Flight Safety Information January 9, 2015 - No. 007 In This Issue Indonesia's Aviation Safety Rules Need Reforming FAA issues permits for agriculture, real estate drones Plane-Sharing Startup Sues FAA Over Ban on Service ANALYSIS: Airline safety performance in 2014 PRISM TO HELP PREPARE FOR E-IOSA ERAU NextGen 101 Seminar - Washington, D.C. Upcoming Events Indonesia's Aviation Safety Rules Need Reforming An image of an AirAsia plane is projected as a Muslim man performs Friday prayers, which included a special prayer for the passengers of AirAsia Flight QZ8501, at Masjid Al-Akbar in Surabaya January 2, 2015. ATHIT PERAWONGMETHA/REUTERS The crash of AirAsia Flight 8501, though tragic, was not an enormous surprise to anyone who follows aviation in Indonesia, or who has flown repeatedly in Indonesia. This is not to say that AirAsia has a poor safety record; the airline had never had a fatal accident prior to this one, and AirAsia management has responded admirably to the crash. Senior management, including AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes, have reached out to families of the survivors, trying to keep them updated about information on the search and rescue operations and personally consoling relatives of people who were on Flight 8501. But anyone who knows aviation in Indonesia knows that the country has a horrific record for airplane accidents and that Indonesia has weaker safety protocols regarding aviation than other middle-income countries. Indonesia's air safety record is more analogous to that of desperately poor and war-torn countries like Yemen, Somalia or Afghanistan than to air safety in neighboring nations like Thailand, Singapore or the Philippines. Multiple Indonesian airlines, like the terrible Adam Air, have closed their doors in recent years after suffering numerous accidents. The European Union and the United States have banned many Indonesian airlines from flying into their home markets, while the International Air Transport Association has refused to allow Lion Air, Indonesia's fastest-growing low-cost carrier, to join, because of Lion Air's safety record. The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, ranks Indonesia as one of the least safe air markets in the world. Indonesia is one of the fastest-growing aviation markets in Asia, due to its expanding middle class, the result of more than a decade of solid growth and its vast territory. Flying in Indonesia, though not safe enough, is still safer than taking one of the rickety inter-island ferries, which have some of the worst marine safety records in the world. Still, just being safer than Indonesia's horrendous ferries is not a high bar. The Indonesian government needs to take concrete steps to improve aviation safety if it hopes to reassure Indonesians to continue flying within the country, to boost tourism arrivals and to attract a significant increase in foreign investment. (After all, foreign investors need to travel around the country, and they aren't going to be taking ferries.) For one, Jakarta needs to implement legislation that will help boost pay for airport managers, air traffic controllers and aircraft safety inspectors. Low pay attracts mediocre talent, and increases the possibility that airlines could bribe managers, controllers and inspectors. Recent reports on CNN suggest that AirAsia did not have a license to fly the Surabaya- Singapore route on Sunday, the day of the week that Flight 8501 crashed. According to CNN, "[Indonesian] Transport Minister Ignatious Jonan described the airline's breach [flying on Sunday] as a 'serious violation.' 'How could they fly? Who would they have to approach to be able to make that flight. It would have to be the airport management or lobby air traffic control,'" CNN reported the transport minister as saying. In addition, Jakarta should take steps to ensure that pilots operating in Indonesia are better- informed, better-trained and working on adequate rest. Indonesia this week already took a positive first step by mandating that all pilots attend briefings before takeoff with flight operating officers-the briefings will discuss the weather, the route and other issues. But the government can take many other steps to improve the quality of pilots operating in Indonesia. Low-cost carriers in Indonesia have become notorious for overworking their pilots, which may be one reason why several of Lion Air's pilots have been caught with methamphetamines the past three years. (Methamphetamines help you stay awake.) Jakarta needs to implement and enforce stricter regulations on the amount of hours pilots can work per week, and to increase enforcement of random drug and alcohol testing for pilots. In addition, Jakarta needs to make pilot licensing more rigorous and more standardized. According to numerous estimates, within two decades Indonesia will be one of the 10 largest aviation markets in the world, in terms of flights flown per day. These estimates, however, assume that Indonesian aviation will be safe enough that growing numbers of travelers will feel comfortable aboard Indonesian domestic airlines. That's hardly a given. http://www.newsweek.com/indonesias-aviation-safety-rules-need-reforming-297976 Back to Top FAA issues permits for agriculture, real estate drones BY JOAN LOWY, ASSOCIATED PRESS An airplane flies over a drone over Coney Island in the Brooklyn borough of New York Jan. 1, 2015. Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters WASHINGTON - The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday issued permits to use drones to monitor crops and photograph properties for sale, marking the first time permission has been granted to companies involved in agriculture and real estate. The exemptions to the current ban on commercial drone flights were granted to Advanced Aviation Solutions in Star, Idaho, for "crop scouting," and to Douglas Trudeau of Tierra Antigua Realty in Tucson, Arizona. Advanced Aviation Solutions plans to use its 1.5-pound, fixed-wing eBee drone to make photographic measurements of farm fields, determine the health of crops and look for pests. The aim is to save farmers time walking through fields. The drone also can carry sensors that pick up information invisible to the naked eye, which can help determine which fields need watering. Trudeau's exemption authorizes him to fly a Phantom 2 Vision+ quadcopter to "enhance academic community awareness and augment real estate listing videos," the FAA said. Real estate companies have been eager to gain permission to use drones to photograph and make videos of pricey properties. The permits require that drone operations include both a ground "pilot" and an observer, that the pilot have at least an FAA private pilot certificate and a current medical certificate, and that the drone remains within line of sight of the operator at all times. Before these approvals, the FAA had granted 12 exemptions to 11 companies involved in the oil and gas, filmmaking, landfill and other industries. As of today, the FAA has received 214 requests for exemptions from commercial entities. The agency is under pressure from Congress, the drone industry and companies that want to use drones to provide broader access to U.S. skies. FAA officials had said they hoped to propose regulations to permit general commercial use of small drones by the end of 2014, but that deadline has slipped. Industry forecasts predict drones will create tens of billions of dollars in economic development and create thousands of new jobs once commercial use is permitted, but an Associated Press poll conducted in early December found Americans are skeptical of the benefits of heralded drone revolution. Thirty-three percent of Americans oppose using drones to monitor or spray crops, while another third support it. Only 27 percent of Americans favor using drones for aerial photography. Privacy and safety are key concerns. FAA officials say preventing potentially deadly collisions between drones and manned aircraft is their top priority. The agency receives reports nearly every day of small drones flying in the vicinity of manned aircraft and airports even though that's not permitted. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/faa-issues-permits-agriculture-real-estate-drones/ Back to Top Plane-Sharing Startup Sues FAA Over Ban on Service Firm Connects Private Pilots With Passengers for Joint Flights Flytenow CEO Matt Voska, right, flew customers to Martha's Vineyard from Bedford, Mass., last April. A startup that connects private pilots with passengers is challenging the Federal Aviation Administration in federal court over the agency's effective ban on the flight-sharing service, taking the battle between regulators and the sharing economy to the skies. Flytenow Inc. connects passengers with private pilots offering a seat on their small planes in exchange for a share of the flight costs. Flytenow and fellow flight-sharing startup Airpooler Inc. say the dozens of pilots and passengers connected on their websites are operating legally under FAA rules that allow private pilots to share expenses with passengers. The FAA disagrees. The agency effectively shut down the flight-sharing services in August when it told the companies that private pilots who use their websites are effectively operating commercially because they are accepting compensation and advertising their flights. Federal rules hold commercial flights to a far higher regulatory standard. Flytenow challenged the FAA's stance in September in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. This week, the company filed a 59-page brief that argued that the FAA is violating federal rules that allow private pilots to share expenses with passengers and that it's violating the company's First Amendment right to use the Internet to communicate. The FAA declined to comment on the petition. The legal petition is the latest dustup between regulators and startups in the "sharing economy," where private individuals share possessions or services, such as rides, apartments or table saws, for a fee. The sharing economy has yielded some of the world's hottest startups, including ride-sharing firm Uber Technologies Inc. and apartment-rental site Airbnb Inc. But sharing-based business models often don't jibe with decades-old regulations. Uber is battling taxi regulators in cities around the world, Airbnb is grappling with local hotel laws, and meal-sharing website EatWith is drawing the attention of local health departments. "These sorts of conflicts are inevitable.... You have new services that no longer fit the regulatory world view that was in place when regulations were enacted," said Christopher Koopman, a fellow at the Mercatus Center, an economic-research center at George Mason University. "Be it Uber, Airbnb or new flight-sharing services, technology and innovation are always going to outpace regulation." Flytenow Chief Executive Matt Voska said the FAA has long allowed private pilots to advertise planned flights in order to attract potential passengers to cut down on expenses. The company produced a 1976 FAA letter that approved a Kansas City, Mo., college student's request to advertise his flights on a college bulletin board. On Flytenow's website, "it's the same pilots, the same flights. The only thing that's changed is the medium: We went from an ancient bulletin board to the Internet, and [the FAA is] saying that's a problem," said Mr. Voska, a 20-year-old who dropped out of Northeastern University in Boston last year to move Flytenow to Mountain View, Calif. Airpooler is also challenging the FAA's position, opting to use congressmen rather than legal challenges. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III (D., Mass.) and Rep. Todd Rotika (R., Ind.) co-wrote a letter to the FAA last month urging the agency to start a formal rule-making process, including public comment, to decide the legality of flight-sharing sites. "Appropriate regulation of general aviation can maintain safety while creating new jobs, attracting new pilots... and providing more options to travelers," the congressmen wrote. Rebecca MacPherson, Airpooler's attorney and the FAA's former assistant chief counsel for regulations, said "the FAA is just flat wrong" in its interpretation of rules regarding the flight- sharing services. She said federal rules explicitly allow limited cost-sharing between passengers and private pilots. "I think they're very nervous," said Ms. MacPherson, who left the FAA in 2013 and is now with Jones Day. The FAA "is concerned that people would look at the [flight-sharing] sites and believe it was commercial air service." The conservative Goldwater Institute has taken up Flytenow's case pro bono and is helping to represent the startup against the FAA. Goldwater attorney Jonathan Riches said the Flytenow petition "could have significant implications for the broader sharing economy" because it argues for the constitutional right to use the Internet to communicate, and many shared-services companies are simply facilitating communication between buyers and sellers via the Internet. http://www.wsj.com/articles/flight-sharing-startup-sues-faa-over-ban-on-service-1420677000 Back to Top ANALYSIS: Airline safety performance in 2014 Calendar year 2014 has turned out to be the best 12 months ever for airline safety, according to Ascend, a Flightglobal advisory service. For many this may seem an unexpected result, given the perceptions created by the high-profile losses of two Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777s and the crash of an AirAsia Airbus A320 just before year-end. Ascend's director of air safety and insurance, Paul Hayes, reveals that the global airline fatal accident rate in 2014 was one fatal accident per 2.38 million flights. On this basis 2014 was, narrowly, the safest year ever. The figures exclude the 17 July loss over eastern Ukraine of Malaysia flight MH17, on the grounds that it was shot down by a guided missile and is considered a war risk loss, not an accident. Although doubts exist about the status of missing Malaysia flight MH370 (see accident tables), that incident has been included in the fatal accident rates. If the disappearance were, however, eventually confirmed as the result of a deliberate act by someone on board - as many experts in Malaysia and elsewhere now believe - and if it were therefore excluded from the accident statistics, its absence would make the 2014 figures even more impressive. MH370 was the largest single loss of the year in terms of people presumed dead as a result of the incident. The previous best airline safety year was 2012, with a fatal accident rate of one per 2.37 million flights, says Hayes. In the other years since 2010, the fatal accident rate was one per 1.91 million flights in 2013, one per 1.4 million in 2011 and one per 1.26 million in 2010. The average for the last five years is now about one fatal accident per 1.75 million flights. The 2014 Malaysian disasters, however, have twisted perceptions of airline safety, despite 2014 being such a safe year. Ascend's 2014Safety Perception Survey starts by quoting an actual newspaper headline fairly representative of media reaction: "As another jet crashes... is it safe to fly?" The study later sums up why this appears to be the perception: "The year 2014 will be remembered for the loss of the two Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777s, resulting in 510 passenger and 27 crew deaths. During January, Indonesian authorities have been trying to recover AirAsia Airbus A320 that crashed into the Java Sea on 28 December Press Association "Given the strange circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the first 777, which is considered likely due to some form of unlawful interference, and the shooting down of the second, these losses would seem to be more to do with security than safety. Nevertheless, they still would have had a significant impact on the public perception of airline safety." The fact is that passengers died in aircraft. Nervous travellers do not distinguish between the causes of death. Ascend's fatal accident rate statistics include all commercial airline flights by jets and turboprops with a seat capacity of 14 and above. Each year Flight International publishes figures in its global airline safety review which also include relatively rare - but still existing - accidents to commercial airline flights operated with piston-engined aircraft. As a result, although the figures are similar and tell the same broad story, the numbers differ slightly (see graphs).Flight International's 2014 figures, like those of Ascend, do not include MH17 on the grounds it was a war loss, but assume until evidence suggests otherwise that MH370 was an accident. According