Flight Safety Information October 11, 2016 - No. 200 In This Issue GE Aviation Launches a Digital Collaboration Center in Austin (Texas) Sriwijaya crew's false assumption led to wrong-airport landing Eurocontrol bids to put problematic datalink back on track Nordstar B738 at Moscow on Oct 9th 2016, unsafe gear, crack found in gear UAE to regulate drone sales for sake of aviation safety Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster Up for bid: Life-sized flight simulator (yes, actually) Dubai South becoming business aviation gateway to the UAE Bombardier CS300 Aircraft Awarded Type Validation by the European Aviation Safety Agency Now boarding: Frontier Airlines to hire 300 new pilots, 800 attendants Airbus to cut A380 assembly rate to one aircraft per month from 2018 Chinese Learn Russian For Sukhoi Jets: Pilots Must Read Language To Fly Fighters Horizon Air, CWU partnering in order to recruit more future pilots Norwegian Air hiring U.S. pilots for Fort Lauderdale base Crunch choice on new jet fighter looms over Tokyo air show Pratt's $10 billion jet engine stumbles in bid to dethrone GE. GRADUATE RESEARCH SURVEY (1) GRADUATE RESEARCH SURVEY (1) GRADUATE RESEARCH SURVEY (2) Accident Investigation for Aviation Management Course - Cranfield University GE Aviation Launches a Digital Collaboration Center in Austin (Texas) GE Aviation is in Austin. The business, a division of General Electric based in Cincinnati, Ohio, officially opened up its Austin digital collaboration center last week. It is the first in the U.S. In the past year, GE opened similar centers in Dubai, Shanghai and Paris. The company also announced it is working with customer Qantas Airways on a data and analytics project aimed at providing solutions for aviation fleet intelligence and operational insights. GE Aviation Chief Digital Officer, Jim Daily, officially opened the center with Qantas Head of Fuel and Environment Alan Milne. Local officials participating in the event included State Representative Paul Workman, State Representative Celia Israel and Ahmed Tewfix, chairperson of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin. "GE's collaboration center in Austin is home to software developers, data scientists and domain experts with specific backgrounds in analytics, flight-planning and engines, depending on what we're working on," Daily said in a news release. "Opening the center with Qantas, marks the commitment from a customer who really understands the value of using data across their operation." The center occupies 27,000 square feet at 400 W 15th Street with 100 data scientists, engineers and designers. GE Aviation plans to hire many more within the next year. "We've seen that even small gains in fuel efficiency add up to big benefits and lower emissions when you multiply them across the hundreds of aircraft in the Qantas fleet," Milne said in a news release. "The work we're doing with GE is giving us more insight than we've ever had before into the way our aircraft operate, helping us find ways of flying smarter - and this is the next step in the partnership." Today, nearly 100 airlines covering more than 10,000 aircraft are GE Aviation Digital Solutions' customers for such services as flight and fuel analytics, navigation services, airline operations management and planning and recovery. Four years ago, GE Aviation acquired Austin Digital, a 40 employee startup that specialized in flight operations data analysis. http://www.siliconhillsnews.com/2016/10/10/ge-aviation-launches-a-digital-collaboration-center-in-austin/ Back to Top Sriwijaya crew's false assumption led to wrong-airport landing Indonesian investigators believe a Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-300 crew incorrectly assumed a precision- approach system was faulty before the jet mistakenly landed at Tabing military airfield. The aircraft had been scheduled to land at Minangkabau on 13 October 2012, following a service from Medan's Polonia airport. National Transportation Safety Committee investigators were unable to access relevant information from either the flight-data recorder or the cockpit-voice recorder. But they believe that the crew mistook runway 34 at Tabing - which was closed to commercial traffic - for the intended runway 33 at Minangkabau, and switched from an ILS approach to a visual one conducted manually. The runways have a similar orientation although Tabing is situated 6nm southeast of Minangkabau, with a centreline 2nm to the right. In its inquiry the NTSC says the crew had originally intended an ILS approach to runway 33 but, while becoming established on the localiser, the captain noticed a runway to the right of the approach path, and that the aircraft was too high. Instead of considering the possibility of misidentification, the crew "assumed that the localiser was wrong", says the inquiry - an assumption based on previous experience of a false VOR reading at a different airport 18 days earlier. It adds that the pilots were using a poor photocopy of the approach chart on which a cautionary note - that Tabing could be mistaken for Minangkabau - was "not clearly readable", and was not mentioned during the crew briefing. The incident occurred during the captain's first approach to Minangkabau's runway 33. In order to align with the Tabing runway the aircraft executed side-slips and descended at an excessive rate, some 1,700ft/min. This amounted to a destabilised approach, says the inquiry. Although the tower controller at Minangkabau had cleared the 737 to land, the controller's attention had subsequently switched to an aircraft on pushback. None of the 102 occupants on board the flight was injured. www.flightglobal.com Back to Top Eurocontrol bids to put problematic datalink back on track Pan-European air navigation organisation Eurocontrol is to host a workshop to initiate a project to deliver a broad air-ground data communications service, as it bids to restore confidence in a highly-problematic datalink concept. The service, known as EAGDCS, is part of a Eurocontrol effort aimed at centralising provision of certain air navigation functions. It will enable the transfer of electronic air traffic control data between Eurocontrol members, reducing the reliance on voice radio communications and cutting down the risk of information errors. Datalink is central to the Single European Sky research programme SESAR. But analysis of the technical capabilities pursued by Eurocontrol - based on VDL Mode 2 and the Aeronautical Telecommunication Network - has raised serious concerns over performance degradation and reliability. Eurocontrol director general Frank Brenner acknowledges the "difficulties" relating to initial deployment of datalink in Europe. He says that datalink has not been deployed in a "coherent and fully-managed way". EAGDCS, he claims, takes "full account" of the conclusions reached by the European Aviation Safety Agency and the SESAR Joint Undertaking in their analyses of the datalink problems. "It represents a practical and effective way forward," says Brenner. Eurocontrol says it has been granted a mandate by member states to prepare for the deployment, following a directive from its governing authority. Its November workshop will "kick-off" the EAGDCS programme, it states, by starting to establish a framework for delivering the service from February 2018. Eurocontrol points out that it is focusing on a specific aspect of data-sharing, that of initial trajectory information, from 2025. Exchange of four-dimensional trajectories - updated in real time - are a key concept at the heart of the Single European Sky initiative. Deployment of the air-ground data communication service is "vital" to this effort, says Brenner. Following the mandate, Eurocontrol is to collaborate with air navigation services and aircraft operators to develop technical specifications as well as the required governance, financing and procurement arrangements for EAGDCS. www.flightglobal.com Back to Top Accident: Nordstar B738 at Moscow on Oct 9th 2016, unsafe gear, crack found in gear leg A Nordstar Boeing 737-800, registration VQ-BDZ performing flight Y7-7750 from Heraklion (Greece) to Moscow Domodedovo (Russia) with 178 people on board, was on approach to Domodedovo Airport's runway 14R when the crew went around due to an unsafe left main gear indication. The aircraft entered a hold at 5000 feet for about 10 minutes, the crew managed to lower and lock the gear, and landed safely on Domodedovo's runway 14L about 30 minutes after the go-around. It emerged the following day, that a crack in the left main gear strut was found. The occurrence aircraft is still on the ground in Moscow about 35 hours after landing. http://avherald.com/h?article=49f2e499&opt=0 Back to Top UAE to regulate drone sales for sake of aviation safety The United Arab Emirates will release new regulations governing the sales and use of drones as the country witnesses increasing problems integrating the new technology into its aerospace. Concerns about aviation safety have prompted the oil state's government to ban sales of drones in March to give the legislators time to prepare the new rules. Existing drone regulations, introduced in April 2015, control mostly commercial licenses for companies. "Several incidents have happened and to integrate them (drones) safely into the commercial airspace is a challenge," said Mohammed Faisal al-Dossari, director of the air navigation & aerodromes department of the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA). On 12 July this year, Dubai International Airport had to close for more than one hour due to unauthorised drone activity in the surrounding airspace. The incident cost the economy millions of dollars. "The Emirates Authority for Standardisation & Metrology (Esma) is working on laws that will have a framework for the UAE for imports, sales and performance of drones," said al-Dossari, adding that the new guidelines will also address air-worthiness of heavier drones, standards for pilotless aircraft and pilot training. UAE's air airspace is extremely congested. The addition of drones therefore poses considerable safety and security risks. The GCAA registers some 400 commercial drones that can be used in the country for various commercial applications such as mapping, security surveillance, wildlife and environment monitoring, as well as transport, agricultural and