Flight Safety Information July 22, 2014 - No. 150 In This Issue MH17 crash: Rebels hand over black boxes Jet Wreckage Bears Signs of Impact by Supersonic Missile Crash of Malaysian Jet Shakes Business Travel Aviation experts say case slipped by strict system Less flight inspectors led to aviation safety downgrade: Govt (India) International Air Transport Association (IATA) calls on govts to lead review of airspace risks ATR-72-212 Landing Accident (Bangladesh) Investigators work to ID Sedona plane crash victims (Arizona) PRISM TO HELP PREPARE FOR E-IOSA Smart goggles let helicopter pilots see through fog THE ALPA 60TH AIR SAFETY FORUM Graduate Research Survey Upcoming Events Employment MH17 crash: Rebels hand over black boxes MH17 Crash Rebels Hand Over Black Boxes Donetsk, Ukraine (CNN) -- Rebels gave Malaysian officials the data recorders from downed Flight 17 on Tuesday, days after the passenger jet crashed in eastern Ukraine. "We believe these are the black boxes and these boxes will reveal the truth," said Alexander Borodai, the self-declared rebel Prime Minister in Donetsk. It was a significant step forward in an investigation that's been stalled for days, but key questions remained unanswered: Will the black boxes give investigators the clues they need? What will happen to the bodies of the plane crash's 298 victims, many of which are being kept in refrigerated train cars? And who pulled the trigger to bring the plane down? Speaking to international reporters invited to watch the handover at the headquarters of the pro-Russian rebel movement early Tuesday, Borodai said the separatists had done their best to retrieve bodies and handle wreckage at the crash site. And he denied accusations that rebels shot down the plane. "This is an information war," he said. "We don't have the technical ability to destroy this plane. Ukrainians are not interested in the truth." Col. Mohammad Sakri of the Malaysian military thanked him. "Having the black box is not to blame each other," he said, "but to show the Malaysians that we are so serious that these things be recovered for Malaysia." The long-awaited handover came hours after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and U.S. President Barack Obama lashed out Monday at Russia over conditions at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, saying Russian-backed rebels were still impeding efforts to find out exactly what happened. What will black boxes reveal? The flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, known as the black boxes, could provide key information about what happened to the plane, analysts told CNN. But is it possible the rebels tampered with them before handing them over? "You can't go and fool around with the data. These are solid, secure devices," said Peter Goelz, former National Transportation Safety Board managing director. "If there was any kind of attempt to alter them, investigators would know immediately." The voice recorder could include audio from the cockpit, which would show whether the pilots knew the plane had been hit, said Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation. And the flight data recorder will give investigators information about engine settings, pressurization and electronic communications, among other details, she said. but that doesn't mean the black boxes hold all the clues to explain what happened to the Boeing 777. "The black boxes aren't going to solve" the issue of who downed the Malaysian airliner, a U.S. intelligence official told CNN's Evan Perez. Handling the remains The remains of 16 people were still missing Monday, four days after Flight 17 plunged to the ground, Poroshenko told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. Earlier, the Ukrainian government issued a statement saying that 282 bodies and 87 "body fragments" had been recovered from the sprawling crash site. A train carrying the remains of 282 passengers was headed toward the eastern city of Kharkiv, officials said Monday. U.S. decries 'armed thugs' at crash site Steward swapped flights to get on MH17 Malaysia Airlines jet crashes in Ukraine Malaysia Airlines jet crashes in Ukraine Obama and Poroshenko decried how the bodies had been treated, echoing complaints that the remains had been left exposed to the elements for days and that rebels had stripped personal belongings from some of the bodies and their effects. Poroshenko said the rebels' conduct was "barbaric." Obama called the handling of remains an "insult" that has "no place in the community of nations." Dutch forensics experts who inspected the train Monday were "more or less" satisfied with how the bodies were being stored," said Michael Bociurkiw, the spokesman for monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. After the train arrives in Kharkiv, the remains will be flown to Amsterdam on board a Dutch C-130 Hercules, officials have said. Most of those who died in the crash were from the Netherlands. Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said bringing the victims' remains home is his country's top priority. "To my dying day, I will not understand that it took so much time for the rescue workers to be allowed to do their difficult jobs," he told the U.N. Security Council on Monday, "and that human remains should be used in a political game." Who pulled the trigger? The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution Monday demanding full access to the crash site and condemning the downing of the plane. The resolution won unanimous approval from the 15-member council, which includes Russia. It did not specify who was responsible for the crash. U.S. and other officials have said it appears the plane was shot down by a sophisticated surface-to-air missile located within rebel-held territory. Evidence supporting that conclusion includes telephone intercepts purporting to be pro-Russian rebels discussing the shootdown and video of a Buk missile launcher traveling into Russia with at least one missile missing. While they have stopped short of putting the responsibility squarely on Russia, Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and others have said the pro-Russian rebels could not have shot such a high-flying jet down without weapons and training from Russia. But officials said Monday that U.S. intelligence analysts are examining phone intercepts, social media posts and information gathered on the ground to see if Russian officials played a direct role in the shootdown, according to two U.S. officials directly familiar with the latest assessment. The officials declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation. "We are trying to determine if they manned it, advised, or pulled the trigger," one of the officials told CNN. Ukraine: How did we get there? Ukraine Pres gets heated over Russia claim MH17 brother: I have so many questions Poroshenko, speaking to CNN's Amanpour, pleaded for international solidarity against the pro-Russian rebels. "I don't see any differences" between 9/11, the Lockerbie bombing and the attack on Flight 17, Poroshenko said, referring to the 2001 terror attacks on the United States and the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland in 1988. Obama called on Russia to rein in the rebel fighters, who he said had treated remains poorly and removed evidence from the site. "What exactly are they trying to hide?" he said. Russians blame Ukraine Pro-Russian rebels have repeatedly denied responsibility for the shootdown. In an interview with Chris Cuomo broadcast Monday on CNN's "New Day," Borodai said he believed Ukrainian forces either shot the plane down with a surface-to-air missile or, as the Russian general suggested, one of its own fighter jets. "We didn't have motives and desire to do that, and it is obvious that Ukrainians have them," he said. "I can't say about desire, but motive is obvious that the crash of this plane was beneficial to them." Moscow has strongly denied claims it pulled the trigger, and on Monday, a Russian general suggested that it may instead have been a Ukrainian jet fighter that shot the plane down. Russian monitoring showed a Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jet flying along the same route and within 3 kilometers to 5 kilometers (1.9 miles to 3.1 miles) of Flight 17, Lt. Gen. Andrei Kartapolov of the Russian Army General Staff said at a news conference, Russian state media reported. "We would like to know why the Ukrainian plane was flying along a civilian route on the same flight path as the Malaysian Boeing," Kartapolov said, according to the reports. In his interview with Amanpour, Poroshenko rejected the Russian suggestion, saying all Ukrainian aircraft were on the ground at the time. Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, also blamed Ukraine for the crash on Monday. But when asked about audio recordings purporting to show pro-Russian separatists talking about shooting down a plane, he suggested that if they did, it was an accident. "According to them, the people from the east were saying that they shot down a military jet," he said. "If they think they shot down a military jet, it was confusion. If it was confusion, it was not an act of terrorism." http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/21/world/europe/ukraine-malaysia-airlines-crash/ Back to Top Jet Wreckage Bears Signs of Impact by Supersonic Missile, Analysis Shows A piece of wreckage from the Malaysia Airlines jet downed over eastern Ukraine last week shows damage, including shrapnel holes and blistered paint, that is consistent with a hit from a fragmenting warhead, according to consultants with IHS-Jane's. Credit Noah Sneider A piece of wreckage from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 that was shot down in eastern Ukraine last week bears