Too fast for Sunday delivery of USPS, UPS or Fed Ex.
If you ask Victoria Haller which is the better airline, she’ll tell you it is JetBlue. That’s because she’s the aunt of Noah Pozner, one of the victims of the massacre in Newtown Connecticut; and when a friend tweeted airlines asking if one could get family letters to Connecticut in time for Noah’s funeral so family letters (including that of Victoria’s five year old son) could be buried with his cousin Noah, JetBlue stepped up. Jetblue called back and made it happen. The letters went from Aunt Victoria to JetBlue flight attendant Craig M. to flight attendants Trisha and Heather.
The letters made it from Seattle to Connecticut in time for the 1 p.m. funeral.
It does the world good to hear of your kindness. When someone takes an extra step, goes beyond, it reminds us that businesses are not made of steel and ink and the bottom line; they are built of human beings. We are all human, and sometimes we are all we have. JetBlue is an example to us all. A simple act of kindness. A light in the darkness. Thank you.
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Woodland Hills, CA — (ReleaseWire) — 07/07/2016 –No one is saying that aircraft tracking doesn’t need an overhaul. It does. Examination of plane crash events demands it.
Aviation experts have been asking for pinger battery improvements since a month after the crash of Air France 447 on 1 June 2009, when the pinger battery ran down in July. Air France 447 was not recovered from the ocean floor until May 2011, nearly two years after it was lost. Debris from the accident was recovered in the interim, but if the pinger had been louder, or the battery designed to last longer, then there’s a good chance that the plane would have been discovered sooner. One of the outcomes of this terrible event was a determination to design a pinger system with longer lasting batteries. EASA amended requirements for flight recorders and underwater locating devices in its 2013-26 amendment(RMT.0400 & RMT.0401 (OPS.090(A) & OPS.090(B)) — 20.12.2013) but implementing these requirements takes a prohibitively long time.
Aviation experts have been asking for better tracking technology since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared on 8 March 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia, to Beijing Capital International Airport in China. Because this plane departed from its planned route, finding where it came down has been a unique challenge. Inmarsat’s satellite communications network concluded that the flight continued until at least 08:19 and flew south into the southern Indian Ocean. Triangulation of Inmarsat’s satellite communications has been the only credible source searchers depend on to develop the search area.
Aviation experts have been suggesting the blackbox be water-activated (or have water-activated duplicates) with flotation of some kind so the blackbox can be found faster. More recently, aviation experts have wondered about EgyptAir Flight 804 which crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on 19 May 2016. It was known fairly precisely where it came down, and yet salvage and rescue units were unable to be on the scene in time to help any survivors—if survivors there had been. We will never know because no one was there. And while tracking the location of the blackbox fell within the thirty day battery limit, if the technology had more power, it could have been located sooner. Finding the wreckage sooner means less money spent on the search, and a shorter time for the families agonizing over their losses.
So here is what is new: Inmarsat provides SwiftBroadband service for plane’s inflight Wi-Fi on many aircraft. Immarsat is developing a streaming system described as a “blackbox in the cloud.” This streaming system they are working on will allow crucial data to be streamed off a plane on the occasion of specified trigger events like a course deviation or disappearance from radar.
One only need consider a few factors to realize that a cloud-based system is a crucial development that current technology can easily handle. We need only to look at the cost of the search for a missing plane. According to France and Brazil, those two countries spent more than $40 million over two years to recover the black boxes from Air France Flight 447. Bloomberg reported the recovery cost of Air France 447 was $100 million. According to the South China Post, the cost of the (as yet unfound) MH370 will be as much as ten times more than AF447. Like the expense of MH370’s search, the cost of finding EgyptAir Flight 804 is still ongoing.
Even when Inmarsat’s streaming system will be available, the aviation industry is going to be resistant, mostly because it is going to be costly. Is this a cost that we must afford? I think it is.
Let me know your thoughts on this crucial topic at https://twitter.com/GeorgeHatcher
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Before the Sukhoi Superjet smashed into a ledge on Wednesday, killing 45 people and raining debris down the slopes of Mount Salak, I had never heard the term “joy flight.”
The “joy flight” is the airline equivalent of you going down to the Ferrari dealership and taking a test drive. Or it would be if you were being driven in the Ferrari for fifty minutes or so, in a party atmosphere courted along with a bunch of other potential buyers.
The “joy flight” is a selling tool for the manufacturer. They host this ride for potential buyers to show off the features and quality/qualities of a new plane they are trying to sell.
