Flight Safety Information March 15, 2019 - No. 056 In This Issue Boeing 737 MAX jets could be grounded for weeks as black box probe to start on Ethiopia crash Ethiopian jet's black box seen damaged but intact in photo Boeing Promised Pilots a 737 Software Fix Last Year, but They're Still Waiting Air crash: Probe of black boxes to begin today Incident: FEAT MD83 at Kalibo on Mar 13th 2019, runway excursion while turning to backtrack Hawker Siddeley HS-125-700A - Fatal Accident (Mexico) List of global aircraft groundings in history How the world rebelled against US on air safety Jet engines get planes in the sky, but software keeps them safe UK and USA sign safety accord to apply in event of no-deal Brexit FAA Moving To Make ASAP More Flexible NTSB: Unstabilized Approach Caused Teterboro Crash India - the 'unlikely' poster girl of gender equality in aviation Passengers rage over disruptions at embattled Jet Airways NASA'S SUPERSIZE SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM MIGHT BE DOOMED GRADUATE RESEARCH SURVEY RTCA Global Aviation Symposium Aircraft Cabin Air Conference Call for Papers - ISASI 2019...*** Deadline March 18th *** ISASI-Mid-Atlantic Regional Chapter (MARC) Dinner/Meeting--2 May 2019 Boeing 737 MAX jets could be grounded for weeks as black box probe to start on Ethiopia crash * Boeing 737 MAXs suspended worldwide for safety checks * Crashed Ethiopian Airlines jet's damaged black box in Paris * New information shows similarities with Indonesia disaster * Relatives visit site, angry at lack of information * Boeing pauses deliveries of 737 MAX planes By David Shepardson, Richard Lough and Aaron Maasho WASHINGTON/PARIS/ADDIS ABABA, March 14 (Reuters) - Boeing Co's BA.N 737 MAX 8 and 9 planes will be grounded for weeks if not longer until a software upgrade can be tested and installed, U.S. lawmakers said on Thursday, as officials in France prepare to begin analysing the black boxes from a jet that crashed in Ethiopia. Boeing said it had paused deliveries of its fastest-selling 737 MAX aircraft built at its factory near Seattle but continues to produce its single-aisle jets at full speed while dealing with the worldwide fleet's grounding. Investigators in France will be seeking clues into Sunday's deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash after take-off from Addis Ababa killed 157 people from 35 nations in the second such calamity involving Boeing's plane since October. Possible links between the accidents have rocked the aviation industry, scared passengers, and left the world's biggest planemaker scrambling to prove the safety of a money-spinning model intended to be the standard for decades. U.S. Representative Rick Larsen said after a briefing with U.S. aviation officials the software upgrade would take a few weeks to complete, and installing it on all aircraft would take "at least through April." He said additional training would also have to take place. Boeing has said it would roll out the software improvement "across the 737 MAX fleet in the coming weeks." Relatives of the dead stormed out of a meeting with Ethiopian Airlines on Thursday, decrying a lack of transparency, while others made the painful trip to the crash scene. "I can't find you! Where are you?" said one Ethiopian woman, draped in traditional white mourning shawl, as she held a framed portrait of her brother in the charred and debris-strewn field. After an apparent tussle over where the investigation should be held, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders were handed over to France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA). Technical analysis would begin on Friday and the first conclusions could take several days, the BEA said, posting a picture of the partly crumpled, orange-cased box. Nations around the world, including an initially reluctant United States, have suspended the 371 MAX models in operation, though airlines are largely coping by switching planes. Nearly 5,000 MAXs are on order, meaning the financial implications are huge for the industry. Moody's rating agency said the fallout from the crash would not immediately affect Boeing's credit rating. "We continue to build 737 MAX airplanes while assessing how the situation, including potential capacity constraints, will impact our production system," Boeing spokesman Chaz Bickers said. Boeing would maintain its production rate of 52 aircraft per month, and its newest version, the MAX, represents the lion's share, although Boeing declined to break out exact numbers. CONNECTION TO INDONESIA CRASH? The investigation of Sunday's crash has added urgency since the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday grounded the 737 MAX aircraft, citing satellite data and evidence from the scene that indicated some similarities and "the possibility of a shared cause" with October's crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people. Though it maintains the planes are safe, Boeing has supported the FAA move. Its stock is down about 11 percent since the crash, wiping more than $26 billion off its market value. It fell 1 percent on Thursday. U.S. and Canadian carriers wrestled with customer calls and flight cancellations and Southwest Airlines Co LUV.N and American Airlines Group Inc AAL.O, the largest U.S. operators of the 737 MAX, said they had started flying empty MAX aircraft to be parked elsewhere during the ban. U.S. President Donald Trump, an aviation enthusiast with deep ties to Boeing, said he hoped the suspensions would be short. "They have to figure it out fast," Trump told reporters at the White House. A software fix for the 737 MAX that Boeing has been working on since the Lion Air crash in October in Indonesia will take months to complete, the FAA said on Wednesday. And in what may presage a raft of claims, Norwegian Air NWC.OL has said it will seek compensation from Boeing for costs and lost revenue after grounding its fleet of 737 MAX. Japan became the latest nation to suspend the 737 MAX planes on Thursday. And airline Garuda Indonesia GIAA.JK said there was a possibility it would cancel its 20-strong order of 737 MAXs. WHAT HAPPENED? Under international rules, Ethiopians are leading the investigation but France's BEA will conduct black box analysis as an adviser. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was also sending three investigators to assist. Only France and the United States have the experience gleaned from being present at almost every crash involving an Airbus or Boeing respectively. The cause of the Indonesian crash is still being investigated. A November preliminary report, before the retrieval of the cockpit voice recorder, focused on maintenance and training and the response of a Boeing anti-stall system to a recently replaced sensor, but gave no reason for the crash. The pilot of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 had reported internal control problems and received permission to return, before the plane came down and burst into a fireball on arid farmland. (Reporting by Richard Lough, Tim Hepher and John Irish in Paris, Duncan Miriri and Aaron Masho in Addis Ababa, Jeff Mason and David Shepardson in Washington, Omar Mohammed and Maggie Fick in Nairobi; Danilo Masoni in Milan, and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle, Tracy Rucinski in Chicago, Allison Lampert in Montreal; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Ben Klayman; Editing by Jon Boyle, Nick Zieminski and Grant McCool) Back to Top Ethiopian jet's black box seen damaged but intact in photo PARIS, March 14 (Reuters) - France's air accident investigation agency on Thursday released a picture of the doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet's flight data recorder, which appeared to show the crash-proof housing protecting the critical recording chip intact. The recorder - one of two 'black boxes' whose data investigators will analyse to determine what caused Sunday's crash - appears damaged at one side. Investigators will also analyse the cockpit voice recorder from the Boeing 737 MAX 8 which should have picked up the conversations between the pilots and between the pilots and air traffic controllers. How to read an aircraft's black box By Tim Hepher PARIS, March 14 (Reuters) - France's BEA safety investigators are searching for clues as to what caused an Ethiopian Airlines plane to hurtle to the ground after take-off, as they begin analysing two black boxes that arrived in Paris on Thursday from the crashed Boeing 737 MAX. Here is how the process works. WHAT ARE BLACK BOXES? They are not actually black but high-visibility orange. Experts disagree how the nickname originated but it