telltale marks of small pieces of high-velocity shrapnel that apparently crippled the jet in flight. Riddled with these perforations and buffeted by a blast wave as it flew high above the conflict zone, the plane then most likely sheared apart. The wreckage, photographed by two reporters for The New York Times in a field several miles from where the largest concentration of the Boeing's debris settled, suggests that the destruction of the aircraft was caused by a supersonic missile that apparently exploded near the jet as it flew 33,000 feet above the ground, according to an analysis of the photographs by IHS Jane's, the defense consultancy. The damage, including the shrapnel holes and blistered paint on a panel of the destroyed plane's exterior, is consistent with the effects of a fragmenting warhead carried by an SA-11 missile, known in Russian as a Buk, the type of missile that American officials have said was the probable culprit in the downing of the plane. It is impossible from these photographs of the damaged plane to determine what specific model of missile was used. But the SA-11 is a member of a class of weapon that carries a fragmenting warhead with a proximity fuze. If a missile like that functioned as designed, it would cause damage like that evident in the debris of Flight 17. "The perforation holes that are visible indicate that they are consistent with a foreign object entering from the exterior of the aircraft to the interior of the aircraft, given the contour of the aluminum around a majority of the perforations as well as the visible blistering of the paint around some of the holes themselves," Reed Foster, an analyst at IHS Jane's, wrote in an assessment provided to The Times. He added: "Most of the smaller holes look to be caused by a high-velocity projectile, as opposed to simple shearing or tearing caused by the forceful separation of the panel from the airframe." Mr. Foster also noted that the shrapnel damage was different from what he would expect after an aircraft engine explosion, which could cause "longer, thinner, oblique tears across the aircraft skin." His observations were consistent with the profile of surface-to-air antiaircraft missiles designed to destroy fast-moving military aircraft at high elevations. Some background on the Buk SA-11, the weapon that was most likely used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, and who might be able to operate it. Video Credit By Natalia V. Osipova on Publish Date July 21, 2014. Rather than striking an aircraft directly, missiles in this class fly a course that is designed to intercept the targeted aircraft and explode beneath it, creating a cloud of shrapnel. At the end of the missiles' flight, they act "more like a shotgun than a rifle," Mr. Foster said, adding: "one is attempting to put as many consistently sized, low-drag fragments into the airframe as possible." Based on the capabilities of an SA-11, when pitted against a civilian passenger jet, which has no defenses against an incoming missile, the results would be devastating. The SA-11 is large and far-reaching: Roughly 18 feet long and 1,500 pounds before launch, according to an American ordnance document, its missiles can travel tens of thousands of feet into the air. Much of each missile's weight is taken up by the fuel required to propel the weapon to supersonic speeds, and to give it its altitude and range. Continue reading the main storyContinue reading the main storyContinue reading the main story But behind each missile's antenna and guidance system is a warhead packed with 46 pounds of high explosive. Standard military hand grenades often contain two to seven ounces of explosive, depending on the model. Variants of 155-millimeter artillery shells often hold a little more than 20 pounds of explosives. The explosive fill of an SA-11 is encased in a double sleeve of molded aluminum that has been preformed into a diamond-patterned grid, Mr. Foster said. After the burnout of motors, the missile, which would then weigh about 800 pounds, would approach the targeted aircraft and a proximity fuze would detonate its warhead, causing its sleeves to shatter into diamond-shaped bits about the size of a quarter. Depending on the model, the standoff for the blast might be 30 to 100 meters, Mr. Foster said, or about 100 to 300 feet. This design was intended by Soviet and Russian engineers to ensure hits against smaller, faster and highly maneuverable Western military aircraft, including fighter and attack jets. That way, even if the targeted aircraft eluded the missile or the direct effects of its blast wave, a piece of shrapnel from the cloud might be enough to damage an engine or sever fuel and hydraulic lines. A large passenger jet flying at a consistent speed and an unchanging course would be a target of an entirely different sort than a fighter jet, and could be expected to be hit by the blast and a large load of the shrapnel. In the minutes before it was struck, Flight 17 was traveling at a steady elevation and speed across Ukraine, according to data from FlightRadar24, an online flight tracker. Its passengers and crew would have settled into the tedious routines of a typical long-haul international flight. The damage visible on the small piece of wreckage indicate a sudden end to the aircraft's journey: Its thin skin was riddled with shrapnel and rocked by the force of a nearby high-explosive blast, twice the power of the blast of a modern artillery shell. Traveling at more than 500 miles an hour, the plane, very quickly, would shear apart, and be a plane no more. