Flight Safety Information - January 15, 2024 No. 011 In This Issue : Incident: Saudia A320 at Geneva on Jan 13th 2024, trouble to climb? No, problem with flight controls : Incident: ANA B738 at Sapporo on Jan 13th 2024, cracked windshield : Incident: Qatar A388 at Sydney on Jan 13th 2024, not cleared for the approach : Incident: KLM A332 near Dublin on Jan 9th 2024, engine unresponsive : US FAA extends Boeing MAX 9 grounding for new safety checks : Before the Boeing Disaster, the Company Lobbied Lawmakers to Deregulate Airplane Safety : Not Just the 737 Max – Cockpit Doors Will Open on Most Airliners : Boeing is letting airlines into its factories as preliminary inspections begin on the 737 Max 9 : Former Alaska Airlines Airbus A320 Makes An Emergency Landing At San Antonio International Airport : Why zero tolerance for airline safety lapses doesn’t extend to other industries : Can Pilots Get A 'Speeding Ticket' For Flying Too Fast? : CALENDAR OF EVENTS Incident: Saudia A320 at Geneva on Jan 13th 2024, trouble to climb? No, problem with flight controls A Saudi Arabian Airlines Airbus A320-200, registration HZ-ASA performing flight SV-236 from Geneva (Switzerland) to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), was climbing out of Geneva's runway 04 already handed off to departure when the controller queried the crew whether they were having problems to climb, prompting the crew reply "no, we have a problem with the flight controls". The aircraft levelled off at FL150 and entered a hold, subsequenty descended to FL100 and entered another hold before the aircraft commenced a return to Geneva's runway 04 for a safe landing at a normal speed about 2.5 hours after departure. The aircraft remained on the ground for about 2 hours, then departed again and reached Jeddah with a delay of about 5:15 hours. https://avherald.com/h?article=513abf49&opt=0 Incident: ANA B738 at Sapporo on Jan 13th 2024, cracked windshield An ANA All Nippon Airways Boeing 737-800, registration JA56AN performing flight NH-1182 from Sapporo to Toyama (Japan) with 59 passengers and 6 crew, was enroute at FL340 about 160nm south of Sapporo when the outer pane of one of the windshields began to crack prompting the crew to return to Sapporo for a safe landing on runway 01R about one hour after departure. The flight was cancelled. https://avherald.com/h?article=513a1bd7&opt=0 Incident: Qatar A388 at Sydney on Jan 13th 2024, not cleared for the approach A Qatar Airways Airbus A380-800, registration A7-APD performing flight QR-908 from Doha (Qatar) to Sydney,NS (Australia), was on final approach to Sydney's runway 34L when about 20 seconds after reporting on tower the crew advised they were going around. The aircraft stopped the descent at about 1000 feet AGL and climbed back to 3000 feet. After being handed off to departure the crew complained they were not stabilized due to a congestion in the communication, while they did receive a clearance to intercept the localizer, they never received a clearance for the approach and didn't even have a chance to request a visual approach. The aircraft positioned for another approach to runwqy 34L and landed safely about 15 minutes after the go around. https://avherald.com/h?article=513a1a6d&opt=0 Incident: KLM A332 near Dublin on Jan 9th 2024, engine unresponsive A KLM Airbus A330-200, registration PH-AOE performing flight KL-777 from Amsterdam (Netherlands) to Sint Maarten (Sint Maarten), was enroute at FL340 about 10nm northwest of Dublin (Ireland) when the crew changed course to return to Amsterdam reporting one of their engines (CF6) had become unresponsive. The aircraft climbed to FL350, while enroute back to Amsterdam, but over Wales (UK) the crew began a descent to FL100 and turned south. The aircraft levelled off at FL100 about 20 minutes after beginning the descent and entered a hold at FL100 west of Cardiff,WL (UK) for about 30 minutes. Subsequently the aircraft climbed to FL310 and returned to Amsterdam for a safe landing on runway 36C about 3:10 hours after departure. The aircraft remained on the ground for about 25 hours before returning to service. The airline reported a technical defect as reason for the return. Passenger Thomas, who also posted below in the reader comments, told The Aviation Herald, that the captain announced there was a low oil indication for one of the engines, they would descend to hold and burn fuel. The inflight meal service, which was in progress at that time, continued normally. The passenger noticed that while in the hold the speed brakes of the aircraft remained extended. The aircraft subsequently returned to Amsterdam, where maintenance looked at the right hand engine (CF6). https://avherald.com/h?article=513989e1&opt=0 US FAA extends Boeing MAX 9 grounding for new safety checks WASHINGTON, Jan 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. aviation regulator on Friday extended the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes indefinitely for new safety checks and announced it will tighten oversight of Boeing (BA.N) itself after a cabin panel broke off a new jet in mid-flight. As United Airlines (UAL.O) and Alaska Airlines (ALK.N) canceled flights through Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it will require another round of inspections before it will consider putting the jets back in service. Under more stringent supervision, the regulator will audit the Boeing 737 MAX 9 production line and suppliers and consider having an independent entity take over from Boeing certain aspects of certifying the safety of new aircraft that the FAA previously assigned to the planemaker. The FAA said the continued grounding of 171 planes with the same configuration as the one in the incident was "for the safety of American travelers." The regulator had said Monday the grounding would be lifted once they were inspected before saying more work was needed on planned checks. On Friday, the FAA said 40 of the planes must be reinspected, then the agency will review the results and determine if safety is adequate to allow the MAX 9s to resume flying. Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, the two U.S. airlines that use the aircraft involved, have had to cancel hundreds of flights in the last week due to the grounding as a widening crisis engulfed the U.S. planemaker. Alaska and United on Friday both canceled all MAX 9 flights through Tuesday and United canceled some additional flights in the following days. Boeing shares closed down 2.2% on Friday and are down nearly 12% since the Jan. 5 incident. Confidence in Boeing has been shaken since a pair of MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 killed 346 people and led Congress to pass sweeping reforms for certification of new airplanes. The Alaska Airlines aircraft, which had been in service for just eight weeks, took off from Portland, Oregon last Friday and was flying at 16,000 feet when the panel tore off the plane. Pilots flew the jet back to Portland, with only minor injuries among passengers. On Thursday, the FAA announced a formal investigation into the MAX 9. FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said the Alaska Airlines MAX 9 had "significant problems" and noted Boeing's history of production issues. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating if the MAX 9 jet in the Alaska episode was missing or had improperly tightened bolts. REGULATOR SEEKS ROOT CAUSES Whitaker told Reuters Friday he sees the MAX 9 problems as a manufacturing issue, not a design problem. Noting years of production problems at Boeing, he said: "Whatever's happening isn't fixing the problem and requires an extensive review. We are becoming increasingly focused on the manufacturing process." The fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 Boeing 737-9 MAX, which was forced to make an emergency landing with a gap in the fuselage, is seen during its investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Portland, Oregon, U.S. January 7, 2024. NTSB/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights The FAA wants to see "where these breakdowns could happen. Are there not enough quality control checks? Are they not in the right places? Is the order of assembly creating some issues?," he added. Boeing pledged on Friday to "cooperate fully and transparently with our regulator. We support all actions that strengthen quality and safety and we are taking actions across our production system." Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems (SPR.N) said Friday it is "committed to supporting the FAA’s audit of production and manufacturing processes." Whitaker wants to reexamine the long-standing practice of the FAA delegating some critical safety tasks to Boeing. "I think we should look at third party," Whitaker said. "I think it may be an option where there's a higher level of confidence, where we have more direct oversight ability, and where the folks doing certain critical inspections don't have a paycheck that's coming from the manufacturer." Alaska and United said preliminary checks found loose parts on multiple grounded aircraft. Captain Ed Sicher, president of the Allied Pilots Association representing 15,000 pilots at American Airlines, said tighter control by the FAA was “inevitable” given Boeing’s problems. Texas-based American flies a different MAX variant. “I think there’s an increased level of skepticism and scrutiny over what used to be … an excellent brand,” Sicher told Reuters. “Now everyone is starting to raise an eyebrow and make sure the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted.” On Wednesday, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun acknowledged on CNBC that there was a "quality" issue in allowing the MAX 9 to fly with the problem that caused the blowout. Since the fatal crashes, critics have said strained budgets at the FAA led the agency to delegate too much responsibility to the planemaker. Since 2019, the agency has cut back on the practice. “The larger question is does the FAA have the staffing to increase oversight for the long term?” said U.S. aviation safety expert John Cox, adding that the creation of third-party entity would be "highly unusual." In March, the FAA said it boosted staff providing regulatory oversight of Boeing to 107 from 82 in prior years. In 2021, Boeing agreed to pay $6.6 million in penalties after failing to comply with a 2015 safety agreement. The FAA also launched an outside review of Boeing's safety culture in January 2023. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/faa-boost-oversight-boeing-audit-737-max-9-production-line-2024-01-12/ Before the Boeing Disaster, the Company Lobbied Lawmakers to Deregulate Airplane Safety Despite allegations of “excessive” defects ahead of the recent Boeing disaster, the company and its parts supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, used their deep pockets to lobby Washington to reduce safety regulations. An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX-9 aircraft grounded at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) in Seattle, Washington, on January 6, 2024. (David Ryder / Bloomberg via Getty Images) The manufacturers of the door plug that blew out of a jetliner last week have used their deep pockets and connections in Washington, DC, to reduce safety regulations, pressure federal officials, and boost production after two previous crashes and other safety incidents, records show. The campaign donations, lobbying money, and regulatory waivers underscore critics’ assertions that Boeing and its long-time parts supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, have used their political influence in both parties to endanger air passengers. Last week’s high-altitude debacle — in which a door plug manufactured by Spirit blew off an Alaska Airlines plane mid-flight over Portland, Oregon — followed two Boeing aircraft crashes in 2018 and 2019 that together killed 346 people, and another fatal incident in 2018 that saw a woman partially sucked out of a plane when a small engine explosion shattered a window. On Monday, the Lever reported allegations from Spirit employees of “excessive” defects in the supplier’s manufacturing. According to court documents, the workers said they were instructed to conceal the problems. Some workers who spoke up were