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Airborne Cell Phones In Legal Eye

To phone or not to phone, that is the question. Or to update it a little:
Do radio signals from cell phones disrupt key airplane functions?

OR

Are current U.S. cell phone bans outdated and useless at promoting air safety?
That is today’s question.

In U.S. air space, cell phones are banned, but all European carriers do not ban cell phone use.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration says cell phones may emit signals that can affect aircraft communications, navigation, and flight control.

There’s some piggyback legislation in the FAA reauthorization bill that would prohibit cell phone use on planes by anyone other than flight crews or law enforcement. Currently once planes reaches 10,000 feet it is up to the carrier to allow or disallow passengers to turn on most portable electronic devices except cell phones.

Boeing, for example, prohibits the use.

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    2012: Tam Remembered

    It is again mid July. Inevitably, in mid July, my thoughts turn toward Tam 3054. On July 17 2007, five years ago, a Tam Airbus failed its landing at São Paulo’s Congonhas airport and stole a hundred and ninety-nine lives. The casualties always number greater than those who died. Each of the 199 touched had families; and each family exponentially touches countless others. I came to know each of the families, and I loved them. I learned from them, especially from their strength in the face of adversity. What I think of too, is how that accident changed me, how I learned from the families left behind to pick up the pieces and move on.

    On this day, I want to remember these families, their grace, and their lost loved ones. We cannot forget that in their passing, a hole was left in the world.

    I hope that the families—my well remembered friends—have overflowed the holes in their lives with something else. Five years of life. I hope they have taken the opportunity to fill to capacity these last five years with a life well lived. What does that mean? A life lived to the fullest. It’s the good and bad and everything in between. I hope that this well-lived life has lit their dark spaces with light, and packed the emptiness with new memories, each to be revisited, like the pages of a beloved book.

    We are all each a harp of many strings, each string struck by memories that play one and many notes. The threads of our lives stretch from the past to future, distant anchors never seen and never known. Each day brings us a chorus of new, and distinct notes. Let us lose all regret, and only joy in the harmony of our histories and our tomorrows. It is the wholeness of these notes that is the music of our lives.

    I hope that in filling the hole with new life, that my friends can now painlessly cast the net into their past. I hope they have learned to embrace the roses in December. Memories are for us to cherish, each one a forever jewel in itself. Memories are a constant gift of joy that is never lost; and as we can remember with poignant joy the roses of summer in December, we can remember our lost loved ones in July. I do not smile because I have forgotten. I smile because I remember.

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    Thoughts about the Boeing Battery

    It’s no surprise that the FAA has no crystal ball and can’t tell us when the 787 is flying again.

    Is Boeing going to switch out Battery systems? Are they wasting time trying to qualify the problematic lithium-ion system they have when they could switch to a different technology? Is it cost prohibitive to switch systems temporarily while Boeing works the kinks out of a system they seem to want to keep?

    Cessna confirms that it intends to requalify lithium-ion batteries. It means that they are going to keep using them–but we do agree with their determination to REQUALIFY them. Let us not forget that Cessna issued an emergency recall of the CJ4+ Citation Jet lithium-ion batteries when they suffered a fire in late 2011. Their airworthiness directive required CJ4+ operators to replace the lithium-ion batteries within 10 flight hours. The company that produced the Cessna batteries, A123 Systems, went out of business. Maybe Cessna should go talk to Boeing about their findings.

    The investigation of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner battery that caught fire in Boston is that two things have been found:

    thermal runaway (a cycle where temperature goes up causing it to go up more) If the electrolyte catches on fire it can self-sustain.

    short-circuit (unintended contact of components and consequent accidental diversion of the current)

    The Boston event battery suffered both.

    Now the question is which one is the chicken, and which one is the egg. Which came first? And they still haven’t figured out why. And did both failed batteries come from the same batch of batteries?

    The lithium cobalt oxide battery chemistry Boeing uses is considered less safe than lithium manganese oxide and lithium iron phosphate chemistry.