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/world/europe/jet-wreckage-bears-signs-of-impact-by-supersonic-missile-analysis-shows.html?_r=0 Back to Top Crash of Malaysian Jet Shakes Business Travel ON any given day, there are about 100,000 commercial airline flights, flying more than 50,000 separate routes, around a world where armed conflict is always occurring, somewhere. As companies send business travelers on assignments that often venture into - and even more often over - dangerous areas, employers have become ever more cognizant of a legal and ethical issue called duty of care. This means, basically, that employers need to take reasonable precautions to ensure a "safe working environment" for travelers as it is described in a 2012 report, "Duty of Care: Are You Covered?" by the corporate risk-management and security company iJet. This includes evaluating security conditions in destination countries, knowing their employees' whereabouts and keeping in contact. But the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last Thursday near the Ukraine border could add a new factor for employers and "has considerable implications for companies and business-travel managers responsible for duty of care," said Greeley Koch, the executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives. "Will it now be necessary for travel departments to make sure that preferred carriers do not overfly war zones, areas of civil conflict or regions of crisis?" That, of course, would be a tall order, but the downing of the commercial airliner, evidently by a sophisticated military surface-to-air missile capable of hitting planes at high altitudes, underlines growing complexities in duty-of-care matters. While obviously no airline or company deliberately puts people at risk, "sometimes new risks are identified and steps have to be taken," Mr. Koch said. It isn't clear what those steps might be, but travel managers have told the association that they are evaluating the specific air-travel issues raised by the Flight 17 disaster. Top among these are questions about the prudence of flying over a troubled region where combatants had recently shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane at about 21,000 feet. While there had been international aviation prohibitions on flying over Crimea, farther south, the operative orders for the area where Flight 17 was downed said that the route was safe for flying - at over 32,000 feet. Flight 17, bound from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was at 33,000 feet, on a standard airway heavily used until recently by hundreds of flights between northern Europe and Asia. "This is a well-established international route," said Anthony C. Roman, a security consultant who is also a former commercial pilot and flight instructor. "It's regularly traversed by other airlines. However, in April, the European aviation authorities issued warnings to member states that the Crimea area should be avoided. In May, the F.A.A. actually restricted flights over Crimea itself and warned about eastern Ukraine." As to corporate duty of care, Mr. Roman points out, managers planning employee travel have no prior knowledge of the routings of particular aircraft, which are determined by airline dispatchers, subject to in-flight modifications by captain and air-traffic control, including for weather or congestion. And given the growing overlapping routes caused by growing consolidation in global airline alliances, it may not even be immediately apparent which airline is even flying the plane. Malaysia Flight 17, for example, was also a code share for KLM Flight 4103 - and most of the passengers on the plane were Dutch citizens who had most likely booked through KLM. Airlines rerouting around Ukraine airspace face tough choices and potential controversy. On Sunday, for example, Flightradar24, the real- time global flight-tracking service, showed that Malaysia Airlines Flight 4 from Kuala Lumpur to London, an A380 capable of carrying 494 passengers, flew over Syria, rather than taking its usual route over Ukraine. A year ago, the Federal Aviation Administration warned American carriers of a potential danger in Syrian skies from