Flight Safety Information April 10, 2013 - No. 074 In This Issue Emirates passenger dies on board flight Poland mourns Smolensk presidential plane crash victims Victims of 1973 Swiss air crash remembered on disaster's 40th anniversary Pilot's texting contributed to fatal copter crash, NTSB says PROS IOSA Audit Experts Google airplane facility goes before San Jose City Council Caller thwarts airplane propeller thieves Boingo, AT&T Offer Free Wi-Fi at International Airports Emirates passenger dies on board flight An Emirates passenger aircraft en route from Dubai to Ghana made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday after one of its passengers died during flight, a Saudi newspaper reported on Wednesday. The plane has just taken off from Dubai and was heading for the Ghanaian capital Accra when the passenger, a citizen of Ghana, suffered from health problems and died, the Arabic language daily Sabq said. It said the pilot landed in Riyadh where the victim was taken off the plane with his wife, adding that Emirates contacted Ghana's embassy in Riyadh to receive the body. "Emirates contacted the Ghanaian embassy to receive the body and facilitate its transport to the deceased's home country," Sabq said without specifying the passenger's age or mentioning how he died. http://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/emirates-passenger-dies-on-board- flight-2013-04-10-1.502080 Back to Top Poland mourns Smolensk presidential plane crash victims Warsaw is remembering the victims of the air tragedy that killed 96 passengers, including the president, first lady and most of the country's political elite. Memorial ceremonies marking the third anniversary of the crash are held in Poland. The late Polish president's twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski is set to attend a memorial event at the military cemetery in Povonzkah where a monument to the victims of the tragedy has been erected. Last year a Polish delegation of the crash victims' relatives and officials took part in the commemoration service at the site of the tragedy, near Smolensk. A minute of silence was held at 8:41 am local time, marking the moment of the crash. On April 10, 2010, a high-profile Polish delegation was flying to western Russia to pay tribute to the victims of the 1940 Katyn forest massacre in which thousands of Polish officers were murdered and executed by Stalin's secret police around 14 kilometers west of the city of Smolensk. The plane never reached its destination. The tragedy soured already strained relations between Russia and Poland. Separate investigations were carried out by the two countries. Bad weather and dubious decisions by the crew were blamed by both expert commissions. It turned out that the personnel were warned of heavy fog and low visibility and asked to reroute to a different airport, but decided to land regardless of the poor weather conditions. Warsaw's official position has coincided with that of Moscow. Thorough investigation has confirmed that the crew committed a number of appreciable errors performing the landing in Smolensk. On top of this, it's believed psychological pressure was exerted on the pilots by some of the high-ranking officials on board also contributed to the crew's fatal decision to land. Transcripts from the plane's "black box" revealed that the pilots were in a hurry to land, on the insistence of an unknown person on-board who said he would "go crazy" if they chose not to. The recording also showed that a certain influential official had entered the cockpit numerous times throughout the flight, while Poland's Chief of the Air Force was present in the cockpit at the time of the crash. The investigation was set back due to the suicide of a key witness just before testimony. In October, flight engineer Remigiusz Mu?, 42, set to deliver critical testimony in the Polish parliamentary investigation into the plane crash, as one of two key witnesses in the case, was found dead in his house in Warsaw after committing suicide. His testimony contradicted the official version, which said that the traffic controller only allowed the airplane to descend to 100 meters. The engineer claimed he overheard a Russian air traffic control officer allowing descent to a 'landing decision' height of 50 meters. His suicide became the second incident connected to the investigation of the plane crash as earlier a Polish prosecutor involved in the investigation shot himself during a media briefing in January 2012. Last year, in March, Poland's Supreme Chamber of Control released its final report on the accident, according to which Kaczynski's plane was not even authorized to carry out the flight. Smolensk airport was not listed as an active facility for the presidential flight. The head of the chamber Yatsek Yazersky pointed out that landing there should have been done only after a test flight, which never took place. While hundreds of thousands of Poles were deeply shaken by the tragedy, some tried to use it to advance