    Was the whole battery system a mistake? It was, according to whistleblower Michael Leon who we mentioned in Battery Buzz wrote a report (2006) saying that the battery technology was risky and that substitute battery technology should be used on the 787.

    Now the NTSB is going to point fingers at the FAA for certifying what may be a problem.

    Video

    And video from the whistleblower:

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    Gol Goes On and On

    According to Brazil’s Defense Minister Nelson Jobim, critics are “playing politics” when they disparage the state of Brazil’s aviation industry, in which occured in the past year, the crash of a Gol jetliner over the Amazon in which 154 people died, and July’s disaster when an Airbus crashed into a warehouse in Sao Paulo killing 199 people.

    Nevertheless, during a seminar in the United States, the President of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers, Marc Baumgartner criticized the Brazilian Air Force which oversees Brazil’s air traffic control system for trying to punish the controllers. “The Brazilian Air Force invested lots of energy to arrest and prosecute its own workers but none to fix its (air traffic control) system.” He also said that “it’s a question of time before a new air accident happens again in Brazil.”

    So far, a military court has declined to indict five Brazilian air traffic controllers for the GOL crash. Two American pilots face charges in a civilian criminal court in connection with the same crash. A Congressional commission report supports the indictment of pilots Joseph Lepore and Jan Paladino.

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    NTSB to Hold Forum on Safety Culture


    The National Transportation Safety Board today announced that it will hold a forum addressing the importance of safety culture in transportation on September 10 and 11, 2013, in Washington, D.C.

    “In our accident investigations we’ve seen instances of weak or non-existent safety cultures,” said Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman. “In this forum, we want to highlight what’s present in strong safety cultures as well as identify what works to build these cultures in order to more effectively prevent accidents.”

    The forum will review the progress and innovations that have been made in developing safety cultures throughout the transportation community and pinpoint areas where there are opportunities for improvements. Participants — including operators, labor groups and oversight authorities — will outline their roles, responsibilities and methods for developing effective safety cultures, with emphasis on the remaining challenges and steps needed for further improvements.

    The two-day forum, “Safety Culture: Enhancing Transportation Safety,” will be chaired by Hersman; all five Board Members will participate. Panelists include researchers, regulators, and leaders in both transportation and non-transportation industries.

    The forum will address ways of enhancing safety by providing first-hand accounts of efforts from both transportation and non-transportation industries to develop effective safety cultures and to implement specific safety-enhancement techniques. Highlighting progress while recognizing remaining challenges, the invited panelists will discuss advances in safety culture research, and describe the roles, responsibilities, and methods for developing effective safety cultures within their industries.

    The forum panels will include:

    Research Perspectives on Organizational Accidents
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    Non-Transportation Perspectives on Safety Culture
    Organizational Leadership Perspectives on Safety Culture
    Safety Culture Management and Oversight in Transportation
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    There will also be a review of some recent organizational accidents that have been investigated by the NTSB. Invited panelists will include researchers, regulators, and industry leaders.

    The forum will be held in the NTSB Board Room and Conference Center, located at 429 L’Enfant Plaza E., S.W., Washington, DC. The public can view the forum in person or by live webcast. Webcast archives are generally available by the end of the next day following the forum, and webcasts are archived for a period of 3 months from after the date of the event.

    Organizations and/or individuals can submit input for consideration as part of the forum’s archived materials. Submissions should directly address one or more of the forum’s topic areas (identified by the panel titles) and should be submitted electronically as an attached document to: SafetyCultureForum@ntsb.gov. Input received will be entered into the public docket for this forum.

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  • Changes Mandated for Indian Pilots

    Indian pilots can be looking forward to better hours. The Indian Pilots Guild, the Indian Commercial Pilot Association, the Society for Welfare of Pilots ( Jet Airways) and the Federation of Indian Pilots sent the (Indian) government a list of suggestions to minimise pilot error due to fatigue.

    Collisions and near collisions are attributed to long hours, unreasonable work scheduling and pilot fatigue.

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