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Feds Debark Unruly Passenger

What: Southwest Airlines Flight 1402 en route from Phoenix to Detroit
Where: Denver International Airport
When: after 2 p.m Saturday
Who: undisclosed woman
Why: While on board, the woman “became unruly and combative” leading up to a physical confrontation. She was escorted from the plane into federal custody as it is a felony to disrupt a commercial flight

George’s Point of View

We already put US Marshalls on plane to keep the bad guys in their seats and so they don’t try anything. With all the recent misbehavior on planes, maybe we’re looking at the wrong profession. Do we need on board referees? A corner for time out? Nuns with rulers?

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    More News today (an overview of a few items we’re not covering right now)

    For various reasons including that we have already covered these or don’t have room or time, this is more news:

    • The NTSB is probing the Manhattan Township, Illinois crash that killed Larry Allan Diffley, head of Bemidji Aviation
    • The pilot that was killed in a plane crash in Yuma on November 24 was Denise Jeanette McCracken
    • The investigation into the Greensburg crash (that killed pilot Donald Horan, Horan’s 44-year-old wife Barbara, 45-year-old Stephen Butz and his 42-year-old wife, Denise) is expected to take over six months.
    • Local police and media believed a November 30 Chicago plane crash set to be a real crash
    • NTSB report is out on the crash that killed pilot Tom Steeper on his way from Houston to Oklahoma on November 26, when the plane crashed in southern Cherokee County.
    • Preliminary reports are out for the Rochester,MN; Mekoryuk AK; and Bolivar, Mo non-fatal crashes in December; and the fatal crashes in Apollo Beach, FL; Blair, NE; Clutier, IA; Childress, TX; Scio, OR; Wells, TX; Corona, CA; San Andreas, CA; Great Guana Cay, Bahamas;
    • Bosnian and Herzegovinan authorities are re-opening the investigation of the February 26th 2004 plane crash that killed Macedonia President Boris Trajkovski.
    • Kevin Barry Jnr, who suffered extensive fractures and a brain injury in a Cessna crash on July 5 2007 is settling in Irish High Court for €1.7m against Lancton Taverns Ltd, SCD House, Waterloo Road, Dublin, and its director David Courtney.
    • The South African Defence Force confirms that six crew members and five passengers died in a plane crash.
    • Knox County Regional Airport in Owls Head is taking new safety measures after the Nov. 16 crash that killed U of Maine students and alumnus.
    • Joshua Marlow, sole survivor of the July South Dakota firefighting crash was promoted from tech sergeant to master sergeant.
    • Failure of one of a Boeing 787’s six electrical generators failed, causing the pilot of United Houston-Newark Flight 1146 to divert his 174 passengers and 10 crew safely to New Orleans.
    • United Express Regional Jet made an emergency landing at Grand Junction Regional Airport
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    Southwest Airlines’ Pilots Begin Flying Required Navigation Performance Efficient Procedures at 11 Airports

    DALLAS, Jan. 11, 2011 — Now ready for departure—Southwest Airlines’ Pilots begin Required Navigation Performance (RNP) efficient flight procedures today at 11 airports nationwide. This major milestone to reduce environmental impact with a more efficient operation and to assist the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on NextGen initiatives is the culmination of a four-year project with partners Boeing, GE, and Honeywell. RNP is satellite-based navigation that brings together the accuracy of GPS (Global Positioning System), the capabilities of advanced aircraft avionics, and new flight procedures.

    “RNP sets the stage for Southwest to continue doing its part to conserve fuel, improve safety, and reduce carbon emissions and Greenhouse gases, while simultaneously taking advantage of the high-performance characteristics that exist in an airline’s fleet,” said Captain Jeff Martin, Southwest’s Vice President of the Operations Coordination Center. “The efficiencies RNP introduces help Southwest be a good neighbor while also maintaining our low fares.”

    The Company’s Pilots and Dispatchers now follow these new efficient flight procedures and enhanced avionics to fly specifically designed satellite-based navigation approaches to many Southwest airports. The primary airports with efficient RNP procedures include Amarillo*, Birmingham, Boise, Corpus Christi*, Los Angeles, Chicago Midway, Oakland, Oklahoma City, West Palm Beach, Raleigh-Durham, and San Jose.