has become synonymous with the public's quest for answers when planes crash. Many historians attribute their invention to Australian scientist David Warren in the 1950s. They are mandatory and the aim is to preserve clues from cockpit sounds and data to help prevent future accidents. HOW BIG ARE THEY? They weigh about 10 pounds (4.5 kilos) and contain four main parts: * a chassis or interface designed to fix the device and facilitate recording and playback * an underwater locator beacon * the core housing or 'Crash Survivable Memory Unit' made of stainless steel or titanium * inside there, the precious finger-nail sized recording chips on circuit boards which in the latest case could help decide the near-term fate of Boeing's grounded 737 MAX. There are two recorders: a Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) for pilot voices or cockpit sounds and a Flight Data Recorder (FDR). The BEA released a photo of the FDR from the Ethiopian jet appearing to show that the chip's crucial housing is intact while the replaceable chassis is crushed. HOW WILL THE RECORDERS BE HANDLED? Technicians peel away protective material and carefully clean connections to make sure they do not accidentally erase data. The audio or data file must be downloaded and copied. The data itself means nothing at first. It must be decoded from raw files before being turned into graphs. Investigators sometimes use "spectral analysis" - a way of examining sounds that allows scientists to pick out barely audible alarms or the first fleeting crack of an explosion. HOW MUCH INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE? The L-3 data chip on a similar Lion Air jet that crashed in October contained 1,790 parameters over 19 flights. The CVR contains two hours of recordings, more than enough to cover the six-minute Ethiopian flight. "The data recorder typically tells you 'what' and 'how' the event happened and the cockpit recorder starts to help you understand 'why' but may not be enough," said an investigator. WHO HEARS THE TAPE? The BEA has a listening room like a recording studio with audio mixing and playback equipment linked to a screen showing synchronised data, Reuters observed on a recent visit by a group of reporters. Four channels separate voices and ambient noise. Only the main investigator and a handful of people hear most tapes, which are then sealed. In France, where judges routinely carry out parallel probes, a police officer may be present as well as representatives from foreign investigation agencies. A technician will first prepare the recording to ensure it is intact. In one of the most dramatic events in the 73-year-old BEA's history, legal sources say it was at this stage that staff first suspected the captain of a Germanwings jet had been locked out by a suicidal co-pilot in 2015, sending 144 people to their death while he tried to beat down a reinforced door. Trauma counselling is available for staff hearing tapes. HOW LONG WILL THE RESULTS TAKE? Investigators prefer to work methodically but public and media pressure can be intense. Depending on any damage to the boxes and type of accident, some investigators acknowledge they can get a very basic idea in days or even hours. But they stress this is not always the case and rarely the whole story. Interim reports are published after a month but are often sparse. Deeper investigations take a year or more to complete. A Lebanese investigation into an Ethiopian Airlines crash in 2010, in which the BEA also analysed recorders, took two years. WHAT WILL BLACK BOXES LOOK LIKE IN FUTURE? A new type of box now being tested by Airbus and the BEA, after it spent two years searching for Air France 447 which crashed in the Atlantic in 2009, would be built into a floatable panel embedded in the outer skin. Bolts would retract allowing it to fall away when the plane feels it is about to crash on water, triggering a radio beacon and avoiding a deep-sea search. Since that crash and the unresolved disappearance in 2014 of Malaysian Airlines MH370, there has been intense debate about whether black boxes should stream live data back to the ground. French regulators are sceptical, saying it would be hugely costly for little benefit, since most boxes are quickly found. HOW HAVE THEY EVOLVED? Older models used to record on wire, foil or reels of magnetic tape. Samples of them are now stacked like an Aladdin's cave of vintage machinery inside the BEA's headquarters at Le Bourget airport, Paris. The BEA needs some old equipment to work on systems that are still flying on decades-old aircraft. Modern versions use computer chips housed inside "crash-survivable" containers able to withstand g-forces 3,400 times the feeling of gravity. Graphics on the Ethiopian Airlines crash: https://tmsnrt.rs/2O6jQbI https://tmsnrt.rs/2ChBW5M (Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Susan Fenton) Back to Top Boeing Promised Pilots a 737 Software Fix Last Year, but They're Still Waiting A delay in a software update after a Boeing 737 Max 8 like this one crashed in Indonesia in October is being scrutinized after the crash of another Max 8 in Ethiopia last weekend. Weeks after a deadly crash involving a Boeing plane last October, company officials met separately with the pilot unions at Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. The officials said they planned to update the software for their 737 Max jets, the plane involved in the disaster, by around the end of 2018. It was the last time the Southwest pilots union heard from Boeing, and months later, the carriers are still waiting for a fix. After a second 737 Max crashed, on Sunday in Ethiopia, United States regulators said the software update would be ready by April. "Boeing was going to have a software fix in the next five to six weeks," said Michael Michaelis, the top safety official at the American Airlines pilots union and a Boeing 737 captain. "We told them, 'Yeah, it can't drag out.' And well, here we are." This delay is now part of the intense scrutiny over Boeing's response after the first air disaster, a Lion Air accident that killed 189 people in Indonesia. The second crash, involving an Ethiopian Airlines flight that killed 157 people, bore similarities to the first, pointing to potential problems with the automated system that requires the update. The planned fix was "designed to detect the problem," said Jon Weaks, the president of Southwest's pilot union, "and keep it from recurring." Boeing officials told Southwest union leaders that they didn't believe any extra training was necessary beyond informing the pilots of how the software fix would function. The potential similarities between the two crashes were central to regulators' decision to ground the whole 737 Max line, a family of planes that has been in service for nearly two years. Boeing is now in damage control mode, as carriers cancel flights and try to limit disruptions. Boeing declined to comment for this article. Along with the grounding, Boeing has been forced to halt deliveries of the jets, one of its best-selling planes. Authorities are trying to determine exactly what went wrong, while a senior Democratic lawmaker is planning to examine Boeing's communications with its regulators. The lawmaker, Representative Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon, the chairman of the House transportation committee, has said he will investigate the Federal Aviation Administration's certification of the 737 Max, including why the regulator did not mandate more substantial training for pilots. To qualify to fly the plane, the pilots at American were given a 56-minute iPad training and about a dozen white papers on the differences between the Max aircraft and previous 737 jets, union officials said. Mr. Weaks of Southwest said his members were trained with an e-learning module on a company-issued iPad that consisted of under three hours of video presentations. Both Southwest and American now say they expect to have simulators including the 737 Max systems by the end of this year. American ordered the simulator after the Lion Air crash. The meetings last year between Boeing officials and the unions were cordial but direct. The pilots from Southwest and American who met with Boeing were frustrated that they hadn't been notified of the newly installed software system in the 737 Max planes before the crash in Indonesia. The so-called maneuvering characteristics augmentation system, or MCAS, is an automated system intended to prevent the plane from stalling. "It was a very frank discussion," said the American union's safety chairman, Mr. Michaelis. "This is to our knowledge the first time pilots