In the middle of winter, in the midst of trouble, at the height of darkness, sometimes it is so hard to believe that Spring will come again.
And look. It’s here.
Spring in the U.S. It’s magic together. It’s magic alone. Nature dressed in her prettiest clothes. From melting snow to new leaves, every blade of grass, buds blooming, life renewing.
All that hope, and renewal, and new life, bubbling under the hard crust of winter, reaching for the sun. Gotta love it.
Arik Air Ltd., and Aero Contractors Co. of Nigeria Ltd., Nigeria’s top two airlines, have been banned from getting loans by Nigeria’s Central Bank due to the massive debt they have accrued. Arik Air owes Asset Management Corp. of Nigeria more than $534 million. Aero Contractors owes more than $203 million. A bank that loans money to these airlines will face “serious fines from the government.” Air Nigeria recently collapsed owing crew a debt of four months’ pay, in addition to $175 million in loans to Nicon Investments Ltd..
Only three Nigerian airlines remain in operation. Arik Air has not published a date when it will resume flying.
Officially, according to the BBC, the carrier resumed domestic flights on Sunday Sept 24. However we did get anonymous input from Monrovia that as of Saturday, Sept 22nd, Arik Air was flying.
This is what the aircraft leasing companies should do:
Stop leasing planes to operators that are careless in their maintenance and pilot training.
Leasing companies should not look only at credit worthiness. Yes, that is one factor, but it is only part of the picture. Leasing companies must also make judgements based on the history of the airline operator performance, and maintenance.
If credit and performance history all checks out, the oversight is not over. The leasing company should monitor every single plane they have leased out to foreign operators.
If monitoring reveals any problems whatsoever, that pilots are not being trained, that they are not getting enough sleep, that the operator or aircraft goes on a black list, that the operator is shown to be negligent in any way, then the lessor should endeavor immediately to pickup/repossess that plane.
Maintaining every aspect of the plane’s maintenance, flight operations, crew resource management, and crew training is as crucial to the contract agreement as payments. Failure to keep everything up to date is as much a breach of contract and cause for action as is failure to pay.
View larger photo here
Contact photographer Iam Lim
What: Yemenia Air Airbus 310 flight 626 lost at sea en route to Moroni
George’s Point of View
What an amazing coincidence…that the news that the black boxes from the Comoros crash are recovered crosses the internet on practically the same day that they throw in the towel for the search for the Air France black boxes.
But the news is out:
They were detected on July 23rd and now, Comores Officials have reported on Aug 28th, that both black boxes have been recovered.
I am delighted with the wonderful news and am as excited as everyone to learn what’s inside. Now maybe they can re-allocate their resources to recommence the search for the black boxes of Air France Flight 447.
It is the Fourth of July.
Without naming names, I save a corner of my happiness for those countries in turmoil, and peoples of all nations and beliefs–I pray whatever their unhappiness is that it will pass, and they too will know some happiness in their own lifetime, in their own back yards.
Today, most of the USA will be grilling with friends and family.
Today we will share the heat, the plenty, the sunshine, the smoke, the food and the fireworks.
Today from sea to shining sea, we will celebrate our independence—another day, another precious year of this miracle of democracy in this land of unparalleled beauty and diversity. We may argue amongst ourselves, but I hope we can always remember, together, warts and all, we are beautiful. Our lives are the embodiment of a beautiful idea.
Today I will not think about the pundits who bring us bad news, and focus instead on the story of our country, the miracle that continues. As our lives inscribe another fourth of July into our own history books, let there be another unique page in our story.
This year, maybe we can invite a few more people to sit at our tables, so more of us can look forward to a well fed today, and a better, stronger, brighter future for our children.
Today we are still the United States of America, and this is our Independence day.
I have to reflect on my love of this holiday, but not too long because my family is waiting.
It’s not the flag waving, it’s what the flag represents.
I love this holiday because it celebrates our lives. It is a simple thing, really. America is families. Families in our parks, or in our own backyards. A hot dog, a hamburger, a chicken on every grill.
I love this holiday because this is where our kids play, where they grow strong and free, and spit watermelon seeds. I love this country because my children are free to argue their own opinions, not just about recycling and vegetarianism, but subjects like abortion and political theory. My children are free to be who they are. They are free to dream of who they can be. They are free to reach out and become the dream. Here sons and daughters can both play spontaneous games of touch football, or soccer or tennis or baseball, or compete in potato-sack races or lie on towels in the grass and stare up to count the leaves that twinkle in the sunlight, or the stars peeking out at dusk.