maritime purposes. "The big question is how to integrate drones into commercial airspace in future," commented Michael Herrero, Gulf area manager at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global body of airlines. "Governments need to put it high on the agenda with enforceable legislation." https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2016/09/uae-to-regulate-drone-sales-for-sake-of-aviation-safety/ Back to Top Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster We increasingly let computers fly planes and carry out security checks. Driverless cars are next. But is our reliance on automation dangerously diminishing our skills? by Tim Harford When a sleepy Marc Dubois walked into the cockpit of his own aeroplane, he was confronted with a scene of confusion. The plane was shaking so violently that it was hard to read the instruments. An alarm was alternating between a chirruping trill and an automated voice: "STALL STALL STALL." His junior co-pilots were at the controls. In a calm tone, Captain Dubois asked: "What's happening?" Co-pilot David Robert's answer was less calm. "We completely lost control of the aeroplane, and we don't understand anything! We tried everything!" The crew were, in fact, in control of the aeroplane. One simple course of action could have ended the crisis they were facing, and they had not tried it. But David Robert was right on one count: he didn't understand what was happening. As William Langewiesche, a writer and professional pilot, described in an article for Vanity Fair in October 2014, Air France Flight 447 had begun straightforwardly enough - an on-time take-off from Rio de Janeiro at 7.29pm on 31 May 2009, bound for Paris. With hindsight, the three pilots had their vulnerabilities. Pierre-Cédric Bonin, 32, was young and inexperienced. David Robert, 37, had more experience but he had recently become an Air France manager and no longer flew full-time. Captain Marc Dubois, 58, had experience aplenty but he had been touring Rio with an off-duty flight attendant. It was later reported that he had only had an hour's sleep. Fortunately, given these potential fragilities, the crew were in charge of one of the most advanced planes in the world, an Airbus 330, legendarily smooth and easy to fly. Like any other modern aircraft, the A330 has an autopilot to keep the plane flying on a programmed route, but it also has a much more sophisticated automation system called fly-by-wire. A traditional aeroplane gives the pilot direct control of the flaps on the plane - its rudder, elevators and ailerons. This means the pilot has plenty of latitude to make mistakes. Fly-by-wire is smoother and safer. It inserts itself between the pilot, with all his or her faults, and the plane's mechanics. A tactful translator between human and machine, it observes the pilot tugging on the controls, figures out how the pilot wanted the plane to move and executes that manoeuvre perfectly. It will turn a clumsy movement into a graceful one. This makes it very hard to crash an A330, and the plane had a superb safety record: there had been no crashes in commercial service in the first 15 years after it was introduced in 1994. But, paradoxically, there is a risk to building a plane that protects pilots so assiduously from even the tiniest error. It means that when something challenging does occur, the pilots will have very little experience to draw on as they try to meet that challenge. The complication facing Flight 447 did not seem especially daunting: thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean, just north of the equator. These were not a major problem, although perhaps Captain Dubois was too relaxed when at 11.02pm, Rio time, he departed the cockpit for a nap, leaving the inexperienced Bonin in charge of the controls. Bonin seemed nervous. The slightest hint of trouble produced an outburst of swearing: "Putain la vache. Putain!" - the French equivalent of "Fucking hell. Fuck!" More than once he expressed a desire to fly at "3- 6" - 36,000 feet - and lamented the fact that Air France procedures recommended flying a little lower. While it is possible to avoid trouble by flying over a storm, there is a limit to how high a plane can go. The atmosphere becomes so thin that it can barely support the aircraft. Margins for error become tight. The plane will be at risk of stalling. An aircraft stall occurs when the plane tries to climb too steeply. At this angle the wings no longer function as wings and the aircraft no longer behaves like an aircraft. It loses airspeed and falls gracelessly in a nose-up position. Fortunately, a high altitude provides plenty of time and space to correct the stall. This is a manoeuvre fundamental to learning how to fly a plane: the pilot pushes the nose of the plane down and into a dive. The diving plane regains airspeed and the wings once more work as wings. The pilot then gently pulls out of the dive and into level flight once more. As the plane approached the storm, ice crystals began to form on the wings. Bonin and Robert switched on the anti-icing system to prevent too much ice building up and slowing the plane down. Robert nudged Bonin a couple of times to pull left, avoiding the worst of the weather. The plane began rocking. The co-pilot overcorrected with sharp jerks on the stick. Then he made a simple mistake And then an alarm sounded. The autopilot had disconnected. An airspeed sensor on the plane had iced over and stopped functioning - not a major problem, but one that required the pilots to take control. But something else happened at the same time and for the same reason: the fly-by-wire system downgraded itself to a mode that gave the pilot less help and more latitude to control the plane. Lacking an airspeed sensor, the plane was unable to babysit Bonin. The first consequence was almost immediate: the plane began rocking right and left, and Bonin overcorrected with sharp jerks on the stick. And then Bonin made a simple mistake: he pulled back on his control stick and the plane started to climb steeply. As the nose of the aircraft rose and it started to lose speed, the automated voice barked out in English: "STALL STALL STALL." Despite the warning, Bonin kept pulling back on the stick, and in the black skies above the Atlantic the plane climbed at an astonishing rate of 7,000 feet a minute. But the plane's air speed was evaporating; it would soon begin to slide down through the storm and towards the water, 37,500 feet below. Had either Bonin or Robert realised what was happening, they could have fixed the problem, at least in its early stages. But they did not. Why? The source of the problem was the system that had done so much to keep A330s safe for 15 years, across millions of miles of flying: the fly-by-wire. Or more precisely, the problem was not fly-by-wire, but the fact that the pilots had grown to rely on it. Bonin was suffering from a problem called mode confusion. Perhaps he did not realise that the plane had switched to the alternate mode that would provide him with far less assistance. Perhaps he knew the plane had switched modes, but did not fully understand the implication: that his plane would now let him stall. That is the most plausible reason Bonin and Robert ignored the alarm - they assumed this was the plane's way of telling them that it was intervening to prevent a stall. In short, Bonin stalled the aircraft because in his gut he felt it was impossible to stall the aircraft. Aggravating this confusion was Bonin's lack of experience in flying a plane without computer assistance. While he had spent many hours in the cockpit of the A330, most of those hours had been spent monitoring and adjusting the plane's computers rather than directly flying the aircraft. And of the tiny number of hours spent manually flying the plane, almost all would have been spent taking off or landing. No wonder he felt so helpless at the controls. The Air France pilots "were hideously incompetent", wrote William Langewiesche, in his Vanity Fair article. And he thinks he knows why. Langewiesche argued that the pilots simply were not used to flying their own aeroplane at altitude without the help of the computer. Even the experienced Captain Dubois was rusty: of the 346 hours he had been at the controls of a plane during the past six months, only four were in manual control, and even then he had had the help of the full fly-by-wire system. All three pilots had been denied the ability to practise their skills, because the plane was usually the one doing the flying. This problem has a name: the paradox of automation. It applies in a wide variety of contexts, from the operators of nuclear power stations to the crew of cruise ships, from the simple fact that we can no longer remember phone numbers because we have them all stored in our mobile phones, to the way we now struggle with mental arithmetic because we are surrounded by electronic calculators. The better the automatic systems, the more out-of-practice human operators will be, and the more extreme the situations they will have to face. The psychologist James Reason, author of Human Error, wrote: "Manual control is a highly skilled activity, and skills need to be practised continuously in order to maintain them. Yet an automatic control system that fails only rarely denies operators the opportunity for practising these basic control skills ... when manual takeover is necessary something has usually gone wrong; this means that operators need to be more rather than less skilled in order to cope with these atypical conditions." The paradox of automation, then, has three strands to it. First, automatic systems accommodate incompetence by being easy to operate and by automatically correcting mistakes. Because of this, an inexpert operator can function for a long time before his lack of skill becomes apparent - his incompetence is a hidden weakness that can persist almost indefinitely. Second, even if operators are expert, automatic systems erode their skills by removing the need for practice. Third, automatic systems tend to fail either in unusual situations or in ways that produce unusual situations, requiring a particularly skilful response. A more capable and reliable automatic system makes the situation worse. There are plenty of situations in which automation creates no such paradox. A customer service webpage may be able to handle routine complaints