One Flyer’s Opinion on lithium ion batteries

Airbus is planning on using the same lithium ion batteries the A350 as the Dreamliner is using (remember those batteries that have gotten Boeing in hot water?) but they’re not changing anything.

At Airbus’s annual commercial results presentation Chief Executive Fabrice Bregier said “we are confident our design is robust” and “don’t see any reason to change.”

Apparently the billions in extra costs that Airbus has racked up has been due to everything but the batteries.

Personally, I don’t know, and I don’t care. At least, I only care in so much as the planes can fly, and are safe safe safe. The competition is great as long as it makes the planes safer. NOT so great when competition pushes these aircraft giants start cut cut cutting edges so they can cut costs so they can secure bragging rights.

If some additional testing needs to be done on the A350 due to lithium ion batteries, DO THE TESTS. Better safe than sorry. When your planes crash or burn and kill people, you can’t give back their lives.

Can we please stop measuring our belts boys, and concentrate on safety? That’s what we frequent fliers want most of all.

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  • Aviation’s New Ride-Em Cowboy Poster-Child

    George’s Point of View

    Americans are always looking for new anti-heroes, and Steven Slater has slipped into that role for a number of groups, especially those who have to deal with a surly public, who always have to be polite for the sake of their jobs and bite back their equally surly response.

    With the job shortage being what it is, people are feeling the weight of their bills and putting up with their need to take this job and shove it–

    But in a more specific sense, he also stands as a symbol of problems in the aviation industry, inside and out. Air travel means discomfort, the bother, the fuss, and a hundred goading needling annoyances: the rude attendant or passenger, hot plane, lost luggage, uncomfortable airline seat, on top of putting up with being too hot, too cold, too miserable. Steven Slater has a whole world of people out there who applaud him for not being “too polite.”

    Slater is one cowboy who would have never had his ten seconds of fame if Jet Blue had provided what every cowboy needs: a side kick. Where was the in-house support? While you’re on that plane, what an airline attendant says is law. (Just ask the Feds.) If the machine had been working properly, it would be that unruly passenger who would be behind bars. Whoever should have been backing up Slater, wasn’t. Instead of one lone cowboy taking it on the chin, Jet Blue needs to step forward and take care of their own.

    When Steven Slater decided he just wasn’t going to take it any more, and slid off the Jet Blue plane with a couple of beers, he became the poster child for dissatisfied people everywhere, who suddenly put themselves in his rebellious shoes and liked the feeling.

    What is more American than the pursuit of happiness?

    After all, we’re all cowboys.

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  • Thoughts on the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800

    According to the Preliminary Dutch Safety Board Report, “The Board is of the opinion that extra attention is needed for the role of the radio altimeter when using the automatic pilot and the automatic throttle system. The Board has issued a warning for Boeing today requesting extra attention to a part of a manual for the Boeing 737, in which is stated that in case of malfunction of the radio altimeter(s), the automatic pilot and throttle system that are connected to this may not be used for approach and landing. The Board would like Boeing to consider an investigation into whether this procedure is also applicable during flight. With the exception of the malfunction of the left radio altimeter the investigators of the Dutch Safety Board have not yet found any irregularities.

    One question that remains now is how Boeing is going to follow up with the reminder for pilots to pay attention. Is this going to be handled with additional training or aircraft or procedure modifications? However–Boeing has said that the autopilot system is designed so that if it senses faulty data from the captain’s altimeter on the left side, the auto-throttle is supposed to switch to the altimeter on the right. In fact, AVweb summarizes it this way: ” The autopilot initiated a power-down of the engines in preparation for landing and the airplane slowed to near stall speed. The pilots responded to the situation too late.”

    It seems to us like this is more of a problem of maintenance and pilot training at Turkish Airlines. How could the pilots not have noticed flying for more than a minute with no thrust?

    We are eager to see what is going to be done to prevent a repetition of catastrophe. On Wednesday Boeing listed six warning signs that can alert a pilot that something is wrong with the altimeter. Maybe they should have included a Starbucks gift certificate for that extra jolt of caffeine-fueled pilot attentiveness.

    The Dutch report indicates that the faulty radio altimeter initiated a sequence of events to which the pilots responded too slowly. The thing is that being a pilot means being aware. There is no margin for error.

    Plus, any time I see that an automatic system did the thinking, it makes me pause: “the automatic system – with its engines at reduced power – assumed it was in the final stages of the flight.” If the autothrust/pilot starts to do something unusual, it is the pilot’s responsibility to disconnect it and fly the aircraft manually.