Until the black box is recovered (we hope one was on the plane!), we won’t have any idea if the pilots had been asked to “buzz” the mountain, or if their request to fly low was a response to the heavy cloud cover. United Aircraft Corporation which built the Superjet says that pilot Alexander Yablontsev (who had logged 10,000 hours in Sukhoi prototypes) was their best test pilot, and had overseen “everything from the designing of the aircraft to its certification.”
Buzzing mountains renowned as an airline graveyard would not be the smartest thing to do, but everyone does wonder why the pilots requested to lower their altitude right over Mount Salak. Family members are already protesting the hazardous route that had been planned for the demonstration flight.
There were 35 Indonesians, 8 Russian crew members, 1 French and 1 American.
The American, Peter Adler was a consultant for Sriwijaya Air, a domestic Indonesian carrier. Adler had been born in São Paulo, Brazil to Auschwitz survivors, grew up in Los Angeles and leaves behind a wife Randi, and family.
Joy flight is a cruelly ironic term. In catastrophic loss of life cases, loss of joy can be considered part of the damages, as families inevitably remain haunted by the loss of their loved ones.
We offer our condolences, but we know how insufficient that is, as relatives are only beginning the harsh journey of grief that begins with shock and a sense of immeasurable loss.
Newspaper reports talk about traces of black soot on the Auxiliary Power Unit. The APU is like your computer backup—similar in theory to the battery backup you may have at home hooked to your computer.
The APU is an auxiliary engine that provided electric power and air to the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 until the main engines began to run.
We ourselves haven’t seen soot, or proof of fire–but we haven’t seen much proof at all, since the report that we keep hearing whispers of has not been made public.
Some facts are known We know, for example, that…
—…the APU is located in the rudder section.
—…the weather was bad.
OLBA 250300Z 06004KT 030V090 5000 VCTS RA FEW020CB BKN026 10/06 Q1014 NOSIG
We have heard rumors which may or may not be unfounded:
—Statements made anonymously by Lebanese airport sources report that Captain Habtamu Benti, the pilot in command (PIC) of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 encountered engine problems, perhaps a flame out, during takeoff, and requested permission to abort the flight and return to Beirut. He was given clearance to do so, but another aircraft, a Etihad Airlines flight from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates was in the process of landing and could have interfered with his emergency maneuvers. *
But some information has been made public.
—The rudder found at the plane’s tail was reported to have been sent to France. *
—“One of the five cockpit voice recorders which has a damaged segment will be sent from France’s BEA to a Seattle-based company [Honeywell] to recover that lost segment.” *
So we have even more questions. Where, for example, are the statements of the witnesses? What has France said about the rudder? Has the APU been found, and if so, what is its condition?
Even if ATC sent pilot in to a storm, the pilot also has radar and should have seen the storm and refused the order to take off and/or the heading issued to him. Did his radar fail? Did the APU fail? It might well be that the pilot was misled by a radar system in the plane that was not operating correctly. Unlikely, but, possible. There are still a lot of possibilities we can not rule out. The captain had too many hours logged to take off in to a storm with a plane that he knew was not built to withstand the forces of a cell ahead of him.
Even if there is no immediate report available yet, we look forward to the promised release in March/July. (They say that data collection will continue until March 15 2011, in April the data will be verified/validated by Ethiopian and Lebanese authorities, officials of Boeing and the US National Transport Safety Board by May 30th, with a tentative public release date in July.) When more official information is released, it will help to rule out all gross speculation, so we can focus on possible culpable parties in the chain of events that caused this tragedy.
We shall see.
What: Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 en route from Beirut to Addis Ababa Where: 2 miles west of the coastal village of Na’ameh. When: Jan 25 2010 Who: 7 crew 83 passengers Why: Shortly after taking off in stormy weather and heavy lightning, Lebanese ATC lost contact. The plane disappeared from radar 45 minutes after leaving Beirut. Witnesses on the coast saw the plane as it crashed into the sea. So far 9 bodies have been found by members of the Lebanese army . Update
Initial reports of 7 survivors, became 9 bodies, and now the count has reached 21 bodies.
The site of the crash is 2 miles west of the coastal village of Na’ameh.
Fifty-four passengers were Lebanese, 22 Ethiopian, two were British and there were also Canadian, Russian, French, Iraqi and Syrian nationals.
A Cypriot police helicopter has joined the Lebanese army in the search for survivors, and two U.N. helicopters are on the scene.
Ethiopian Airlines is state owned, and has a standing order of 10 of Boeing’s Next-Generation 737-800s
—
ET-409 Incident – 25 January, 2010
Ethiopian flight ET-409 was scheduled to operate from Beirut to Addis Ababa on January 25th lost contact with the Lebanese air controllers shortly after take off. The flight departed at 02:35 Lebanese time from Beirut International Airport.