their political ambitions. Despite the hard evidence and eyewitness accounts supporting the investigation, some political forces in Poland have pointed the finger at Russia. Polish right-wing parties made an attempt to use the Smolensk crash to score points in their presidential and parliamentary campaigns. Their failure to win votes with anti-Russian rhetoric later proved their line had nonetheless failed to reflect the general mood of the Polish people. Meanwhile, Nationalist Law and Justice party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has repeatedly claimed that the tragic death of his brother might not have been an accident, accusing Moscow of killing his brother. "If there were explosions [on-board the plane], if this catastrophe looks increasingly like an assassination, then this means there is a new quality to international politics," Kaczynski was quoted as saying. On the eve of the second anniversary of the presidential plane crash, Jaroslaw Kaczynski's supporters rallied in front of the Russian Embassy in Warsaw and set fire to an effigy of Vladimir Putin, also claiming the tragedy was an assassination. On Wednesday, in Smolensk memorial services are to start at 9:00am to commemorate the death of the Polish President and a swath of the Polish military and political elite. Several Polish officials, including the head of the Prime Minister's office, Interior Minister and Defense Minister, are expected to visit the memorial ceremony at the site of the crash in Smolensk. The two countries have long been discussing the details of construction of the monument in Smolensk. Russia had provided Poland the topographic and geological information about the crash site and its surroundings needed for a monument to be designed. This week Poland has announced that the Smolensk memorial area will occupy 1,219 square meters. According to the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage plan, the monument will be in a form of a 115-meter-long and 2.2-meter- high red granite wall with the names of the victims on it. "We hope our cooperation will intensify, and allow us to do everything possible to build a memorial to mark the site of this terrible tragedy, that could become a symbol of solidarity between our two nations," Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said last year. "This is our common goal." http://rt.com/news/poland-mourns-smolensk-tragedy-585/ Back to Top Victims of 1973 Swiss air crash remembered on disaster's 40th anniversary Three new benches in a North Somerset churchyard are a moving reminder of the day, 40 years ago, that a day-trip to Switzerland plunged Somerset into mourning. A Vickers Vanguard aircraft on an Invicta Airways charter flight to Basle from Bristol's Lulsgate airport crashed shortly before arriving at its destination in a snow storm, with the loss of 104 passengers and four crew. Twenty people from Congresbury, 16 women and four men, were among the dead. Other communities also suffered multiple losses. Axbridge, Cheddar, Claverham, Wrington, Weston-Super-Mare and Bristol, were all left in mourning. Most people on the flight were women, many of them mothers. Seventy-seven women lost their lives and 45 children were left motherless or orphaned. The day had begun with the prospect of shopping and sight-seeing in Basle. The plane took off at about 8.30am, but as was nearing Basle airport, air traffic control lost contact with the flight in atrocious weather conditions. The plane brushed a wooded range of hills 16 km south of the airport and crashed in pine woods near the hamlet of Herrenmatt. Thirty-five passengers and an air stewardess were injured and one air stewardess escaped unhurt. A subsequent report into the disaster said the crash was caused by a catalogue of blunders, botched repairs and instrument error. Many said the plane should never have taken off, as the company which had organised the flight had gone bust the previous week. Passengers were let down by a company which took short cuts, employed poor pilots and had an apparent disregard for their safety, the report said. The report also said that the aircraft's landing systems were just not good enough to assist the pilot and crew in such severe weather conditions. The Vanguard crew did know where they were but it has been suggested that the pilots may have been guided to destruction by "ghost" beacon transmissions caused by electric power lines. Despite the appalling conditions some planes made it into Basle airport that morning, but others were diverted. A retired Swissair pilot, alarmed at seeing the plane just overhead, telephoned air traffic control. "If it remains like this it'll crash into the mountains" he told them. The controller agreed but failed to act quickly enough, only telling the plane it was off course 30 seconds before impact. Fourteen-year-old Swiss schoolboy Erich Vogtli was one of the heroes of the disaster. He went hunting for the plane with his dog, Bari. Without them the death toll would have been