George’s Point of View
New technology is coming in 2013 that will replace pilots current “see and avoid” avoidance system over the Hudson, where pilots rely on listening to a traffic frequency to keep them out of harm’s way. Obviously, this is proving inadequate over the Hudson River where the helicopter and plane collided last August killing nine. All those buildings to avoid–and all those planes and helicopters too.
Until 2013, more regulations will be in place regarding what vehicle flies at which altitude. The new system will involve GPS tracking on visible receiver screens carried on planes and helicopters, a new take on old radar technology.
It’s never too late to save lives. Though one wonders if pilots can’t see a whole plane coming, (or conversely, a helicopter at nine o’clock, or right in front of them) if a blip on a screen is going to be more effective. Given the heavy traffic over the Hudson, it just might look like Space Invaders and how much good will that do?
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The Callous Abandonment of Air France Flight 447
It’s difficult for me to comprehend why we cancelled earlier searches. I’m certain we do not have any new technology now that we didn’t already have 2 years ago. The subs used have been gradually fine-tuned, but not significantly in the past two years.
It is common knowledge now that the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute team, running a couple of AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) Remus 6000’s were barely a week into the fourth search when they discovered the location of pieces of the wreckage of the fallen Airbus, flight 447 in an area thought of as an underwater “Himalayas”. Mike Purcell, Senior Engineer of the Woods Hole team, has attributed the discovery to the ability of the Remus being able to submerge to 6000 meters (which means being able to follow the underwater mountain range cliffs, ravines, and slopes); and to the decision to start close to the last known position of the plane.
I do wonder why this was the fourth search; there should have been only one— a single search that continued until the wreckage was found.
Maybe there is no correct time to be critical, and if I am critical, it is not of the search team who did a splendid, if not all but impossible job, in finding the wreckage. It is entirely the human effort that made the difference, because although the AUVs are autonomous, they are not truly intelligent. They had to be daily programmed, and with three units running, this means three times the (sonar) data had to be daily downloaded, processed and analyzed. The team learned how to deal with managing the challenging demersal topography, and reading the visual output which were sonar abstractions that look like etch-a-sketch scribbles. The expert on board analysts had 15 years of experience in interpreting this data.
For the search team, I have only praise.
My point of criticism is for the decision makers, and it is founded on behalf of concern for the families.
We are hearing how well preserved the remains were, due to the temperature and water pressure. We are hearing about how only some of the remains were retrieved.
Why only some?
All the bereaved families should have the right to retrieve their loved ones. All of the families should have the right to place their loved ones in a known and tangible resting place.
It is a chilling callousness on behalf of the planners to advise their team to knowingly leave behind even so much as a single hair, if that hair was known to be that of one of the victims. The decision betrays a chilling callousness; an act of deliberate abandonment. It reminds me of those all fallen into a “deep place…where the sun is silent”, in Dante’s hell. “Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.”
And now, we’re back to where we started, only worse. Many bodies were not recovered. Are they lost forever?
I can all but guarantee you that the future holds some grisly Titanic/Disney-esque treasure-seeking macarbre (or sugared) revisitation of the tragic ground, private touring expeditions seeking out the latitude and longitude, with camera, wallet, and catching net in hand. Movie rights and treasure hunters-a marriage made in hell, or Hollywood.
This is no Dante’s tale. For the bereaved families there will be no poetic justice. They will live knowing forever that their loved ones were found…came this close to being returned…and left behind, if not in the nine circles of hell, then across the oceans in that “deep place…where the sun is silent” and all hope abandoned.
Boeing 777 Air Emergency: Engine thrust rollback events
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Zach Lautzenheiser
George’s Point of View
come on Boeing/Rolls Royce, FIX-IT, waiting can be life-costly!
As you can see by the NTSB Press Release, It is time for Rolls-Royce and Boeing to move forward on a corrective redesign of Rolls-Royce RB211 Trent 800 Series engines.
Take a look at these two incidents:
The solution is to amend the safety vulnerability. Redesign the FOHE and eliminate the potential of ice build-up.