    With RNP/NextGen procedures designed at 11 Southwest airports, the Company’s projected savings is $16 million a year, with an anticipated savings of more than $60 million per year once all Southwest airports have efficient RNP procedures.

    “RNP is a significant step in the future for the NextGen Air Traffic Control system,” said Mike Van de Ven, Southwest’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. “This milestone culminates substantial efforts by our Company working with the FAA to position Southwest as a leading participant in a modernized air traffic control system.”

    In addition to modifying 345 Boeing 737-700s with new flight display software and ensuring that all new aircraft are RNP ready, this cross-company effort involving Technology, Maintenance & Engineering, and the Operations Coordination Center also featured intense training efforts to support achieving this milestone.

    “I am very proud of our Flight Operations Team for the design, training, and implementation of NextGen procedures, including training more than 5,900 Pilots to fly Primary Flight Display Navigation Display (PFD/ND) procedures,” said Captain Chuck Magill, Vice President of Flight Operations. “This extensive training allows us to capture RNP procedures as well as provide flexibility in any new aircraft platform we might use in the future.”

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    Air France, Airbus Playing “Hot Potato” with Responsibility

    Air France denies responsibility for the Air France Flight 447 crash, saying that they had raised concerns about the sensors before the crash.

    If they did so, it would seem the memorandum they presented indicates that they were aware of the problem, and therefore responsible. Though Air France “submitted a memorandum to show it had taken ‘all possible precautions” after a series of earlier sensor failures,’ ” it would seem the memorandum would indicate that they were aware of a problem, and should have cancelled flights until the problem was corrected. Certainly passengers were not made aware that there was a potentially serious issue.

    If Airbus had really been concerned, they would have installed the $50,000 backup system used by other carriers in the event of a multiple airspeed sensor failure.

    Watching Air France and Airbus (and Thales) shift blame for the crash back and forth is like watching a child’s game of “hot potato.” When they are finished passing the buck, who ever ends up officially responsible, the victims are still just as dead. Time for someone to “man up.”

    There are rumors that a request will be made to Transport Minister Thierry Mariani to continue the search for the black box. Three earlier searches failed, seeking the Airbus SAS A330, which crashed into the Atlantic on June 1, 2009, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 228 people aboard. 6,700 square miles was searched for the acoustic pings, but the batteries are now dead, and searches changed to sonar imaging.

    The BEA claims that only the black boxes will tell the truth of what happened but drags its feet in continuing the search. On May 6th 2010, a French deputy minister told the public that the black boxes had been found (meaning, apparently, that their general location had been pinned down.) That report was withdrawn. That fact, combined with the BEA reluctance to continue searching, has led to persistent rumors of a cover-up.

    Private shareholders own 81.4% of Air France, 37% held by former Air France shareholders and 21% held by former KLM shareholders. The Government of France owns 18.6% of Air France—putting the BEA in the awkward position of heading an investigation where it has essentially owes 18.6% responsibility.

    Air France was fined €310 million this month for price fixing. Read about their response to the fine

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    Slovakia Plants Explosive on Dublin-bound Flight


    Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
    Contact photographer Diego Ruiz De Vargas

    What: Danube Wings Boeing 737-400 en route from Poprad/Tatry Slovakia to Dublin
    Where: The entire flight
    When: Jan 2nd 2010
    Who: Number aboard not released
    Why: A Slovakian agency decided to test their security by slipping 9 packages of explosives into innocent passengers’ luggage. Eight of those packages were found.

    George’s Point of View

    ONE of those packages—85 grams of RDX plastic explosive— made it all the way to the innocent Slovakian-Irish passenger’s HOUSE, where suddenly Irish forces evacuate their entire neighborhood (reportedly evacuating several apartment buildings and shutting down a couple of intersections) to retrieve that one package of live explosive from his apartment on Dorset Street. Stefan Gonda, a 49-year-old Slovak electrician working in Ireland, must have been really surprised at that knock on the door. On the other hand, maybe not, since he’s from Slovakia and may be used to such thoughtless, stupid, ridiculous, dangerous, psychotic behavior from his government.