were not informed of a major system on an airplane that could affect flight controls." A Boeing 737 Max 8 at Miami International Airport on Thursday. Some of the jets were allowed to fly to be better situated for long-term parking. The pilots demanded more information about the system. Mr. Michaelis said it had been mentioned once in the appendix of the official aircraft manual, but without any explanation about what it was or did. In response to the pilots' request, Mr. Michaelis said, Boeing concurred. The company has since provided the American pilots with basic information about MCAS, but it hasn't updated the official manual with a full explanation about how it works. Mr. Michaelis said Boeing had partly attributed the delay to the recent government shutdown, which caused a backlog at the F.A.A. Daniel K. Elwell, the acting administrator of the F.A.A., said on Wednesday that the 35-day partial government shutdown that stretched from December until late January "did not cause any delay in work on the software." For days after the Ethiopian crash, Boeing and the F.A.A. stood by the safety of the plane. As regulators around the world grounded the plane, the F.A.A. resisted doing the same. Mr. DeFazio said he stepped out of a hearing on Wednesday morning to speak with Mr. Elwell about the plane. Mr. DeFazio said Mr. Elwell assured him there was no cause for alarm. Within hours, President Trump announced the Max would be grounded. "One of my staff, her phone went 'bing' and there it was," Mr. DeFazio said. Mr. Elwell and the F.A.A.'s top safety official, Ali Bahrami, visited Capitol Hill on Thursday to brief members of the House and Senate about the agency's decision- making after the crash in Ethiopia. Mr. Elwell also made the rounds on morning television shows as his agency continued to face questions about its response to the crash as well as the earlier accident in Indonesia. "We're confident in the safety of the airplane," he said on "CBS This Morning." "What we don't know is if there's a linkage between those two accidents, and now that we have the new evidence to suggest there very well may be, we grounded the airplanes to find the linkage." Mr. Trump, at the White House on Thursday, said he hoped the Boeing planes would be back in the air soon. "They have to figure it out fast," he said. "They know that. They're under great pressure." The three American airlines that operate 737 Max aircraft - American and Southwest operate Max 8s and United flies the Max 9 - have scrambled to limit any disruptions caused by the groundings. The airlines have shifted other available aircraft to replace the jets, canceled less popular flights to use those aircraft for busier Max routes, and rebooked some fliers on other airlines. Cancellations will vary by the day based on the availability of other aircraft. American, which has 24 Max 8 jets, canceled 85 flights out of 6,700 on Thursday, but it was able to limit the disruption by scrapping emptier flights on routes where it could rebook those passengers on later flights. For instance, it canceled flights from Dallas to Sacramento and Tucson, booking those fliers on later planes, and used those aircraft to instead operate busier routes between Miami and New York. Southwest, which has 34 Max 8 jets, said it was able to shift enough planes around to cancel just 39 out of its 4,000 scheduled flights on Thursday. And United, which has 14 Max 9 jets, was able to avoid any cancellations from the grounding on Thursday because it shifted many planes from its hub in Denver, where a snowstorm was already disrupting flights. There were still some 737 Max jets flying in American skies on Thursday. The F.A.A. granted the airlines permission to ferry their empty Max jets to new airports for long- term parking. American flew its planes from places like Miami, New York and Tampa, Fla., to places like Tulsa, Orlando, Fla., and Mobile, Ala. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/business/boeing-737-software-update.html Back to Top Air crash: Probe of black boxes to begin today Red cross team work amid debris at the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines near Bishoftu, a town some 60 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on March 10, 2019. - An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed on March 10 morning en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi with 149 passengers and eight crew believed to be on board, Ethiopian Airlines said. (Photo by Michael TEWELDE / AFP) Investigators in France will begin analysing the crashed Ethiopian Airlines aircraft's black boxes on Friday (today), seeking clues into a disaster that has angered scores of mourning families and grounded Boeing's global 737 MAX fleet. The black boxes arrived in Paris, France, on Thursday after a tussle over where the investigation should be held. Reuters reports that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders were handed over to France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety agency. Sunday's crash after take-off from Addis Ababa killed 157 people from 35 nations in the second of such calamity involving Boeing's new model of B737 Max in six months. Possible links between the accidents have rocked the aviation industry, scared passengers worldwide, and left the world's biggest planemaker scrambling to prove the safety of the model. Boeing, however said in a statement that it had confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX but that after consultation with the United States Federal Aviation Administration, the US National Transportation Safety Board, aviation authorities and its customers around the world, it had determined the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft. The President and Chief Executive Officer of the Boeing Company, Dennis Muilenburg, said "We are supporting this proactive step out of an abundance of caution. Safety is a core value at Boeing for as long as we have been building airplanes; and it always will be. "There is no greater priority for our company and our industry. We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with the investigators, deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again." https://punchng.com/air-crash-probe-of-black-boxes-to-begin-today/ Back to Top Incident: FEAT MD83 at Kalibo on Mar 13th 2019, runway excursion while turning to backtrack A FEAT Far Eastern Air Transport McDonnell Douglas MD-83, registration B-28027 performing flight FE- 321 from Taipei (Taiwan) to Kalibo (Philippines) with 122 people on board, landed on Kalibo's runway 23 and rolled out safely. When the aircraft attempted to turn around to backtrack runway 23 to the terminal, the aircraft's nose gear went off the paved surface of the runway, the aircraft became disabled. The aircraft needed to be towed back onto paved surface and to the apron. The occurrence aircraft is still on the ground in Kalibo about 28 hours after landing. No Metars are available. The aircraft disabled with the nose gear off the runway: http://avherald.com/h?article=4c55ca5e&opt=0 Back to Top Hawker Siddeley HS-125-700A - Fatal Accident (Mexico) Status: Date: Sunday 10 March 2019 Type: Hawker Siddeley HS-125-700A Operator: private Registration: fake reg. C/n / msn: First flight: Crew: Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 2 Passengers: Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 0 Total: Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 2 Aircraft damage: Damaged beyond repair Location: near San Pedro Peralta, Chetumal, Quintana Roo ( Mexico) Phase: Landing (LDG) Nature: Illegal Flight Departure airport: ? Destination airport: ? Narrative: A HS-125-700 jet sustained substantial damage in an apparent forced landing in a jungle area near San Pedro Peralta, Mexico. One of the two pilots was killed, the other sustained serious injuries. The aircraft was found to be carrying 200 kgs of cocaine. U.S. registration marks 'N18BA' were applied on the engines on both sides of the aircraft and are likely fake. At the time of the accident the registration was current in the FAA register, also belonging to a HS-125-700A jet. https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20190310-1 Back to Top List of global aircraft groundings in history 14 March 2019 On March 13, 2019, all Boeing 737 MAX aircraft were temporarily grounded worldwide by relevant authorities and airlines. The MAX was not the first aircraft in aviation history to be grounded globally. 