surface-to-air missiles. Victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 Among the 298 people aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were a renowned AIDS researcher, a Dutch senator and an Australian novelist. Malaysia Airlines said Flight 4 over Syria "was in airspace approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization." Airlines now avoid Ukraine's skies. On Monday, for example, only a handful of commercial flights were over Ukraine, all of them on approach or departure from Boryspil International Airport near Kiev, which is 350 miles west of the Flight 17 crash site near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Radar showed a narrow river of flights bowing along the western Russian border with Ukraine and over the Black Sea, and a very broad river of flights to the west of Ukraine between Europe, the Mediterranean and Asia. Reacting to the Flight 17 disaster, some airlines rushed to announce that they had not been flying over Ukraine for some time - but Flightradar24.com posted on Twitter right after the Malaysia crash that "several airlines that have been tracked over Ukraine as late as yesterday claim they have been avoiding Ukraine for months." Flightradar24 did not name those airlines. Over the weekend, Finnair had to backtrack after it was called out on social media for claiming that "Finnair does not fly over Ukraine. Your safety is our top priority." Flightradar24 data showed that the airline was in fact flying over western Ukraine in recent days. Finnair subsequently conceded that Flightradar24 was correct and said it had stopped flying over Ukraine. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/business/international/crash-of-malaysian-jet-shakes-business-travel.html Back to Top Aviation experts say case slipped by strict system A JetBlue pilot busted allegedly with heroin was a "very rogue situation" who slipped through the cracks of the airline industry's strict regulations, according to longtime aviators. That makes the arrest of John Kirk Manwaring II, 42, more confounding. "Professional pilots are a very disciplined and scrutinized bunch," said Anthony Roman, a former corporate pilot. "They must go in for training and requalification every six months and medical examinations every six months. They are constantly being scrutinized and constantly being monitored by supervisors. Can someone slip by unnoticed? Yes, but the risk is absolutely miniscule." Roman said the rules for commercial pilots forbid alcohol consumption within 24 hours of liftoff, and heavy drinking isn't allowed either because alcohol could still be present in the pilot's system during that 24-hour time frame. Manwaring, of Maitland, Fla., was arrested for allegedly buying heroin Sunday - 14 hours before he was scheduled to fly a plane. "We can't even take a very benign prescription pill and fly an airplane," said Bruce Rodger, a commercial pilot for a major U.S. carrier and president of Aero Consulting Experts. "This is a very rogue situation, a rogue pilot. It's completely non-representative of the pilot community in this country." Rodger said pilots are randomly drug tested and the Federal Aviation Administration has "very strict guidelines" on medications pilots can take. Drug and alcohol testing of commercial airline pilots is required by the Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act of 1991 and federal regulations, according to the FAA. Federal regulations also require all pilots to send written notification to FAA investigators within 60 days of an alcohol-related conviction or "administrative action," which includes a driver's license suspension for a chemical test failure. The FAA touts that investigators find out about alcohol-related motor-vehicle incidents even if pilots fail to report because the agency receives the information from the National Driver Register. A system of cross-checks in the cockpit also helps prevent unprepared pilots from taking the controls, according to Roman. He said pilots are required to report any member of the cockpit crew who is unable to fly - whether they are overtired, hung over, intoxicated or distracted with a personal problem. "No first officer and no captain wants to fly with anyone who is intoxicated or under the influence of narcotics or alcohol," said Roman. "It's a very effective method to make sure flying is safe." http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/ Back to Top Less flight inspectors led to aviation safety downgrade: Govt (India) The prime reason for US aviation regulator FAA downgrading India's aviation safety ranking was lack of sufficient number of regular flight inspectors, rendering DGCA's safety oversight ineffective, the Rajya Sabha was informed today. To overcome the downgrade, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has completed actions on six of the seven findings