    Another thing that seems crucial is the black box data:
    “The black box – which can register 25 hours of flying time and which, in this case, covered 8 flights- showed that this problem had occurred twice previously in a similar situation, before landing.” It is crucial in conflicting ways. When it happened before, why was there no “crash” situation? How was it averted? (Probably the pilots flew in manually.)

    And…if it happened before, doesn’t it make the faulty radio altimeter a “known problem” and therefore one which the carrier should have corrected before this plane ever went out again?

    For those who survived, it really doesn’t matter why it happened.

    The passengers–those who perished and those who were injured and those who lucked out and got away without a scrape (if there are any)–are innocents who purchased a ticket.

    There’s no one on that plane who will ever board a plane again without thinking twice; some will suffer sleepless nights and develop phobias; and some have paid the ultimate price, losing their health, or their life.

    Now they are owed a lot more than a refund.

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  • Sleeping or Surfing at 10,000 feet

    George’s Point of View

    Can’t phone while driving, can’t text while driving, can’t drink while driving. What next? For pilots, don’t surf while flying. No federal rules specifically ban pilots’ use of laptops or other personal electronic devices above 10,000 feet, but Delta does have just such a policy.

    I know the Internet can be engrossing. I’ve logged on for one minute and looked up 2 or 3 hours later, but I wasn’t driving—or flying a plane—when I did it.

    Delta has suspended Richard Cole and Timothy Cheney, the pilots who overshot their destination by 150 miles.

    Would it have been better if they’d been sleeping?

    You may be surprised that in some places, it is allowed for pilots to sleep while flying. Pilot Antonio De Biasi provided me this little tidbit of information:

    International carriers including former Varig, Air France, British Airways and Qantas allow pilots to nap, but sleeping while flying is prohibited at U.S. airlines by the FAA. Just last month, the Air Transport Association again pressed the FAA to allow controlled cockpit napping, citing NASA research that found a mid-flight snooze significantly reduces the risks of overall pilot fatigue.

    The NASA study begun in 1989 and allowed one group of pilots flying across the Pacific to take a 25-minute nap while their co-pilots flew the planes, while a control group was required to remain awake for the entire flight. Those without the naps nodded off five times as much – including while on the approach to the airport – as those who got some sleep.

    What is scary to me is the finding that pilots without naps nodded off five times as frequently as those who slept. If this was a blind study, those same ratios may be true for all pilots flying across the Pacific. Pilots nodding off may not be that unusual. That’s disturbing enough for me to want to bring an air horn on my next flight, just to honk it at regular intervals or whenever the captain is not a chatty sort.

    Sleeping and surfing on the job: neither are illegal, at least, not yet, anyway.

    And I am sure that I’m not the only passenger who wants the only law I want my pilots breaking to be the law of gravity.

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  • Getting Past Indifference

    In George’s Point of View

    When we are working on a case trying to get compensation for victims of a crash, we find that the court relies on friends and family to paint a picture of who the victim was, and how they used to fit in the world. Of course we all know that every human being is priceless; but it is the court’s duty oftentimes to put a numeric value on a person for the sake of compensation. Some courts can be remarkably indifferent to individuals. I was reminded of that truism when reading the word-pictures rendered by the boyfriend of one of the Kazan Airport Crash victims, Yana Baranova …” an incredibly focused and mature businesswoman. Her colleagues describe her as a “rising star” of their industry, and her drive would have doubtless carried her beyond her own expectations….” He barely glances over this description of her, but in his words, we do see the snapshot of a vital young woman lost in her prime.

    Yana’s boyfriend is unaccustomed to dealing with the Russian bureaucracy, and refers to “indifference and a lack of surprise boarding on apathy” and officials who write off that attitude with “This is Russia.” As this young man notes, my experience too has been that Russian courts that can be apathetic.

    It is true that the opposite of love is not hate; it is apathy. Elie Wiesel said that, and it is true. Apathy is the callus that has formed—like a healed blister over an injury— thickened, hardened, insensitive tissue formed over a wound to protect it. Over time, it may become expedient for an official not to stop and feel the pain, but it is a tragedy when that happens. Something of humanity is lost. When dealing with government and the courts, one has to remember that they have seen it all, not once but a hundred, a thousand times. Their souls are probably more blistered than your worst blistered feet in new shoes with no socks, worn day after day, in grueling conditions. No wonder they are calloused, insensitive, even hard. It is a grievous fact that too often robes of government, of jurisprudence, which should be worn to empower and embrace the rights of man and the rule of justice are often worn as shields and blades against the individual. For the law to work at its best, it should be objective, but never sacrifice sensitivity to the victims, or the families of the victims.

