Flight Safety Information April 4, 2014 - No. 070 In This Issue Search for Missing Jet's Black Box Begins in Indian Ocean Visitors in cockpit, four pilots lose licence (India) Payment delays leave 500 trainee pilots stuck in Libya China is trying to scoop up the world's airline pilots to cope with its own shortfall PRISM SMS Supreme Court: Airline can drop frequent flier Boeing sells first business jet version of its 737-Max Graduate Research Survey (1) Graduate Research Survey (2) International Humanitarian Aviation Summmit Upcoming Events Search for Missing Jet's Black Box Begins in Indian Ocean Crews searching for the missing Malaysian plane started underwater scouring of the southern Indian Ocean for pings emitted by the jet's black box, days before batteries that power its beacon are set to run out. "We're now getting pretty close to the time when it might expire," said retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who heads Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre. "Using the towed pinger locator from the U.S. Navy on Australian defense vessel Ocean Shield and similar capability from HMS Echo, the two ships will search a single 240-kilometer (149- mile) track converging on each other." The zone was determined using analysis based on data about the plane's flight path, Houston told reporters in Perth today. Recovering the data and cockpit-voice recorders in the black box would help in deciphering the plane's movements and pilots' actions in the air after contact was lost with Malaysian Airline System Bhd. (MAS) Flight 370 on March 8. Ten planes and nine ships are today combing an area of about 217,000 square kilometers, 1,700 kilometers north west of Perth in Western Australia, the JACC said in a statement. The batteries of black box pingers last for about 30 days. The Boeing Co. (BA) 777-200ER, which was carrying 239 passengers and crew, was deliberately steered off its flight path to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur and the journey ended in the southern Indian Ocean, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said. Nuclear Submarine Investigators have relied on limited contact between Flight 370 and an Inmarsat Plc (ISAT) satellite to draw up possible paths the plane took after it vanished from civilian radar. Planes and ships from Australia, Malaysia, China, the U.S., South Korea, New Zealand and Japan are taking part in the hunt, the longest in modern passenger-airline history between a disappearance and initial findings of debris. "We've probably got to the end of the process of analysis and my expectation is, you know, we're into a situation where the data that we've got is the data that we've got," Houston said. "And we'll proceed on the basis of that." Earlier this week, British nuclear submarine HMS Tireless joined the hunt for the missing aircraft. British survey ship HMS Echo is also conducting a sub-surface search, Houston said. The HMS Echo, launched in 2002, can collect military hydrographic and oceanographic data and carries a detachment of marines, according to the British navy's website. Costly Search The search over the past four weeks is also costing a "lot of money," Houston said today, without giving a specific figure. The U.S. military has spent more than $3.3 million on its role in the multinational hunt and may spend as much as $8 million before the search ends, Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters April 2. That included $148,000 the Navy spent to fly one P-8 Poseidon, now based in Perth, Australia. So-called black boxes in aircraft are actually bright orange to help find them in wreckage. While designed to operate at depths of 20,000 feet (3.8 miles) and may work in even deeper water, the range of the beacons' pings is a mile, according to manuals from Honeywell International (HON) Inc., the maker of the equipment. That may make the signals difficult to pick up even if an underwater microphone is over the correct location. Hearing Pingers It can be difficult to hear the pingers if they are blocked by undersea mountains. Layers of water with different temperatures can also block sounds. In the search for Air France Flight 447 wreckage, which crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil in 2009, authorities were able to narrow down a 5,000 nautical-mile area after finding floating objects five days following the crash. They also had a last known position plus four minutes of signals from the plane's so-called Acars system, which was turned off on Flight 370. Even with those clues, the pings from Flight 447's recorders weren't picked up. It took two voyages over almost a two-year period to find the debris field with unmanned underwater vehicles. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-04/search-for-missing-jet-s-black-box-begins- in-indian-ocean.html Back to Top Visitors in cockpit, four pilots lose licence (India) NEW DELHI: Strict rules framed post 9/11 prohibiting entry of passengers into aircraft cockpits seem to exist only on paper. In the past one week, three flights - two mid-air and one on ground preparing to take off - saw pilots allowing either their children, their friend's kids or general passengers in large numbers into the cockpit. The directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) has suspended the flying licence of the four pilots who allowed their or their colleagues children inside the cockpit mid-air on two flights. And the pilot of the third flight who allowed passengers inside the cockpit of a plane on ground being prepared to take off has been derostered, or taken off flying duties. Since violation of the no-entry-by-unauthorized-personnel-in-cockpit rule has become flagrant in Indian skies, the DGCA on Thursday night issued a directive to all airlines - including schedule carriers and charter companies - that action will be taken against them also apart from crew for future breaches. A senior DGCA official said that on Wednesday the captain of Air India's AI 660 (Goa- Mumbai) flight took his son inside the cockpit while the plane was flying over the azure blue waters of the Arabian Sea. "A passenger sent us a mail complaining that the captain of the aircraft came out of the cockpit and took a young person with him to the cockpit. After receiving this complaint, we called the captain and co-pilot of this flight for questioning on Thursday. They admitted to taking the captain's son side the cockpit," said the official. In the second case, the pilots of AI's Delhi-Bagdogra flight last Wednesday (AI 879) took the daughter of their airline's engineer (who was a passenger) inside the cockpit to show how the plane flies. "The flying licence of the captains and co-pilots of these flights have been suspended for a month," the DGCA official said. A senior AI official said that these four pilots had been taken off flying duties, pending investigation. And in the last case, an IndiGo commander on April 1 allowed 12 passengers, including some children, inside the cockpit as his flight 6E-338 (Goa-Delhi) was being prepared for take-off. "The airline has taken this captain off flying duties," the DGCA official said. While deciding on the action to be taken on these cases and ensure that unauthorized entry into cockpits is checked, DGCA chief Prabhat Kumar detected an omission in the Aircraft Rules. "Our rules say that entry inside cockpits by non-crew members is banned but it does not say who shall be held accountable for violations. So we have issued a directive to all airlines that action will be taken against them also, apart from the crew at fault, for this violation," said the official. The idea: Now airlines will do their bit to stop crew from taking people inside cockpits as they too shall be held responsible for lapses on this count. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Visitors-in-cockpit-four-pilots-lose- licence/articleshow/33199583.cms Back to Top Payment delays leave 500 trainee pilots stuck in Libya Tripoli, 3 April 2014: Payment delays are preventing some 500 trainee pilots from taking up courses in the UK and Ireland, one of the prospective airmen has told the Libya Herald. "We have been waiting to start these courses since 2012 and the Transport Minister himself promised, live on TV that we would all have gone by the end of 2013," said one of the 520 pilots waiting to leave for England. "But we are still here waiting, in April 2014." The prospective pilot, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that one batch of some 60 pilots had been sent to Ireland in January and that just ten more had been sent in March to the UK. "These ten guys were the ones who volunteered to work on our paperwork, so I think maybe they were sent first as some kind of reward," he said. "There are over 500 still waiting here in Libya, not in the UK." It had taken more than two months to get the student visas sorted, the trainee said, but then the prospective pilots were told they would not be able to leave for the UK until the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) had transferred money into UK accounts. Frustrated at these further delays, some students approached the Ministry of Transport, which is behind the project to train 520 new pilots and 108 air traffic controllers. "They literally said it wasn't their problem or their fault and told us to go and speak to CBL," he said. A group of students then went to CBL and started asking questions about why payment was taking so long. "They said the manager was on vacation so he's not here, which was ridiculous because then he arrived," the student said. "He looked at the paperwork and said the number was too high and sent it back to the accountants and said they needed to review it." The student described