of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Minister of State for Civil Aviation G M Siddeshwara said while replying to questions on the issue. DGCA also created 75 new posts of flight operations inspectors (FOIs) of various categories, of which 35 have already been filled, he said referring to the remaining finding of the FAA. The FAA had lowered safety ranking of India to Category II from Category I which the country has been holding since 1997. "Category II was assigned primarily due to the findings related to lack of sufficient number of regular FOIs, resulting in DGCA's inability to have effective safety oversight," Siddeshwara said. To another question, the minister said the government would establish a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) "in place of DGCA" for better management of civil aviation safety oversight over air operators, navigation operators and those involved in other related activities. The proposed CAA would also examine matters relating to the impact of financial stress on operational safety, consumer protection, environment regulations and monitor implementation of laid-down laws and rules, he added. http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/less-flight-inspectors-led-to-aviation-safety-downgrade-govt-114072200812_1.html Back to Top International Air Transport Association (IATA) calls on govts to lead review of airspace risks BERLIN: Governments should take the lead in reviewing how risk assessments for airspace are made, the head of the International Air Transport Association said, after airlines called for a summit following the downing of an airliner over Ukraine. "No effort should be spared in ensuring that this outrage is not repeated," IATA Director General Tony Tyler said in a statement on Tuesday. "And the industry will do all that it can to support governments, through ICAO, in the diff .. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/38858835.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst Back to Top ATR-72-212 Landing Accident (Bangladesh) Status: Preliminary Date: Sunday 20 July 2014 Time: 17:45 Type: ATR-72-212 Operator: United Airways Registration: S2-AFN C/n / msn: 379 First flight: 1993-11-08 (20 years 9 months) Engines: 2 Pratt & Whitney Canada PW127 Crew: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 5 Passengers: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 43 Total: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 48 Airplane damage: Substantial Location: Cox's Bazar Airport (CXB) ( Bangladesh) Phase: Landing (LDG) Nature: Domestic Scheduled Passenger Departure airport: Dhaka-Shahjalal International Airport (DAC/VGHS), Bangladesh Destination airport: Cox's Bazar Airport (CXB/VGCB), Bangladesh Flightnumber: 501 Narrative: A United Airways ATR-72-212, S2-AFN, was damaged in a landing accident at Cox's Bazar Airport (CXB), Bangladesh. The airplane had arrived from Dhaka as United Airways' flight 501. After landing the nose gear collapsed, causing severe damage to the forward fuselage of the airplane. The airplane was removed from the runway after 22 hours. www.aviation-safety.net Back to Top Investigators work to ID Sedona plane crash victims (Arizona) Officials trying to remove bodies from rugged plane-crash site outside of Sedona. Yavapai County authorities removed the bodies of four people killed Sunday in a plane crash Investigators had to hike into the remote area northwest of Sedona Investigators worked Monday to remove the bodies of four people who died in a Sunday afternoon plane crash that sparked the approximately 25-acre Fay Fire in a remote area northwest of Sedona, a law-enforcement spokesman said. Official identification of the crash victims will be made by the Yavapai County medical examiner and could take some time, said Dwight D'Evelyn, a Sheriff's Office spokesman. Meanwhile, Mohave County officials on Monday identified two teenage brothers as the occupants of a fixed-wing, single engine 1969 Cessna 172k that crashed Sunday south of Interstate 15 near the Arizona/Utah border. The pilot, Daulton Rey Whatcott, 19, was traveling with his younger brother Jaxon McKee Whatcott, 16, both from Clinton City, Utah. They took off from Bountiful, Utah, and were headed to Mesquite, Nev., according to a Mohave County spokeswoman. Sheriff's deputies were called to the crash site just before 6:30 p.m. Hours earlier, at about 3 p.m. Sunday, a plane thought to be a single-engine Cessna 182 crashed into the Mogollon Rim northwest of Sedona, said Ian Gregor, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. The cause of the crash and the plane's intended flight route were not immediately known. The Fay Fire is burning piņon and juniper, mixed conifer and heavy brush about 4miles northwest of Sedona in the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness area of Fay Canyon, according to Brady Smith, spokesman