    Sometimes it is up to our lawyers to remind the courts that the best and brightest of the legal profession went into the field because they were idealists who love the law; who stepped into their professions because they wanted to spearhead change for good, rights of man; who probably had specific agendas where they wanted to affect change; who believed they would be more effective than they are; who ran into barrier after barrier and who may have given up; who may have substituted apathy for the appearance of objectivity.

    After consulting for forty years on a huge variety of cases, maybe I haven’t seen it all, but I’ve come pretty close. I can’t claim to have a crystal ball, but there’s not a whole lot that surprises me. I’ve developed a pretty good instinct about where and when courts go left instead of right.

    In the US, our “rights-based” ethics system means that we all have the right to be treated as equal to others. Other countries may have “utilitarian ethics based on “good outcomes” vs “bad outcomes”, often with the rights of the individual getting crunched somewhere under the wheels of the system.

    We can only hope to do our best to represent the individuals who were lost. We can only do our best to remind those who sit in judgement that underneath the armor and callouses we all wear to protect ourselves from being fragile in the face of all the storms of life, that we are all human, all deserving of hope, concern, and ethical treatment.

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  • Ethiopia Flight 409: Dubious Claims Circulate the Blognet

    There’s a general consensus among the people who deal with terrorists that terrorists like to take credit for disasters, even when they’re not responsible for them. Ownership of violence is part of the whole extremist “psych-you-out “ ideology. To claim responsibility for an act one did not do to is to “claim” one for the malevolent gipper, to make one appear more powerful, especially when actually helpless, and/or to appease whomever one is confessing to with false collateral by churning out false confessions.

    But consider this: if I say I am Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, it does not mean I am Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Legally, it’s going to take more than tall talking and word of mouth to establish that claim in court. It will take heavy duty concrete proof to make that claim stand up in a court of law. The head of the Engineering Department at the BEA (France’s version of the NTSB, the Investigation and Analysis Bureau) Christophe Ménez said in an interview … that evidence shows that last month’s Ethiopian plane crash was not a result of an explosion. “The fuselage and other heavy parts, such as the engine, all sank together, and the plane’s wreckage was in close proximity, which indicates that the airliner did not explode. ”

    The investigation of Ethiopia Airlines Flight 409 so far does not develop a case for terrorism having anything to do with causing the crash. But even if it were true (and we don’t think it is), the primary liability rests with the operator, Ethiopia Airlines. This is not a legal opinion, just my own opinion.

    Now let’s speculate. If it were a terrorist act, it might derail a law suit against component manufacturers in the United States, but an experienced lawyer would tell us that if an act of terror downed the plane, it would not budge legal claims against Ethiopia Airlines. Under the various treaties that govern air travel, the operator has the primary responsibility for that innocent passenger who paid good money to get on that plane.

    The big news services are not the source of this claim; it looks like it is coming from a blog network, so it appears to be a rumor rather than fact, or a rehash or repost of an earlier theory. There is no plausible evidence of sabotage.

    But we are still hoping for more evidence, and for the families, more remains, to be discovered by the Odyssey Explorer in the ongoing marine search for definitive evidence.

    The terrorism theory has already been postulated and discarded once so I don’t give much credence to it. But more than anything, I regret seeing these things crop up to stress the victims families even more. They’ve already been through too much; and the investigation is going to take a long time. They have a long way to go.

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  • |

    AfavTAM Issues, 3 Years After TAM Airlines Flight 3054


    From the desk of AfavTAM president Dario Scott

    After nearly three years of sorrow, of missing our loved ones, we still struggle for truth, justice and life!

    The facts: Information extracted from www.globo.com 08/24/2007

    • 7 month before the TAM tragedy, in a meeting with ANAC, Captain Gilberto Schittini, ANAC’s manager of evaluation standards for aircrafts, warned INFRAERO and AIR COMPANIES technicians, TAM’s technicians among them, that “… the three incidents we recently had could be considered as ‘warning signs of more serious incidents, involving the overrunning of the runway…’”, referring to Congonhas Airport, under certain conditions. The same statement was given before the Aerial Blackout Parliamentary Inquiry Committee.

