Flight Safety Information March 21 2014 - No. 060 In This Issue Malaysia Airlines Search Uses Every Method Possible Satellite Company Says It Predicted Missing Plane's Location 10 Days Ago. Pilots face tough physicals, but 'shallow' mental exams Air Canada suspends Venezuela flights, saying it can't assure safety PRISM SMS Asia Pacific Aviation Safety Seminar, 21-22 May 2014, Bangkok, Thailand Upcoming Events Malaysia Airlines Search Uses Every Method Possible Australian Teams Search For Missing Plane With Everything From Satellites to Birds Australian-led search teams are using everything from sophisticated oceanographic models to the activities of birds, to try to locate clues to the missing Malaysia Airlines plane in a harrowing part of the southern Indian Ocean. SYDNEY-Australian-led search teams will likely be using an eclectic mix of high-tech and traditional methods to help track down possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean. Australia's national science agency is helping the nation's maritime safety authority undertake the search, offering its sophisticated ocean-modelling data to be checked against the findings of rescue teams hunting for scattered debris on the ocean's surface. Oceanographers say the maritime authority may also be relying on National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, satellite technology used for studying ocean topography from space to help pinpoint the location of moving objects. NASA's system, like that of the European Space Agency, takes pictures of subtle changes in ocean currents. Search teams are scouring the southern Indian Ocean looking for two objects captured on satellite images Sunday that could explain the fate of MH370, which went missing almost two weeks ago. But Australia's maritime authority has said little publicly about the techniques it is using to locate the debris. The difficulty for rescuers is that ocean conditions in the search area-about 1,550 miles from the Western Australian state capital of Perth-are also some of the roughest, with strong winds, towering waves and complex currents that make it a challenge to find floating debris. Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Friday described the suspected location of the debris as among the most inaccessible in the world. Ships involved in the search are faced with the problem of looking for the debris amid continuous rolling waves of between 3 meters and 30 meters, according to some experts. "It's not a fun place to be on a ship," said Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales. "The currents in this part of the ocean are among the strongest in the world. It's going to make the search difficult because the objects float away so fast." Determining the speed and direction of ocean currents in the area is critical to discovering how far the cited objects have moved since the images were taken by DigitalGlobe Inc., a U.S. commercial satellite- imaging company, which passed them along to Australian intelligence. Oceanographers say the broad movement of the current in that part of the ocean is eastward. Australian authorities have dropped colored buoys from aircraft flying over the search area, which is close to the southern-corridor flight path MH370 may have taken after it lost contact with radar. The markers emit signals as they drift along the ocean's surface, and these are fed into a computer program to help calculate how far, and in which direction, the objects may have moved. The speed of the buoys may be influenced by changing weather conditions, including strong winds. Sailors have dubbed the area where the search is taking place "the roaring 40s"-a stretch around 40-degrees latitude in the southern hemisphere where strong winds can sound like a lion's roar. Charitha Pattiaratchi, a professor of coastal oceanography at the University of Western Australia, said waves here can be among the highest anywhere. This region of the ocean also is rich in eddies, water that moves in a circular way, adding another degree of complexity in tracking the ocean's flow. Five aircraft were assigned to the rescue mission Friday, the second day of searching the area. They included an Australian P-C3 Orion aircraft, a U.S. Navy Poseidon P-8 aircraft, and a civilian Bombardier Global Express jet. The aircraft have been flying relatively low, manned by trained observers looking out of the window for objects. A number of merchant ships, too, are involved in the search, and an Australian warship is expected to arrive at the scene on Saturday to help retrieve any debris that is discovered. According to Mr. van Sebille, space technology like NASA's could be used to narrow down the search by studying the likely velocity of the moving debris. He said the two objects-identified by authorities as being, separately, 79 feet and 16 feet long-could already be as much as 311 miles away from the location seen in the satellite pictures five days earlier. The objects would be moving as much as 50-100 km a day due to the ocean's currents, and computer simulations could help pin down their location to within 30-40 km of their actual position, Mr. van Sebille said. Investigators may be looking at satellite images tracked over the past few days and then creating computer simulations to work out where the objects are likely to have moved to since the last available snapshot was taken. NASA's technology measures the distance between the sea surface and the satellite accurately to within a centimeter, he said. The hills and valleys of the ocean enable researchers to keep track of the pressure of the current, but the pictures can often be "quite blurred," making tracking less than perfect. More traditional methods may be employed once search teams are get closer to the suspected wreckage. Birds such as albatrosses tend to gather around any objects that have fallen into the sea, and so crew