for the Coconino National Forest. The fire had burned between 25 and 30 acres by Monday evening, Smith said. A hotshot crew was expected to monitor the fire overnight. The crew, two helicopters and an air attack were among about 30 personnel from several agencies fighting the fire Monday in an area dominated by canyons, cliffs and buttes, Smith said. The blaze was zero percent contained on Monday afternoon. No structures are threatened, and no one has been injured. There are no direct trails or roads to the site of the plane crash, Smith said. An investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board planned to hike to the crash site Monday. Yavapai County authorities removed the bodies of four people killed Sunday in a plane crash. Investigators had to hike into the remote area northwest of Sedona. Officials trying to remove bodies from rugged plane-crash site outside of Sedona. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2014/07/21/arizona-sedona-plane-crash-fay-fire/12950871/ **************** Date: 20-JUL-2014 Time: 15:30 Type: Airplane Owner/operator: Registration: C/n / msn: Fatalities: Fatalities: 4 / Occupants: 4 Other fatalities: 0 Airplane damage: Unknown Location: Mogollon Rim, Fay Canyon, Coconino National Forest, AZ - United States of America Phase: Unknown Nature: Unknown Departure airport: Destination airport: Narrative: An unconfirmed aircraft crash has occurred and a forest fire ensued on Mogollon Rim in the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness area of Fay Canyon in the Coconino National Forest area of Arizona. The number of occupants onboard and fatalities is also unconfirmed. www.aviation-safety.net Back to Top Back to Top Smart goggles let helicopter pilots see through fog A sea fog has blown in and covered the heliport I'm trying to land at. But - as if by magic - I can suddenly see the sharp lines of a helicopter landing pad and airport buildings picked out clearly ahead of me. And, as I move my head from side to side, I can clearly see the terrain and symbols representing the position and flight directions of other air traffic nearby. I'm not really at the helm of a helicopter, though. Instead, I am sitting in a simulator at the Farnborough Air Show, UK, wearing an augmented reality headset that's been developed to allow the pilots of business jets and helicopters to take off and land in adverse weather like fog, torrential rain, snow and dust storms. Unlike big jets, helicopters and small aircraft don't have expensive automatic landing aids - so if weather suddenly changes a pilot can gets caught out and disaster can strike. Last January, two people died in London when the helicopter they were flying in crashed into a crane hidden by fog. Called Skylens, the system comprises wearable, wrap-around smart goggles that are fed video by multispectral cameras embedded in the plane's nose - which can see through any weather conditions. The goggles give the pilot clear images of the terrain, overlaid with information on local air traffic - even in the worst weather. A tiny depth-sensing camera the size of a cigarette lighter, fixed on the instrument panel, tracks pilot head motion - so the images move in sync as the pilot turns their head. Runway clear ahead The idea is that when weather closes in unexpectedly the pilot simply dons the headset and the ground and the runway become visible again. "This gives pilots much more confidence as they can still look ahead and to either side as normal. This is better than looking down at instruments to perform the landing as that disconnects you from the environment," says Dror Yahav, vice-president of commercial aviation at Elbit Systems, based in Haifa, Israel, the firm that developed Skylens. The headset works with a plane's other onboard systems so it can display any standard symbols from flight deck instruments in the wrap- around display - including artificial horizon, airspeed and altitude. By plugging it into the Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), which monitors the positions of nearby aircraft from their radar signals, Skylens can show other air traffic too. "We have had 150 pilots try it out so far in rain, snow, haze and dust on five different types of aircraft - including large regional jets, business jets, light aircraft and helicopters," says Yahav. "They really like it." Skylens is undergoing airworthiness certification tests and should be on the market in 2016. But Simon Brown, a helicopter flight instructor at Heliair in Wellsbourne, UK, thinks it could be a tougher sell than Elbit expects. While the technology sounds interesting, he says it might "encourage pilots to think they are invincible and fly in dangerous conditions". "I can see this having fantastic applications in the military and search and rescue, but it is the opposite of what I teach civilian student pilots: we don't fly in degraded