    • On 07/17/2007, TAM flight JJ3054 overran the Congonhas runway, hitting a TAM building, and 199 people lost their lives. Hundreds of families were destroyed and are still struggling for justice. WHAT HAPPENED?

    State and Federal inquiries were already concluded. The state inquiry, as disclosed by the press, identified a number of people from ANAC, INFRAERO, TAM and even AIRBUS to be held accountable.

    Although working from the same facts, the federal inquiry came to a different conclusion, only identifying the pilots as responsible for the tragedy, exasperating us all.

    Now, AFAVITAM awaits and relies on an independent and solid analysis by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. AFAVITAM and rest of Brazil count on the indictment of the real wrongdoers that are responsible for this foreshadowed tragedy. Time elapsed is a disturbing factor; we don’t have a closure, even after three years. Due to the statute of limitations, time works on behalf of the guilty. We believe that, in order to get the proper measures taken and to PREVENT NEW TRAGEDIES, to compel and awaken society, an exemplary punishment is a valid mechanism.

    We have monthly meetings because we believe we can make a difference. WE LOOK FOR:

    • TRUTH AND JUSTICE;
    • PUNISHMENT FOR THOSE RESPONSIBLE;
    • SOLUTIONS FOR THE PROBLEMS FOUND, so we can avoid another tragedy.

    NO MORE IMPUNITY IN BRAZIL.
    HOW LONG OUR SAFETY WILL HAVE TO WAIT?
    YOU CAN’T PUT A PRICE ON A HUMAN LIFE!!!

    Estamos completando três anos de saudades. São três anos de caminhada pela VERDADE, pela JUSTIÇA e pela VIDA !!!! (www.afavitam.com.br)

    Dos fatos: (Informações extraídas do G1, Globo.com, de 24/08/07)

    ? “O Comandante Gilberto Schittini Gerente de Padrões de avaliação de aeronaves da ANAC, alertou 7 meses antes da tragédia, em reunião em que estavam presentes técnicos da ANAC, INFRAERO E AS COMPANHIAS AÉREAS, dentre elas a TAM, que “ … os três incidentes ocorridos recentemente poderiam ser considerados indícios de que “há um potencial de ocorrências mais graves, com ultrapassagem do final da pista (VARAR A PISTA) …”, referindo-se ao aeroporto de Congonhas, quando ocorridas algumas condições.” Declaração fornecida por este em depoimento, posteriormente, à CPI do apagão aéreo.

    ? O QUE ACONTECEU? No dia 17/07/07 a aeronave da TAM, vôo JJ3054, VAROU a pista do aeroporto de Congonhas, bateu no prédio da TAM e 199 pessoas perderam suas vidas. Centenas de famílias foram destruídas e encontra-se em reconstrução atrás de JUSTIÇA.


    Os inquéritos nas esferas Estadual e Federal já foram concluídos. No primeiro, conforme divulgado pela imprensa, várias pessoas foram apontadas como responsáveis, tanto da ANAC como da INFRAERO e da TAM, tendo referido ainda a empresa AIRBUS. O segundo, em que pese analisar os mesmos fatos, indicou apenas os pilotos mortos como culpados, o que indignou a todos. Agora a AFAVITAM aguarda e confia na análise firme e independente do Ministério Público Federal e espera, junto com a sociedade brasileira, que haja a denuncia e o apontamento dos verdadeiros culpados dessa tragédia anunciada. Estamos preocupados com a demora, porque já se passaram 3 anos e ainda não temos uma definição. Sabemos que o tempo beneficia o culpado, porque pode ocorrer a prescrição da pena. Acreditamos que a punição exemplar dos responsáveis pela tragédia é um mecanismo de coerção e conscientização para que medidas sejam tomadas e novas tragédias NÃO SE REPITAM.

    Nos reunimos todos os meses porque acreditamos que podemos fazer a diferença e
    BUSCAMOS:
    – VERDADE E JUSTIÇA;
    – PUNIÇÃO PARA OS CULPADOS;
    – SOLUÇÕES PARA OS PROBLEMAS ENCONTRADOS, para que outra
    tragédia anunciada não ocorra;
    CHEGA DE IMPUNIDADE NESTE PAÍS.
    A SEGURANÇA DE TODOS VAI ESPERAR ATÉ QUANDO? VIDA NÃO TEM PREÇO!!!

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