from the ships may be looking out for that too. "Any experienced captain would know that," Mr. van Sebille said. (le lien a été supprimé !) Back to Top Satellite Company Says It Predicted Missing Plane's Location 10 Days Ago Malaysia May Have Delayed Search Efforts A British satellite company said today that it had indications that the missing Malaysia Airlines plane may have crashed into the Indian Ocean as early as two days after the plane's disappearance. The search for the jetliner did not move into the Indian Ocean until more than a week after the plane vanished in the middle of the night from Malaysian airspace on March 7. "This is very troubling, just thinking of the time wasted and what was ever on the water moving farther away," said ABC News consultant Tom Haueter, a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator. Inmarsat, the maker of satellites, told ABC News that they had an "initial idea" on March 9 and by March 10 were "fairly certain" that the search parties should look in the south Indian Ocean for the vanished plane. A map from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority shows the area they plan to search on Friday, March 21, 2014, as investigators continue to look for Malaysia Airlines flight 370. Inmarsat shared their data with a partner company the following day, on March 11, and with Malaysian investigators on March 12. It was not until three days later, on March 15, that Malaysian authorities acknowledged that satellite data suggested the plane was not in the Strait of Malacca or the South China Sea and began redirecting search efforts to the Indian Ocean. Asked whether the company was concerned Malaysia took so long to act on their information, Inmarsat spokesman Chris McLaughlin told the BBC that theirs was just one small piece of data in the Malaysian investigation. "No, it's not our place to be concerned," McLaughlin said. "Our position was we shared data and an idea that could be tested against other data with the correct authorities on the Tuesday. We can't possibly know what other data was in the investigation or what routes the Malaysian government were following." (le lien a été supprimé !) Back to Top Pilots face tough physicals, but 'shallow' mental exams The FBI is helping Malaysian officials determine whether the pilots of missing Flight 370 could have intentionally diverted or crashed the plane, raising questions about whether better psychological screening for pilots could prevent rare, but violent incidents. Malaysian authorities have opened a criminal investigation into the flight that disappeared March 8 because someone familiar with the 777-200ER's controls is thought to have changed the plane's course less than an hour after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur, based on military radar tracking. The FBI will examine Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah's personal flight simulator that he kept at his home for clues. The equipment has been flown to the USA. The open question is whether one or both pilots aboard the plane might have diverted and possibly crashed the plane intentionally. The Federal Aviation Administration requires stringent physical exams for U.S. pilots, but monitors their mental health largely through their own reporting and prescriptions. "The mental component is alarmingly shallow in its probing," said Greg Raiff, CEO of Private Jet Services in New Hampshire, an aviation consultancy that lines up charter flights for corporations, governments and sports teams.. Under FAA rules, commercial passenger pilots under age 40 have physical exams every year and those older every six months to keep their certificates to fly. Cargo and general-aviation pilots have less- frequent exams. Before the appointment, the pilot fills out a medical history through part of the FAA's website called MedXPress. Besides typical physical characteristics, the questions ask about medications, ailments such as vision or heart problems and mental disorders such as depression or anxiety. A doctor - called an aviation medical examiner - then meets with the pilot to check vision, lungs, heart, abdomen, extremities for swelling that could signal heart failure and urine for possible diabetes or renal failure, said Ryan Rees, who conducts the exams at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. "Basically, the air medical is an overall survey to ensure that pilots don't put passengers or people on the ground at risk," Rees said. "If we see anything that raises a flag, we defer it for FAA review. All of the ones that we certify are also reviewed by the FAA, and they verify whether it was a good decision or a bad decision." He estimated that 10% or 15% of the pilots he sees are declined immediately or deferred for further FAA evaluation. Commercial pilots aren't allowed to have insulin-dependent diabetes, for example. But pilots can fly with high blood pressure that is treated with medication and with coronary artery disease that is closely monitored. MALAYSIA MISSING PLANE A Malaysian Airlines model aircraft on sale at a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 19, 2014.