Flight Safety Information - January 11, 2024 No. 009 In This Issue : Incident: Transavia A21N at Faro on Jan 9th 2024, bird strike : Incident: Finnair A321 at Helsinki on Jan 8th 2024, bleed air fault : Southwest airplane hits jet bridge due to high winds at Portland Jetport : Alaska flight incident reveals another feature Boeing didn’t inform pilots about : The Truth About Airplane Safety : Passenger opens emergency door and falls onto tarmac at Canadian airport : https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/japan-airlines-a350-wreckage-safety-exhibit : Cargo airline Amerijet in distress sale, terminates 6 aircraft leases : 777 Partners sued by aircraft lessors over missed Flair airline payments : Spirit Airlines Sells 25 Aircraft To Reduce Debt : CALENDAR OF EVENTS Incident: Transavia A21N at Faro on Jan 9th 2024, bird strike A Transavia Airbus A321-200N, registration PH-YHZ performing flight HV-5355 from Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Faro (Portugal), was on approach to Faro's runway 28 when a bird impacted the nose of the aircraft. The aircraft continued for a safe landing on runway 28. The aircraft was unable to depart for the return flight due to a dented radome and is still on the ground in Faro about 26 hours after landing. https://www.avherald.com/h?article=51383416&opt=0 Incident: Finnair A321 at Helsinki on Jan 8th 2024, bleed air fault A Finnair Airbus A321-200, registration OH-LZH performing flight AY-1723 from Helsinki (Finland) to Las Palmas,CI (Spain), was climbing out of Helsinki's runway 22R when the crew stopped the climb at about 7000 feet due to abnormal bleed air indications for both engines (V2533). The aircraft returned to Helsinki for a safe landing on runway 22L about 70 minutes after departure. A replacement A321-200 registration OH-LZL reached Las Palmas with a delay of about 12.5 hours. The occurrence aircraft remained on the ground for about 37 hours before returning to service. https://www.avherald.com/h?article=51382463&opt=0 Southwest airplane hits jet bridge due to high winds at Portland Jetport • Officials say high winds pushed a parked Southwest airplane into a jet bridge at the Portland Jetport on Wednesday. PORTLAND (WGME) -- Officials say high winds pushed a parked Southwest airplane into a jet bridge at the Portland Jetport on Wednesday. Jetport officials say the incident happened around 4:35 a.m. Jetport officials a parked Southwest Airlines Boeing 737MAX8 aircraft was pushed into a jet bridge. Officials say high winds pushed a parked Southwest airplane into a jet bridge at the Portland Jetport on Wednesday. (Portland Jetport) There were no passengers or crew on the aircraft at the time. The leading edge of the left wing impacted the jet bridge. Southwest is sending an additional aircraft to the Portland Jetport to accommodate passengers. https://wgme.com/news/local/southwest-airplane-hits-jet-bridge-due-to-high-winds-at-portland-jetport-maine-storm-rain-snow Alaska flight incident reveals another feature Boeing didn’t inform pilots about Federal investigators said that Boeing didn’t make pilots aware that when a plane rapidly depressurizes, the cockpit door will fly open. The cockpit door aboard last week’s troubled Alaska Airlines flight surprised the flight crew by swinging open seconds after the fuselage suffered a potentially catastrophic rupture, according to the chair of the federal agency investigating the incident. National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said during a news briefing Monday that the cockpit doors flew open immediately after the paneled-over exit door popped off of the fuselage. A flight attendant had to try three times to get it to close again, Homendy said. “The cockpit doors flew open immediately and at this point the flight attendant in the forward portion of the aircraft was standing. The cockpit door flew open, hit the lavatory door,” Homendy said. “The lavatory door got stuck. She did attempt to shut the door three times, it eventually shut but it did blow open during the explosive decompression.” Homendy’s revelation echoes criticism heaped on Boeing during earlier probes of another in the 737 MAX line of planes, the MAX 8, in which pilots said they were not properly trained on a flight control system on board the plane that was implicated in two deadly crashes overseas. In 2020, pilots were required to undergo new simulator training and training for erroneous angle of attack sensor malfunctions as part of the plan to put the 737 MAX back into service. “It’s another round of Boeing not telling pilots about an airplane detail, which erodes the trust relationship and more importantly it narrows the safety margin.” said Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, which represents pilots from American Airlines. Homendy said that Boeing would make changes to its MAX 9 manual to make clear that the doors are designed to open. In June, the FAA announced it will require a secondary barrier between the passenger cabin and cockpit of new commercial planes that are manufactured starting in the summer of 2025. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/09/alaska-flight-incident-boeing-pilots-cockpit-00134515 The Truth About Airplane Safety It was only when I attempted to make small talk with my visibly squirming seatmate on a Raleigh-Durham to New York flight that I realized it was me causing that look of horror on his face, rather than the slight turbulence we had been experiencing since takeoff. A friendly chat, I had thought, might help distract him from flight anxiety. But then I noticed his eyes — wide with fear — were fixed on my computer screen, which displayed an investigative report on an airplane crash I had been reading. I slammed the laptop shut, stammered an apology and mumbled about how these detailed crash reports were, in fact, highly comforting, and it had just slipped my mind where I was, and it hadn’t been my intention to spread worry … Well, never mind. But it’s true. A National Transportation Safety Board investigation report reads like a how-to book for pulling off miracles and achieving seemingly incredible levels of safety. These reports renew one’s faith in what humanity can achieve if we apply our brainpower and resources to it. But they also remind us that, much like liberty, these exceptional levels of commercial airline safety require eternal vigilance against the usual foes: greed, negligence, failure to adapt, complacency, revolving doors at regulatory agencies and so on. Someday, I’ll have two more reports to read (one by the Japan Transport Safety Board) from two incidents in just one week — but both events are already full of lessons. On Jan. 2, a Japanese Coast Guard plane and an arriving Japan Airlines Airbus A350 collided. The Airbus turned into a fireball as it sped down the runway before stopping about half a mile away. Remarkably, all 379 people aboard the Airbus got out safely before the entire plane was engulfed in flames and reduced to a smoldering wreck. (Five of the six people on the coast guard plane died.) And then on Friday, a plug on one of the unused emergency exit doors on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 plane blew out a few minutes after takeoff, causing the plane to undergo rapid depressurization. Passengers told news outlets that the teenager sitting near the hole had his shirt torn off by the force of the wind while his mother clung to him. The plane turned around and landed safely in Portland, Ore., and no serious injuries have been reported. Both incidents could have been much worse. And that everyone on both airliners walked away is, indeed, a miracle — but not the kind most people think about. They’re miracles of regulation, training, expertise, effort and constant improvement of infrastructure, as well as the professionalism and heroism of the crew. But these brave and professional men and women were standing on the shoulders of giants: competent bureaucrats; forensic investigators dispatched to accident sites; large binders (nowadays digital) with hundreds and hundreds of pages of meticulously collected details of every aspect of accidents and near misses; constant training and retraining not just of the pilots but also the cabin, ground, traffic control and maintenance crews; and a determined ethos that if something has gone wrong, the reason will be identified and fixed. Consider the Japan Airlines evacuation. Commercial airliners carry a lot of combustible fuel, and quick evacuations are essential to avoid trapping everyone in a fireball if something goes wrong. Fairly little is left to chance. Some of this is visible to us passengers and even a little annoying. But it’s actually a federal law that all tray tables must be put up and seats made upright during takeoff and landing. While accidents are really rare, statistically, takeoffs and landings are the most dangerous stages of flight, so you don’t want anything preventing passengers from moving quickly. That’s why large items have to be put away, as well: to clear the potential evacuation path. As images of the passengers in Japan evacuating without reaching for their luggage show, it might be good if more airlines followed Japan Airlines’ lead and used its safety videos for explaining the logic behind the rules — as its own does for why luggage must be left behind in an emergency. Still, the evacuation took longer than the 90 seconds that Airbus had to demonstrate as possible to get certified. And on that day, the obstacles were many. Only three of the eight emergency exits were usable, and the plane was filling with smoke. The plane had tilted forward because the nose landing gear had collapsed, the steep angle hindering passengers’ progress. The intercoms were inoperable, the crew reduced to using megaphones to direct passengers. And yet the crew evacuated all the passengers. The passengers had other allies, too: These days, planes are designed to slow fires’ spread — many such improvements, including seats that can withstand impacts and fire-retardant designs and materials, are painful lessons learned from the accidents of the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, the plane resisted the worst effects of the flames much longer than 90 seconds, until everyone was out. The Boeing 737 Max line holds other lessons. After two eerily similar back-to-back crashes in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people total, the planes were grounded. At first, some rushed to blame inexperienced pilots or software gone awry. But the world soon learned that the real problem had been corporate greed that had taken too many shortcuts while the regulators hadn’t managed to resist the onslaught. On the surface, there is little reason to assume the failure of the exit door plug on the Alaska Airlines flight is related to the previous crashes. The plane is very new, about eight weeks in service, and the incident happened at relatively low altitude, which suggests a manufacturing and assembly problem or inadequate oversight — in which case, corporate culture might come under scrutiny again. For the actual facts, though, we will await that safety board report. But what happened after the door fell out is textbook: The pilot declared an emergency, the