and requests, so that staff are spared repetitive work and may do a better job for customers with more complex questions. Not so with an aeroplane. Autopilots and the more subtle assistance of fly-by-wire do not free up the crew to concentrate on the interesting stuff. Instead, they free up the crew to fall asleep at the controls, figuratively or even literally. One notorious incident occurred late in 2009, when two pilots let their autopilot overshoot Minneapolis airport by more than 100 miles. They had been looking at their laptops. When something goes wrong in such situations, it is hard to snap to attention and deal with a situation that is very likely to be bewildering. His nap abruptly interrupted, Captain Dubois arrived in the cockpit 1min 38secs after the airspeed indicator had failed. The plane was still above 35,000 feet, although it was falling at more than 150 feet a second. The de-icers had done their job and the airspeed sensor was operating again, but the co-pilots no longer trusted any of their instruments. The plane - which was now in perfect working order - was telling them that they were barely moving forward at all and were slicing through the air down towards the water, tens of thousands of feet below. But rather than realising the faulty instrument was fixed, they appear to have assumed that yet more of their instruments had broken. Dubois was silent for 23 seconds - a long time, if you count them off. Long enough for the plane to fall 4,000 feet. It was still not too late to save the plane - if Dubois had been able to recognise what was happening to it. The nose was now so high that the stall warning had stopped - it, like the pilots, simply rejected the information it was getting as anomalous. A couple of times, Bonin did push the nose of the aircraft down a little and the stall warning started up again STALL STALL STALL - which no doubt confused him further. At one stage he tried to engage the speed brakes, worried that they were going too fast - the opposite of the truth: the plane was clawing its way forwards through the air at less than 60 knots, about 70 miles per hour - far too slow. It was falling twice as fast. Utterly confused, the pilots argued briefly about whether the plane was climbing or descending. Bonin and Robert were shouting at each other, each trying to control the plane. All three men were talking at cross-purposes. The plane was still nose up, but losing altitude rapidly. Robert: "Your speed! You're climbing! Descend! Descend, descend, descend!" Bonin: "I am descending!" Dubois: "No, you're climbing." Bonin: "I'm climbing? OK, so we're going down." Nobody said: "We're stalling. Put the nose down and dive out of the stall." At 11.13pm and 40 seconds, less than 12 minutes after Dubois first left the cockpit for a nap, and two minutes after the autopilot switched itself off, Robert yelled at Bonin:"Climb ... climb ... climb ... climb ..." Bonin replied that he had had his stick back the entire time - the information that might have helped Dubois diagnose the stall, had he known. Finally the penny seemed to drop for Dubois, who was standing behind the two co-pilots. "No, no, no ... Don't climb ... no, no." Robert announced that he was taking control and pushed the nose of the plane down. The plane began to accelerate at last. But he was about one minute too late - that's 11,000 feet of altitude. There was not enough room between the plummeting plane and the black water of the Atlantic to regain speed and then pull out of the dive. In any case, Bonin silently retook control of the plane and tried to climb again. It was an act of pure panic. Robert and Dubois had, perhaps, realised that the plane had stalled - but they never said so. They may not have realised that Bonin was the one in control of the plane. And Bonin never grasped what he had done. His last words were: "But what's happening?" Four seconds later the aircraft hit the Atlantic at about 125 miles an hour. Everyone on board, 228 passengers and crew, died instantly. Earl Wiener, a cult figure in aviation safety, coined what is known as Wiener's Laws of aviation and human error. One of them was:"Digital devices tune out small errors while creating opportunities for large errors." We might rephrase it as: "Automation will routinely tidy up ordinary messes, but occasionally create an extraordinary mess." It is an insight that applies far beyond aviation. Victor Hankins, a British citizen, received an unwelcome gift for Christmas: a parking fine. The first Hankins knew of the penalty was when a letter from the local council dropped on to his doormat. At 14 seconds after 8.08pm on 20 December 2013, his car had been blocking a bus stop in Bradford, Yorkshire, and had been photographed by a camera mounted in a passing traffic enforcement van. A computer had identified the number plate, looked it up in a database and found Mr Hankins's address. An "evidence pack" was automatically generated, including video of the scene, a time stamp and location. The letter from Bradford city council demanding that Hankins pay a fine or face court action was composed, printed and mailed by an automatic process. There was just one problem: Hankins had not been illegally parked at all. He had been stuck in traffic. In principle, such technology should not fall victim to the paradox of automation. It should free up humans to do more interesting and varied work - checking the anomalous cases, such as the complaint Hankins immediately registered, which are likely to be more intriguing than simply writing down yet another licence plate and issuing yet another ticket. But the tendency to assume that the technology knows what it is doing applies just as much to bureaucracy as it does to pilots. Bradford city council initially dismissed Hankins's complaint, admitting its error only when he threatened them with the inconvenience of a court case. The rarer the exception gets, as with fly-by-wire, the less gracefully we are likely to deal with it. We assume that the computer is always right, and when someone says the computer made a mistake, we assume they are wrong or lying. What happens when private security guards throw you out of your local shopping centre because a computer has mistaken your face for that of a known shoplifter? (This technology is now being modified to allow retailers to single out particular customers for special offers the moment they walk into the store.) When your face, or name, is on a "criminal" list, how easy is it to get it taken off? We are now on more lists than ever before, and computers have turned filing cabinets full of paper into instantly searchable, instantly actionable banks of data. Increasingly, computers are managing these databases, with no need for humans to get involved or even to understand what is happening. And the computers are often unaccountable: an algorithm that rates teachers and schools, Uber drivers or businesses on Google's search, will typically be commercially confidential. Whatever errors or preconceptions have been programmed into the algorithm from the start, it is safe from scrutiny: those errors and preconceptions will be hard to challenge. For all the power and the genuine usefulness of data, perhaps we have not yet acknowledged how imperfectly a tidy database maps on to a messy world. We fail to see that a computer that is a hundred times more accurate than a human, and a million times faster, will make 10,000 times as many mistakes. This is not to say that we should call for death to the databases and algorithms. There is at least some legitimate role for computerised attempts to investigate criminal suspects, and keep traffic flowing. But the database and the algorithm, like the autopilot, should be there to support human decision-making. If we rely on computers completely, disaster awaits. Gary Klein, a psychologist who specialises in the study of expert and intuitive decision-making, summarises the problem: "When the algorithms are making the decisions, people often stop working to get better. The algorithms can make it hard to diagnose reasons for failures. As people become more dependent on algorithms, their judgment may erode, making them depend even more on the algorithms. That process sets up a vicious cycle. People get passive and less vigilant when algorithms make the decisions." Decision experts such as Klein complain that many software engineers make the problem worse by deliberately designing systems to supplant human expertise by default; if we wish instead to use them to support human expertise, we need to wrestle with the system. GPS devices, for example, could provide all sorts of decision support, allowing a human driver to explore options, view maps and alter a route. But these functions tend to be buried deeper in the app. They take effort, whereas it is very easy to hit "Start navigation" and trust the computer to do the rest. It is possible to resist the siren call of the algorithms. Rebecca Pliske, a psychologist, found that veteran meteorologists would make weather forecasts first by looking at the data and forming an expert judgment; only then would they look at the computerised forecast to see if the computer had spotted anything that they had missed. (Typically, the answer was no.) By making their manual forecast first, these veterans kept their skills sharp, unlike the pilots on the Airbus 330. However, the younger generation of meteorologists are happier to trust the computers. Once the veterans retire, the human expertise to intuit when the computer has screwed up could be lost. Many of us have experienced problems with GPS systems, and we have seen the trouble with autopilot. Put the two ideas together and you get the self-driving car. Chris Urmson, who runs Google's self-driving car programme, hopes that the cars will soon be so widely available that his sons will never need to have a driving licence. There is a revealing implication in the target: that unlike a plane's autopilot, a self-driving car will never need to cede control to a human being. Raj Rajkumar, an autonomous driving expert at Carnegie Mellon University, thinks completely autonomous vehicles are 10 to 20 years away. Until then, we can look forward to a more gradual process of letting the car drive itself in easier conditions, while humans take over at more challenging moments. "The number of scenarios that are automatable will