Flight Safety Information March 27, 2014 - No. 064 In This Issue Best lead yet? Satellite spots possible debris field in search for Flight 370 How Malaysia Flight 370 Could Shape Flight-Tracking Technology NTSB reminds pilots to land at the right airport FAA tells Boeing to fix 747-8 software to avoid crash 11 Seattle helipads scrutinized in wake of news helicopter crash PRISM SMS Malaysia Airlines may need government rescue Airbus Signs Long-Term Helicopter Deal With China Manufacturer T.S.A. Calls for Armed Guards at Airport Checkpoints Graduate Research Survey Upcoming Events Best lead yet? Satellite spots possible debris field in search for Flight 370 (CNN) -- New satellite images provided by a French defense firm show 122 objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean, not far from other satellite sightings that could be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the Malaysian transport minister said Wednesday. When photographed by the satellite on Sunday, the objects were scattered over 154 square miles (400 square kilometers), acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Bin Hussein said. That's about the size of Denver, Colorado. The location recorded by the satellite was within the search area scoured Wednesday by a dozen aircraft from six nations, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. Nothing was found, the agency said on Twitter. Experts say it's possible the materials may have drifted or sunk. Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 'Eventually something will come to light' How Inmarsat found MH370's path Search aircraft did spot three objects, but teams weren't able to locate them again in several passes through the area, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said. The latest objects seen on satellite images provided by Airbus Defence and Space range from about 3 feet (1 meter) to about 75 feet (23 meters), Hishammuddin said. Some appear bright, indicating they may be solid, he said. The latest images appear to be the most significant discovery yet in the hunt for the missing plane, which vanished March 8 with 239 people aboard, said CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien. "There's a very good chance this could be the break we've been waiting for," he said. Aviation safety analyst David Soucie agreed, saying he was particularly intrigued by the size of the 75-foot object. "It has potential to be a wing that's floating," he said. "So I'm really encouraged by it, I really am." But satellites have captured images of objects before during the current search, crews have yet to spot anything definitively linked to the airplane and ships haven't recovered anything of note. "This is a positive indication that the searchers are getting closer to the origin of the crash, but there are many uncertainties," said Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University. "There could be many objects floating in the ocean, that are large or small, that are completely unrelated to the crash." Until searchers get their hands on the objects, he said, it's too soon to say whether they are parts of the plane or garbage floating in ocean waters. Officials have warned that objects spotted in the water may turn out to be flotsam from cargo ships, and that finding anything from the plane still could take a long time. "There's always a possibility we might not actually find something next week or the week after," Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defence Force, told CNN's Kate Bolduan on Tuesday. "I think eventually, something will come to light, but it's going to take time." The search resumed Thursday morning as a Chinese military plane took off for the search area in the southern Indian Ocean, Australian authorities said. Six military reconnaissance planes -- from Australia, the United States, China and Japan -- and five civilian aircraft are set to comb the vast search area again on Thursday. Five ships -- one from Australia and four from China -- also are in the search zone, Australian authorities said. Questions linger What role did pilots play? An ongoing FBI review of the missing jet's pilots' hard drives, including the captain's flight simulator, has not turned up a "smoking gun," a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. "They have accessed the data," the official said. "There is nothing that's jumping out and grabbing us right now." The official would not reveal what was on the hard drive, but said the Malaysia Airlines pilot did not encrypt any of the files nor did he appear to go to any great lengths to scrub the hard drive when he deleted files last month. FBI Director James Comey said earlier Wednesday that he expects the information would be handed over to the Malaysians in the next day or two. "I have teams working literally around the clock to try and exploit that,'' Comey said. "I don't want to say more about that in an open setting. But I expect it to be done fairly shortly within a day or two, to finish that work." The information retrieved from the hard drives will hopefully give investigators