Flight ET-409 carried 82 passenger plus 8 Ethiopian Crew members. Out of the total passengers 23 were Ethiopian, 51 Lebanese, 1 Turkish, 1 French, 2 British, 1 Russian, 1 Canadian, 1 Syrian, 1 Iraqi nationals.
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But there was no excuse for the icing problem on the UTAir flight that we are calling the Tyumen crash.
On that flight, both Pratt & Whitney Canada PW124 engines were operating till impact. The plane reached 690 feet and banked 35 degrees to the right, then rolled left banking at 50 degrees, demonstrating instability in the roll axis. Why? Ice.
The ATR 72 had a decent safety record until the 1993 icing incident that caused a fatal crash. This problem was handled by Avions de Transport Regional, the planes designers, by adapting the icing characteristics of the aircraft. They added icing boot extensions to the wing leading edges. (A deicing boot is a ice protection system installed on aircraft surfaces to permit a mechanical deicing in flight.)
The UTAIr 72 was not de-iced at Tyumen before the fatal flight. There’s not much benefit to adding a safety feature if it is ignored.
The ATR 72-210 is equipped with PW 127 engines with a maximum certified takeoff rating of 2750 SHP, and a normal power rating of 2475 SHP. The ATR 72 employs a four bladed propeller. The engine has a reduction gearbox assembly . Because the ATR 72-210 is “stretched” ( much longer than the 42s) ATR 42 pilots are warned about taking off an ATR 72 with too excessive a takeoff pitch angle, which would cause the tail would strike the runway. The ATR 72 has a maximum takeoff weight of 47,465 lbs., and carries 11,020 lbs. of fuel. The engine noise and vibration from the props can get uncomfortable.
Most pilots would not need to be reminded that de-icing is essential when the conditions for ice are likely.
The NTSB has investigated fifty icing accidents and 202 fatalities from 1998 to 2007. We might be able to conjecture that at least some of these incidents would not have happened if the planes had been properly de-iced to begin with, though for some this is too simplistic an assumption.
There were fatal consequences to ATRs which ignored de-icing as demonstrated by the UTair ATR 72 that crashed after taking off from Tyumen in Siberia, killing 31 and mangling 12.
After the disaster, UTAir said that all UTAir planes would henceforth have mandatory de-icing, a change from allowing the pilot to decide whether or not to deice.
Icing has also been determined as the as cause of two earlier fatal ATR 72 crashes:
-Aerocaribbean Flight 883 crashed near Sancti Spiritus November 2010 killing 68 when the plane encountered extreme meteorological conditions that caused it to ice up at 6,100 meters.
-American Eagle Flight 4184 crashed killing 68 when in a holding pattern over Chicago encountering a supercooled cloud and rain causing ice which had built up on the wings.
Icing can take place in a temperature band from minus 12 to plus 4 Celsius.
We have seen a dozen ATR 72 accidents caused by other events:
July 2011-The Eurolot ATR 72 collided with a baggage truck in Warszawa-Frédéric Chopin Airport in Poland.
Nov 2009-The Kingfisher ATR 72 skidded off the runway on landing at Mumbai-Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in India.
August 2009-The Bangkok Airways ATR 72 that skidded off the runway and struck the Koh Samui Airport ATC tower in Thailand.
Feb 2008-The Air Bagan ATR 72 that skidded off the runway on takeoff from Putao Airport in Myanmar.
July 2007-The Jet Airways ATR 72 made a heavy landing before the mid-point of the runway and bounced a couple of times before going off the runway at Indore Airport, India.
March 2006-The Air Deccan ATR 72 that made a landing at Bangalore Airport that was so hard, the new plane had to be sold as spare parts.
Aug 2005-The Tuninter ATR 72 ran out of fuel, both engines quit and the plane ditched in the sea killing 16.
March 2004-The American Eagle ATR 72 that made a bounced landing before skidded off the runway injuring 13 while landing at Luis Munoz International Airport, Puerto Rico.
Dec 2002-The Transasia Airways cargo flight that crashed into the ocean killing 2 crew.
Jan 1995-The cargo ATR 72 that crashed in Taiwan killing 4 crew.
Dec 1994-The Air Gabon ATR 72 skidded off the runway and struck trees while landing at Oyem Airport.
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JetBlue flight 683 had to return and make an emergency landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on the morning of October 4.
The plane was on its way to Orlando, Florida, with 144 people aboard, when the pilot reported a bird strike. It was then turned back to JFK where it landed uneventfully.
A spokesperson of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey confirmed that no injuries were reported and that the aircraft remained undamaged.
The passengers were transferred to another aircraft which departed at 8:45 a.m. to take them to their destination.
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JetBlue flight B6-1735 made an emergency landing in Buffalo, New York, on November 14th.