visibility conditions." http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25926-smart-goggles-let-helicopter-pilots-see-through-fog.html#.U85fA_ldV8E Back to Top THE ALPA 60TH AIR SAFETY FORUM A Celebration of Pilots Helping Get the Job Done Safely & Securely August 4-7, 2014 | Washington Hilton Washington, DC _______________________________________________________ AGENDA AT A GLANCE - Visit http://safetyforum.alpa.org for full agendas MONDAY - AUGUST 4, 2014 8:30-9:00 General Session-ALPA Air Safety Organization Update (Open to all ALPA Members Only) 9:30-6:00 ALPA ASO Group Workshops & Council Meetings - (invitation only) 9:30-4:30 Jumpseat Forum (invitation only) 12:00-5:00 Aviation Security Forum (invitation only) TUESDAY - AUGUST 5, 2014 8:00-6:00 ALPA ASO Group Workshops & Council Meetings - (invitation only) 9:00-5:00 Joint Aviation/Security Forum - (invitation only) WEDNESDAY - AUGUST 6, 2014 - 60TH AIR SAFETY FORUM 8:30-9:00 Opening Ceremony Captain Lee Moak - President, Air Line Pilots Association, Int'l General Edward Bolton - Assistant Administrator, NextGen, Federal Aviation Administration 9:00-10:30 Panel: Surviving a Main Deck Lithium Battery Fire: New Technological Solutions 11:00-12:30 Panel: Smoke In the Cockpit-Where Seconds Matter 12:30-1:45 Keynote Luncheon-100 Years of Commercial Aviation Mr. Paul Rinaldi - President, National Air Traffic Controllers Association 1:45-3:15 Panel: Responding To the Emergency - Using All the Tools 3:45-5:15 Panel: Landing A Distressed Airliner-What's Waiting at the Airport? 5:15-5:25 Presentation of the ALPA Airport Safety Liaison and ALPA Airport Awards 5:25-5:30 Closing Remarks 5:30-6:30 Hospitality Reception (Sponsored by Boeing) THURSDAY - AUGUST 7, 2014 - 60TH AIR SAFETY FORUM 8:30-10:00 Panel - Current Security Threats and Countermeasures 10:30-11:30 Panel: A Discussion With Key Regulators 11:30-11:40 Presentation of the ALPA Presidential Citation Awards 1:00-2:30 Panel: Pilot Health & Occupational Safety 3:00-4:30 Panel: Modernizing Our National Airspace System: The Flight Path, The Potholes and the Promise 4:30-5:00 Closing Ceremony Astronaut Garrett Reisman-Commercial Crew Program Manager, SpaceX 6:00-7:00 Awards Reception (Sponsored by Airbus) 7:00-10:00 Awards Dinner 10:00-11:00 Post Awards Reception SPONSORSHIP & EXHIBITING OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE Contact Tina Long at tina.long@alpa.org for more information or click here to download the sponsorship brochure. Back to Top Graduate Research Survey Hello, Our names are Aanu Benson, Hajar Taouil, Alexandre Arnau and Vincent Oyaro. We are graduate students at Toulouse Business School and are currently conducting a project on Frequent Flyer Programs. The purpose of the project is to improve the understanding of frequent flyer programs from airlines and customers perspectives. By gathering data about preferences, perceptions and how rewards and benefits impact a passenger's choice of an air carrier, conclusions will be made about the importance of a frequent flyer program as a business model for airlines. To achieve this, we have created two surveys: One targeting Frequent Flyers and the other targeting Airlines. We are seeking your assistance in completing an anonymous online survey as appropriate. Both surveys are 14 questions long and will take approximately five to ten minutes. You can omit any question you prefer not to answer. Your responses will be greatly appreciated, and the feedback provided by your survey responses will provide valuable information that will help process findings of this study. The survey links can be accessed via: For Passengers: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FFP_Passengers For Airlines: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FFP_Airlines If you have any questions about this project or your participation, you can email v.oyaro@tbs-eductaion.org or a.arnau@tbs-education.org We thank you in advance for your participation. Sincerely, Aanu, Hajar, Alex, and Vincent Aerospace MBA Students, PT8 Back to Top Upcoming Events: International System Safety Society Annual Symposium 04-08AUG2014 - St. Louis, MO http://issc2014.system-safety.org ACI-NA Annual Conference and Exhibition Atlanta, GA September 7 - 10, 2014 http://annual.aci-na.org/ IFA - Maintaining Airworthiness Standards and Investing in the Most Important Asset 'The Human Element' 17 - 18 September, 2014 Emirates Eng Facility, Dubai www.ifairworthy.com Public Safety and Security Fall Conference Arlington, VA October 6 - 9, 2014 http://aci-na.org/event/4309 IASS 2014 Abu Dhabi, UAE November 11-13, 2014 http://flightsafety.org/meeting/iass-2014 Back to Top Employment: NTSB Position Available - Mechanical or Aerospace Engineer https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/375124300 or https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/375127300 Curt Lewis