fired, according to allegations stemming from a new federal lawsuit. While Spirit workers were allegedly being told to falsify inspection reports and ship out products to Boeing “as quickly as possible,” the company was doling out campaign cash to lawmakers who then fought for the company’s interests in Washington. In one instance, Republican representative Ron Estes (KS) — one of the top recipients of Spirit-affiliated campaign cash — pressured the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) over its previous grounding of the 737 MAX. As Spirit faced potential profit losses from the grounding, Estes insisted that the FAA’s extended process of recertifying the airplane after two crashes was resulting in “negative repercussions” and warned that “until recertification [of the Boeing 737 MAX] is complete,” Spirit and its workers would suffer. In another instance, Democratic senator Maria Cantwell (WA) — who has received nearly $200,000 in contributions from Boeing’s political action committee and employees — pushed through legislation to exempt Boeing’s 737 MAX models from a looming safety deadline that would have required changes in their alerting systems. The move came despite concerns from the families of the passengers who died in the 2018 and 2019 crashes. Over the last four years, Boeing and Spirit’s political action committees and employees have together reported spending more than $65 million on lobbying and federal campaign contributions. That includes Spirit donors spending $210,000 lobbying Congress on “advanced aviation manufacturing” and other issues in the first three quarters of 2023, disclosures show. In the first three quarters of 2023, Boeing donors spent more than $10.6 million — the sixteenth most of any US company — lobbying the White House, lawmakers, the FAA, and other regulators on “Aviation safety,” certifications, and other issues. The company’s lobbying expenditures have ranged between $12.6 million and $15.2 million annually since 2018. Of late, Boeing has been pressing regulators at the FAA to weaken safety standards for its new 737 MAX 7 models. There’s mounting evidence that Boeing has known about myriad safety issues and critics say the company has done little to properly address them. Boeing officials were aware of the faulty safety sensors that led to crashes in 2018 and 2019. In fact, messages sent between 2015 and 2018 among Boeing employees shows how they joked that the 737 MAX planes were “designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” Messages also show employees bragging about how they tricked a federal aviation regulator by “making them feel stupid” for trying to require additional training. Boeing officials are also aware of potentially deadly side effects from an anti-ice system that can cause engine parts to overheat and break off mid-flight, but are seeking a safety exemption to allow the parts to be used. “I think the culture that still prevails at the top management levels of Boeing is ‘We’re watching the stock price.’ Safety and quality are a secondary concern,” former representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR), and former chair of the House Transportation Committee, told the Lever. “The FAA has to finally hold the line with Boeing. It’s time for that company to clean up their act.” DeFazio added, “Do we want to put thousands of more planes in the air that have the same defect? How many years is that going to take [to fix]?” Neither Boeing nor Spirit replied to the Lever’s requests for comment for this story. In response to earlier questions related to the recent incident in Portland, a spokesperson from Spirit AeroSystems said over email, “A Spirit team is now supporting the [National Transportation Safety Board]’s investigation directly. As a company, we remain focused on the quality of each aircraft structure that leaves our facilities.” Boeing CEO David Calhoun said the aircraft company needs to address the current near-catastrophe involving the door plug with “complete transparency.” “We’re gonna approach it with 100 percent and complete transparency every step of the way,” Calhoun said at a town hall with Boeing employees on Tuesday. “We are going to work with the [National Transportation Safety Board], who is investigating the accident itself to find out what the cause is.” “Do Everything Necessary to Get the 737 MAX Safely Back in the Air” After the two devastating fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, which involved faulty control systems that caused planes to nosedive, the FAA, following the lead of authorities around the world, in March 2019 grounded Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft until it determined the planes could be flown safely and could recertify them for normal operation. The delay in rolling out Boeing’s flagship new model represented a major financial blow for Boeing, but also for the airplane company’s suppliers, like Spirit, which makes the 737 MAX’s fuselages — the main body of the airplanes. Company executives have said that Spirit makes 70 percent of the 737 MAX’s structure. Spirit was established in 2005 as a spinoff company from Boeing, and Boeing remains Spirit’s primary customer, representing as much as 60 percent of the company’s revenue, according to Spirit’s most recent annual report. After the 737 MAXs were grounded in 2019, the supplier’s revenue at one point plummeted by 58 percent year over year, executives told investors on an earnings call in November 2020. By December 2019, with uncertainty hanging over the FAA’s recertification process for the 737 MAX, reports were circulating that Boeing planned to pause production of the plane entirely. In January 2020, Spirit AeroSystems — fearing the pause would send the company into a financial tailspin — announced it would lay off twenty-eight hundred workers. In Washington, lawmakers, well funded by Spirit, stepped in. On January 10, 2020, shortly after the layoffs were proposed, Senator Jerry Moran (KS) — the senior Republican on the Senate subcommittee overseeing aviation safety — issued a statement saying he had spoken with both Boeing’s then-brand-new CEO, former Blackstone