expert with the Taxpayer's Association Germany. "To get these expensive projects started, they artificially calculate down the real costs to get permission from parliament or other committees in charge." In addition to that, politicians at the city, state and federal levels then often come with extra demands once construction is underway, which leads to expensive modifications. In the case of the Berlin airport, said Pankin, there were about 300 ad hoc change requests by politicians which created an explosion of costs and several delays - among them a last-minute wish to expand the terminal to include a shopping mall. "The airport is a classic example of the incompetence of our politicians," said Sven Fandrich, a 28-year-old Berliner who works for an insurance company. "We've seen this happen with many big infrastructure projects in Germany. Nobody feels responsible. The politicians are more concerned about winning the next elections than devoting their service to the people." Hamburg's concert hall was to have opened by 2010. Instead it's nowhere near complete and costs have more than doubled to 575 million euros. It's now due to open in 2016. Construction on Cologne's North-South subway line began in 2004. After cost overruns and a collapse that killed two people in 2009, officials say the entire line may not be open until 2019. Costs have soared from 780 million to 1.08 billion euros. In Leipzig, the city tunnel for commuter trains was expected to open in 2009. Construction is still not finished, and costs have jumped from 572 million to 960 million euros. Of all the bungled projects, the Berlin airport is the biggest embarrassment. The initial plan foresaw building a stately airport that would be financed by private investors and replace the city's two Cold War airports - Tegel in former West Berlin and Schoenefeld in what was the communist east. After a series of disputes with private investors, the city, state and federal governments eventually took over the airport project. In 2006, costs were estimated at 2 billion euros, but after four delays, the figure spiked to 4.4 billion euros. Companies like Air Berlin, Germany's second biggest carrier, have been severely affected by the delays and are suing for lost revenues. Small businesses like coffee shops, restaurants, retail stores or bus operators - who had already hired staff and invested in new stores at the airport - are facing bankruptcy. Twitter users asked the mayor to "please open this gate," playing off President Ronald Reagan's famous 1987 appeal to Moscow to "tear down" the Berlin Wall. And by the time the airport finally opens, it may face a new headache. Some aviation experts are warning that by its inauguration date, the airport will already be too small to handle the rising number of passengers. The nearly 3.9 million square foot (360,000 square meter) airport complex was designed to handle 27 million passengers. But the existing two city airports handled 25 million passengers last year - and the city keeps attracting more visitors every year. "The airport is too expensive, too small and too much behind time," said aviation expert Dieter Faulenbach da Costa, who recently caused a stir when he proposed that the airport ought to be torn down. In an effort to salvage the mess, Hartmut Mehdorn, the hardnosed former boss of the German railway system with a reputation for turning around failing corporations, was named chief executive of the airport in early March. "The whole world says: it's not possible at all," Mehdorn said when he took over. "I say: It should be possible. "I just don't know how yet." http://www.usatoday.com/story/todayinthesky/2013/04/08/berlin-airport-fiasco-an- embarrassment-for-germans/2062533/ Curt Lewis