air traffic control quickly arranged a clear runway, the plane circled right back and landed in just about 15 minutes. We’ve since learned all this may not have been a complete surprise. The N.T.S.B. told reporters that a pressurization warning light in this plane had come on three times before, at least once in flight, during its short time in service. The maintenance crews had checked and cleared the light, but Alaska Airlines thankfully restricted the plane to flying over land so it could return rapidly to an airport if it came on again. Whew. If the door had blown out at high altitude and over the ocean we may not have had the same happy ending. And it wasn’t all smooth sailing back to the airport. The cockpit door flew open from the depressurization, jamming against a bathroom door, and one pilot lost her headset. Still, you’d hardly know all that from listening to the communication between the pilots and the ground: just composed, competent professionalism on the way back to the gate. The plane’s quick return to the airport, while much less dramatic, has similarities to the “Miracle on the Hudson” 15 years ago next Monday, when the now famed Captain Sully landed a plane on the Hudson River after losing its engines to a bird strike, saving everyone aboard. It’s what pilots train for, and it shows. Listening to calm, collected communication between Capt. Chesley Sullenberger and the control tower during the four short minutes from the loss of all engine power to ditching in the Hudson, one might not realize the magnitude of what was about to happen: that he was about to attempt to land a cylindrical object weighing roughly 150,000 pounds in a narrow waterway next to one of the world’s largest cities. But these kinds of emergencies are what pilots train for. “One way of looking at this might be that, for 42 years, I’ve been making small regular deposits in this bank of experience: education and training,” Mr. Sullenberger told Katie Couric shortly after the incident. “And on Jan. 15, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.” Even if the pilot is at fault, N.T.S.B. investigations are carried out as “no blame” processes — the goal is to identify the problem in order to make errors less likely in the future. This encourages people to be frank, in stark contrast with liability-driven cultures that encourage people to hide their errors and the authorities to seek scapegoats rather than solutions. As the facts come in, there will be more questions as to what went wrong — United Airlines and Alaska Airlines have both found loose bolts on the grounded Boeing airliners. That coast guard plane in Japan was in the wrong place. But progress comes by acknowledging these failures and working to make them even less likely in the future. Those N.T.S.B. investigation reports that I cherish reading represent just that kind of accumulation. Year by year, investigation by investigation, incident by incident, commercial flying has become remarkably safe despite the complexity of operation with so many moving parts at a global scale: humans, software, weather and metal objects flying through the sky. Most of the time, it works so well that we don’t notice it — which is perhaps the true miracle of infrastructure that works well: It becomes invisible. Sometimes, it’s good to make visible the many invisible people who keep us safe. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/opinion/alaska-airlines-safety.html Passenger opens emergency door and falls onto tarmac at Canadian airport A passenger has been injured after they boarded an Air Canada plane and immediately opened an emergency door before falling 6 metres onto the tarmac. The incident on Flight AC056 to Dubai unfolded as the Boeing 777 was at the gate at Toronto Pearson International Airport. Air Canada said in a statement that the passenger had “boarded the aircraft normally” but instead of taking their seat, immediately went to open the door. The extent of their injuries and the circumstances behind the incident have not been revealed as yet. “We can confirm all of our approved boarding and cabin operating procedures were followed,” Air Canada said in a statement to Global News. The flight with more than 300 passengers eventually left six hours later. Air Canada said in a statement that the passenger had “boarded the aircraft normally” (file photo). Falling out of parked planes can cause serious injuries. In 2020, a flight attendant in Finland was badly hurt after he fell nearly four metres out of the back door. A Finnair spokesperson called it a "rare and very unfortunate event". In 2018, a crew member with Air India was badly injured after falling out of a parked plane in Mumbai. A year before, a China Eastern Airlines attendant fell nearly three metres onto the tarmac at Shenzhen Bao'an Airport after trying to close the back door before take-off. Also in China, a crew member was at the back of the plane preparing food when she lost her footing and fell out of the door. The woman underwent surgery after suffering broken bones. https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/travel-troubles/133545819/passenger-opens-emergency-door-and-falls-onto-tarmac-at-canadian-airport Japan Airlines plans to recover A350 wreckage for aviation safety exhibition Japan Airlines (JAL) is said to be considering the preservation of the wreckage of the Airbus A350-900 that was involved in an accident at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport (HND) on January 2, 2024. The aircraft collided with a Japan Coast Guard aircraft that had positioned itself on the runway on which the larger plane was