ever higher. In 2003 he told Western Daily Press reporter Roger Tavener that when his family called Basle airport to report a plane crash they were told it was impossible and that nothing was done by officials for another 70 minutes. He and Bari found the aircraft smouldering 300 yards from their front door. "People were walking around in a daze, freezing cold just in jackets and dresses," he said. "It was strange. I began bringing the ones who could walk to my home to warm them and put them in blankets. It was terrible." It was two hours before official search-and-rescue teams set off and it took them 45 minutes to find the wreckage with the first of the injured being taken to hospital some 30 minutes later. Low cloud ruled out the use of helicopters and access roads were only passable using cross-country vehicles. The rescuers, mainly gendarmes and Swiss army recruits, worked in deep snow to ferry survivors to hospital. The dead were taken to a temporary mortuary in a school gym. Over the past 40 years many relatives and survivors have travelled back to the scene of the crash to mourn and to pay their respects to the dead. Ten years ago during a return visit an English oak was planted in the pine forest, a living reminder that this piece of a foreign field will remain forever part of the West Country. And last Sunday three benches in the churchyard at Congresbury were dedicated to the memory of the 20 people from the parish who lost their lives in the disaster. http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk/Victims-1973-Swiss-air-crash-remembered- disaster/story-18664301-detail/story.html#axzz2Q3jcmAvr Back to Top Pilot's texting contributed to fatal copter crash, NTSB says Texting by the pilot of a medical helicopter contributed to a crash that killed four people, federal accident investigators declared Tuesday, and they approved a safety alert cautioning all pilots against using cellphones or other distracting devices during critical operations. It was the first fatal commercial aircraft accident investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board in which texting has been implicated. And it underscored the board's worries that distractions from electronic devices are a growing factor in incidents across all modes of transportation - planes, trains, cars, trucks and even ships. The five-member board unanimously agreed that the helicopter crash was caused by a distracted and tired pilot who skipped preflight safety checks, which would have revealed his helicopter was low on fuel, and then, after he discovered his situation, decided to proceed with the fatal last leg of the flight. The case "juxtaposes old issues of pilot decision making with a 21st century twist: distractions from portable electronic devices," said board Chairman Deborah Hersman. The helicopter ran out of fuel, crashing into a farm field in clear weather early on the evening of Aug. 26, 2011, near Mosby, Mo., a little over a mile short of an airport. The pilot was killed, along with a patient being taken from one hospital to another, a flight nurse and a flight paramedic. One board member, Earl Weener, dissented on the safety alert decision, saying the cases cited as the basis for it - including the medical helicopter accident - were the result of bad decisions by pilots without a direct connection to the use of distracting devices. Other board members disagreed. "We see this as a problem that is emerging, and on that basis, let's try to get ahead of it," said board member Chris Hart. The pilot, James Freudenberg, 34, of Rapid City, S.D., sent 25 text messages and received 60 more during the course of his 12-hour shift, including 20 messages exchanged during the hour and 41 minutes before the crash, according to investigators and a timeline prepared for the board. Most of the messaging was with an off-duty female co-worker with whom Freudenberg had a long history of "frequent, intensive communications," and with whom he was planning to have dinner that night, said Bill Bramble, an NTSB expert on pilot psychology. Three of the messages were sent, and five were received while the helicopter was in flight, although none in the final 11 minutes before it crashed, according to the NTSB timeline. 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. In January, the Federal Aviation Administration proposed regulations prohibiting airline flight crews from using cellphones and other wireless devices while a plane is in operation. The regulations are required by a law passed by Congress last year. Regulations already in place prohibit airline pilots from engaging in potentially distracting activities during critical phases of flight such as takeoffs, landings and taxiing. In some cases, however, pilots are allowed to use tablet computers containing safety and navigation procedures known as "electronic flight bags," replacing paper documents. The board concluded Freudenberg was fatigued as well as distracted. He had slept only five hours the night before, and the