to the Flight terms of reference, there were 19 fatal accidents - the lowest ever figure - and 671 fatalities in 2014 (see graph). This compares with 2013, in which the respective figures were 26 fatal accidents and 281 fatalities - the number of deaths an all-time low. In the previous best year - 2012 - there were only 21 fatal accidents, but 425 fatalities. The logic of choosing the "best" year as the one with the lowest number of fatal accidents rather than deaths is that the fatalities total depends mostly on the size of the aircraft that crashes. So 2014's total of 671 fatalities results from the fact that three of the accidents involved big jets, and one a large turboprop. If evidence emerges that MH370 was not an accident and its figures were removed from the accident tables, the 2014 numbers would fall to 18 fatal accidents and 432 fatalities. The statistical risk to each individual passenger is affected more by the number of passengers that died than the number of fatal accidents. As a result 2014 took a backward step in this respect, as three big jets suffered fatal accidents with the subsequent loss of everyone on board. The Ascend 2014 figures show that 6 million passengers were carried for every one that was killed in a jet accident, whereas in 2013 - in which the number of fatal accidents was higher, but the resulting fatalities much lower - almost 16 million passengers were carried for every one that died (see graph). This measure is useful for determining how safe commercial aviation is as a mass public transport system, but it feels rather artificial to a passenger who, on boarding a flight, hopes the entire flight will be safe, rather than taking comfort in the fact that his personal chance of survival is 6 million-to-one in favour. There were two accidents in 2014 that occurred in similar circumstances - both were in tropical latitudes at cruising level, and just before they disappeared their crews radioed that they needed to manoeuvre to avoid bad weather. The first was an Air Algerie/Swiftair Boeing MD-80 over Mali in July, the second an AirAsia Airbus A320 over the Java Sea in December (see accident list). For reasons yet to be established, neither crew managed to retain control of the aircraft. It is worthy of note that in recent years the same circumstances have had a similar result in two other cases. One was the 1 June 2009 loss of Air France flight AF447, and the other the 16 August 2005 loss of a West Caribbean Airways McDonnell Douglas MD-82. AF447 was lost in the inter-tropical convergence zone over the South Atlantic Ocean while the pilots were known to be manoeuvring to avoid storm clouds. The aircraft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders were eventually recovered, revealing that the pilots had been confused by an icing- related loss of airspeed information for less than a minute, but quickly lost control of the aircraft. The MD-82, flying from Panama City to Martinique, went out of control while the pilots were discussing how to deal with the airframe and engine icing the aircraft seemed to be suffering in the cruise. The crew were cleared by air traffic control to descend because they said they could not maintain altitude. The stall warning is known to have operated during the descent, which took 3.5min from cruise at 33,000ft to impact with the ground. Perhaps the primary message from 2014 - delivered by the fate of flights MH370 and MH17 - is that security is as important as operational and engineering safety for preserving life. An ICAO commission is looking at the risks of flying over or close to conflict zones as MH17 did, but determining what to do about a mystery like MH370 is more difficult. If, as conjectured, the aircraft's flightpath was deliberately planned and executed by a person on board with some kind of revenge motive, how can such a person be recognised? Download our free Annual Safety Review here http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-airline-safety-performance-in-2014- 407718/ Back to Top Back to Top ERAU NextGen 101 Seminar - Washington, D.C. "The Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Worldwide Office of Professional Education is pleased to announce a two-day seminar entitled NextGen 101. The course is designed to identify the key concepts, attributes, and challenges of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). Government and industry employees with an interest in NextGen, aviation stakeholders and members of the military transitioning to a career in civilian education should attend. The course will take place in Washington D.C. on April 21-22, 2015. Course fee is $750 per person or $675 per person with five or more people registering from the same group. For more information and to register, please visit us online at http://proed.erau.edu/programs/specialized-industry-training/nextgen-101- seminar/index.html" Back to Top Upcoming Events: IS-BAO Workshop Information and Registration 13 - 14 Jan. 2015 Baltimore, MD USA https://www.regonline.com/CalendarNET/EventCalendar.aspx?EventID=1592658&view=Month A3IR CON 2015 January 16-17, 2015 Phoenix, AZ http://commons.erau.edu/aircon/2015/ Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) NTSB Training Center, Ashburn, VA March 10-11, 2015 www.acsf.aero/symposium ERAU NextGen 101 Seminar April 21-22, 2015. Washington D.C. http://proed.erau.edu/programs/specialized-industry-training/nextgen-101- seminar/index.html FAA Helicopter Safety Effort three-day safety forum April 21-23, 2015 Hurst, Texas eugene.trainor@faa.gov www.faahelisafety.org Curt Lewis