exec Calhoun and the FAA administrator at the time, Stephen Dickson, urging them to “do everything necessary to get the 737 MAX safely back in the air.” At the time, Spirit was — and remains — a top campaign contributor to Moran. Since 2019, the company has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Moran and political action committees working to reelect him, campaign finance data shows, making Spirit the number-two donor to Moran in recent years. Asked about Moran’s relationship with Spirit, Tom Brandt, a spokesperson for the senator, pointed to a series of tweets Moran posted about the Alaska Airlines incident on Tuesday that did not mention the company. “I am closely monitoring this investigation to ensure the safety of the flying public,” Moran wrote in one tweet. “For the thousands of Kansans who work in aviation, their jobs depend on the passengers feeling safe to fly.” Another key recipient of Spirit cash is Estes, whose district includes Wichita, where Spirit is based. The aviation giant’s political action committee and employees are collectively Estes’s biggest career contributor. Four days after Moran’s statement, Estes, too, intervened. On January 14, 2020, Estes wrote a letter to the FAA, which began by praising the agency for “its willingness to treat the ongoing Boeing 737 MAX situation with caution,” but then warned that Spirit, and its workers, were being “jeopardized” by pausing construction on the 737 MAX. “I am concerned that the FAA is following a process for returning the 737 MAX to service that is not guided by a defined process with standards, expectations, and a schedule,” he wrote, saying that suppliers were “wondering what prerequisites the FAA will demand and for how long their livelihoods will be impacted.” Estes did not respond to the Lever’s requests for comment. Two weeks later, on January 30, 2020, Spirit announced that it had come to an agreement with Boeing to resume limited production of the 737 MAX, although the plane had not yet been recertified. Yet the pressure from lawmakers didn’t entirely ease. “I look forward to Spirit’s ultimate return to robust production levels,” Moran wrote in a statement the same day. With the onset of the pandemic, conditions worsened yet again for Spirit, as the aviation industry ground to a halt worldwide. The supplier went through additional rounds of layoffs — which former employees in the December 2023 lawsuit said impacted the quality of its manufacturing. In September 2020, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, then cochaired by DeFazio, released a 238-page report on the Boeing 737 MAX crashes, detailing “a horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA.” Two months later, on November 18, 2020, Dickson, then the head of the FAA, signed an order that allowed for Boeing’s 737 MAX aircrafts to return to commercial operations after certain criteria were met, including design changes and updated training requirements. The FAA said the planes were allowed to return to service after a twenty-month safety review process during which “FAA employees worked diligently to identify and address the safety issues that played a role in the tragic loss of 346 lives aboard Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.” Moran and Estes both helped secure Spirit more than $75 million in federal COVID-19 relief dollars in September 2021 — the largest federal award at the time in the aviation industry. The airline industry, which is considered essential to American travel and commerce, was given an enormous lifeline to avoid laying off workers and resume regular travel when it was designated safe. Instead, major carriers laid off workers anyway, rewarded executives with huge bonuses, and were ill-prepared for travel to resume despite receiving billions of dollars to retain workers. Amid all the financial strain — both from the 737 MAX grounding and the pandemic — workers said in the federal lawsuit that Spirit cultivated a culture of production over quality, as it worked to ramp back up the production of Boeing’s 737 MAX, with support from lawmakers like Moran and Estes. (Spirit told the Lever Wednesday it “strongly disagrees” with the claims made in the lawsuit, but has not provided additional specifics.) The company, one worker said, “just wanted to ship its completed products as quickly as possible.” Ticket to Ride Spirit’s political spending, however, pales in comparison to what Boeing spends to woo lawmakers in Washington. Boeing has a history of lobbying lawmakers on safety regulations, dating back to at least 2017. Since 2020, Boeing has spent nearly $50 million lobbying Congress, the White House, the FAA, and a slew of other federal regulators on issues including aviation safety, aircraft certifications, COVID relief money, weapons sales, and space exploration, disclosures show. Before two deadly crashes involving Boeing planes in 2018 and 2019, Boeing “helped craft” and “shap[ed] the language” of a bill that weakens the government’s ability to approve designs of new airplanes, the New York Times reported in 2019. That bill was passed into law in 2018, just weeks before a Boeing plane crashed in Indonesia. Cantwell, chair of the Senate panel that oversees the airline industry, represents Washington State, where Boeing was founded. Boeing representatives also currently serve as members on a subcommittee for the FAA’s Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC), which is tasked with recommending airline industry regulations, including safety oversight. In 2019, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called ARAC a “clandestine committee” that acts as a “proverbial blanket with their lack of transparency and the comfortable cover they provide for companies like Boeing.” Schumer pushed for Boeing representatives to no longer be included as formal members of ARAC, a move that was seemingly granted — but the airline manufacturer currently has representatives on an ARAC subcommittee called the Transport Aircraft and Engines Subcommittee. In Boeing’s recent troubles, its close connections to Washington have paid off. At the end of 2022, the company was facing a looming