2019: Boeing 737 MAX First aircraft in service: 2017 Grounding in effect: March 13, 2019 (some airlines and countries on March 11 and 12) Regulatory action: FAA Emergency Order (other countries took own regulatory actions) Grounding lifted: - Reason for grounding: Fatal accidents involving Lion Air 601 and Ethiopian 302 2013: Boeing 787 Dreamliner First aircraft in service: 2009 Grounding in effect: January 16, 2013 Regulatory action: Emergency AD Grounding lifted: April 19, 2013 Reason for grounding: Two lithium ion battery failures on January 7 and January 16. 2000: Concorde First aircraft in service: 1976 Grounding in effect: August 16, 2000 Regulatory action: Withdrawal of the Airworthiness Certificates of all Concordes Grounding lifted: November 2001 Reason for grounding: Doubts about the fuel tank safety following the crash of Air France flight 4590. 1982: Yakovlev Yak-42 First aircraft in service: 1980 Grounding in effect: 1982 Regulatory action: unknown Grounding lifted: October 1984 Reason for grounding: Design fault which caused horizontal stabiliser screw jack mechanism to fail on a Yak-42 on June 28, 1982, killing 132. 1979: McDonnell Douglas DC-10 First aircraft in service: 1971 Grounding in effect: June 6, 1979 Regulatory action: Emergency Order, suspending the Type Certificate Grounding lifted: July 13, 1979 Reason for grounding: Doubt about the engine pylon assembly not meeting certification criteria following the crash of American Airlines flight 191 . 1954: de Havilland Comet First aircraft in service: 1952 Grounding in effect: 1954 Regulatory action: Airworthiness Certificate was revoked Grounding lifted: commercial flights resumed in 1958 Reason for grounding: Two in-flight break up accidents involving BOAC Flight 781 and South African Airways Flight 201. 1947: Douglas DC-6 First aircraft in service: 1947 Grounding in effect: November 11, 1947 Regulatory action: Voluntary grounding by airlines Grounding lifted: after four months Reason for grounding: Grounding following a series of inflight fires including the fatal crash of United Airlines Flight 608 on Oct 24, 1947 1946: Lockheed Constellation First aircraft in service: 1945 Grounding in effect: July 12, 1946 Regulatory action: Government Order Grounding lifted: August 23, 1946 Reason for grounding: Grounding following fatal in-flight fire accident of TWA Flight 513 on July 11, 1946 https://news.aviation-safety.net/2019/03/14/list-of-global-aircraft-groundings-in- history/ Back to Top How the world rebelled against US on air safety Washington | The muddled response by US regulators and the Trump administration to the safety risks of the Boeing 737 Max is raising fresh doubt about the international airworthiness not only of a jetliner - but also of American leadership. Across the globe, the US Federal Aviation Authority for decades represented the gold standard for air safety - a regulator whose decisions, particularly on American-made aircraft, boosted the confidence of plane travellers in New York, Miami and Los Angeles as well as London, Rio de Janeiro and Beijing. Yet since Sunday's Ethiopian Airlines crash shortly after take-off - the second 737 Max to go down in less than five months - foreign observers have watched Washington's handling of the crisis with mounting alarm. Critics at home and abroad are blaming, at best, erratic decision-making and, at worst, domestic commercial interests, for what many of them decry as a flawed US reaction. "Protection of passengers is what the FAA is there for. Beyond any consideration, it's safety, safety, safety. And traditionally, the FAA has been the best in the world," said Elmar Giemulla, a professor of aviation law at the Berlin University of Technology in Germany. "But now, this has been spoiled." Boeing 737 Max jets grounded at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix on Thursday. Matt York After Sunday's crash, the FAA defended the 737 Max until reversing course on Wednesday, two days after China led a host of nations including Australia in grounding the jetliners. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, fired off rambling tweets about newfangled planes before pre-empting his own regulators and announcing the US decision to finally ground the aircraft based on new evidence that showed similarities between Sunday's crash in Africa and that of another 737 Max crash in Indonesia last October. The outcome, critics say, has undermined American credibility as the pacesetter for global aircraft standards, while potentially ushering in a new era in which international regulators - particularly those in China and Europe - assert growing clout. The global response now stands in contrast to 2013, when foreign aviation authorities largely followed the US lead in dealing with a rash of battery problems that led to the temporary grounding of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This time, the FAA "just looked idiotic", said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector-general of the US Transportation Department. Noting that Ethiopia has decided to send black boxes recovered from Sunday's crash to France rather than the US for analysis, she added, "There is no way this doesn't erode confidence in American aviation regulation and American leadership." Giemulla said the delays in Washington had reinforced fears that the Trump administration was compromising the work of government agencies and experts in deference to the wishes of big companies such as Boeing. "It fits the impression that the world outside the US has of Donald Trump. And the suspicion, of course, is that he has ordered the FAA to deviate from its main task," he said. For some, the events of this week harked back to the international distrust of American financial regulators that surfaced after a toxic meltdown on Wall Street sparked the global financial crisis a decade ago. Yet it also fuelled further concern over what critics call the recklessness of a Trump era driven by edicts via Twitter, impromptu trade wars and the on-again, off-again detente with North Korea. In the aftermath of the crash, global experts marvelled at what they called a sudden "rebellion" in an area Washington once dominated: global aviation. "The Americans may feel, and not without justification, that they have the greatest insight into the Boeing aircraft," said Sandy Morris, an aerospace analyst at Jefferies International in London. "But this is a case when others in the world decided that they wanted to bring the risk of another accident down to zero. What you've seen here is a rebellion." Perhaps nowhere was US leadership on aviation safety being questioned more than in China, the first country to ground the 737 Max - an unprecedented move for a government that long followed cues from American authorities. A top Chinese regulator said his agency made its decision because the FAA and Boeing had not provided China with satisfactory answers about the airplane's software and safety issues after the first 737 Max crash - of Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia that killed all 189 passengers and crew. Li Jian, deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), suggested that the FAA was reluctant to take strong measures against the 737 Max. 'We took the lead' "They have had difficulty making a decision, so we took the lead," Li told reporters on Monday. China's move triggered a cascade of other countries, including Britain, Canada and members of the European Union, to follow suit within 48 hours, effectively isolating the FAA before Trump ordered the planes temporarily grounded as well. Chinese officials probably welcomed the opportunity to establish their leadership credentials at an inflection point in the country's aviation history, analysts said. China's civil aviation market is expected to eclipse that of the US in three years, while its first homegrown passenger jet, the C919 narrow-body model that is designed to compete with the 737 Max, is also expected to take to the skies by the mid-2020s, at least in China. "As China grows, as its aviation grows both as a market and manufacturer, as its products and technology develop, it's obviously the intention of the Chinese government to take on more and more global leadership," said Guo Yufeng, chief executive of the Q&A Consulting firm in Guangzhou. In Europe, several aviation officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the process by which jets are grounded, said they traditionally look to the FAA for guidance on US-built planes. And for days, they stuck to that, opting not to take action in the face of mounting pressure to do so. As recently as Tuesday morning, regulators in some nations in Europe issued statements standing by the US decision to keep the 737 Max flying. New satellite information But within hours, European officials