these latest delays as "ridiculous" and said the prospective pilots were planning to demonstrate outside CBL, if the paperwork was not signed by Thursday. The director of Prime Education, the UK-based company responsible for dealing with administration and visas for the project, Tevfik Sekerci, said that it was unaware of this problem until some students came to its Libya office today. "When I spoke with the Ministry of Transport they told me it is a matter of days before they resolve the payment issue," he said. The problem as he understood it, Sekerci said, was to do with payment for UK accommodation for the students which the CBL had not yet processed. The former CEO of one of Libya's airline has estimated that the country needs around 75 new pilots per year, through a combination of retiring senior airmen and the anticipated fleet expansion of the state-owned airlines. He added, however, that there were currently between 80 and 100 newly-trained pilots in the country who were effectively unemployable because they had gained their qualifications at "low-standard schools" and "did not meet international standards." It was not possible to contact anyone at the Ministry of Transport or CBL this evening. http://www.libyaherald.com/2014/04/03/payment-delays-leave-500-trainee-pilots-stuck-in- libya/#ixzz2xuoGULs3 Back to Top China is trying to scoop up the world's airline pilots to cope with its own shortfall China is offering pilots more than a pretty view. A shortage of airline pilots is threatening China's hopes of building a world-class commercial aviation industry. According to data released this week, the number of pilots in the country rose 13% last year, but China still faces a potential shortfall of about 1,000 pilots a year. Analysts estimate the expanding air travel industry will need 3,000 pilots a year as air travel expands, but schools are so far producing only about 2,000. China's airline industry is already facing some turbulence. Flight delays are so common that passenger outrage has turned into riots at airports several times over the last few years. The country's quickly expanding high-speed rail system is also threatening airline profitability. To help alleviate a pilot shortage that could limit growth, Chinese carriers have taken to recruiting experienced foreign pilots, especially those from South America, the US, and other developed markets with the promise of higher salaries. Shenzhen Airlines recently advertised salaries for a captain of up to $212,400. Today, China employs more than 800 foreign pilots, out of 18,400 commercial pilots. About a third of all recruitment ads for captains on the careers website of Flightglobal, an industry publication, are for Chinese airlines. Boeing estimates that China will need 77,400 or 15% of total new pilots over the next 20 years. Pilot shortages have been a problem all over the region-according to estimates by Boeing, the world will need about half a million new commercial airline pilots over the next two decades and Asia accounts for a little over a third of that demand. But because of China's aggressive recruiting, smaller airlines elsewhere in Asia are having trouble attracting pilots. Southeast Asian airlines typically pay foreign captains about half (paywall) of what Chinese airlines typically offer http://qz.com/194407/china-is-trying-to-scoop-up-the-worlds-airlines-pilots-to-cope-with- its-own-shortfall/ Back to Top Back to Top Supreme Court: Airline can drop frequent flier WASHINGTON -The Supreme Court decided unanimously Wednesday that an airline had the right to dump a frequent flier who complained too much. The decision allows airlines to have sole discretion to drop frequent fliers. The case involved Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg, who was ousted from Northwest Airlines' WorldPerks loyalty program for complaining too often about getting bumped from flights and repeatedly seeking compensation the airline considered unfair. The airline argued that frequent-flier programs operate at the sole discretion of the airline. Airlines said they can't tailor their programs to a patchwork of consumer laws in 50 states. In overturning the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that travelers have protection from being mistreated because they could sue for possible breach of contract, just not for covenants that Ginsberg had argued were implied by participating in a loyalty program. "They can avoid an airline with a poor reputation and possibly enroll in a more favorable rival program," Alito wrote in the 18-page decision. "Moreover, the Department of Transportation has the authority to investigate complaints about frequent flyer programs." Adina Rosenbaum, a lawyer from Public Citizen who represented Ginsberg, said the court didn't block breach-of-contract lawsuits against airlines, but that the decision could still hurt