FAA deadline to update safety features for the cockpits on two versions of its 737 fleets — the MAX 7 and 10 — which it was set to miss. Instead of complying with requirements for new and retrofitted technology, as other aviation manufacturers did, the company and its lobbyists descended on Washington, pushing for an exemption from lawmakers, claiming that its current model was safe and could still win FAA certification. Boeing has managed to successfully leverage its ‘lobbying horsepower’ in Washington, even amid public outcry about safety. Key players in the negotiations had received big money from both Boeing and the aviation industry as a whole. One was Cantwell, who has received more than $90,000 from Boeing donors over the last two election cycles. According to OpenSecrets, she is among the top three recipients of aviation industry dollars in Congress, receiving $82,613 in the first three quarters of 2023 alone. Other lawmakers pushed for an extension for Boeing with even fewer strings attached — including Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), who has received $57,000 from Boeing donors over the past several election cycles. Like Cantwell, Wicker serves on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Ultimately, after lawmakers proposed exemptions for Boeing in a defense spending bill that were nixed, Boeing managed to secure the waiver, which contained limited additional safety requirements, in a must-pass omnibus spending bill in December 2022. The move came despite the resolute opposition of the families of the victims of the 2018 and 2019 fatal 737 MAX crashes. The whole saga was a “classic example,” said Ed Pierson, a former senior Boeing employee who now leads the nonprofit Foundation for Aviation Safety, of how Boeing has managed to successfully leverage its “lobbying horsepower” in Washington, even amid public outcry about safety. And it has continued to push for safety exemptions. “This is going to require a lot of ongoing attention,” Pierson said of the systemic issues at Boeing. “The FAA is really asleep at the wheel. And they’ve been asleep at the wheel for a while.” Boeing’s regulatory capture has been well-reported, in Seattle and in Washington, DC, the FAA had been considered the global aviation industry’s gold standard since it was established in 1958. But by 2006, the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog agency, was warning the FAA that their programs were becoming ineffective because of their tight relationships with and lax supervision of industry leaders like Boeing. The FAA was one of the last regulators across the globe to ground the 737 MAX planes following the two crashes in 2018 and 2019. Most recently, Boeing asked the FAA for an exemption for safety standards relating to anti-ice systems of its still-uncertified 737 MAX 7 plane. An anti-ice system failure caused the 2018 accident in which a passenger was partially sucked out of a shattered plane window and killed. The Foundation for Aviation Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for additional oversight and safety regulation in the aviation industry, warned that if Boeing received the new exemptions, a defect in the system could lead to “a potentially catastrophic failure.” Less than one month later, the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 took off from Portland. https://jacobin.com/2024/01/boeing-spirit-safety-regulations-airlines Not Just the 737 Max – Cockpit Doors Will Open on Most Airliners By: Christine Negroni The crew of Alaska Airlines 1282 was startled. The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board was annoyed. Headlines accused Boeing of keeping yet another secret from pilots. But the design that allows the cockpit door to open in case of a significant loss of pressure is not new, nor is it unique to the Max. It is common on nearly all airliners made by Boeing and Airbus. Since the mid-2000s, plane makers have patented and installed relatively simple devices that override the cockpit electronic door locks installed as a result of September 11th security concerns. The devices activate in response to an abrupt loss of pressure from the passenger cabin. This is what happened after a door plug came off at 16-thousand feet on the Alaska flight out of Portland, Oregon on January 5th. It would have worked the same way on Qantas Flight 30, a Boeing 747 that depressurized when an oxygen bottle exploded and shot like a missile through the side of the passenger cabin in 2008. Opening the door to the cockpit in events like this “allows the venting of the cabin area” to “relieve the now higher pressure on the cockpit/cabin bulkhead therein,” according to one of the patent applications sought by Boeing. “Having the door pop open relieves that pressure,” one pilot told me as we discussed the feature. In my book, The Crash Detectives, I spend quite a bit of time reporting on the various ways airplanes can depressurize. In the case of the cockpit door opening mechanism, what is important to understand is where in the fuselage the breach occurs. If it happens behind the cockpit as in Alaska and Qantas, air races out the hole including air in the cockpit. If the closed cockpit door restricts the flow of air, the pressure can stress the airplane structure. When the breach happens in the cockpit, decompression panels on hinges swing open, allowing a path for the pressurized air in the cabin to to exit through the cockpit. The cockpit door remains shut. So to be clear, the unlocking of the door happens only to equalize the pressure when the opening is behind the cockpit. Don’t spend hours, as I did, combing the pilot forums or Reddit or Quora about this because you are certain to discover many conflicting claims and a whole lot of nonsense. What is important to note is that when depressurization happens in the cabin it can trigger the cockpit door to unlock. Many pilots don’t know this. Why the secrecy? Boeing had no comment and Airbus and the NTSB did not reply to questions. My research shows however that it is not – as has been portrayed – some conspiracy by Boeing to keep pilots in the dark. Earlier in the week, I called an