made a different determination, prompted in part by new satellite information suggesting similarities between the crash on Sunday and the Lion Air flight that went down October - evidence the US would not act on until later in the day on Wednesday. "Aviation safety is our number one priority & the EU is taking every step to ensure the safety of passengers," wrote the top EU official in charge of transportation, Violeta Bulc, on Twitter. The outcry of international criticism was not universal - few, for example, in Japan and South Korea appeared to challenge US management of the crisis. But from Canada to China to the Middle East, a social media storm erupted over the erosion of American credibility. "Smart friends of mine have pointed out the reactions to 737 MAX might be inflection point for US hegemony," tweeted Canadian scholar Stephen Saideman. "China says no to MAX, FAA says don't worry, EU closes airspace. So much for US leadership." In Brazil, the controversy surrounding the 737 Max even before Sunday's crash was not so much a rejection of US leadership as an attempt to function in its absence. When the Max models were first introduced, for instance, Brazil ignored an FAA report that did not require additional pilot training for the aircraft's software, instead determining that such training was in fact needed. On March 11, India's civil aviation regulator first announced that any pilot flying the 737 Max must have a minimum of 1000 hours of experience and reserved the right to impose other restrictions based on information received from the FAA and Boeing. But as other countries grounded the planes entirely, India's aviation regulator - which eventually grounded the aircraft Tuesday night - faced a growing chorus of criticism for its own delayed reaction. Critics there said the fact that the FAA was even slower to react undermined its role as a decider in such crises. 'We all live by their rules' "We all live by their rules," said Neelam Mathews, a veteran aviation journalist based in New Delhi. "It's very disappointing the way the FAA reacted." By Wednesday, the last major holdout - besides the United States - was Canada. As other countries grounded the planes, Ottawa stood with Washington. Canadian Transport minister Marc Garneau on Tuesday said the country would keep flying the 737 Max. That changed on Wednesday morning. With domestic pressure growing, Garneau and Canada switched course, just hours ahead of Trump, citing "new evidence" from satellites and other sources. Canadian reporters pressed him on whether the US had pressured Canada to keep the planes in the air. He said it had not. Hours later, when America First had already become America Last, Trump announced the United States was also grounding the planes. "We're doing it almost as a simultaneous thing. Because we were co-ordinating with Canada. We were giving them information, they were giving us information, and we very much work in conjunction with Canada," he said. https://www.afr.com/news/world/north-america/how-the-world-rebelled-against-us-on- air-safety-20190315-p514g1 Back to Top Jet engines get planes in the sky, but software keeps them safe Boeing is working on a fix for a system that may be connected to two aviation disasters. A Boeing 737 MAX 9, one of the two models of 737 MAX aircraft that the FAA grounded. Following two disastrous aviation accidents involving the same type of aircraft, the FAA on Wednesday issued an Emergency Order of Prohibition that grounded the Boeing 737 MAX planes. The equipment the airlines were using in both crashes-Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302-was a 737 MAX 8. While investigations are ongoing, and it is too soon to know if their causes were the same, some see a resemblance between the two disasters, as The New York Times and others have reported. The FAA itself has said it sees "similarities." Even before the crash in Ethiopia, Boeing had been working on a software update for these aircraft. That patch will affect a system on the plane called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. (More on what that system does, below.) While Boeing is not commenting on the software update beyond what they have said publicly, a company representative has confirmed the update will take around 60 minutes to install per aircraft. While the public is used to upgrading the software on their phone and computers with over-the-air updates, the software for a plane has a different protocol. Updates to a plane's code are typically done by a mechanic, says John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and the director of the International Center for Air Transportation at MIT. Of course, the stakes are high for any code that's involved in flying a plane. "This is very critical software, and you really don't want anybody hacking it, so it's a very protected process," he says. Software and hardware fail in different ways The hardware of a plane-the fuselage, wings, engines, and movable surfaces on the outside that give the pilot control-are what passengers naturally notice. But these accidents, and the forthcoming software update from Boeing, have put the importance of the code that runs on the aircraft into a spotlight. "We always like to think that it's the shape of the airplane that makes it work," says William Crossley, a professor at Purdue University's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "It's actually moving to the point where the software is as important as the shape of the airplane." The software allows the aircraft makers to accomplish a lot. For example, Crossley notes, "Military aircraft can be actually statically unstable and [still] fly, because of the computer and the software." In short: don't underestimate the importance of the code running the vehicle. "The software costs on a modern airplane, particularly for military planes, are typically more than 50 percent of the [total] cost," says Hansman, of MIT. "It is a huge part of the development of the airplane." Aviation engineers also must consider hardware and software in different ways when it comes to safety. "Software fails differently from hardware," Hansman says. For example, on the hardware side, the best way to make sure a sensor system is safe is through redundancy, or having multiple sensors that monitor the same or similar variables. Simply put, three sensors to measure something is ideal, he says, because then a plane can utilize a type of voting system if one sensor breaks. If one of the three is giving an aberrant reading, the two that agree with one another are the ones to trust. (In reality, there are more complex ways of doing this than just duplicating a sensor three times-a plane can use data from other places onboard, a process known as "analytical redundancy.") Redundancy comes into play in other ways in airplane hardware, of course, too: Two engines propel even some of the biggest commercial planes, like Boeing 777s, and the craft can still land if one fails. But with software, Hansman says, modern commercial planes do not have two software systems that completely duplicate each other-the coding equivalent of two engines. However, a famous spacecraft did, he notes. "The Space Shuttle had a totally separate software package that was written by an entirely independent team," he says, and points out that the astronauts could switch to the backup system by hitting a button. But that approach is "incredibly expensive," he says. The problem with that strategy is that even two independent software systems could have the same kind of mistake in the same place. But commercial planes don't take a two-independent-systems approach like the Shuttle. Instead, critical software is carefully vetted and certified through a document called DO- 178C. "It's a very arduous process," Hansman says. The Boeing patch With the Boeing update, the patch will affect how the MCAS works, which is a subsystem the aircraft maker put in place to prevent a stall-that can happen when the angle of attack of the wings is too high and the nose is pointed up. If the system malfunctioned and thought the plane was stalling, it could cause the plane's nose to dip down so that the wings lower their angle of attack, even if the pilots didn't want it to- here is great infographic of that system as it pertains to the Lion Air crash. Hansman says that the code has been finished for some time, and that it's designed to address a perceived vulnerability relating to the fact that MCAS is "primarily reliant on the active angle-of-attack sensor," he says. "My understanding, from what the reports are, is that they are integrating other data