increase over time, and one fine day, the vehicle is able to control itself completely, but that last step will be a minor, incremental step and one will barely notice this actually happened," Rajkumar told the 99% Invisible podcast. Even then, he says, "There will always be some edge cases where things do go beyond anybody's control." If this sounds ominous, perhaps it should. At first glance, it sounds reasonable that the car will hand over to the human driver when things are difficult. But that raises two immediate problems. If we expect the car to know when to cede control, then we are expecting the car to know the limits of its own competence - to understand when it is capable and when it is not. That is a hard thing to ask even of a human, let alone a computer. Also, if we expect the human to leap in and take over, how will the human know how to react appropriately? Given what we know about the difficulty that highly trained pilots can have figuring out an unusual situation when the autopilot switches off, surely we should be sceptical about the capacity of humans to notice when the computer is about to make a mistake. "Human beings are not used to driving automated vehicles, so we really don't know how drivers are going to react when the driving is taken over by the car," says Anuj K Pradhan of the University of Michigan. It seems likely that we'll react by playing a computer game or chatting on a video phone, rather than watching like a hawk how the computer is driving - maybe not on our first trip in an autonomous car, but certainly on our hundredth. And when the computer gives control back to the driver, it may well do so in the most extreme and challenging situations. The three Air France pilots had two or three minutes to work out what to do when their autopilot asked them to take over an A330 - what chance would you or I have when the computer in our car says, "Automatic mode disengaged" and we look up from our smartphone screen to see a bus careening towards us? Anuj Pradhan has floated the idea that humans should have to acquire several years of manual experience before they are allowed to supervise an autonomous car. But it is hard to see how this solves the problem. No matter how many years of experience a driver has, his or her skills will slowly erode if he or she lets the computer take over. Pradhan's proposal gives us the worst of both worlds: we let teenage drivers loose in manual cars, when they are most likely to have accidents. And even when they have learned some road craft, it will not take long being a passenger in a usually reliable autonomous car before their skills begin to fade. It is precisely because the digital devices tidily tune out small errors that they create the opportunities for large ones. Deprived of any awkward feedback, any modest challenges that might allow us to maintain our skills, when the crisis arrives we find ourselves lamentably unprepared. Some senior pilots urge their juniors to turn off the autopilots from time to time, in order to maintain their skills. That sounds like good advice. But if the junior pilots only turn off the autopilot when it is absolutely safe to do so, they are not practising their skills in a challenging situation. And if they turn off the autopilot in a challenging situation, they may provoke the very accident they are practising to avoid. An alternative solution is to reverse the role of computer and human. Rather than letting the computer fly the plane with the human poised to take over when the computer cannot cope, perhaps it would be better to have the human fly the plane with the computer monitoring the situation, ready to intervene. Computers, after all, are tireless, patient and do not need practice. Why, then, do we ask people to monitor machines and not the other way round? When humans are asked to babysit computers, for example, in the operation of drones, the computers themselves should be programmed to serve up occasional brief diversions. Even better might be an automated system that demanded more input, more often, from the human - even when that input is not strictly needed. If you occasionally need human skill at short notice to navigate a hugely messy situation, it may make sense to artificially create smaller messes, just to keep people on their toes. In the mid-1980s, a Dutch traffic engineer named Hans Monderman was sent to the village of Oudehaske. Two children had been killed by cars, and Monderman's radar gun showed right away that drivers were going too fast through the village. He pondered the traditional solutions - traffic lights, speed bumps, additional signs pestering drivers to slow down. They were expensive and often ineffective. Control measures such as traffic lights and speed bumps frustrated drivers, who would often speed dangerously between one measure and another. And so Monderman tried something revolutionary. He suggested that the road through Oudehaske be made to look more like what it was: a road through a village. First, the existing traffic signs were removed. (Signs always irritated Monderman: driving through his home country of the Netherlands with the writer Tom Vanderbilt, he once railed against their patronising redundancy. "Do you really think that no one would perceive there is a bridge over there?" he would ask, waving at a sign that stood next to a bridge, notifying people of the bridge.) The signs might ostensibly be asking drivers to slow down. However, argued Monderman, because signs are the universal language of roads everywhere, on a deeper level the effect of their presence is simply to reassure drivers that they were on a road - a road like any other road, where cars rule. Monderman wanted to remind them that they were also in a village, where children might play. So, next, he replaced the asphalt with red brick paving, and the raised kerb with a flush pavement and gently curved guttering. Where once drivers had, figuratively speaking, sped through the village on autopilot - not really attending to what they were doing - now they were faced with a messy situation and had to engage their brains. It was hard to know quite what to do or where to drive - or which space belonged to the cars and which to the village children. As Tom Vanderbilt describes Monderman's strategy in his book Traffic, "Rather than clarity and segregation, he had created confusion and ambiguity." Perplexed, drivers took the cautious way forward: they drove so slowly through Oudehaske that Monderman could no longer capture their speed on his radar gun. By forcing drivers to confront the possibility of small errors, the chance of them making larger ones was greatly reduced. Monderman, who died in 2008, was the most famous of a small group of traffic planners around the world who have been pushing against the trend towards an ever-tidier strategy for making traffic flow smoothly and safely. The usual approach is to give drivers the clearest possible guidance as to what they should do and where they should go: traffic lights, bus lanes, cycle lanes, left- and right-filtering traffic signals, railings to confine pedestrians, and of course signs attached to every available surface, forbidding or permitting different manoeuvres. Laweiplein in the Dutch town of Drachten was a typical such junction, and accidents were common. Frustrated by waiting in jams, drivers would sometimes try to beat the traffic lights by blasting across the junction at speed - or they would be impatiently watching the lights, rather than watching for other road users. (In urban environments, about half of all accidents happen at traffic lights.) With a shopping centre on one side of the junction and a theatre on the other, pedestrians often got in the way, too. Monderman wove his messy magic and created the "squareabout". He threw away all the explicit efforts at control. In their place, he built a square with fountains, a small grassy roundabout in one corner, pinch points where cyclists and pedestrians might try to cross the flow of traffic, and very little signposting of any kind. It looks much like a pedestrianisation scheme - except that the square has as many cars crossing it as ever, approaching from all four directions. Pedestrians and cyclists must cross the traffic as before, but now they have no traffic lights to protect them. It sounds dangerous - and surveys show that locals think it is dangerous. It is certainly unnerving to watch the squareabout in operation - drivers, cyclists and pedestrians weave in and out of one another in an apparently chaotic fashion. Yet the squareabout works. Traffic glides through slowly but rarely stops moving for long. The number of cars passing through the junction has risen, yet congestion has fallen. And the squareabout is safer than the traffic-light crossroads that preceded it, with half as many accidents as before. It is precisely because the squareabout feels so hazardous that it is safer. Drivers never quite know what is going on or where the next cyclist is coming from, and as a result they drive slowly and with the constant expectation of trouble. And while the squareabout feels risky, it does not feel threatening; at the gentle speeds that have become the custom, drivers, cyclists and pedestrians have time to make eye contact and to read one another as human beings, rather than as threats or obstacles. When showing visiting journalists the squareabout, Monderman's party trick was to close his eyes and walk backwards into the traffic. The cars would just flow around him without so much as a honk on the horn. In Monderman's artfully ambiguous squareabout, drivers are never given the opportunity to glaze over and switch to the automatic driving mode that can be so familiar. The chaos of the square forces them to pay attention, work things out for themselves and look out for each other. The square is a mess of confusion. That is why it works. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how-computers-are-setting-us-up-disaster Back to Top Up for bid: Life-sized flight simulator (yes, actually) EAGAN - Shawn Hokuf was in a time machine Friday. Stepping into an old Northwest Airlines DC-9 flight simulator brought him back to when he was a younger pilot and was put through emergency-type situations - engine and system failures, for instance - as part of training and to test his mettle. "I have a lot of blood, sweat and tears in this thing," said Hokuf, now a Delta Air Lines pilot. Flight simulators - nine in all - are among the thousands of items that were left behind when the Northwest Airlines/Delta flight training center in Eagan closed in 2012. The items are being auctioned off before the 300,000-square-foot building is demolished for the Vikings new headquarters. Grafe Auction, a Spring Valley company running the auction, opened the doors to the flight training center Friday to allow the public to look around. Another public viewing was held Monday. "I've not sold life-size simulators before," said Judd Grafe, president of Grafe Auction. "And we've been doing this for 60 years. This is unique." Public bidding began online Sept. 29 and ends Oct. 13-14, depending on the items. Individual items like office equipment, overhead cranes, air conditioners, tools and even a light-up Mary and Joseph from a Nativity scene are up for grabs. As of Friday afternoon, bids on the flight simulators ranged from $5 to $375, but Grafe noted that "98 percent of the bidding happens within the last two minutes of the item being available for sale." Vikki Hancock of Inver Grove Heights made a list of items she might bid on - filing cabinets, storage shelves, high-top tables - through the auction company's website, grafeauction.com. "If we can get some of these for 10 bucks, why not?" she said. But Hancock, a former secretary for the flight training department who retired in 2001, was mostly interested in seeing the building once again. "I found my old cube," she said. "It's still there." Grafe said several colleges have shown interest in the simulators, as have several aviation enthusiasts. One of them is Matt Armstrong, a science teacher at Cherry View Elementary School in Lakeville who has a homemade flight simulator in the basement of his Eagan home. He was at the preview looking for parts. "It's a hobby," he said. Roger Plath, a 76-year-old retired Mendota Heights cop, was impressed with the number of fire extinguishers for sale. "They're literally getting rid of everything," he said. Ron Ferrell, who collects Northwest Airlines memorabilia, made off with several old Delta signs - for free. "They were in the garbage," the Mansfield, Ohio, resident said. Former Northwest simulator instructor Pat Hassett of Lakeville hadn't been in the building since he retired when the facility shut down and moved operations to Delta's headquarters in Atlanta. "I kind of left with the building," he said. Hassett recalled how the hallways and rooms used to be packed with 1,000 or more employees - up to 300 flight attendants, who also trained there, and an equal number of pilots from around the world, as well as support staff. "Now it's like a ghost town in here," said his friend, Jim Delong. "And weeds are growing in the parking lot," Hassett replied. For more, go to www.grafeauction.com . http://www.wctrib.com/news/4133637-bid-life-sized-flight-simulator-yes-actually Back to Top Dubai South becoming business aviation gateway to the UAE A decade after work began on a massive aviation services hub at the city's new second airport, Dubai South is rapidly becoming the main business aviation gateway to the UAE, with three major infrastructure developments under way. Formerly known as Dubai World Central, the airport has just completed its first dedicated VIP terminal, which includes separate fixed base operations for Falcon Aviation Services and JetEx. These are due to open in time for the Middle East Business Aviation Association show in Dubai in early December. Meanwhile, Falcon will start building work this year on a separate maintenance facility at Dubai South, adding to its existing hangar at Abu Dhabi's Al Bateen airport. German company DC Aviation, which opened its own FBO and hangar in late 2013 in partnership with local investor Al Futtaim, has begun construction of a second, 7,500m2 hangar which will more than double its maintenance footprint at Dubai South. Dubai Airports has been encouraging business aviation tenants at Dubai International to relocate to Dubai South as demand for slots from Emirates and other commercial carriers increases at what is now the world's busiest international airport. Two long-term FBO operators at Dubai International, ExecuJet and Jet Aviation, already have a presence at the second airport. However, Dubai South faces competition. Al Bateen markets itself as the region's only dedicated, downtown business aviation airport, just minutes' drive from the country's main government offices, Abu Dhabi's Formula 1 track and several luxury hotels. Royal Jet, the world's largest operator of Boeing Business Jets, has an FBO at Abu Dhabi International. Meanwhile, UK company Gama Aviation presses the merits of the smaller Sharjah International Airport, where it is building an FBO and maintenance facility, as being closer than Dubai South to many key Dubai destinations, and a cheaper, slot-free alternative to nearby Dubai International. We will be writing in-depth about the latest developments in the region's business aviation sector in our special feature in late November, ahead of the MEBAA show. https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/dubai-south-becoming-business-aviation-gateway-to-th- 430188/ Back to Top Bombardier CS300 Aircraft Awarded Type Validation by the European Aviation Safety Agency MONTRÉAL, QUÉBEC--(Marketwired - Oct. 7, 2016) - Bombardier Commercial Aircraft announced today that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has awarded Type Validation to Bombardier's CS300 aircraft. The validation is a requirement for the aircraft's operation in Europe and a precursor to first delivery to CS300 launch operator, airBaltic of Latvia. Bombardier's first CS300 aircraft delivery to airBaltic is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2016. EASA's validation follows the CS300 aircraft Type Certification awarded by Transport Canada in July 2016. "Certifying two clean-sheet aircraft within a nine-month period is a major aviation industry achievement and today we celebrate the latest C Series program milestone with the CS300 EASA certification. We owe a great deal of thanks to the hundreds of Bombardier employees and suppliers who have worked so diligently and professionally to design and build the superb C Series aircraft -- the only single-aisle jetliners developed for the 100- to 150- seat market segment in close to 30 years," said Fred Cromer, President, Bombardier Commercial Aircraft. "EASA's approval of our CS300 aircraft, as per schedule, recognizes the significant contribution of our highly skilled engineers and technical experts in the development and testing of the best-in-class C Series aircraft," said François Caza, Vice President, Product Development and Chief Engineer and Head of Bombardier's Design Approval Organization. "We fully expect that the CS300 aircraft's upcoming delivery and entry-into-service with airBaltic will be as successful as for the CS100 aircraft with SWISS." "Our teams have produced an impressive family of airplanes with proven technology, performance, passenger amenities, economics and environmental qualifications that are turning heads and will be serving operators well in the future," said Robert Dewar, Vice President, C Series Aircraft Program. "Our focus is on the completion of the first production CS300 aircraft for launch operator airBaltic as their teams focus on completing their pilot and crew training for first delivery later this year." Bombardier's smaller CS100 airliner, which was awarded Type Certification by Transport Canada in December 2015, and Type Validations by both EASA and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in June 2016, successfully entered service with launch operator SWISS in July 2016. Both airBaltic and SWISS have joined Bombardier's Smart Parts program for the C Series aircraft. The Smart Parts program maximizes aircraft utilization and minimize maintenance costs by providing comprehensive component maintenance, repair and overhaul services, access to strategically located spare parts exchange pools, and on-site inventories based at the airlines' hubs. About C Series Aircraft The C Series is the only aircraft optimized for the 100- to 150-seat market segment, which drives the aircraft's phenomenal economic proposition and performance, opening up new opportunities for single- aisle aircraft operation. Comprised of the CS100 and the larger CS300 aircraft, the C Series family represents the fusion of performance and technology. The result is aircraft that deliver unmatched performance and economics in the 100- to 150-seat market segment and an 18 per cent lower cost per passenger, making them the ideal candidates to complement larger single-aisle aircraft. Airlines can now operate routes that were previously not profitable or even possible. An improvement in range in excess of 20 per cent out of hot-and-high airports such as Denver, Mexico City or Lhasa has been confirmed. Bombardier has created a new standard in cabin design and flexibility to ensure an unrivalled passenger experience. The aircraft's larger seats, overhead bins and windows deliver a widebody feel that offers passengers unparalleled comfort in a single-aisle cabin. The CS100 and the CS300 aircraft have over 99 per cent parts commonality as well as the same pilot type rating. The groundbreaking Pratt & Whitney PurePower® PW1500G engine, combined with the aircraft's advanced aerodynamics, delivers reduced fuel burn, noise, and emissions - making the C Series the most community-friendly aircraft. About Bombardier Bombardier is the world's leading manufacturer of both planes and trains. Looking far ahead while delivering today, Bombardier is evolving mobility worldwide by answering the call for more efficient, sustainable and enjoyable transportation everywhere. Our vehicles, services and, most of all, our employees are what make us a global leader in transportation. Bombardier is headquartered in Montréal, Canada. Our shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (BBD) and we are listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index. In the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, we posted revenues of $18.2 billion. News and information are available at bombardier.com or follow us on Twitter @Bombardier http://www.aviationpros.com/press_release/12266928/bombardier-cs300-aircraft-awarded-type- validation-by-the-european-aviation-safety-agency