(Photo: Azhar Rahim, EPA) The FAA also can review driving infractions, such as drunken driving charges, which the agency asks pilots to report within 60 days of a conviction or administrative action. Computerization, both of the medical histories and prescriptions, helps prevent a pilot who fails a medical from applying to a different doctor, said Rees, who has caught one or two that way. "Warning flags pop up immediately," he said. The 15- to 20-minute meeting also involves asking questions about the pilot's mental status for depression or suicidal feelings, and about medication such as anti-depressants. "There's a lot of fantasies about flying in the air and ending things with as much damage as you can," Rees said. "That never is far from our minds as a possibility." But psychological problems are rare in pilots who receive their certificates. Commercial pilots fly tens of thousands of flights each day in the USA without incident. An FAA report in February of 2,758 aviation fatalities during a 10-year period found eight cases of probable suicide. Five of those pilots had commercial licenses, two of whom had a history of suicide threats or joking about suicide. But all the incidents happened in small propeller planes or a helicopter. That report didn't cover a couple of commercial crashes where investigators suspected pilots steered their planes toward the ground: * SilkAir Flight 185, which crashed into a river in Indonesia in December 1997. *EqyptAir Flight 990, which crashed off the coast of Massachusetts in October 1999. In a case without injuries, a JetBlue Airways pilot locked Capt. Clayton Osbon out of the cockpit in March 2012 after he began speaking nonsensically during a flight from New York to Las Vegas. Osbon then moved about the cabin yelling about Jesus and al-Qaeda before flight attendants and passengers restrained him for an emergency landing in Amarillo, Texas. At trial for interfering with a flight crew, Osbon was found not guilty by reason of insanity after arguing he had a "brief psychotic disorder" from lack of sleep. Such cases are why Raiff of Private Jet Services says pilots should be examined more thoroughly. His company reviews medical certificates and seeks out experienced pilots. "Really what you're relying on at that point is that an old salt who's been flying an airplane for 35 years has the highest probability of not going off the deep end, so to speak, on tomorrow's flight," Raiff said. "The No. 1 answer is make sure you know your pilots." (le lien a été supprimé !) Back to Top Air Canada suspends Venezuela flights, saying it can't assure safety CARACAS, Venezuela - Air Canada decided to suspend its flights to and from Venezuela on Monday as anti- government protests continue to rattle the South American country. "Due to on-going civil unrest in Venezuela, Air Canada can no longer ensure the safety of its operation and has suspended flights to Caracas until further notice," the airline said in a statement posted on its website. "Air Canada will continue to monitor the situation and will evaluate the re-introduction of flights with the objective of resuming operations on the route once Air Canada is satisfied that the situation in Venezuela has stabilized." The first flights affected by the move are a scheduled departure from Toronto to Caracas on Tuesday evening and a flight from Caracas to Toronto on Wednesday morning. The airline and travel agents have started notifying affected customers. Air Canada's reservations and ticketing office in Caracas remains open. The airline said affected ticket-holders can obtain refunds while those who are mid-travel also have the option to be rebooked on other airlines at no additional charge. Air Canada's suspension came just a few days after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said any airline that reduced or suspended flights in and out of Venezuela would face severe measures. Maduro said any airline that leaves won't be allowed back while he is in power. Demonstrations have erupted in numerous parts of Venezuela during the past month over crime and a deteriorating economy. Protesters have been voicing their dissatisfaction with inflation that hit 56 per cent last year, soaring violent crime and shortages of basic necessities such as corn flour and cooking oil. In a part of the capital, peaceful daily protests have devolved each afternoon into violent clashes with tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannon and Molotov cocktails. Only a small segment of the demonstrators stick around for the skirmishes, but the damage wreaked by an even smaller subgroup has been highly publicized on state television. (le lien a été supprimé !) Back to Top Back to Top Asia Pacific Aviation Safety Seminar, 21-22 May 2014, Bangkok, Thailand The Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) is holding the next Asia Pacific Aviation Safety Seminar (APASS) on 21-22 May 2014 in Bangkok. The seminar, hosted by THAI Airways International, is organised by the AAPA Flight Operations & Safety Working Group. This seminar is designed to create a common meeting place for all airlines from the Asia Pacific region, airports, aircraft manufacturers, regulators, insurers, ground handlers, MROs, service providers and suppliers to discuss and to be updated on the latest developments in aviation safety. Why attend? * Excellent networking opportunities for all safety stakeholders to exchange ideas on the important fundamentals and applications of aviation safety best practices, in-service experience and lessons-learned with like-minded aviation safety experts. * Topic-specific workshops in Cabin Safety, Flight Operations Safety and Safety Performance Indicators will enable participants to exchange views and debate on the practical approaches in managing some of the leading safety issues facing the region. Click here to find out more >> (le lien a été supprimé !) Back to Top Upcoming Events: WATS 2014 April 1-3, 2014 Orlando, FL (le lien a été supprimé !) North Texas Business Aviation Safety Show-Down is set for April 3rd (le lien a été supprimé !) Middle East Air Cargo and Logistics Exhibition & Conference 2014 April 9-10, 2014 Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) (le lien a été supprimé !) Airport Show Dubai May 11-13, 2014 Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC) (le lien a été supprimé !) National Safety Council Aviation Safety Committee Annual Conference Savanah, GA - May 14-15, 2014 Contact: tammy.washington@nsc.org (le lien a été supprimé !) Asia Pacific Aviation Safety Seminar 21-22 May 2014, Bangkok, Thailand (le lien a été supprimé !) Curt Lewis