sources." https://www.popsci.com/boeing-software-update#page-3 Back to Top UK and USA sign safety accord to apply in event of no-deal Brexit UK and US regulators have agreed a new bilateral deal which provides for current safety regulation between the two countries to be kept in place in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The UK Civil Aviation Authority says the agreement - signed with the UK Department for Transportation and the US Federal Aviation Administration - is intended to ensure that co-operation between the two countries will "remain the same", even if a no-deal Brexit means that the UK is no longer able to remain a member of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). There would be "no change" to maintenance oversight, with the UK and USA committed to mutual recognition of approvals, says the CAA. Products, parts and appliances manufactured by UK and US companies will continue to be accepted in both countries. The CAA will permit the operation by UK companies of aircraft designed in the USA and previously validated by EASA. Design-validation processes will be "similar" to those implemented under the EU-US bilateral air services agreement, says the UK regulator. The exception is that an application will need to be made to the CAA for FAA validation of designs produced in the UK. The CAA says the new agreement - which is part of its no-deal contingency planning - gives assurances to airlines and aerospace companies in both countries that transatlantic trade would in a no-deal scenario continue "with minimal change" to the current oversight regime. Similar bilateral safety arrangements with aviation authorities in Canada and Brazil are being finalised, it adds. https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/uk-and-usa-sign-safety-accord-to-apply-in- event-of-n-456652/ Back to Top FAA Moving To Make ASAP More Flexible The FAA is updating the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) conducted in concert with the Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) to encourage even greater participation of Part 135 and 91 operators, said Randy McDonald, the ASAP program manager for the FAA's Air Carrier Training System and Voluntary Safety Programs branch. The program provides a mechanism for voluntarily reporting and mitigating safety issues in a "non- threatening" environment. These changes are designed to make the partnership agreements less restrictive for participants, McDonald told attendees at this week's Air Charter Safety Foundation meeting. Currently, companies must sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the FAA to participate, but this will change to a less restrictive partnership agreement. He characterized the current MoU as a nine- to 10-page document "filled with dos and don'ts." This will now be streamlined to a smaller document that focuses on about a handful of aspects of the partnership: roles and responsibilities, how it will function, how decisions will be made, guidance on managing data, and how the partnership could be terminated. In addition, the FAA is committing to remove administration actions-meaning no letters of warning or correction-as long as a report is accepted into the program. He stressed that employees must be "incentivized" to come forward, but disciplinary actions only serve to chill such activity. Other changes ahead include the timeliness of the ASAP reports and activities, he said, noting that should be left up to the company on what works best rather than a predetermined timeline. The changes come as the ACSF-administered programs have now collectively generated 4,000 reports, 90 percent of them from a sole source. https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2019-03-14/faa-moving- make-asap-more-flexible Back to Top NTSB: Unstabilized Approach Caused Teterboro Crash The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that the fatal crash of a Learjet 35A near New Jersey's Teterboro Airport (TEB) on May 15, 2017, was caused by the pilot's "attempt to salvage an unstabilized visual approach." According to the NTSB, the aircraft stalled while conducting a circle-to-land maneuver and crashed into a commercial building and parking lot about 0.5 NM south of the runway threshold. As previously reported on AVweb, the pilot-in-command and second-in-command were the only people onboard the aircraft, which was operated by Trans-Pacific Air Charter. Both were killed in the accident. No one on the ground was injured. While the flight crew was properly certified, the NTSB found that the second-in- command was flying the aircraft at the time of the accident in spite of being prohibited by company policy from doing so based on his level of experience. The report (PDF) also noted that "the pilots' performance on the accident flight included deficiencies that were noted during their initial Trans-Pacific Jets training, but the company did not monitor the pilots' subsequent performance to identify and correct any continued deficiencies." Additional contributing factors included incomplete and inadequate preflight planning, the flight crew's lack of an approach briefing, Trans-Pacific's lack of safety programs "that would have enabled the company to identify and correct patterns of poor performance and procedural noncompliance," and ineffective FAA Safety Assurance System procedures "which failed to identify these company oversight deficiencies." Based on the investigation, the board is recommending that the FAA require programs, additional oversight and corrective training for flight crew members with performance deficiencies or failures during training. It has also asked that guidance be developed for Part 135 operators on creating and implementing effective crew resource management training programs. Finally, the NTSB is calling for a review of the Learjet operators' manuals to determine whether they contain manufacturer-recommended approach speed wind additives. In addition to these safety recommendations, the NTSB also restated six previous recommendations regarding leadership training for upgrading captains, installation of flight data recorders and use of flight data monitoring programs for Part 135 operators, establishing safety management systems for Part 135 operators, and implementing procedures to identify Part 135 operators whose pilots do not comply with standard operating procedures. https://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/NTSB-Unstabilized-Approach-Caused- Teterboro-Crash-232413-1.html Back to Top India - the 'unlikely' poster girl of gender equality in aviation India soars above other countries when it comes to hiring women pilots, despite the country's deeply entrenched patriarchal mindset. What is inspiring Indian women to break barriers and earn their wings? Indian female pilots of Air India, the country's state owned carrier. It's not very often one hears about India trailblazing on issues of gender equality. On the contrary, the country regularly makes headlines for all the wrong reasons when it comes to women: high rape statistics, dowry deaths, and pervasive discrimination. So when data collated by the International Society of Women Airline Pilots showed that India had the highest proportion of female commercial pilots in the world at 12 percent - twice as high as in most Western countries and way above the global average of 5 percent - many were left astonished. International media ran stories calling India a 'surprise' leader on the list. Some even called on their readers to guess which country hired most female pilots, as if they anticipated the readers' incredulity. For Indians, while the news was a welcome break from incessant incidents of violence against women, it wasn't exactly a bolt from the blue. "It doesn't surprise me," Kshamta Bajpai, a veteran female Air India pilot, told DW. "The urban India has stopped differentiating between what a girl should pursue as a career and what a boy should do," said Bajpai, who holds the world record for leading the longest flight with an all-female crew. An infographic showing the proportion of female pilots in Indian airlines Booming sector India is the world's fastest-growing aviation market as the airlines tap into rising demand from the country's ever-growing middle class. With domestic air traffic growing in double digits there is an increasing demand for pilots. Filling the gap are hundreds of women, who are increasingly taking a liking to the male- dominated profession, which promises them a safer workplace, maternity benefits and indeed, a high - and equal - wage. "Awareness has risen about this being an alternate occupation," Priti Kohal, a captain with