NTSB agents believe there’s a good chance this will happen again; we would hazard a guess that it has already happened more than the twice we’ve mentioned here, and will continue to happen until the solution suggestion is implemented, built, and installed asap before we have to write here about 777 incidents or fatalities.
Argentina | Boeing | compensation | Crash | Damages | Editorial | flap problems | Líneas Aéreas Privadas Argentinas | Video
Compensation after Fifteen Years
I know I’ve said before how cases take a long time. Sometimes they drag on in unexpected ways. Take for example the LAPA case. On August 31 1999 Líneas Aéreas Privadas Argentinas scheduled Flight 3142 (LV-WRZ) to fly Buenos Aires–Córdoba with a hundred and one persons aboard. The twenty-nine year old Boeing 737-204C failed to get in the air because the flight crew forgot to put the flaps in the appropriate position for flight. Instead of shooting into the air, the plane sped through the perimeter fence, across a street, struck a car and collided with a median and machinery on the road.
The accident took sixty-five lives, two of them not even on the plane. Forty aboard were injured, seventeen of them seriously. NTSB records say there were 80 fatalities and 21 minor injuries.
That’s what is widely known. What many do not know is that after the accident, nine families were given the wrong bodies. Those bodies were exhumed, checked, delivered to the correct families, and reburied at the cost of Argentina’s First Chamber of the House. The financial cost associated with all of this was covered. Not the emotional cost.
Three of those families affected will be compensated 100 thousand dollars plus interest.
In my heart of hearts, I do believe no amount of money can ever compensate for the wear and tear on the families due to the mix-up, even if at the time, the hasty mistake was well-meaning (or expedited due to politics.) Can you imagine what the families went through, seeing the resting places disturbed, then having to endure new funerals? It must have been like losing them more than once—refreshing the whole misery of loss a multiple of times. I cannot help but wonder about the families who were not compensated. I wonder if it has been so long that there is no one left to pay.
This can be of no assurance to the families of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. It is further proof that aviation crash cases do take a long time. Tragedy is tragedy. There is no best case scenario in a tragedy.
A 380-Just a note
George’s Point of View
Airbus wants to do the impossible. Always pushing aviation physics to be bigger than we thought it was possible to be.
There’s a whole lot of buzz about Airbus’s superjumbo elephantine double-decker, wide-body, four-engine jets with seating for up to 853 people. The families who have lost loved ones at sea–especially those in the recent Airbus flight 447 and the Comoros crash–must feel crushed when they hear about expensive Airbus efforts to make their already huge aircraft series break more size records.
Maybe Airbus should stop trying to be the biggest plane on the block, and work a little harder on safety. If they were as safe as they are big, there would be 380 families not in mourning today. Yes, 380. Here’s the biggest irony.
There were 152 fatalities in the Airbus crash in the Comoros. There were 228 fatalities in AF 477. Does anyone else find it macabre and frightening that that adds up to 380? I’m not a numerologist, but that’s awfully disturbing–
Airbus needs to rethink their entire aviation philosopy, stop making these monstrous death traps, go back to the drawing board, and correct the defects of the planes they already have in service.
If they had done so already, there would be at least 380 mothers, fathers, and children still alive.
Or they should be responsible, and ask that their planes be grounded until they are made safe.
Airbus needs to stop throwing money at air shows, and start compensating the families of those that have died or been injured due to design flaws of Airbus planes.
Yes, even the much vaunted new jet has niggling problems surfacing all of the time, but the flaws in the Airbus 380 skywhale behemoth are being downplayed by the powers that be.
Issues have been found with all of these systems:
- a braking system fault
- a plethora of system nuisance warnings based on alleged over-sensitivity
- weight growth during development
- fuel tank indication
- nose wheel steering
This is just what has come to light so far.
Please, let’s go back to the drawing board Airbus, for the sake of your human family. There is nothing, nothing, nothing you can do to bring joy back to 380 families who remain wounded, broken, with holes in their lives that can never be filled, lives that have been deformed by damage that can not be undone. Airbus, you want to do the impossible, be ever bigger. How about doing something in the realm of the possible? Let your heart be big. Step up to the plate, and compensate the grieving, who are suffering from lives lost in Airbus planes. This is beyond the physics of aviation and above the laws of man. It’s the right thing to do.