accident occurred at the end of his 12-hour shift. He was told when he came on duty that the helicopter was low on fuel. But later in the day he missed several opportunities to correct the fuel situation before he took off for a hospital in Bethany, Mo., the first leg of the trip. Among those missed opportunities were failing to conduct a pre-flight check and to look at the craft's fuel gauge. Shortly after takeoff, he radioed that he had two hours of fuel. He apparently realized his mistake later during the flight. While waiting on the ground in Bethany for the patient and the medical crew, Freudenberg exchanged text messages as he was reporting by radio to a company communications center that the helicopter was lower on fuel than he had originally thought. He told the communications center he had about 45 minutes worth of fuel, which investigators said they believe was a lie intended to cover up his earlier omissions and that he was in jeopardy of violating federal safety regulations. In fact, the helicopter had 30 minutes of fuel left, investigators said. Federal Aviation Administration regulations require 20 minutes of reserve fuel at all times. With no other place nearby to refuel, Freudenberg opted to continue the patient transfer to a hospital in Liberty, Mo., changing his flight plan enough for a stop at an airfield 32 minutes away for fuel. The helicopter stalled and crashed 30 minutes later. A low fuel warning light might have alerted him 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 said. Although the pilot wasn't texting at the time of the crash, it's possible the messaging took his mind off his duties and caused him to skip safety steps he might have otherwise performed, said experts on human performance and cognitive distraction. 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 pilot didn't have a history of safety problems and was regarded as a good, safe pilot by his co-workers. He was a former Army pilot, and NTSB investigators said his actions on the day of the accident were apparently "out of character." Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/10/pilot-texting-contributed-to- copter-crash-ntsb-says/#ixzz2Q3uQylVr Back to Top Back to Top Google airplane facility goes before San Jose City Council The San Jose City Council on Tuesday is poised to bolster the city's cash- strapped airport by approving an $82 million facility for private and corporate jets, including the growing fleet owned by Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin now parked up at Moffett Field. But the city's top choice of Signature Flight Support and its primary tenant Blue City Holdings, a company that manages aircraft for Page, Brin and Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt, hit a snag recently when the chief competitor to develop the west side of the airport appealed the city staff's recommendation so the council will first consider Atlantic Aviation's case before taking a vote on the project. Atlantic was disqualified because it didn't fulfill the requirements of the bidding process. Mayor Chuck Reed has called Atlantic's appeal a delay tactic. Reed said that when the bid parameters were published for aviation development on the 29-acre site, Atlantic did not return to the city with "a proposal to do development. They just want to hold onto the lands," he said, thereby avoiding any competition with another fixed-base operator. "They chose not to respond to that and just assert their position that we do nothing," said Reed. In documents filed with the city on Monday, aviation experts hired by Atlantic allege that the airport's proposed west side development will "introduce significant concerns relative to safe airfield operations." In an email to this newspaper, Atlantic CEO Louis Pepper also reiterated the possible negative impact the development would have on his company. "Atlantic Aviation has serious concerns about the airport's intention to move forward with new development before addressing all safety and planning issues that impact airport operations," Pepper said. "We've asked the airport to address these issues for over two years. Atlantic is still faced with the possibility of losing close to 50 percent of our ramp space, crippling our business. ... We support Google coming to the airport, we simply believe these safety and planning issues must be resolved first." Aviation Director Bill Sherry adamantly denied allegations of safety problems. "Safety of the flying public is our number one priority," said Sherry, who backs Signature's proposal. "We never ever do anything that would compromise that -- and I take that very seriously." Like Reed, Sherry pointed out that Atlantic's appeal will be decided by the City Council based on documents provided by Atlantic to the city -- which the city attorney's office also has deemed to be an inadequate response by Atlantic. The company said it offered the airport up to $295 million over 25 years to ensure the airport's vacant land was put to its highest