acquaintance who specializes in safety to find out if he was aware of the ubiquity of the technology. He was not. He was mildly upset about it because there is a process in the United States at least, for confidentially sharing with pilots what is called “sensitive security information.” This had not been shared. “It’s one of those things, we can’t affect it. We can’t change it. We can’t stop it, so why are we getting uptight about something that is there to protect the airplane?” Other pilots are less sanguine. “When you’re not informing pilots about the way the plane operates in normal and emergency conditions you have a problem,” said Dennis Tajer, a pilot with American and a representative of the pilots’ union. He was mystified that though crews train for depressurization emergencies, this piece of relevant information is withheld. “My manual states the pressure sensors unlock the decompression panels, not the door lock itself. There is no mention of anything that will automatically trigger the door to unlock,” a pilot for another airline weighed in. Considering the security concerns following the commandeering and crashing of 4 airliners in the September 11th attacks, it is likely that the decision to keep the news from pilots came from security officials in the US and perhaps other nations as well. Safety and security sometimes conflict and this appears to be a perfect example. The lack of information reduced the subject to the level of hangar talk. And here we are with even experienced pilots, former military pilots, ambidextrous pilots (proficient on both Airbus and Boeing) pilots certified to carry weapons on airplanes (FFDOs) and pilots with significant experience in safety who do not know about the door opening even on the airplanes they fly. “If there is a security threat of the door popping open during decompression, would it be better to have the crew taken by surprise or have them at least think about it beforehand?”, asked John Gadzinski, a 737 pilot and a safety consultant. “I call bullshit that they kept it a secret. Tell your crews the truth and train them well.” The 9/11 attacks created a need for impenetrable cockpits. For nearly 2 decades, flight decks have been protected by heavy, ballistic-resistant doors that lock and cannot be opened without a pilot releasing the door from the inside or entering a passcode from the outside. Except now you know that there is a third mechanism, physics. https://christinenegroni.com/not-just-the-737-max-cockpit-doors-will-open-on-most-airliners/ Boeing is letting airlines into its factories as preliminary inspections begin on the 737 Max 9 Boeing says it will give airlines more oversight of its facilities following the Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 incident in which a part of the plane fell off mid-flight. The plane maker said Monday that in addition to extra quality control inspections on the 737 production line, it will allow airlines into Boeing factories and those of contractor Spirit AeroSystems, which builds Max 9 fuselage. The January 5th blowout of the door plug on Alaska 1282 — which caused the Federal Aviation Administration to ground Max 9 planes — “make clear that we are not where we need to be,” Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal said in a companywide memo shared with CNN. “These checks will provide one more layer of scrutiny on top of the thousands of inspections performed today,” said Deal in the memo. “Our team is also taking a hard look at our quality practices in our factories and across our production system.” Over the weekend, Alaska Airlines announced it has begun preliminary inspections of 20 of its Max 9s and it will “enhance our own quality oversight of Alaska aircraft on the Boeing production line” by sending more workers to validate the work and its quality. Alaska Airlines said it is in the middle a “thorough review of Boeing’s production quality and control systems.” The airline has 65 Boeing 737 Max 9s with another 25 on order, according to fleet data from airlines analytics firm Cirium. Boeing 737 Max 9s remain grounded in the United States as airlines Alaska and United await emergency inspection guidance from the Federal Aviation Administration. On Friday, the FAA announced it will audit Boeing’s production practices as it considers mandating an independent third-party oversee Boeing quality. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the blowout incident. It says the door plug has arrived at its Washington, DC, headquarters for examination. https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/15/business/boeing-737-max-inspections/index.html Former Alaska Airlines Airbus A320 Makes An Emergency Landing At San Antonio International Airport The plane’s speed decreased below 150 miles per hour at 15,000 feet. SUMMARY • An Airbus A320, previously operated by Alaska Airlines, made a safe emergency landing during a maintenance test flight. • An alert in the cockpit reportedly prompted the pilots to request an emergency landing. • The retired A320, still owned by Alaska, may be picked up by another airline in the future. An Airbus A320, operated by Seattle-based Alaska Airlines, made an emergency landing at San Antonio International Airport (SAT) on Friday. The aircraft was reportedly performing a maintenance test flight when the incident occurred. No passengers were onboard, and the aircraft landed safely. Alaska retired the jet from passenger service a few years ago, but the test flight coincides with reports that its days of flying passengers are not over yet. Details of the incident According to San Antonio local NBC affiliate WOAI, emergency crews responded to the scene involving N632VA. The 16-year-old A320 was flying a maintenance test flight from SAT as ASA9524 and departed from Runway 30L on Friday at 16:52, data from FlightAware indicates. The aircraft quickly gained speed and climbed in altitude, reaching 12,000 feet five minutes into the flight. Heading east, the plane reached 14,200 feet but remained at the altitude briefly and then descended to 13,500 feet. As the aircraft turned south, its altitude fluctuated greatly, which may have been due to the routine testing, but its speed was rapidly decreasing. 