leads to follow regarding the pilot's backgrounds, such as their finances and emotional state and who they had been communicating with. U.S. investigators continue to be baffled by the plane's disappearance, with one U.S. official saying, "I don't think there is a prevailing theory. There are counterarguments to every theory right now." Investigators are still focusing on the pilots, even though no physical evidence, such as a suicide note, has been found in their homes that would suggest they were planning the plane's disappearance. One of the main reasons for the continued focus on the pair is that there is nothing else explaining what happened, sources say. Citing an anonymous high-ranking officer attached to a special investigative branch of Malaysian police in Kuala Lumpur, USA Today reported Wednesday that investigators believe the plane's captain was "solely responsible for the flight being taken hundreds of miles off course." Investigators are now pressing Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah's family for more details, USA Today world news editor William Dermody told CNN. "Some of it's process of elimination," Dermody said. "They can't find any other rationale for it, and according to the evidence they have thus far, they don't believe that the plane was mechanically disabled. They feel that it had to have been done manually, and the only person who could have done that on the plane was the pilot." But a senior Malaysian government official told CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes that they have found nothing negative so far in 19 days of investigating the two pilots that leads them to any motive, be it political, suicidal or extremist. "The people in the cockpit are a top priority," a senior U.S. government official said. "We are heavily dependent on the Malaysians to do a deep dive on personal lives." Another U.S. official said nothing was flagged after a study of the passengers onboard the plane and that "no terrorism stuff is moving forward" at this stage in the investigation. The hardware If search teams are able to find debris confirmed to be from the plane, it will help officials figure out roughly where the aircraft went down. They would then be able to focus the search under the water to try to find larger pieces of wreckage and the all-important flight data recorder, which may hold vital clues about what happened the night the plane disappeared. Wife grieves for husband missing on MH370 Source: Flight 370 turned, dropped Flight 370 relative: This is a cover-up Families told all lives are lost U.S. hardware designed to help with that task arrived Wednesday in Perth, the western Australian city that is the base for the search efforts. The United States sent a Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle, which can search for submerged objects at depths as low as 14,700 feet (about 4,500 meters), and a TPL-25, a giant listening device that can help pinpoint the location of pings from the flight data recorder. Towed behind a ship, the TPL-25 can detect pings at a maximum depth of 20,000 feet (about 6,100 meters). The Indian Ocean has an average depth of about 13,000 feet (about 4,000 meters). Time is against that part of the search, though, as the pingers that send signals from the plane's voice and date recorders are expected to run out of power within the next two weeks. CNN safety analyst David Soucie, author of "Why Planes Crash," said Wednesday there's a chance the batteries powering the pingers could have been stored improperly and might be dead already. That doesn't mean the recorders can't be found, but it would complicate the investigation. Searchers found the recorders from Air France Flight 447 two years after the plane's 2009 crash, long after the battery died. How 'groundbreaking' number crunching found path of Flight 370 The families The wait for answers about what happened to the plane and where it is now has taken a toll on the relatives of those on the flight. Chinese kin have been particularly upset by Malaysian authorities' announcement Monday, based on analysis of satellite data, that the plane had crashed into the southern Indian Ocean with the loss of all lives aboard. "It is still theory, and it's just still analysis" said Stephen Wang, whose mother was on the missing flight. "No one have seen anything." Many relatives of those missing haven't accepted the theory, and still think their loved ones might still be alive, Wang told CNN's Pauline Chiou. "To me, I think it might be 5% that there is still hope, but most of the families don't believe that it might be bad news," Wang said. "Most of the families still think that there will be hope." On Wednesday, some families accused Malaysia Airlines of falling short of its promises to provide volunteer caregivers and accommodations for some family members. The airline couldn't immediately be reached for comment and did not send a representative to a news conference Wednesday. The complaints came a day after hundreds of Flight 370 family members marched to the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing -- the flight's destination -- to voice their anger and frustration. Some said the Malaysian government was covering up the truth and demanded tangible evidence the plane had ended up in the ocean. The Chinese government, whose citizens made up two-thirds of the passengers on board the missing plane, also said it wanted more information from Malaysia. President Xi Jinping has sent a special envoy to Kuala Lumpur to deal with the matter. Malaysian officials met with the Chinese envoy, said Hishammuddin, the transport minister, and briefed them extensively on the analysis of the satellite data that led to the crash conclusion. Did flammable cargo doom flight? The backlash The Malaysians' comments appeared to have done little to placate the anger among the families, however, and it appeared to be spreading more widely among the Chinese public. Some Chinese celebrities used social media to urge people to boycott Malaysian products and visits to the country. Chen Kun, one of China's most popular actors, accused the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines of "clownish prevarication and lies." His post Tuesday calling for a boycott was reposted more than 65,000 times on Weibo, China's Twitter-like microblogging platform. "I've never been to Malaysia, and I will no longer plan to go there anymore," Meng Fei, the host of one of China's most popular TV shows, wrote Wednesday on Weibo, calling for others to repost the comments if they felt the same. More than 120,000 users did. Other social media users, albeit with smaller followings, argued against punishing Malaysia over the matter. Chen Shu, a journalist, warned that a boycott would "hurt the relationship of Chinese and Malaysians" and long-term regional ties. Chinese authorities regularly censor Weibo posts. The fact the anti-Malaysian posts by high-profile users weren't deleted suggested either tacit approval or at least an unwillingness to wade into the debate by Chinese government censors. How they're searching for debris Hishammuddin, however, praised his country's performance, saying officials had overcome significant diplomatic challenges to bring together 26 countries, at one point, to participate in the search. "History will judge us well," he said. http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/ Back to Top How Malaysia Flight 370 Could Shape Flight-Tracking Technology PHOTO: Flight Officer Jack Chen mans the navigation and comms station on board a Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion as they search for debris or wreckage of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, March 22, 2014. The most recent satellite data from telecommunications company Inmarsat has search committees scouring a patch of water about the size of Alaska to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. It's "inconceivable" that commercial airliners can fly around today without the requirement that they be tracked, spokesman Chris McLaughlin of British company Inmarsat said. "It's just over 100 years since the safety of lives at sea first was enforced after the loss of the Titanic," he told ABC News. "All ships at sea have a requirement for long-distance identification and tracking. That should and must happen for aircraft." MH370's disappearance isn't the first time that modern plane-tracking systems have been called into question. Stephen Trimble, U.S. bureau chief of U.K. aviation news website Flightglobal, said the conversation was started five years ago after the Air France 447 crash in 2009. "It's a complicated story, but that's where a lot of this got covered initially," he said. Although there have been improvements in tracking technology since the Air France crash, many of those would not have significantly changed the outcome for the Malaysia Airlines flight, particularly in regard to the plane's transponder. "When a transponder stops working, [the plane] becomes invisible," he said. "A new tracking system is launching next year, but it would be invisible to that system as well." Officials Say Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane 'Ended in the Southern Indian Ocean' But there is one piece of tech that might not involve the transponder at all. Triggered transmission, Trimble said, is a system that acts as its own server on board the aircraft, independent of the transponder. "If the airplane banks or dives too steeply or goes too fast or too slow, it automatically sends out a burst of data that gives us position information," he said. "Rather than searching over thousands or millions of square miles, you reduce the search radius to four miles of the crash site." But outfitting all airplanes with a triggered transmission system would not come cheap. "It's about $50,000 to install them per aircraft," Trimble said. An airline like American Airlines has about 900 planes, making the upgrade cost nearly $50 million. "It's not unaffordable, but some airlines wouldn't be happy about the bill," he said. "For some other airlines, it would just be ruinous." Richard Aboulafia, aviation analyst at Fairfax, Va.