Flight Safety Information May 31, 2013 - No. 109 In This Issue Air safety officials deny claim that BA jet was close to catastrophe Aircraft skids at Wamena airport, forcing temporary closure Pilot, passenger suffer minor injuries in Eatonville plane crash Plane Crashes Into Apartment Building In Herndon, Virginia Annual SMS Audit Results Released Finnair to remove airplane art after plagiarism charges Amelia Earhart: Has sonar found her missing airplane? Air safety officials deny claim that BA jet was close to catastrophe UK authorities deny US investigators' claim that one engine shut down and one was on fire before Heathrow emergency landing Workers examine the British Airways plane after the emergency landing at Heathrow. The UK air accident investigation board (AAIB) has denied reports from US safety authorities that the British Airways jet which made an emergency landing last week at Heathrow did so with one engine shut down and the other on fire. The AAIB, which is expected to publish an interim report on Friday, took the rare step of denying reports from the website of the US national transportation safety board (NTSB), which is assisting the AAIB, on the incident. British investigators did not, however, contradict a US claim that heavy protective coverings, or cowls, on both engines were torn from the plane on or after takeoff. The information from the US government, if correct, suggests the plane came closer to potential catastrophe - making the incident much more serious than so far revealed, safety experts say. The London-Oslo flight BA762 returned to land at Heathrow soon after takeoff on the morning of Friday 24 May. Passengers on board and witnesses below saw smoke billowing from the plane, which landed safely, with the 75 passengers and crew evacuated via emergency slides. The NTSB is assisting the investigation because the engines were manufactured for Airbus in the US. On its website, it noted that the BA plane saw "the engine cowls from both International Aero Engines V2500 engines separate and fall on to the runway. The pilots reported that they shut down one engine, there was a fuel leak, and that they were returning." The NTSB continued: "The pilots subsequently reported that one engine was shut down and the other engine was on fire." The AAIB later asserted that this information was incorrect. It has emerged that Airbus has noted 32 similar incidents on its A320 family of planes, including the A319, in which the engine cowls - roughly equivalent to the bonnet of a car - have flown open or detached in flight, causing potentially serious damage to the plane. The manufacturer issued a safety briefing last year, urging crews to be aware of the risk of cowls not being properly closed. The AAIB's full conclusion is likely to be months away, but it will issue a special bulletin on Friday. BA said it would not comment on the incident but was conducting an investigation, co-operating fully with the AAIB and awaiting its full report. David Learmount, operations and safety editor of Flight Global, said: "This was more serious than we realised at the time - this was a serious incident. If you have fires in the engine, and cowls falling from both engines, that is very dangerous." He added that the crew did well to avert loss of life on board and under the flight path. Passenger Jean Ralphs, who was sitting in seat 3F, says she saw an engine cowl detach. "I saw vapour streaming off the right-hand engine and a colourless liquid streaming from the exposed pipes. It was obvious that it was only a matter of time before the engine caught fire. "I know that we all nearly died on that flight. I fail to understand how such a dangerous maintenance issue can be allowed to continue. Why have all Airbuses not been grounded until this is sorted out?" Airbus declined to comment. Last July the Airbus safety publication stressed the importance of pre-flight checks and the danger of assuming cowls were properly closed, warning that inadvertent opening was a "major hazard" that could cause "heavy damage". Learmount said it seemed clear that there was an issue with maintenance. He said: "It's emerging that it's very difficult to see - the underside of the engines is where the latches are and the ground clearance is 18 inches. Airbus has done several things over the years which has made them more visible - but unless you get down on your stomach and check during the walkaround you may miss it." He added: "Whether there was something else that happened in addition - or as a result - of the cowl failure is still unclear." The incident closed both runways at Heathrow briefly, but the stoppage saw British Airways cancel all short-haul flights until 4pm that day - a decision that left thousands stranded, with many foreign connecting travellers left in London or in the airport for two days. Passengers complained of chaos at the airport and accused the airline of not doing enough to help, with reports of nine-hour queues for desk service and a lack of response on telephone helplines. A BA spokeswoman said the effects had been compounded by the incident's timing on a bank holiday weekend when flights were very full, making it difficult to swiftly rebook onward travel. However, she said the airline had put calls out for extra staff to volunteer and added extra phone lines, albeit with some rerouting to call centres in India and Jacksonville in the US. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/30/air-safety-officials-ba-jet Back to Top Aircraft skids at Wamena airport, forcing temporary closure The Jakarta Post, Jayapura | Archipelago | Fri, May 31 2013, 11:09 AM Wamena airport in Jayapura, Papua, was temporarily closed on Friday after a Deraya aircraft skidded during landing. The incident took place at 7:13 a.m. local time. "We have to temporarily close the airport until the evacuation work is completed. Heavy machinery is being used to drag the plane on to the runway," head of the airport Junikar Pakondo said over the phone. The aircraft, flown by Captain Hadi and co-pilot Monangka on a flight from Sentani, was about to land when it veered to the left off the runway on to the grass. The aircraft's nose wheel broke off in the incident. The plane came to a stop 150 meters from the runway; its propellers were also damaged. Due to the closure, Papua Police deputy chief Brig. Gen. Paulus Waterpauw was forced to delay his departure to Wamena to investigate communal clashes in Nduga, Wamena, on Thursday, which left four people dead and 23 injured. "He will leave as soon as the removal of the skidded plane is completed," Papua Police spokesman Sr. Comr. I Gede Sumerta said. This latest incident has brought the number of accidents at Wamena to three so far this month. The other two accidents were on May 8, when a cargo plane owned by PT Trigana Airways caught fire and on May 20 when another plane belonging to Trigana skidded off the runway. http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/ Back to Top Pilot, passenger suffer minor injuries in Eatonville plane crash A pilot and his passenger escaped serious injury Thursday evening when they crashed a small airplane into an Eatonville home. The two men were flying from Oregon to Seattle for a conference when they came upon some rough weather over the Eatonville area just after 5 p.m., according to Eatonville Fire Chief Bob Hudspeth. Hudspeth said the pilot decided to land at Swanson Field Airport in Eatonville, but somehow missed the field. Instead, the Cessna 172 landed in the front yard of a large home in the 500 block of Airport Road and skidded into the front of the house. Tim Brown was nearby when the crashed happened and rushed over to help. "We ran across here and jumped the fence and the guys who'd just flown into the house were getting out of the plane," he said. Ryan Collins said he heard the crash. "It sounded like an airplane going by and then maybe half a minute or so later it sounded like a car wreck," he said. Both the pilot and the passenger suffered minor injuries in the crash, but both are expected to be fine. Nobody was inside the home at the time of the crash, and only minor damage was reported. "There's been several fatality plane crashes around this area, and this was not one of them and we're very pleased these guys were able to walk away from it," Hudspeth said. Hudspeth said the crash didn't spark a fire and no fuel is leaking. Eatonville police and officials from the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash. http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Small-plane-crashes-into-Eatonville-house- 209606351.html Back to Top Plane Crashes Into Apartment Building In Herndon, Virginia (video here) Virginia State Police say two people were taken to a hospital after a two-seat plane crashed into the living room of a third-story apartment outside Washington. Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller says the plane crashed into the roof of the apartment building in Herndon, Va., early Friday after it had electrical problems and its engine cut off. Geller says the men were taking infrared photographs for an aerial photography company. They were headed to Manassas from Philadelphia, but rerouted to Dulles when they ran low on fuel. Geller says the pilot was taken to the hospital with serious injuries. A woman who was in the apartment was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The Red Cross is helping nine adults, seven children and pets who had to leave the building. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/plane-crashes-into-apartm_n_3365190.html Back to Top Back to Top Finnair to remove airplane art after plagiarism charges Finnair, the largest airline in Finland, said on Wednesday that it will remove artwork that adorns an Airbus plane in its fleet after it was discovered that the art was plagiarized. The design on the plane, which depicts a group of trees in a forest, was created by the Finnish firm Marimekko five years ago, according to reports. But it turns out that the design was improperly copied from the celebrated Ukrainian folk artist Maria Primatshenko. A spokeswoman for Finnair told the Associated Press that the design would be painted over as soon as possible. The airline had only recently unveiled the design on one of its Airbus 330 planes. Finnair said in a release this month that the plane was servicing routes from its Helsinki hub to the airline's 13 Asian destinations, as well as New York. The discovery of artistic plagiarism apparently started with a report this week in the Finnish publication Helsingin Sanomat. The newspaper reported on the similarities between the forest design and a painting by Primatshenko known as "Metsanvaki." Reuters reported that Kristina Isola, who works for Marimekko, has admitted copying the design and apologized for the plagiarism. Primatshenko, who died in 1997, was a renowned Ukrainian artist whose colorful works depicted animals, various flora and rural life. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-finnair-art-plagiarism- 20130529,0,2659200.story Back to Top Amelia Earhart: Has sonar found her missing airplane? Though she vanished during her around-the-world flight in 1937, Amelia Earhart's plane was never found, leaving behind one of the bigger mysteries in aviation. However, that mystery may be solved. An "anomaly" has been discovered on a sonar image and the International Group for Historic Aviation Recovery believed it could be Earhart's downed plane. The image was captured off Nikumaroro island in the southwestern Pacific. It shows an object about 22 feet long, resting 600 feet underwater. The location is roughly 350 miles southeast of Earhart's destination, which was Howland Island. The group has made a number of discoveries over 10 expeditions, recovering several artifacts. It is their belief that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the island's coral reef and became castaways, eventually dying there. "What initially got our attention is that there is no other sonar return like it in the entire body of data collected," Ric Gillespie, executive director of the group, tells Discovery News. "It is truly an anomaly, and when you're looking for man-made objects against a natural background, anomalies are good." The group hopes to make another expedition to the island to investigate the anomaly, but it will depend on whether the non-profit is able to raise funding. http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2013/05/amelia-earhart-has-sonar-found-her-missing- airplane.html Curt Lewis