and best use. In an April 4 letter to the mayor and City Council, City Attorney Rick Doyle and senior deputy city attorney Kevin Fisher wrote that Atlantic failed to respond to nine items that were "material provisions" of the bid, including a proposal bond; financial references; a financial pro forma; a management plan; a rent proposal; property, sales and use tax proposals; and the city's required labor peace- employee work environment form. "The city cannot waive Atlantic's errors, because accepting a proposal with such material omissions would result in Atlantic gaining a competitive advantage over the proposer that complied with all of the ... submittal requirements," said the memo. Signature proposes seven airplane hangars, five of which would house the Google fleet and two others that would accommodate private jets used by other members of Silicon Valley's corporate elite. But Atlantic, which has invested $60 million since 2007 to expand and upgrade its operations, has said that it already has the capacity to meet current demand for corporate and private pilots. The Signature deal would provide at least $3 million annually in rent and other fees to the city-owned airport. The new facility would include 270,000 square feet of building space on the west side of the airport grounds. Sherry has estimated the project would create 150 to 200 airport and regional construction jobs, 36 permanent jobs and as many as 370 other jobs. Ken Ambrose of Blue City Holdings is hoping the council will endorse the Signature proposal and allow his company to break ground this summer because Google's executives' lease at Moffett Field runs out by next summer. "That would be a best-case scenario," he said, adding that officials at NASA, the federal agency that controls Hangar One, which Google executives had offered to pay $33 million to renovate in exchange for the right to use, have never responded. "We didn't jump, we were pushed," said Ambrose of their plight to relocate to another airport facility. http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_22983076/san-jose-council- consider-airport-development-house-google Back to Top Caller thwarts airplane propeller thieves PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Police are praising a citizen who thought the sight of people loading an airplane propeller into a pickup truck in a southeast Portland neighborhood was unusual enough to warrant a 911 call. Officers responding on Tuesday learned on their way that nearby Troutdale police had just taken a report of a stolen airplane propeller. Sgt. Pete Simpson says police stopped a Ford pickup, recovered two stolen propellers and took three people into custody for investigation of theft. The theft victim soon arrived and confirmed the propellers were his so officers returned them to him. http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Caller-thwarts-airplane-propeller- thieves-4422593.php#ixzz2Q3pP6ueH Back to Top Boingo, AT&T Offer Free Wi-Fi at International Airports AT&T customers traveling abroad can take advantage of the carrier's new partnership with Boingo Wireless, but only if they subscribe to specific international data plans. The companies today announced that travelers will have access to Boingo's global network of Wi-Fi hotspots in major international airports via the AT&T Wi-Fi International app. The catch: It is applicable only to those with the $60 (300MB) or $120 (800MB) Data Global Add-On packages. With Boingo, AT&T customers can consume up to 1GB of data over Wi-Fi each month for free. "We're committed to keeping our customers connected to the people, places and information that matter most," JR Wilson, vice president of AT&T Mobility Partnerships and Alliances, said in a statement. "Which is why we're pleased that many of them can now seamlessly connect to Boingo's global Wi-Fi during their travels abroad." Boingo and AT&T did not specify which airports will offer the service, except to say that service will expand throughout 2013. Boingo did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The deal also means that Boingo customers traveling in the U.S. will have access to AT&T's network of Wi-Fi hotspots in airports, restaurants, sporting arenas, and retail locations. "With the explosion in both Wi-Fi enabled devices and customer data demand, Wi-Fi roaming continues to be a key facilitator for global data access," Boingo Wireless vice president of business development Howard Buzick said in a statement. The AT&T deal comes several months after Boingo bought Cloud Nine Media, a Wi-Fi sponsorship and location-based advertising company. Boingo swooped up the media company in an effort to add sponsored access to its global platform of managed Wi-Fi hotspots. In an effort to promote its Windows 8 OS launch, Redmond sponsored a number of free Boingo wireless hotspots in New York and San Francisco, including subway stations and popular outdoor areas. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2417598,00.asp Curt Lewis