Indian carrier Jet Airways, told DW. "Women typically don't want to test boundaries and in this profession you are given an SOP (standard operating procedure) and you have to adhere to it." Women are filling nearly a quarter of seats in some of the country's prestigious flying schools - a sign that the number of female pilots is only headed north from here. Women-friendly incentives Indian airlines are introducing policies not only to attract more and more women to the cockpit but also to retain them. Indigo, the country's largest carrier by market share, has the highest proportion of female pilots among the world's major airlines at 13 percent. The airline has seen the number of female pilots rise to 330 - some of them managers - from 80 in the last five years. "This statistic is a testament to the Indian aviation industry being welcoming and creating a level playing field for women," Sakshi Batra, Indigo's spokeswoman, told DW. The airline runs crèches for its employees and offers pregnant pilots on break from flying duties office roles and an allowance to compensate them for any loss in income. "This enables women pilots to constructively stay engaged with the profession in spite of having to take a break from their flying duties," Batra said. At Jet Airways, around 13 percent of the pilots are women - a figure that the company expects to "only continue to grow over the coming years." "At Jet, there were no biases. The recruitment process was tough and robust," said Kohal, who has been with the airline for more than two decades. "But once in we had to prove that we were doubly good," she says, adding that she still has to prove herself even after all these years in the cockpit. Equal pay Pilots in India are paid an annual starting salary, including flying allowances, of between 1.7 million rupees ($25,000, €22,000) and 3.3 million rupees depending on the airline and the type of aircraft. That's well above the average starting salary for engineers and managers. Flying is one of the few professions in India where there is no pay discrimination based on gender. Pilots get paid on the basis of seniority and the number of miles under their belts. Getting it right Kohal feels there is something that makes the profession a perfect match for women: "the urge to get it right." "All women have this innate desire. Whether it's cooking, dressing up, being a good wife or a good mother, women just want to get it right," she said. "And as a pilot you need to get it right all the time." Bajpai agrees. "Men are more hard-wired to do risky things and women are not," she said. "Women are very procedural, meticulous and focused." Air India pilot Kshamta Bajpai (C) led an all-women crew flight all around the world in 2017 The West trails The oft-repeated notion that girls dislike machines and hence can't become pilots, the lack of role models and the pressure to have children are some reasons often given for the skewed representation of women in the cockpit globally. In the US - the world's largest aviation market - a little over 4 percent of the pilots are women. Kathy McCullough, a retired Boeing 747 captain from US, feels the US carriers, could learn from Indian airlines, which are increasingly accommodating pilots balancing new motherhood. "My pilot friends in India tell me they all have families," McCullough told DW. "But the US airlines don't make any adjustments for new mothers. This is not a job where a nursing mother can return to work just six weeks after giving birth." "Old-school men want to maintain the status quo. Most of the men in power in the US aviation sector are from the military and they want to keep it a boys' club," she said. German flagship carrier Lufthansa Airline has 7 percent female pilots. The airline says having more women in the cockpit is one of its central human resource goals. "However, fewer women than men still apply to become pilots," Anne Schafmeister, a Lufthansa spokeswoman, told DW. The company is running several social media campaigns to attract more female applicants. The prospects seem promising: 15 percent of the prospective pilots in the current batch at the European Flight Academy, which trains pilots for all Lufthansa Group airlines, are female. https://www.dw.com/en/india-the-unlikely-poster-girl-of-gender-equality-in-aviation/a- 47919822 Back to Top Passengers rage over disruptions at embattled Jet Airways NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's embattled Jet Airways put photographs of smiling women employees on social media last week for Women's Day, using the tagline "Standing tall; touching the skies" but few passengers reacted cheerfully. A Jet Airways Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircarft is seen parked inside a hanger during its induction ceremony at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International airport in Mumbai, June 28, 2018. REUTERS/Abhirup Roy/Files "'Touching the skies' is a good joke at a time when your flights are getting grounded," said a respondent on Twitter, while others expressed anger and dismay at cancellations, delays in refunds and long response times to telephone calls. India's second-largest carrier, grappling with debt of more than $1 billion, Jet has delayed payments to banks, lessors, vendors and staff. Lessors have grounded more than three dozen planes, forcing hundreds of flights to be cancelled. Rising customer frustration could bring further disruption for the 25-year-old airline, as some flyers backed a boycott, while others blamed cancellations for ruining their plans. "We had to worry about rebooking flights during our wedding, when there is already so much to do," said Siddhant Agarwal, a 32-year-old businessman whose flight home from his honeymoon was abruptly cancelled just days before his marriage. Agarwal, who is based in the capital, New Delhi, had to pay nearly twice as much for new tickets, he said. "They did not even offer an apology, which is disappointing and unprofessional." The airline, partly owned by Etihad Airways, did not respond to a request from Reuters for comment. PLANES GROUNDED Amid talks for a bailout led by state-run banks, lessors have forced the airline to ground at least 37 planes over non-payment of dues and some have also threatened repossession. It had 556 flights on average in January, down from 641 a year earlier, data from the aviation regulator showed. Jet has planned cancellations of more than 600 flights in March, said one source with direct knowledge of the matter. Monday's tally of about 330 flights compared with a daily average of nearly 650 in March 2018, a second source said, adding that short notice about grounded planes triggered many unplanned cancellations. "The bigger worry is if people stop future bookings, because that will affect cash flows," said the source, adding that cancellations in February and March outstripped prior months. Jet Airways' market share shrank to 14.3 percent in 2018 from 17.2 percent a year earlier, even as India's aviation market grew nearly a fifth. Some of the hundreds of aggrieved passengers who posted on the airline's Facebook page and Twitter told of delays on the way to wedding and festival celebrations, and several uploaded screenshots showing telephone wait times longer than an hour for a response from the customer call centre. After a last-minute cancellation, comedian Kenny Sebastian expressed outrage on Twitter, warning his 1.74 million followers to avoid the airline. "Best part is they made it sound like it was the passengers' fault," he said this week. https://in.reuters.com/article/jet-airways-debt-passengers/passengers-rage-over- disruptions-at-embattled-jet-airways-idINKCN1QW0QM Back to Top NASA'S SUPERSIZE SPACE LAUNCH SYSTEM MIGHT BE DOOMED The SLS was supposed to be the biggest rocket in the world. Now NASA's 'rocket to nowhere' may have lost its last reason for being.TYLER MARTIN/NASA IT'S NO SECRET that NASA's Space Launch System is struggling to meet its schedule. The multibillion-dollar launcher is expected to ferry humans and cargo into deep space. The problem is, the agency has vocally committed to sending an American craft to the moon next year. NASA's new lunar taxi, called Orion, is almost ready to go. But its ride- the big and bloated SLS-is still years from completion. On Wednesday morning, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine appeared before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation to discuss America's leadership in space. During his testimony, he revealed an unexpected twist. For the first time, Bridenstine said that the agency would consider commercial rockets to get its crew capsule