Tonight I will love this country even more when the babies that cried over fireworks last year will this year gaze at them in wonder.
Happy Birthday America from sea to shining sea. Have a happy fourth of July.
* all credit to whoever made this amazing photo found on the internet. You are an artist and an inspiration, whoever you are.
At Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the memorial dedicated to the victims of flight 447 will have its grand opening. Family members of those lost in the crash are invited.
Sometimes Air France displays a disturbing lack of propriety, even when they’re doing their public best to appear sensitive and thoughtful.
Case in point: Generously, Air France provided tickets to the family members of the victims of Flight 447 , the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, that final notorious, fatal flight which disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009, killing all 216 passengers and 12 crew members.
Guess which flight Air France put the grieving families on? Flight AF445 on an Airbus aircraft–it is, in fact, exactly the same flight as the one which killed their family members. (“447” was discontinued; “445” is the current designation for the same flight.)
The victim association is intending to rebook on Boeing flights.
It’s difficult to figure out, impartially, what is going on in the heads of Air France management. Are they deliberately ignoring the 400 lb gorilla in the room? (Actually, they’re planning to replace the 400 lb gorilla—the Airbus A330-200— with an even bigger model, the A340. Essentially replacing the 400 lb gorilla with a 500 lb gorilla… but I digress.)
Meanwhile, the families agonize over the details: would the plane have crashed if the pitot tubes had been replaced with another model? Or if the pitot tubes had been maintained properly? And how can Air France possibly expect them to set foot on a plane–especially the same flight as the one that carried their family members to their deaths?
Lives have value. It doesn’t matter if a man makes $10,000 a day, or 10 cents. If he dies in a plane crash, he’s irreplaceable. Maybe his boss can put a dollar figure on what it would cost him to lose that worker; maybe his banker can come up a specific value to subtract from the family’s credit rating.
But to his wife
to his son
to his daughter
to his parents
to his friends
to all those his life touched daily—
he’s irreplaceable.
His loss leaves a hole in a family that money can never fill.
And then the attorneys for insurance companies will “try” to get by with compensation offers that are equal amounts for each passenger, that in some cases, equal to “peanuts” — I don’t see that too much, but ‘they’ try, especially if the laws in the country have established maximum low-values for the loss of life in aviation accidents. Even with Warsaw and Montreal the compensation I’ve seen is seldom governed by the caps provided for in these treaties.
Instead, the compensation is based on the profile of the decedent. Age, Occupation, Family, etc. With this said, each seat on that plane is occupied by an individual and the family of the victim should be compensated accordingly, and in addition, the family should be paid non-pecuniary damages for pain and suffering, etc. In a perfect case, that’s how it works.
Whether he makes $10,000 a day, or 10 cents will not affect a man’s pain and suffering. In fact, his pain may be worse, knowing his ten cents is all that lies between his family and ruin.
PEANUTS is not acceptable.
After making note of the Oct 31 near miss in Oslo, I remembered this 100 foot close call of two Boeing 747’s over Scotland. This occurred in late June, when a Lufthansa pilot was climbing, and a British Airways flight were 24.3nm apart on converging courses. A STCA (Short Germ Conflict Alert)
The Oslo near miss could have been prevented if the repetition protocol have been observed.
The Scotland near miss had two planes
(DLH418 Lufthansa Boeing 747-830, D-ABYC Frankfurt (FRA) – Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD))
and
(BAW87 British Airways Boeing 747-436, G-BNLM London-Heathrow (LHR) – Vancouver (YVR))
on a collision course 100 feet Vertical/3.9 nm Horizontal and 1100 feet Vertical/2.8nm from impact. The study of the event concluded that actions of both the pilots and the controller contributed but that the pilots avoiding ATC instructions caused the proximity issue.
The added pressure of reporting incidents such as these should help pilots and air traffic control to avoid similar events in the future. It will do so ONLY if adequate attention is paid to the mistakes, if alternative/better responses are deter mend, if the resulting studies are closely attended, and if protocol is adjusted to reduce the possibility of such problems re-occurring. On some level, the protocol worked, because these incidents were not collisions. However, they were closer than they should be. All I can say about this event is that it is a good thing that mistakes are reported.