21 minutes into the flight, the A320 was traveling at 140 miles per hour while situated about 15,000 feet – a speed dangerously low at that altitude, depending on the aircraft's weight. It then descended slightly, which naturally increased its speed, but at 24 minutes in the air, the plane made a sharp turn to the northwest, back toward SAT. Landing safely It continued descending, and its speed increased further, reaching about 400 miles per hour at 8,000 feet. At 17:27, N632VA was on final approach and landed two minutes later, back on Runway 30L. During the flight, an alert was noticed in the cockpit, prompting the pilots to request an emergency landing, according to WOAI. Simple Flying contacted Alaska for further comment on Sunday, but a representative could not be immediately reached. A new home? It is unclear whether the aircraft was bound for another destination during the test flight or if it planned to return to SAT, and the emergency just cut it short. According to Flightradar24.com, the plane was retired by Alaska in 2022. It flew from Oakland International Airport to SAT on March 18, 2022, and has remained at the airport ever since. In April of last year, it flew a test flight and then remained grounded until Friday’s test flight. Although the aircraft has been removed from service, Alaska still owns and operates it, and crews must perform routine maintenance regularly to maintain flying conditions. Photos from WOAI also show that the aircraft, alongside another Airbus aircraft, is still painted in Alaska’s livery. Former Alaska Airlines Airbus A320 San Antonio Photo: News 4 San Antonio (WOAI) According to Planespotters.net, N632VA will likely see more test flights in the future as it is “due” to be picked up by Air Canada. The Canadian airline currently operates 13 A320s but plans to acquire five more – four of which are former Alaska birds. Air Canada also has plans to retrofit the interior of eight A320s to feature larger overhead bins, cabin lighting, and inflight entertainment. The carrier’s first A321 to receive the interior upgrades was unveiled in October of last year. It is unclear if the former Alaska planes will be retrofitted. https://simpleflying.com/alaska-airlines-a320-emergency-landing-san-antonio/ Why zero tolerance for airline safety lapses doesn’t extend to other industries Last Friday, January 5, the day a door plug flew off an Alaska Airlines airplane in mid-flight, was a day in which approximately 120 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes. Roughly 136 died from opioids. Perhaps 150 died as hospital inpatients due to preventable medical errors. About 230 died of COVID-19. And zero died in aircraft accidents. Why it matters: Air travel is the one part of American daily life where the general public has zero tolerance for any kind of safety lapse. As we saw so vividly, the aviation industry is far from perfect in that regard. But it's still astonishingly good. Where it stands: Journalist James Fallows calls air travel's safety record "an under-appreciated miracle of modern society." "On a statistical basis, being aboard a North American or Western European airliner is about the safest thing you can do with your time," he writes, "compared even with taking a walk or sitting in a chair." How it works: Precisely because flying is so inherently dangerous, the industry has developed an obsession with safety, as epitomized in the famous reports painstakingly put together after every incident. Writes the NYT's Zeynep Tufekci: "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." A "but" follows, of course: "these exceptional levels of commercial airline safety require eternal vigilance against the usual foes." Reality check: Nothing remotely similar exists with regard to auto safety. As David Zipper reports for Slate, auto manufacturers such as Tesla self-certify their vehicles as safe, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration needs to launch and conclude an in-depth investigation before it can intervene and ask for a recall. Between the lines: Buy-in from the public is crucial. When hundreds of planes were grounded in the wake of the Alaska Airlines incident, causing thousands of flights to be canceled, there were surely grumbles but there was no real opposition, like there was to seatbelt laws or safer streets or mask mandates. No one called loudly for the flights to be reinstated immediately, saying that safety culture had gone too far. Public attitudes toward Boeing track the manufacturer's safety record — unlike, say, attitudes toward Tesla, which has a pretty dismal safety record for both employees and drivers but whose reputation in the public mind is mostly a function of what people think about the company's technology and CEO. Be smart: The public is so accepting of safety protocols in aviation mainly because flyers want all the reassurance they can get. No one considers banks, say, to be physically dangerous. As a result, if a bank headquarters construction project ends up killing a worker, as recently happened at JPMorgan, there's almost no hit to the institution's reputation. Similarly, working from home is not something people are afraid of. It might well end up causing a significant number of musculoskeletal injuries, but those injuries won't generally redound on employers' reputations. My thought bubble: Americans are broadly OK with a society where thousands of people are injured or killed daily in preventable ways. Aviation is the honorable exception. Safety is a choice Former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill transformed Alcoa during his tenure as CEO by concentrating on safety above everything else. The logic: As Michael Lewis explained in a 2002 profile, O'Neill's first day as CEO included a speech — "the greatest CEO speech of the 20th century," per one account — saying that worker safety had to be a higher priority than profits, and that anybody found cutting corners on safety would be fired. The idea was, in part, that the focus on safety would demonstrate to the company's workers that it actually cared about