Back to Top Now boarding: Frontier Airlines to hire 300 new pilots, 800 attendants Planning to expand to more warm-weather markets, Denver-based Frontier Airlines is going on a hiring spree with hopes of recruiting 800 flight attendants and 300 pilots by the end of next year. Frontier is still one of the nation's smallest commercial carriers, with only 63 planes. But the airline's owner, Indigo Partners, wants to spread Frontier's new ultra-low-cost business model across the country, following the lead of Spirit Airlines, based in Miramar, Fla. Spirit has reported one of the biggest profit margins of any airline in the country since Indigo bought a majority share of the airlines in 2006 and began charging fees for an assortment of services, including printing out a boarding pass. Indigo had been a majority shareholder in Spirit, but in 2013 sold its stake and took ownership of Frontier. Despite the hefty profit margins, Spirit has reported the highest rate of complaints per passengers of any carrier in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. In the latest DOT report released in September, Frontier had the second-highest complaint rate, 3.54 complaints for every 100,000 fliers, compared with 6.46 for Spirit. Frontier announced earlier this year that is planned to add 42 routes, including several warm-weather destinations such as Orlando, Fla., Houston and Phoenix. The carrier also plans to expand its fleet to 120 planes by 2021, while retiring smaller aircraft, such as the Airbus 319, replacing them with larger Airbus 320s and Airbus 321s, Frontier spokesman Jim Faulkner said. "The 319 only requires three flight attendants, while the 320 and 321 will need four and five flight attendants," he added. http://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2016/10/10/now-boarding-frontier-airlines-hire-300-new- pilots800-attendants Back to Top Airbus to cut A380 assembly rate to one aircraft per month from 2018 An Airbus A380, the world's largest jetliner, approaches to land after a flying display during the last day of the 51st Paris Air Show at Le Bourget airport near Paris, June 21, 2015. Also pictured are the French and the EU (R) flag. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol Airbus (AIR.PA) plans to slow the assembly rate of its A380 superjumbo to one aircraft per month from 2018, the head of the A380 program told Le Figaro, as the European planemaker struggles to revive sales of the world's largest passenger jet. "This decision allows us to smooth our deliveries pending new orders," Alain Flourens told the French newspaper. Airbus' assembly rate for the A380 currently stands at 2.5 aircraft per month. Airbus has said the double-decker is still attractive because it believes it helps to solve airport congestion and growing air traffic. But sales of large four-engine airliners like the 544-seat A380 have been hit hard by improvements in the range and efficiency of smaller two-engined models, which can be easier to fill. "The A380 still has a place in the Airbus product portfolio," Flourens said, adding that Airbus plans to improve the plane's efficiency. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-a-idUSKCN12B0GL Back to Top Chinese Learn Russian For Sukhoi Jets: Pilots Must Read Language To Fly Fighters A massive language barrier, even on a military aircraft, evidently isn't a problem for the Chinese military. China reportedly requested the systems aboard its new and Russian-born Sukhoi Su-35 multirole fighter aircraft be delivered later this year "as is," meaning Chinese fighter pilots will have to learn Russian in order to fly the aircraft, according to Sputnik News. While the planes will be fitted with BeiDou navigations systems, which are in Chinese, the rest of the planes readouts will be in Russia, Sputnik reported. The planes were built by state-run Rostec subsidiary Radio-Electronic Technology Concern, KRET. China made the request because its character-based language is difficult to read on LCD screens found onboard, deputy CEO Givi Janjgava told a Russian newspaper. "Adapting onboard systems in accordance with our customer's national specifications is one of the most important technical procedures. We spent the entire year translating all data readout systems in the cockpit into Chinese," Janjgava said. "However, unlike Cyrillic and Latin inscriptions, hieroglyphics are hard to read from LCD screens. Therefore, the Chinese side requested that we leave everything 'as is', considering that PLA pilots already have experience in flying Russian Su-27s with cockpits not adapted for China, and learned to 'read' onboard information in Russian." The aircraft is fitted with a glass cockpit and LCD screens, which have shown blurry or small Chinese characters or symbols, and redesigning the cockpits would have been too expensive and time-consuming, Janjgava said. According to the Diplomat, China had already received four of the Su-35s that are part of a 24 aircraft deal struck in November. The deal called for Komsomolsk-on-Amur Production, one of Russia's top manufacturers, to deliver all of the aircraft between 2016 and 2018. Considered the best plane among Russia's considerable fleet, Su-35 is capable of both incredible speed and stealth. It's reportedly been clocked at a maximum speed of 1,553 miles-per-hour. http://www.ibtimes.com/chinese-learn-russian-sukhoi-jets-pilots-must-read-language-fly-fighters- 2428882 Back to Top Horizon Air, CWU partnering in order to recruit more future pilots Central Washington University aviation students Gage Geist, left, and Clayton Davis train in a flight simulator, practicing a flight from Yakima to Moses Lake Oct. 29, 2015. Instructor Pat Deveny acts as the airport tower operator, giving the students flight information and directions. CWU has one of the larger aviation training programs in the West and is ramping up efforts to recruit future pilots. (GORDON KING/Yakima Herald-Republic) ELLENSBURG, Wash. -- A new program between Central Washington University and Horizon Air could lead to more prospective airline pilots. It was announced this morning that regional airline Horizon Air, a subsidiary of Alaska Airlines, and CWU's aviation program will establish a pilot development program. Up to 17 students would receive stipends of about $7,500 this school year for training fees and costs associated with obtaining a commercial flight instructor certificate. Twelve are senior students, while the other five juniors. "They want to use this development program as a pipeline to bring in qualified pilots," said aviation department chair Sundaram Nataraja. "It's a win-win situation for the students, the university, and the airlines. This is prestigious for us, shows the high quality our program is." The students would receive a conditional job offer from Horizon Air, committing them to a term of employment with the company. In order to begin work with Horizon Air, the students would have to serve at the CWU flight training facility and log 1,000 flight hours as a flight instructor. The move is intended to better alleviate future demand for pilots. Boeing recently projected the world needs 558,000 commercial airline pilots over the next 20 years. http://www.yakimaherald.com/news/education/horizon-air-cwu-partnering-in-order-to-recruit-more- future/article_1f6ce08a-8f0a-11e6-8df7-1bd453e81aa4.html Back to Top Norwegian Air hiring U.S. pilots for Fort Lauderdale base Norwegian Air's Fort Lauderdale-based flight attendants Fort Lauderdale-based crew members show off their cabin crew certificates during agraduation at the Pelican Grand Beach Resort. (Norwegian Air Shuttle) Norwegian Air Shuttle to hire at least 24 U.S. pilots for its Fort Lauderdale crew base To shore up growth in the United States in coming years, Norwegian Air Shuttle announced Monday it is recruiting and hiring American pilots for its crew base at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The Scandinavian low-cost airline, which has drawn opposition from U.S. carriers and unions over its business practices, said its goal is to hire a "large pool" of American pilots to ensure adequate staffing for the dozens of new Boeing Dreamliner aircraft expected to join its fleet over the next few years. "Hiring American pilots for our long-haul operation has been one of Norwegian's goals since launching our transatlantic service three years ago, and we are thrilled that we are finally able to do so," said Asgeir Nyseth, Norwegian Group chief operating officer, in a statement. "With the delivery of 31 additional Boeing Dreamliners over the next few years, Norwegian is excited to be adding American pilots to our ever- growing workforce." Norwegian will be the only European airline to hire U.S.-based pilots, Nyseth said. For its Fort Lauderdale pilots' base, the carrier is aiming to hire a minimum of 24 crew members to support operations of one Dreamliner aircraft, spokesman Anders Lindstrom said. That will include one base captain, nine captains, five relief captains and nine first officers, he said. "We will start with a pilot's base in Fort Lauderdale, but the ambition, of course, is to grow and also have more pilot bases in the U.S.," Lindstrom said. "Recruitment is already in place, with job ads just out, and we aim to have them working during the first six months of 2017." The airline has received nearly 100 applications for the pilots' jobs, which will offer competitive salaries, Lindstrom added. Norwegian first began recruiting American flight attendants for its bases at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood and John F. Kennedy International Airport in October 2013. Three years later, it expects to have more than 500 American cabin crew members across the two bases by year's end, Norwegian said. In August, Norwegian's U.S. base flight attendants voted for union representation through the Norwegian Cabin Crew Association, with assistance from the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA in Washington, D.C., which represents nearly 60,000 flight attendants at several major carriers. Norwegian launched service between Fort Lauderdale and Scandinavia in late 2013, with flights to Oslo, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Stockholm, Sweden. It then added service to London's Gatwick Airport in July 2014 and, most recently, to