-based Teal Group Corp., said there are other costs to consider as well. "Hardware isn't expensive, but bandwidth is," he said. "You're increasing the amount of bandwidth needed to transmit this data." Both Aboulafia and Trimble are unsure whether MH370 will inspire a wave of reformation and innovation in airplane tracking technology. "Maybe there will be some change," Aboulafia said, "but there isn't a lot of historical precedent for it. There are very few examples in the past of how a crash can change a system." http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/malaysia-flight-370-shape-flight-tracking- technology/story?id=23055129 Back to Top NTSB reminds pilots to land at the right airport WASHINGTON - Federal safety officials issued an alert Wednesday reminding airline pilots to remain vigilant in finding their destinations after two pilots landed at the wrong airports in the last six months. The National Transportation Safety Board issued the alert after a Southwest Airlines 737 landed at the wrong airport in Branson, Mo., in January. A Boeing 747 cargo plane landed at the wrong airport in Wichita, Kan., in November 2013. "All of us have experienced a loss of situational awareness at some time," NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said. But "mistaking a nearby airport for the intended one, or landing on the wrong runway or a taxiway, can have catastrophic consequences," she said. Government safety data and news reports reviewed by The Associated Press revealed at least 150 flights made such mistakes over the past two decades. Thirty-five of those cases involved wrong landings. The other 115 cases consist of aborted landing attempts or erroneous approaches. The NTSB made five recommendations to flight crews for avoiding the mistake: *Verify the plane's position relative to the destination. *Maintain extra vigilance when identifying the destination airport at night, when both of the recent mistakes happened. *Become familiar with the airport's layout and relationship to other facilities. *Use the most precise navigation aids possible. *Confirm the destination before reporting the airport or runway is in sight. http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2014/03/26/ntsb-wrong-landing-airport-southwest- pilots/6923833/ Back to Top FAA tells Boeing to fix 747-8 software to avoid crash Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental jetliner, tail number A7-HHE which is the first-delivery VIP- configured aircraft for an undisclosed customer, taxis past Boeing's widebody jetliner production line before taking off from Paine Field in Everett, Washington on February 28, 2012. (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday ordered an immediate fix to the latest version of Boeing Co's 747-8 plane, saying a software glitch could cause it to lose thrust when close to landing and fly into the ground. The FAA's so-called airworthiness directive covers Boeing's 747-8 and 747-8F planes with certain General Electric Co engines. It calls for replacing defective software with a new, improved version. The rule, the fourth such directive involving the 747-8, directly affects seven airplanes in the United States, the FAA said. If adopted internationally, the rule would cover a larger number. Boeing's website said it had delivered 66 of the four-engine jets, the company's largest, to customers worldwide since the model was introduced in October 2011. The problem never caused a problem in flight, Boeing said. Because of the seriousness of the safety issues, the directive takes effect April 9, skipping the usual comment period, although comments can still be submitted, the FAA said. Boeing said data analysis indicated a potential problem, and it advised customers last year to update the software. It said it believed the majority of operators had already done so. The risk of failure was "extremely remote," Boeing said. GE said it owned the software and jointly analyzed it with Boeing, but plane maker decided to recommend the software change to customers. According to the FAA, the risk arises when a plane is changing back into "air mode" while performing a "rejected or bounced landing." That change halts hydraulic pressure used to stow the engine thrust reversers, which slow the plane on landing, the agency said. Without hydraulic pressure, the reversers may not stow fully and might redeploy, which "could result in inadequate climb performance at an altitude insufficient for recovery, and consequent uncontrolled flight into terrain," the FAA said. Unidentified business jet/VIP customers own the eight passenger models of the aircraft in the United States, according to Boeing's website. Air cargo company Atlas Air is the largest U.S. commercial owner of the jet, with a fleet of eight 747-8F freighters. Among passenger carriers, Lufthansa is the largest operator, with 11. It said its planes were unaffected by the directive. "GE has confirmed that all our engines already have the software update that is required by the FAA," a spokesman said on Wednesday. China's Cathay Pacific has 13 freighters and Cargolux, based in Luxembourg, has nine. Korean Airlines Co, Nippon Cargo Airlines Co Ltd and Volga-Dnepr UK Ltd also own 787-8F freighters, according to Boeing's website. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/26/us-usa-aerospace-boeing-idUSBREA2P0Q420140326 Back to Top 11 Seattle helipads scrutinized in wake of news helicopter crash Two people were killed when a leased KOMO news helicopter crashed during takeoff into Broad Street between KOMO's offices and the Space Needle. A person in a passing car (the maroon car visible behind the helicopter tail wreckage) was injured. Eleven helipads have been identified within Seattle city limits, as city officials continue to research helicopter use in the city after the deadly crash of a news helicopter last Tuesday. An early list from the Seattle Department of Planning and Development, based on Federal Aviation Administration information, shows there are three helipads associated with news media outlets - KOMO, KING and KIRO - and three associated with hospitals. Harborview Medical Center has its own helipad, while Seattle Children's Hospital and University of Washington Medical Center both use a university site called Graves Field. Children's also has its own site, which is used only in emergencies, said Bryan Stevens, spokesman for the Seattle department, on Wednesday. Of the remaining five, two are at downtown Seattle office buildings: Safeco Plaza on Fourth Avenue and Puget Sound Plaza at Sixth and Seneca. "At this point we haven't concluded our research; we don't know what is really active," he said. "We're trying to compare the FAA licensed sites with the permit history on file, to correctly label what it was permitted for." After the accident, which killed two, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said the city should review its permits and procedures to make sure the helicopters are operating safely. "We want to understand what actually happened, to understand what we need to do in the future to prevent this from happening," Murray said at a press event that day. "We want to understand if there's something we should do different." Under regulations adopted by the city in 1993, conditional use permits can be granted only for facilities that "serve a public safety, news gathering or emergency medical care function." Details on the sites won't be fully gathered for several weeks, because researchers are having to comb through large files to find the city permits, Stevens said. Some of the FAA information dates back to the 1970s. The planning department also will research helicopter policies in major cities, including San Francisco, New York and Vancouver, B.C. Stevens said he expects that process to also take weeks. This information, and the pending report on the crash from the National Transportation Safety Board, will then be studied by an interdepartmental team that has not yet been assembled, he said. "The outcome of that investigation will inform what types of decisions may have to be made," he said, adding that the city hopes to have better preliminary information in the next few weeks. There is no current timetable for reaching any decisions, he said. http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/2014/03/11-seattle-helipads-scrutinized-in-wake-of- news.html?page=all Back to Top Back to Top Malaysia Airlines may need government rescue Malaysia Airlines was in dire financial straits long before Flight 370 vanished. HONG KONG (CNNMoney) Even before Flight 370 disappeared, Malaysia Airlines was neck-deep in financial trouble. But the loss of the flight and subsequent focus on the company's management has further damaged the troubled carrier. Analysts say Malaysia Airlines' future now hangs in the balance -- and it may take a government rescue to save the company from financial disaster. "As in any country with a large national carrier, [Malaysia Airlines] is quite significant in terms of having someone champion the tourist industry, to carry high value cargoes, and of course, employ an awful lot of people," said Timothy Ross, head research analyst for Asia Pacific transport at Credit Suisse. "The question is, does it require more state aid, and in what shape will that state aid come? Would it make more sense to [nationalize] the business, than to have it publicly listed?" he said. Acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein ducked questions about a government bailout at a press briefing Wednesday, saying only that efforts were focused on searching for the missing plane. Malaysia Airlines has faced increased competition in recent years from new regional airlines, including budget carrier AirAsia, that are able to offer much lower ticket prices. The struggling carrier tried to boost revenue by selling more tickets, rather than raising prices, while keeping operating costs under control. It has also canceled some longer flight routes. But the strategy never took hold, and the difficult business climate has forced the airline into the red for the past three years in a row, leading to a loss of about 4.2 billion ringgit ($1.3 billion) over that period. As the