landing. The cause of the accident which killed four people on board the Coast Guard plane remains under investigation. As reported by The Straits Times, JAL has begun considering preserving the remains of its aircraft involved in the accident, which has since been removed from the side of runway 16L/34R which has reopened. The runway is one of four at the busy international airport. On January 5, 2024, three days following the accident, investigators from Japan’s Transport Safety Board (JTSB) began working their way through the wreckage before excavators removed the remains of the A350 and relocated it to a secure JAL hangar located elsewhere on the airfield for further inspection, following a maintenance order issued by the JTSB. JAL is considering exhibiting the remains for both company employees and also the general public to convey lessons learned from the incident to improve aviation safety overall. While little remains of the fuselage of the JAL aircraft which caught fire upon landing following the collision, parts of the aircraft’s wings, vertical stabilizer, and engines remain. JAL considers the wreckage of its A350 jet to be “a valuable object in conveying the lessons of air safety”, and will consult with the Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism Ministry of Japan, the engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce, and other stakeholders regarding the preservation of the remains, while also monitoring the progress of the investigation into the accident. The company’s employee training facility, known as the JAL Safety Promotion Center, displays various articles and exhibits that are related to aviation safety matters. One such display preserves the remains of part of the fuselage from the JAL Boeing 747SR that was involved in an accident in August 1985 when the aircraft suffered an explosive decompression and broke apart mid-air, killing all 520 passengers and crew onboard. The aircraft, operating a domestic flight from Haneda Airport to Osaka (ITM), had been damaged during a landing accident seven years earlier. The subsequent repairs were inadequately carried out, causing the aircraft to suffer a catastrophic structural failure on its way to Osaka several years later. The exhibit also features other parts of the aircraft remains as well as various passenger belongings that were recovered from the crash site scene. The JAL Safety Promotion Center is open to the public five days per week (Monday to Friday) and offers guided tours of the exhibits. Advanced reservations are required. https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/japan-airlines-a350-wreckage-safety-exhibit Cargo airline Amerijet in distress sale, terminates 6 aircraft leases Restructuring includes change in control, layoffs Amerijet, a midtier cargo airline based in Miami, said Wednesday it is returning six freighters to lessors, laying off nonpilot personnel and securing $55 million in capital from existing lenders as part of a restructuring aimed at stabilizing faltering finances and operations. The company said it will hand back six Boeing 757 freighters to its lessors and defer agreements to add additional Boeing 767 cargo jets to improve cash flow. Three of the freighters came from aviation service provider AerSale. The announcement provided few details, but an industry source with knowledge of the situation said the arrangement involved a distress sale by ZS Fund to another private equity company. The new ownership forced the board of directors to resign and has named new members, according to the source. The circumstances of the transaction suggest that the banks involved may also have received an ownership position in exchange for the capital. Amerijet officials did not respond to inquiries by publication time. Amerijet has struggled for the past year under a severe downturn in airfreight volumes that have hit the company harder than most. The company was caught by falling revenues at the same time it was expanding on expectations that a surge in business from the pandemic would continue. FreightWaves reported in early December that the company was struggling financially. The inability to utilize some aircraft due to weak demand, maintenance issues with 757 freighters, an overly long certification process for 757 converted freighters that sat idle for months, and the erosion of key flying business from DHL Express and the U.S. Postal Service combined to take their toll on the bottom line. Amerijet’s fleet had grown to 22 aircraft a year ago, but seven of them were out of action in recent months. The company, which has fewer than 1,000 employees, underwent two small rounds of layoffs last year. “We are pleased that we were able to complete this restructuring with the support of our investors and lessors. … These strategic actions have strengthened the company’s financial foundation, ensuring its scheduled service, and contract flights will continue to operate as usual,” said CEO Joe Mozzali in the announcement. Mozzali took the helm at Amerijet in early October after then-CEO Tim Strauss was ousted by the board. Ameijet did not say how many employees it was terminating, but another Miami-based source said more than 50 workers were given notice Wednesday. The airline operates three Boeing 767s for Maersk Air Cargo between Asia and the U.S. Maersk owns the aircraft and uses Amerijet to fly them. Meanwhile, Amerijet said it has secured a new contract operating four weekly flights between Bogota, Colombia, and Miami as well a new multiyear contract transporting a global integrator’s express and cargo volumes in Central America and the Caribbean. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/cargo-airline-amerijet-in-distress-sale-terminates-6-aircraft-leases 777 Partners sued by aircraft lessors over missed Flair airline payments Jan 10 (Reuters) - Three aircraft lessors have sued a U.S.-based minority investor in Flair Airlines for $30 million after the Canadian budget carrier allegedly missed lease payments for four jets, their filing in a London court showed. Ireland-based Corvus Lights Aviation, MAM Aircraft Leasing 4 and Columba Lights Aviation filed the suit against 777 Partners and its sister company 600 Partners on Dec. 12, which was made public later. 777 Partners provided guarantees for each of the four leases involving a Boeing (BA.N) 737-800 and three 737 MAX 8 jets, while 600 partners had given it for three leases, the lawsuit said. The $30 million claim is the latest round in a dispute over the four jets that were leased to privately owned Flair, but were repossessed in March by Airborne Capital, which managed the jets on behalf of the three lessors. "Despite being repeatedly notified of their financial obligations, 777 Partners continued to ignore calls to settle outstanding payments of almost $30 million," the three lessors said in a statement. In response, 777 Partners said, "the English proceedings are likely to be the subject of a stay application given that the position of 777 Partners remains that it is at best premature, and at worst possibly abusing the English Court System." https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/flair-airlines-investor-sued-by-aircraft-lessors-over-missed-payments-2024-01-10/ Spirit Airlines Sells 25 Aircraft To Reduce Debt The sales generated net cash of over $400 million. SUMMARY • Spirit Airlines sells 25 planes to meet debt repayments, generating $419 million in net cash proceeds. • The sale and leaseback agreement will help the carrier repay approximately $465 million in debt related to the aircraft. • Spirit Airlines has a fleet of over 200 A320-family aircraft and plans to retire its A319s by the end of 2025. Spirit Airlines has sold 25 aircraft as part of a sale and leaseback agreement to help it meet debt repayments. Spirit sells off 25 planes According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week, Spirit Airlines has completed the sale and leaseback of 25 of its aircraft. The all-Airbus A320-family carrier is saddled with debt and recently announced a net loss of over $157 million for Q3 2023. The sale will be used to repay approximately $465 million in debt payments related to said aircraft, with net cash proceeds of around $419 million generated through the sale - if you do the math, that works out at just over $16.75 million per plane. The SEC filing said, "On January 3, 2024, Spirit Airlines completed a series of sale-leaseback transactions with respect to 25 aircraft, resulting in repayment of approximately $465 million of indebtedness on those aircraft and net cash proceeds to the Company of approximately $419 million." Spirit has not revealed which specific aircraft are involved in the deal. The ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC) has previously resorted to sale and leaseback agreements with lessors to free up capital, including deals with Avolon, GECAS (before its acquisition by AerCap), and an agreement last year with Aircraft Leasing & Management (ALM) over five A320neos. The Spirit fleet The budget airline's fleet currently stands at over 200 aircraft, all of which belong to the A320-family. Its oldest planes are its 17 A319-100s which have an average age approaching 17 years old, as per ch-aviation. The airline welcomed the majority of its A319s in 2006 and 2007, although it took delivery of two airframes on lease in 2016. It also dropped its plans to fly the A319neo, instead converting its orders to the larger A321neo, and plans on retiring all of its A319s by the end of 2025. In January 2023, the carrier announced a major sale involving 29 of its A319s, generating up to $200 million. The A320 makes up the majority of Spirit's fleet. The airline currently has 148 A320s, split across 64 A320-200s and 84 A320neos, and expects to induct another 15 A320neos over 2024. Most of the airline's A321s are the older A321-200 model, of which it has 30, while its A321neo fleet currently stands at eight. Spirit welcomed its first A321neo in June 2023 and will eventually induct over 40 of the type. JetBlue merger update Spirit and JetBlue continue to wait for a ruling on their proposed merger after the trial ended in early December. The deal has faced opposition by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on antitrust grounds, claiming a merger will ultimately lead to higher airfares and fewer options for low-cost travel. JetBlue - Spirit Airlines Merger Now Awaiting Judge’s Decision The deal could go through with further concessions from JetBlue. The judgment in this case is expected at some point this month - if it goes ahead, it would lead to the creation of the country's fifth-largest airline. https://simpleflying.com/spirit-airlines-25-aircraft-sale-reduce-debt/ CALENDAR OF EVENTS • SINGAPORE AIRSHOW 2024 - February 20 - 25 • HAI Heli-Expo 2024 - February 26 - 29 - Anaheim, CA • 2024 Women in Aviation International Conference - March 21-23 (Orlando) • 2024 ACSF Safety Symposium – Air Charter Safety Foundation - April 1-3, 2024 • Airborne Public Safety Association, Inc. (APSCON 2024) - July 29 - August 3; Houston TX • 2024 ISASI - Lisbon, Portugal - September 30 to October 4, 2024 • 2024 NBAA Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition - Oct. 22-24 (Vegas) Curt Lewis