Paris, France this August. Since it began operations at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood in November 2013, Norwegian has carried 511,894 passengers on 1,977 flights to and from there, airport records show. Next up, Norwegian plans to launch service from Fort Lauderdale to Guadeloupe in the French Caribbean on Dec. 17 and to Barcelona, Spain on Aug. 22. Given the upcoming launch of several new routes from the United States, the hiring of American pilots over the next few years will allow it to adequately accommodate the growth of its long-haul network, airline officials have said. Norwegian said it will cover the cost of converting the U.S. pilots' certification from a Federal Aviation Administration pilot certificate to a European pilot license based on European Aviation Safety Agency regulations. "Continuing our U.S. expansion is one of the key factors to Norwegian's global strategy, and we want to be able to support the local market and stimulate those economies as much as we possibly can," Nyseth said. "We are still looking at opening more crew bases across the U.S., and depending on the success of the American pilots in Fort Lauderdale, we'll include pilots in each of those new bases as well." Currently, two subsidiaries - Norwegian Air International (Ireland) and Norwegian UK (London) - are awaiting approval from the Department of Transportation for their foreign air carrier permit to operate flights between the United States and Europe. Their approval would allow the airline to more effectively utilize its long-haul fleet and establish a seamless operation, including the use of the same aircraft on both U.S. and other long-haul routes to Asia and South America, Norwegian said. Norwegian Air International's application, which has been pending for more than two years, has received opposition from industry groups including the AFA and Air Line Pilots Association International (ALPA). AFA has said NAI's business model evades international labor laws and seeks to create unfair competition with U.S. carriers. ALPA, which represents more than 52,000 pilots at 30 airlines in North America, contends the airline's business plan threatens fair competition and U.S. jobs. Both applications are still pending approval from the DOT. For information on Norwegian's pilot jobs, click here. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/tourism/fl-norwegian-air-hires-us-pilots-20161010-story.html Back to Top Crunch choice on new jet fighter looms over Tokyo air show A prototype of the first Japan-made stealth fighter is pictured at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' factory in Toyoyama town, Aichi Prefecture, central Japan, January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Kiyoshi Takenaka/File Photo Faced with a growing North Korean threat and expanding Chinese power, Japan's military and aerospace industry will use this week's airshow in Tokyo to push the case to develop a highly advanced, and costly, stealth fighter jet. The new fighter, dubbed the F-3, will serve as a key component of Japanese air power in the coming decades and could cost Asia's second biggest military as much as $40 billion, depending on its specifications. Tokyo faces a crunch choice between ordering an industry-pleasing advanced stealth fighter or opting for a cheaper conventional combat jet that will deliver a bigger bang for taxpayers' yen. In March, Japan's Ministry of Defence issued a request for information (RFI) to gauge interest among foreign aerospace companies for jointly developing the F-3, which would operate alongside Lockheed Martin's new F-35s and older F-15s. "It cuts to the core of the future of Japanese defense industry," said an industry source, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the media. "The rising threat from China and most immediately North Korea no longer supports a relaxed industrial base. There is now a premium on actual capability." North Korea's nuclear tests and recent rocket tests, particularly the apparent successful launch in June of an intermediate-range Musudan ballistic missile, have spooked Japan. Tokyo is also dealing with record encounters with Chinese military jets in the skies around disputed islands in the East China Sea. PREVIOUS FAILURE A final decision on the project is expected by early 2018. The strongest supporters of a cheaper conventional aircraft are officials close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said the sources. Abe's government has reversed a decade of defense cuts with spending reaching record levels. However, those increases are a fraction of the extra China is spending every year on its military. A cheaper fighter program would free up funding for other purchases and a lower cost jet that other nations could afford opens up the prospect of overseas sales that would further lower unit costs for Japan's Self Defence Force. Pushing for a more advanced fighter are defense ministry bureaucrats and local companies seeking to secure jobs, underpin defense industry supply chains and compensate for business lost to U.S. defense industry suppliers. Proponents aim to build a jet more advanced than the U.S. Lockheed's F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, said another of the industry sources. A decade ago, the U.S. government refused to sell the Raptor to Japan after it deemed the technology too sensitive even for its closes Asian ally. Japan's last domestic fighter jet, the F-2, which the F-3 will replace, is widely regarded as an expensive failure. Based on F-16 it was built two decades ago by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Lockheed. It was the world's first production aircraft built with composite carbon fiber wings, but cracks in the composite plagued the program. An initial plan to produce 141 jets was pared down with less than 100 entering service, costing around four times that of an equivalent off-the-shelf fighter. FISHING FOR IDEAS Ahead of the defense ministry's RFI, Mitsubishi Heavy tested a prototype jet, dubbed the ATD-X, showcasing numerous stealth technologies. The RFI, however, does not specify what type of aircraft Japan wants, said the sources. "The request is very vague," said another industry official who saw the document. It may be an attempt by Japan to fish for ideas while it mulls its choice between an expensive stealth program and a lower cost fighter, he added. His company will join almost 800 other commercial aerospace and defense firms that are exhibiting at Japan Aerospace 2016, the four-day show which begins in Tokyo on Wednesday. The event, held only once every four years, is the first major aerospace show since Abe two years ago ended a ban on military exports, allowing Japanese firms to export arms for the first time since the end of World War Two. On the commercial side, Japan is promoting the Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ), the nation's first attempt in half a century to build a commercially viable civilian aircraft. The 100-seat MRJ, which has been delayed by five years, is aimed at taking on regional jet makers Bombardier Inc in Canada and Brazil's Embraer. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-aerospace-japan-idUSKCN12A2M4 Back to Top Pratt's $10 billion jet engine stumbles in bid to dethrone GE A Pratt & Whitney PW1000G turbofan engine sits on the wing of an Airbus A320neo aircraft in Hamburg, Germany, on Feb. 12, 2016. It's rarely a good sign when you become the butt of jokes. But that's what happened to Pratt & Whitney at an industry gathering recently, when John Leahy, the venerable chief salesman of Airbus Group, went on about a futuristic airplane -- with an engine that "no doubt will be delivered late." While the audience was amused, Pratt surely wasn't. It's spent $10 billion and decades developing the quieter, more-efficient and less-polluting engine. Executives see the product as critical to catching up to rival General Electric in the market to power narrow-body planes, the dominant aircraft used by airlines around the world. Instead, the engine's debut has been marred by production delays, technical issues and supply-chain foul- ups. Qatar Airways last week cited the problems while announcing plans to buy planes powered exclusively by GE turbines. Pratt was forced to cut promised deliveries this year by 25 percent, frustrating some airlines and plane manufacturers counting on them. The troubles have dinged the stock of parent United Technologies Corp., as Pratt's $14 billion in sales accounts for about one-quarter of its revenue. "This is their big play to get back on single-aisles," said Cai Von Rumohr, an analyst at Cowen & Co. "This is the one that's going to have to happen if they're going to be a player in large commercial engines." The company has characterized the production issues as "teething" problems typical to new technology. President Bob Leduc told Bloomberg in June that complaints were overblown, saying the engines in service have been reliable while meeting promises of 16 percent better fuel efficiency, 75 percent noise reduction and 50 percent less emissions. "The engine is as we advertised, period," he said. Pratt has about 8,200 orders for the product. Founded in 1925, Pratt has a storied history, supplying engines to early planes and later for fighters in World War II. In the 1970s Pratt was the leader in selling engines for large passenger planes. But its position slipped in the 1980s when it miscalculated the market. By the end of that decade, Pratt engineers began work on technology to slow the engine's fan speed, which cuts noise and can improve efficiency. This year, the new engine, known as a geared turbofan, debuted in commercial service on the 180-seat Airbus A320neo (the "neo" standing for "new engine option"). Engine list price: more than $10 million apiece, say analysts. But production issues led Pratt to revise its delivery schedule. Last month it said it would deliver only 150 engines this year, to planemakers such as Airbus and Bombardier, down from the 200 it had earlier pledged. One of the sharpest blows came Oct. 7 when Qatar Airways made good on a threat to buy competitors to the A320neo over concerns about the delays. Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker, a vocal critic of Pratt's engine issues, said his carrier would order as many as 100 Boeing Co. 737 Max jets to "mitigate our risk" on the Airbus plane. He stressed the reliability of Boeing's jet, which use engines from CFM International, a joint venture of GE and France's Safran. Pratt's delays have forced Airbus to alter its delivery schedule, substituting 20 A320 jets with older engines in place of newer models, according to Douglas Harned, a Bernstein analyst. An Airbus representative said the company would hand over more older-version A320s this year "to make up for any shortfall on A320neo deliveries" but didn't specify the number of planes. The engine problems "appear significant with path to resolution currently unclear," Harned wrote in a note. Pratt declined to discuss its plans to improve production processes. Delays also forced Bombardier to halve projected 2016 deliveries of its marquee C Series jetliner. The company has a deal to use Pratt engines exclusively on the plane. "This is very disappointing," Alain Bellemare, Bombardier's CEO, said in a speech. But even after the various issues, Bellemare couldn't muster bad words for the engine's core technology: "I'm still very pleased that we made that choice. It's the best engine available out there today for commercial aircraft." Pratt's rivalry with GE remains fierce. GE's Leap engine, the other option on the A320neo, debuted this year and achieves fuel savings largely through advanced materials. A320neo customers have picked GE's engine about 54 percent of the time, and Pratt the rest, according to data from Ascend Flightglobal Consultancy. More than one-third of A320neo orders have not announced an engine choice yet, leaving plenty of sales up for grabs. The engine's technical advances have contributed to some of the production problems. The aluminum- titanium fan blades are particularly complex, taking about 60 days to manufacture when they need to take half that time, Gregory Hayes, CEO of Farmington, Connecticut-based United Technologies, said in a presentation last month. The company is "still struggling to come down the learning curve," he said. The introduction of new technology is bound to have glitches, experts and industry leaders say. For that reason, Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air intentionally scheduled deliveries several years down the line to allow time for kinks to be worked out, according to CEO Jozsef Varadi. "I think by the time we start taking deliveries this will all get sorted," he said in a recent interview. Wizz, which last year firmed up an order for 110 of the A321neo, targeted 2019 because "we don't want to be associated with this mess." Pratt remains resolute, recently announcing plans to hire as many as 25,000 new workers in the next decade to work down the backlog. And joking aside, Airbus's Leahy is standing behind the company. "I have faith that Pratt will solve" the issues, he told reporters after poking fun at the engine delays. "It is disappointing the situation we find ourselves in, but it's a good engine from everything we can see." http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-pratt-68e0f2b4-8eed-11e6-bc00-1a9756d4111b- 20161010-story.html Back to Top Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Mystery Mission Wings by 500 Days in Orbit An artist's depiction of the U.S. Air Force's unmanned X-37B space plane in orbit with its solar array deployed and payload bay open. Credit: United Launch Alliance/Boeing The latest secretive mission of the United States Air Force's X-37B space plane has cruised beyond 500 days in Earth orbit since its launch last year. The U.S. military launched the robotic X-37B space plane on May 20, 2015, marking the fourth flight for the Air Force program. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lofted the spacecraft from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to kick off the OTV-4 mission (short for Orbital Test Vehicle-4). Exactly what the winged space plane's duties are while it's in orbit continues to remain a tight-lipped affair. Similarly, how long the vehicle will remain in orbit has not been detailed. [The X-37B's Fourth Mystery Mission in Photos] The first OTV mission launched in April 22, 2010, and concluded on Dec. 3, 2010, after 224 days in orbit. The second OTV mission - which used a different vehicle than the first - began March 5, 2011, and concluded on June 16, 2012, after 468 days on orbit. The subsequent OTV-3 mission reused the X-37B that flew on the first mission, and chalked up nearly 675 days in orbit. So far, the U.S. military has not stated where the OTV-4 mission's craft will ultimately land once it's current flight ends. In the past, all three X-37B flights ended at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, gliding to a runway landing on autopilot. The U.S. Air Force's robotic X-37B space plane is a miniature space shuttle capable of long, classified missions in orbit. See how the X-37B space plane works in this Space.com infographic. Credit: By Karl Tate, Infographics Artist New landing site for X-37B? Progress has been made, however, to consolidate its space plane operations, including use of NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida as a landing site for the X-37B. A former KSC space-shuttle facility known as Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF-1) was converted into a structure that will enable the Air Force "to efficiently land, recover, refurbish and relaunch the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV)," according to Boeing representatives. The X-37B vehicle development falls under the Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems in El Segundo, California, the firm's center for all space and experimental systems and government and commercial satellites. The Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office is leading the Department of Defense's OTV initiative, by direction of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics and the Secretary of the Air Force. A fleet of two space planes Only two reusable X-37B vehicles have been confirmed as constituting the fleet. This current OTV-4 trek is the second flight of the second X-37B vehicle built for the Air Force by Boeing. The reusable X-37B military space plane looks like a miniature adaptation of NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiter. The space plane is 29 feet (8.8 meters) long and 9.6 feet (2.9 m) tall, and has a wingspan of nearly 15 feet (4.6 m). The space drone has a payload bay about the size of a pickup truck bed. It has a launch weight of 11,000 lbs. (4,990 kilograms) and is powered on orbit gallium arsenide solar cells with lithium-ion batteries. Onboard payloads A few payloads onboard the OTV-4 craft have been identified. Aerojet Rocketdyne has announced that its XR-5A Hall Thruster had completed initial on-orbit validation testing onboard the X-37B space plane. It is also known that the vehicle carries a NASA advanced materials investigation, as well as an experimental propulsion system developed by the Air Force. "It remains a very useful way to test out things," Winston Beauchamp, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for Space told Inside Outer Space during last month's American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) meeting in Long Beach, California. Asked about any interest in increasing the X-37B fleet size, Beauchamp said that the number of vehicles currently in use is fine due to the pace of experiments it conducts. http://www.space.com/34343-x37b-space-plane-otv4-mission-passes-500-days.html Back to Top GRADUATE RESEARCH SURVEY (1) Dear Airline colleagues, I would be very grateful if airline staff among you accept this invite to complete my short online survey on "exploring the influence of emotionally intelligent leadership on airline safety culture". https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/EI-INTEL The survey is an element of my final project which explores how safety leadership who utilize or exhibit emotional intelligence leadership qualities can influence the organisations safety culture. Safety leadership in this context is taken as all management and supervisory staff who act as, or should act as safety leaders in their teams. I am researching to see if the leadership qualities of each individual safety leader can impact safety culture. Emotional intelligence markers are embedded in 10 of the survey questions. The survey contains an introduction and explanatory page, followed by 14 questions and should only take 8 to 10 minutes. If you would like to make any comments on the project, or have any questions, please contact me at Patrick.Morris.1@city.ac.uk. Thank you in advance and best regards. Pat Morris. MSc Student, City University of London. Back to Top GRADUATE RESEARCH SURVEY (2) Dear colleague in the aircraft ground handling industry My name is Mario Pierobon and I am conducting a doctoral study on aircraft ground handling safety at Cranfield University. As part of my research I have developed a survey that requires you to consider the degree of implementation of the IATA Ground Operations Manual (IGOM) chapter 4 ramp safety provisions and various management practices in place in your organisation to ensure that safety provisions are implemented. The survey will take approximately 13 minutes to complete. In order to participate to this survey you are required to have a management role in the aircraft ground handling industry and be familiar with IGOM chapter 4 ramp safety provisions. The survey may be accessed at the following link https://cranfielduniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8c5FmAf0bLFJ39P Earlier in the summer I sent out another survey concerning the categorisation of 40 different hazards that are peculiar to the aircraft ground handling environment. If you have not filled in this survey may I kindly ask you to please do so and go to the other following link https://cranfielduniversity.eu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3abRtXF0f6D7oEJ Thank you in advance for your kind support, if you need any additional information you may reach me at m.pierobon@cranfield.ac.uk. Kind regards Mario Pierobon PhD Candidate (air safety), Cranfield University Back to Top Accident Investigation for Aviation Management Course 31 Oct - 11 Nov 2016 https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/Courses/Short/Transport-Systems/Accident-Investigation-for- Aviation-Management Curt Lewis