fallout widens over missing Flight 370, investors are losing confidence. The airline faces lawsuits, millions of dollars in payments to passengers' families, and the possibility of fewer tourists. Malaysia Airlines did not respond to requests for comment. Its stock has fallen by around a third this year, and by about 8% since Flight 370 vanished. The cost of searching for Flight 370 The Malaysian government has helped the largely unprofitable airline before, though its previous efforts seemed only to provide temporary respite. About a decade ago, the government even created a new state-owned company to absorb various assets and financial liabilities from Malaysia Airlines, to help clean up the company's debt and free up some cash. "That paved the way for a couple of years of profitability, before fresh rounds of mismanagement, and the impact of a unionized work force played out," Ross said. Still, the airline is not in danger of shutting up shop. Whether or not a government bailout is on its way, "there's no question that Malaysia Airlines will continue to operate," Ross said. To top of page http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/26/news/companies/malaysia-airlines/ Back to Top Airbus Signs Long-Term Helicopter Deal With China Manufacturer Company Expects to Take More Than 50% of Chinese Market Over Next 20 Years Airbus Helicopters CEO Guillaume Faury poses next to a model of the EC175 in Paris earlier this year Reuters PARIS- Airbus Group EADSY +0.84% NV expects to take more than 50% of the estimated €50 billion ($69 billion), Chinese market for helicopters over the next 20 years, thanks to a long-term industrial agreement signed on Wednesday with China's leading aircraft manufacturer. China has a vast need in the coming decades for helicopters for emergency services, offshore-crew transportation and search-and-rescue missions. The agreement to manufacture a new medium-size helicopter developed jointly by the two companies will go part way to meeting that need, said Guillaume Faury, chief executive of Airbus Helicopters. Mr. Faury said there are currently only 350 civil helicopters flying in China, a tiny figure compared to the 10,000 in Europe and the 12,000 in the U.S. Only 20 helicopters were delivered to Chinese operators last year, but the pace will quicken rapidly in the coming years and is forecast to reach between 200 and 300 by the end of the decade, he said. That is about the same level of deliveries as in the U.S., which is experiencing little growth and is essentially a replacement market. "It's strategically important for us. It gives us greater access to the Chinese market that has still to take off," Mr. Faury said. Last year, Airbus had a 42% market share in China. Much of China's airspace remains closed to civil helicopter operators, but this is set to change, he said. The agreement signed on Wednesday in Paris during an official visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for Airbus Helicopters and Avicopter, the rotorcraft division of Aviation Industry Corporation of China, to build 1,000 units of the new helicopter over the next 20 years at their respective plants at Marignane, in southern France, and Harbin, in China's Heilongjiang province. Airbus already produces a smaller helicopter, the EC120, at the Harbin facility. Richard Aboulafia, aviation consultant with Fairfax, Va.-based Teal Group, said that partnerships between Western and Chinese aviation companies have tended to unravel over time because of intellectual- property issues. Since 2005, Airbus and Avicopter have invested €600 million to develop the new helicopter, which can carry as many as 18 passengers and is marketed as the EC175 by Airbus and the AC352 in China. To date, the partners have taken in 65 orders, including 15 this year, and Mr. Faury expects his company will sell "several dozen" in 2014. Deliveries from France will start toward the end of this year, he said. Airbus Helicopters, which changed its name from Eurocopter earlier this year as part of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. rebranding to Airbus Group, is already the world leader for civil and parapublic helicopters. It held a 46% market share last year, ahead of Textron Inc. TXT -2.26% 's Bell Helicopter division and AgustaWestland, part of Italy's Finmeccanica FNC.MI -0.07% SpA. The twin-engine EC175s sold by Airbus will have power plants made by United Technologies Corp.'s UTX - 0.54% Pratt & Whitney, while the Chinese-made aircraft will have engines made by Turbomeca, the helicopter-engine division of France's Safran SA. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/ Back to Top T.S.A. Calls for Armed Guards at Airport Checkpoints Police officers patrolling Los Angeles International Airport. A shooting there last year prompted a T.S.A. report on security. WASHINGTON - The Transportation Security Administration is recommending that armed personnel be present at airport checkpoints during peak hours of passenger traffic, though airports would be able to tailor the security to their specific needs, according to a report released on Wednesday. The T.S.A.'s report also suggests that security be increased at ticket counters and other areas in airports where passengers often gather. And it recommends mandatory training for all T.S.A. employees on how to respond to a shooting; twice-yearly evacuation drills; and the installation of panic buttons at airports that do not have them - and routine testing of such alerts. The report, which was first obtained by The Associated Press, was in response to a shooting last year at Los Angeles International Airport in which a worker was killed. The report's recommendations are limited in scope. They would not require airports to hire new officers, only to reassign those who are already on duty, concentrating them at checkpoints and ticket counters during peak periods of passenger arrivals and departures. The report recommends that, because of jurisdictional issues, airport police officers, not T.S.A. officers, should provide the armed security at checkpoints. But the T.S.A. said that its Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads would also increase the number of their airport patrols. The agency created the special units in 2005 to perform random security sweeps aimed at preventing terrorist attacks. "The report released today outlines the actions T.S.A. took immediately following the shooting and new procedures to enhance the safety and security of T.S.A. employees nationwide, especially those who work on the front lines each and every day to protect the traveling public," the agency's administrator, John S. Pistole, said in a statement. Mr. Pistole is scheduled to present the report to Congress on Friday when he testifies at a field hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security in Los Angeles. Gerardo I. Hernandez, a T.S.A. officer, was killed in the Los Angeles shooting. He was the first officer at the agency - which was created two months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - to die in the line of duty. Paul A. Ciancia, 24, an unemployed mechanic, has been charged in the shooting. Law enforcement officials said the gunman targeted T.S.A. workers, although his motives were unclear. A passenger and two other law enforcement officials were injured in the shooting, and Mr. Ciancia was wounded. A federal grand jury indicted him in December on 11 charges, including murder and attempted murder. He is being held without bail at a detention center in San Bernardino County. Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which represents more than 25,000 federal officers, including T.S.A. workers, said his group supported the report's recommendations. Mr. Adler said his association had long suggested that armed officers be present at security checkpoints and other areas of airports that have high passenger traffic. "This is a common-sense thing to do," he said. "You can't bring a government pen to a gunfight." http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/business/tsa-calls-for-armed-guards-at-airport- checkpoints.html?_r=0 Back to Top Graduate Research Survey My name is Hannatu Dogo, and I am a Master of Science student in Applied Aviation Safety at Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne Campus. I am writing to ask if you would be willing to send out the link to the survey instrument for my final Graduate Research Project. The survey is designed for Pilots with at least a Private Pilot License.The purpose of it is to determine approximately how many pilots have experienced an in-flight encounter with weather that led to accidents, incidents or close calls. In addition, pilots' perceptions based on what factors led to the weather encounter will help determine courses of action to improve pilots' ability to maintain aircraft control in instrument flying conditions. The survey is very brief and will only take about 15 minutes to complete. Results will remain completely anonymous. Here is a link for the survey Web site: http://fluidsurveys.com/surveys/cgr/hannatu-s-survey/ The Institutional Review Board has approved this survey (IRB #14-031). Should you have any comments or questions, please feel free to contact me at hdogo2008@my.fit.edu . Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Hannatu Dogo Back to Top Upcoming Events: WATS 2014 April 1-3, 2014 Orlando, FL http://halldale.com/wats#.UymQ_vldWSo North Texas Business Aviation Safety Show-Down is set for April 3rd http://www.aviationpros.com/press_release/11327425/north-texas-business-aviation-safety-show-down- is-set-for-april-3rd Middle East Air Cargo and Logistics Exhibition & Conference 2014 April 9-10, 2014 Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) http://cargomiddleeast.com Airport Show Dubai May 11-13, 2014 Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC) www.theairportshow.com/portal/home.aspx National Safety Council Aviation Safety Committee Annual Conference Savanah, GA - May 14-15, 2014 Contact: tammy.washington@nsc.org http://cwp.marriott.com/savdt/artexmeeting/ Asia Pacific Aviation Safety Seminar 21-22 May 2014, Bangkok, Thailand http://bit.ly/APASS2014 Curt Lewis