them, which in turn would persuade those workers to cooperate in necessary cost-cutting measures. O'Neill's strategy worked: Alcoa's profits rose from $4.8 million in 1993 to $1.5 billion in 2000. Lewis writes: "To give you an idea of what he achieved, Treasury Department employees, most of whom don't do much but sit at desks, missed work because of injury 20 times as often as Alcoa employees, most of whom work with molten lava and man-eating machinery." Between the lines: As O'Neill himself put it, a safety-first culture is one in which, "when a group of people are going down a stairway and there's a handrail, and you're going with the CEO, if the CEO doesn't hold the handrail, you pull on his sleeve or her sleeve and say, hold the handrail. That's what we do here. We all do it." The bottom line: There's a good chance your CEO has said at some point that in your organization, safety comes first. Almost certainly, that wasn't true. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/13/airline-safety-boeing Can Pilots Get A 'Speeding Ticket' For Flying Too Fast? Why overspeeds usually happen, and what comes of them. SUMMARY • Overspeeding is uncommon and usually unintentional for most pilots, who prioritize following rules and staying within their plane's limitations. • Modern planes have flight data monitoring systems that instantly report deviations from regulations, allowing airlines to address safety concerns. • Pilots who unintentionally exceed speed limits may face a phone call, extra training, or a conversation with their managing pilot and union representative. • Pilots are some of the most compliant, rule-abiding people while they're at work. A respect for rules is tantamount to a respect for the safety culture that the airline industry has built. Being negligent of company procedures or regulatory standards comes with penalties that pilots do everything they can to avoid. With this in mind, let's talk about what happens if pilots fly too fast. Getting caught It was much harder for ATC and airlines to know exactly how fast pilots flew airliners not so long ago. Modern airliners and other technologically advanced planes have transponders that communicate callsign, aircraft, altitude, and airspeed information. Before this, primary radar communicated only a plane's groundspeed based on simple time/distance displacement. Groundspeed is easily affected by winds aloft, so a plane breaking the 250 knot speed limit under 10,000 feet would be difficult to detect. Modern planes, including most airliners, have flight data monitoring systems installed on them. This information, commonly referred to as FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance), is instantly downloadable by operators and actively reports deivations from regulatory, company, or manufacuterer imposed limitations. Not only is speed below 10,000 feet measured, but structural, tire, and flap overspeeds are constantly monitored for parameter exceedances. If the flight data monitor records an overspeed value, the relevant data is pushed to the airline's safety or flight standards department. Pilots also have the ability to fill out deviations reports, commonly referred to as ASAPs (Aviation Safety Action Program) in the US. The FAA (or other regulatory agency) collects this pilot-reported data and uses it to address recurring trends or perceived lapses in safety systems. Self-disclosing mistakes is an important element of being a professional pilot. Intentions Pilots who violate speed restrictions almost never intend to do so. Most overspeeds are momentary and don't come anywhere near putting the plane or passengers at risk of harm. Flap overspeeds generally occur from unforeseen turbulence or wind shear with the flaps extended, and the same is true for structural overspeeds at altitude. Another reason for an overspeed might be the pilot flying using a different flight path mode on the autopilot than the one they intended, resulting in the speed not being checked or a higher rate of descent than desired. This happens as a result of task saturation or not checking the mode annunciator. Simply put, human errors happen. When they do, modern airliners inform the companies of these events. Importantly, the common reasons for flying too fast are unintentional. Willful negligence, on the other hand, is an intentional deviation from rules and regulations or flying in a manner generally deemed unsafe. For instance, flying right at the high-speed buffet boundary at 40,000 feet on a turbulent day would likely be considered willfully negligent. Ninety-nine percent of overspeeds are not of this sort, and most pilots willingly report their mistakes to the company via dedicated reporting systems in an effort to be transparent. Discipline Now to answer the big question: What happens to pilots who speed? More often than not, the pilot will have a phone call with their managing pilot and a union representative. If the event was unintentional, that's generally the end of it, assuming they made the requisite self-disclosures and were forthcoming with information. Pilots whose exceedences are more significant but still deemed unintentional are removed from line flying and sent for retraining in ground and simulator sessions. These pilots focus on the maneuver characteristics of the events leading to their overspeed event, such as a hurried or unanticipated go-around. Pilots who are found to be willfully negligent face further discipline. Takeaways Overspeeding is pretty uncommon to begin with. Every airline flight has two well-trained pilots monitoring the plane's parameters throughout the flight. Pilots like to stay well-within the boundaries of their plane's limitations, and edging up towards the airspeed indicator's red line doesn't match the typology of most aviators. When it happens, overspeeds are usually unintentional. The result is a conversation or extra training, but generally never more than that. https://simpleflying.com/what-happens-when-pilots-fly-too-fast/ 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) • SMU Air Law Symposium - March 21-22, 2024 ( Dallas, TX) • 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