off the ground. For NASA, travel to deep space would no longer be SLS or bust. "We are now understanding better how difficult this project is," he explained. Before the retirement of NASA's storied space shuttle program, the agency began laying out its vision for its next-generation rocket. In 2011, development began on SLS, which it hoped would become the biggest rocket in the world. But year after year, as it missed its targets and blew through its budgets, the agency faced criticism for the project's shortcomings. Dubbed the rocket to nowhere by its critics, SLS was at times derided as more of an agencywide jobs program than a real ride to space. That is until 2017, when the rocket received a new goal: ferry astronauts to the moon. Its inaugural launch was originally set for 2018, but that date soon slipped to 2019, then 2020, and now officials aren't even sure that timeframe is feasible. But Bridenstine told Congress that he wants NASA to hit its deadlines going forward. "I want to be really clear," he said. "I think we as an agency need to stick to our commitment. If we tell you, and others, that we're going to launch in June of 2020 around the moon, I think we should launch around the moon in June of 2020." To meet those deadlines, the administrator acknowledged that all options-including commercial rockets-should be considered. Bridenstine's comments were unexpected; for nearly a decade now NASA has supported an SLS-only approach to sending its astronauts into deep space. (The agency had originally limited its commercial partners to sending crews no farther than low earth orbit and back.) But with an extremely tight timeline and multiple technical [delays],(https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-19-001.pdf) it's now abundantly clear that SLS will almost certainly not be ready to fly in 2020. Over the years, Orion's destination changed from Mars to the moon, and even to the surface of an asteroid. But one thing was certain: On Orion's first foray beyond Earth, a crewless capsule would complete a six-day circuit of the moon; that's the mission Bridenstine now says could launch atop a commercial rocket. Dubbed Exploration Mission 1 (or EM-1), it had also been intended as SLS's maiden voyage. The hitch is that Orion is too heavy for any commercial vehicle now in use to deposit it in lunar orbit. Bridenstine acknowledged this in his testimony: "The challenge is we don't have a rocket right now that can launch Orion and the European Service Module around the moon." (Built by the European Space Agency, the service module will provide power to Orion during flight.) "That's what the SLS is all about," he added. Instead, Bridenstine proposed that the mission could be done in phases. First, one rocket would send Orion and the European Service Module into orbit around Earth; a second rocket would launch an upper stage separately. That upper-stage rocket would have to meet up with the duo in orbit and boost them to the moon. But this, too, is easier said than done, as the docking technology required to pull it off doesn't exist yet. "Between now and June of 2020, we would have to make that a reality," Bridenstine said to that point. But Bridenstine did not mention which rockets would carry out such a mission. Currently, only two vehicles can haul large amounts of cargo to space: SpaceX's Falcon Heavy and United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy. The Falcon Heavy, which debuted last year, has so far only carried a Tesla to orbit, while the Delta IV Heavy has carried a plethora of payloads, including a stripped-down version of the Orion spacecraft back in 2014. (The heavy-lift rocket launched the capsule on a four-hour trip around Earth on an experimental flight known as Exploration Flight Test-1.) Switching to a commercial rocket for EM-1 would deliver a major blow to the SLS program, which has been criticized for is massive budget-an estimated $14 billion-and snail-speed development. But with the debut of the Falcon Heavy, its reason for being has become less and less clear. (A Falcon Heavy can deliver nearly 141,000 pounds to low earth orbit, while a Delta IV can carry 62,540 pounds and SLS a theoretical 209,000 pounds.) The big takeaway: If NASA can send Orion to space on the backs of private rockets, it's likely that future crewed missions, which were slated for SLS, can as well. (Bridenstine told Congress that the agency will be looking into the commercial possibility as soon as possible.) In a speech on Monday, the administrator explained that other elements of the planned Lunar Gateway-which is essentially a mini space station orbiting the moon- may also launch on commercial rockets. But this isn't the only blow to SLS this week. On Monday, the president released his budget request for 2020. In it, Trump proposed cuts that would shrink NASA's overall budget by 2 percent, or $2.1 billion. The cuts include halting development on a second, more powerful version of SLS; a request that strips the rocket of its biggest asset: lift capacity. However, Bridenstine stressed that the SLS is still needed for the future of the Orion program and NASA's deep space ambitions. "The SLS, the largest rocket that's ever been built in American history, is a critical piece of what the United States of America needs to build," he said in front of a crowd of NASA employees at Kennedy Space Center on Monday. "We need the SLS, and we need the Orion crew capsule." The administration also expressed that NASA's upcoming mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, which is slated for 2023, should launch on a commercial rocket-a reversal of a 2015 Congressional mandate that said it must fly on SLS. The budget proposal states that using a commercial rocket would save NASA over $700 million, allowing the agency to fund multiple new activities. (The Obama administration made the same proposal but was denied by Congress.) With these proposals stripping away much of SLS's capabilities, the heavy lifter is left with only one mission: launching Orion directly to lunar orbit. But if NASA can launch the necessary Gateway components, including Orion, on commercial rockets, the case for SLS is getting increasingly threadbare. https://www.wired.com/story/nasas-super-sized-space-launch-system-might-be- doomed/ Back to Top GRADUATE RESEARCH SURVEY Participants for a 5-minute survey regarding hypoxia and high altitude chamber training are being sought for a study assessing hypoxia perceptions and experiences related to hypoxia awareness training. To be eligible for participation, you must have previously completed high altitude chamber training. All responses are anonymous and no identifying information will be collected. The study is being conducted by Kasey Stevenson, a graduate student studying Aviation Management and Human Factors at Arizona State University. Kasey's research is being conducted at the Del E. Webb High Altitude Chamber; previously the Williams Air Force Base High Altitude Chamber. The research is being completed with the goal of improving hypoxia awareness and training methods, in an effort to reduce hypoxia- related incidents and accidents. The survey can be accessed at: https://asu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ealbH4xwJRL8P2J Back to Top Back to Top Back to Top Call for Papers - ISASI 2019 *** Deadline March 18th *** Future Safety: has the past become irrelevant? The Hague Marriott Hotel & World Forum The Hague September 3 - 5, 2019 Suggested topics for presentations to support the theme may include: * Recent accidents/incidents investigations of particular interest. * Novel investigation techniques for aircraft, helicopter and drone accidents. * Human factors investigation methods, techniques and future developments. * Data investigation methods, techniques and future developments. * Airport investigation methods, techniques and future developments. * Investigator selection, training and future needs. * Lessons learned and potential future developments in recommendations. Presentations must be in English and should be 25 minutes long. There will be an additional 5 minutes for questions at the end of each presentation. If you who would like to submit an abstract, please download and use the ISASI 2019 abstract template, which can be found at: www.ISASI2019.org. Important dates: March 18, 2019 - Last date for receipt of abstracts May 8, 2019 - Presenters informed of acceptance May 22, 2019 - The 2018 Seminar Technical Program will be published July 9, 2019 - Last date for receipt of completed paper and PowerPoint presentations. For questions related to the program: program@isasi2019.org Curt Lewis