consumers. "Today's decision gives airlines greater freedom to act in bad faith in performing their contracts with consumers, to the detriment of the millions of consumers," Rosenbaum said. Chris Nemeth, a partner at McDermott Will & Emery law firm in Chicago, who works on contract disputes, called the case a qualified victory for the airlines because the court left open the possibility that a traveler could still sue over a breach of contract. Nemeth said he didn't expect travelers to see changes in how loyalty programs work, except perhaps to explicitly say that airlines won't be bound by covenants for good faith and fair dealing that aren't stated in the agreements. "I don't think passengers can expect any significant differences at all in the way that airlines treat passengers or in the way that the loyalty programs work," Nemeth said. Northwest, which has since become part of Delta Air Lines, dumped Ginsberg in June 2008 after he complained 24 times in eight months. He flies 75 times a year to lecture, so he enjoys the benefits of loyalty programs. Rosenbaum argued that airlines should be forced to act in good faith, even when those "implied covenants" aren't spelled out in the contracts for loyalty programs. But the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act law prevents regulation dealing with the "price, route or service of an air carrier." Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general representing Northwest, said airlines wouldn't be crazy enough to dismiss their most lucrative and loyal customers. He said rather than filing lawsuits, passengers can file complaints with the Transportation Department, which investigated 289 cases in 2012. http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2014/04/02/supreme-court-frequent-flier- program-northwest-rabbi-ginsberg/4489983/ Back to Top Boeing sells first business jet version of its 737-Max 737-MAX 8 Boeing Business Jet The 737-Max, Boeing's newest version of the popular 737 airliner, has just landed its first business jet customer. Boeing said an undisclosed customer has placed an order for a BBJ Max 8, the business jet version of the twin-engine airliner. Boeing has long sold private jet versions of its popular airliner. This order is the first for the upgraded model of the business version of the plane. Boeing has received orders for more than 1,900 737 Max airliners. The BBJ Max will fly farther, use less fuel and emit fewer pollutants than the existing models of the plane. The first airline version of the plane is scheduled to debut in airline service in 2017. The plane features new split wingtips, more fuel-efficient engines and aerodynamic modifications that Boeing says will be 14 percent more fuel-efficient that the best twin-jets in present service. The BBJ 8 Max will have a range of nearly 7,300 miles. That's some 900 miles longer than the present BBJ 2 range. The first BBJ Max is scheduled to be delivered to the initial customer in 2018 without an interior. The plane will be fitted with a customer interior by an outside provider. http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/04/03/3131512/boeing-sells-first-business- jet.html?sp=/99/261/#storylink=cpy Back to Top Graduate Research Survey (1) Hello, Our names are Lauren Sperlak, Lukas Rudari, Gilbert Jones, and Robert Geske. We are graduate students at Purdue University currently conducting research on Title 14 C.F.R. Part 117 which addresses fatigue risk for Title 14 C.F.R. Part 121 pilots. The new regulation recognizes fatigue related risks to safety, such as changes to natural circadian rhythm and "jetlag." We are seeking your assistance in completing an anonymous online survey. Your responses are greatly appreciated by the researchers, and the feedback provided by your survey responses will provide valuable information that will be used to help process the findings of this study. In order to complete the survey, you must be at least 18 years of age, and you may not complete the survey more than once. It is anticipated that the survey will take 5-10 minutes to complete. The survey link can be accessed via: https://purdue.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_0TUBgrhMpM1vO8B We thank you in advance for your participation. Sincerely, Lauren, Lukas, Gilbert, and Rob Back to Top Graduate Research Survey (2) Good day, 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 Back to Top Upcoming Events: 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 Flight Safety Foundation Business Aviation Safety Summit 2014 April 16-17, 2014 San Diego, CA http://flightsafety.org/files/doc/2014FSF_Prospectus.pdf Airport Show Dubai May 11-13, 2014 Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC) www.theairportshow.com/portal/home.aspx International Humanitarian Aviation Summit 12-14MAY Toledo, Spain wfp.org 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