    How do they justify endangering a plane full of innocent passengers on a commercial jet? RDX is considered unstable–it can light without a detonator. What if there had been turbulence? What if the temperature had dropped to make the compound even more unstable?

    One head has already rolled for this. The head of the Slovak border and foreign police Tibor Mako resigned. Was he the one responsible or did he throw himself on his sword? Is there more to this?

    I find it difficult to believe that anyone would use real passengers as guinea pigs, put real explosives on an actual international flight. If Ireland has a legal chip on its shoulder the same way the US does, there’d be an International lawsuit pending.

    The Slovokian ministry claims no one was endangered.

    Excuse me?

    85 grams of RDX plastic explosive aboard a plane. Irish forces evacuated the neighborhood to retrieve it…but hey, on a volatile oxygen pumped package like an airplane, no problem.

    It’s hard to believe they call that branch of government “intelligence.” Talk about an oxymoron.

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    Wrongheaded Industry Reassessing Vulnerable Pitot Tubes vs Ice Procedures instead of Brainstorming Next Generation

    Pitot tubes use external air temperature and pressure to calculate changes in speed. Ice crystals that get caught in pitot tubes are considered a contributing factor in a dozen significant events, and the crash of Air France flight 447. As a result of ice crystal accumulation, air temp and pressure readings are false, autopilots shut off, pilots lose altitude readings and receive false warnings. In a fly by wire plane, this is disastrous. In Air France Flight 447, it killed everyone aboard the plane.

    Today’s news is full of aviation-safety experts looking for changes in procedures and more-precise checklists. There’s a lot of buzz out there about a new study. I hope that the study, as it has been explained, is not just about adapting to broken technology. I hope this is not the only study out there.

    Air France and Boeing are now examining how these ice crystals function (or more correctly, malfunction.) That seems wise.

    But one questions why the next step of the anti-icing drive will be to get consensus on how pilots should respond to pitot tube failure.

    George’s Point of View

    This is like figuring out the best way to drive on a flat tire, instead of making a tire that doesn’t go flat. Sure, pilots should have procedures, but shouldn’t a study be designed with the ultimate goal being to give the pilots a dependable speed sensor, not methods how to mitigate an oncoming disaster? Are designers afraid to trade a known quantity, even though it is flawed, for something unaffected by ice crystals? Even if it is cheaper for airlines to figure out how to muddle on with existing systems than to devise an alternative technology to pitot tubes, shouldn’t the focus of studies be on creating technology that is not disabled by ice crystals?

    Not being an engineer myself, I have no ideas on the subject—but somewhere there’s an aviation engineer with a brilliant idea of either a safe design of reconfigured pitot tubes or a completely different system. Let us hope that engineer is able to step up, and be recognized. But it may not be so simple. Apparently Airbus and Air France had been aware of chronic pitot tube problems for years and were content to continue using the same design anyway.

    Come on engineers. It’s time for a better mousetrap.

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    Southwest Airlines and Flight Simulator Technicians Ratify Contract Extension

    DALLAS, Dec. 16, 2010 COMTEX/ —

    Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) is pleased to announce that its Flight Simulator Technicians, represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) Airlines Division, voted to ratify an extension to their current agreement. The agreement is for a two-year contract extension through October 2013. The current contract would have become amendable on November 1, 2011.

    “I want to congratulate both sides for ratification of a contract that delivers mutually beneficial enhancements to pay, benefits, and work rules to our dedicated Flight Simulator Technicians,” said Mike Van de Ven, Southwest Airlines Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. “The negotiating teams were able to balance our competitive needs with our Technicians’ requests to quickly come to an agreement as we head toward our 40th year of operation.”

    After nearly 40 years of service, Southwest Airlines continues to differentiate itself from other low fare carriers–offering a reliable product with exemplary Customer Service. Southwest Airlines is the nation’s largest carrier in terms of originating domestic passengers boarded, now serving 69 cities in 35 states. Southwest also is one of the most honored airlines in the world known for its commitment to the triple bottom line of Performance, People, and Planet. To read more about how Southwest is doing its part to be a good citizen, visit southwest.com/cares to read the Southwest Airlines One Report(TM). Based in Dallas, Southwest currently operates more than 3,100 flights a day and has nearly 35,000 Employees systemwide.

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