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Remembering AirBlue Flight 202

On July 28, Air Blue Flight 202 crashed in the Margalla Hills north of Islamabad. It was the last flight ever for 146 passengers and six crew. The accident happened during a July rainstorm six years ago, I believe the people aboard should be remembered.

The only survivors were the family members. No one aboard lived.

That means that the families of 152 people have had to learn to live with the memories of their loved ones. Most of them have probably traveled to the memorial to see their loved ones names written in stone. Stone will remember what people may forget.

The accident has been labeled pilot error, but those are just words. Some called the fatal flaw CRM, which is an acronym referring to how well the crew inter-managed resources, i.e. themselves. The final report has been completed and filed and put away.

And the victims are still dead. I could wish for a world of magic reality where the investigation would solve some thing, and somehow put the passengers back in their lives. Or even better, change the events of the past so that the flight never happened.

But magic reality does not exist. All that exists is the truth of what happened, the lessons of the past, and the hope that the aviation industry learned whatever it could to prevent such accidents in the future.

The tragedy is a stain on 2010, and forever a wound in the hearts of the families of those whose lives were pointlessly lost. Families, please know that even if the accident is no longer in the global eye, we are so sorry for your loss. No one can say it better than John Donne:

Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

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  • First Rate Planes Need First Rate Maintenance

    George’s Point of View

    I fly a certain carrier.

    I fly a lot of miles on this carrier.

    This carrier impresses me as a company. They got through a bankruptcy as a team, and that says something to me.

    Now let me tell you what I don’t like.

    A half-*** approach to maintenance.

    You fill in the blanks.

    What if the maintenance of this carrier’s fleet were as bad as the aesthetic condition of the interior and exterior of the planes? Within a couple of months even new and re-configured planes lose that “new plane” smell. I can live without the “new.” What I can’t live without is working parts. I don’t care how shiny the bells and whistles are, I just want the important parts (engine, hydraulics, on board computer systems, etc.) to function. When I board one of these planes, every single time, I send a little prayer skyward that the maintenance has been done, perfectly.

    There’s no margin for error. I know I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. It’s not like a car–when you get a lemon, and you have to keep pulling over to the side of the road and calling road service. It’s not like a ship, where at least the passengers can get into a lifeboat and have a fighting chance at survival. There’s no soft shoulder or lifeboat for a plane. There’s only straight down, and certain termination. Every pilot, every crew member, every passenger puts their very lives into the hands of those mechanics. And if they’re American mechanics, I can be relatively confident that they’re well-paid, well-fed, and well-educated. Do I have that assurance if the mechanic is in some other country? No, I cannot.

    How can any passenger feel confident when the mechanics can’t read the plane’s manual? When I board a plane, I have every intention of getting where I am bound. With an American maintenance team, I am assured that if there were the slightest inkling that the maintenance were not up to par, I still can be confident that the parameters of maintenance are overseen by the FAA and the NTSB, and prescribed by American standards of excellence; and any default of or deviation from that standard of excellence is proscribed by and accountable thru the massive engine of our legal system. Can I say that when maintenance is farmed out to some obscure third world entity? Of course not.

    I had one emergency landing one hour out of Sao Paulo and was forced to stay the night, and wait 24 hours for the dubious right to depart on what turned out to be the same plane. Instead of taking off as expected, we rolled to a complete stop out on the runway. The captain came on the PA system stating that he was just not comfortable with the smell in the cockpit, and we were going back to the terminal.

    The pilot knew better to trust his own senses over dubious maintenance practices. So for that flight, it was back to the terminal for more waiting.

    I do have some cause to worry about maintenance. If there is belt tightening that must be done, by all means do it. But not if it means sacrificing safety standards in favor of a third world discount.

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    Man vs Wire

    George’s Point of View

    As opposed to Boeing, where the pilot always has the upper hand over the machine, the basic tenet of Airbus philosophy is machine knows best. That must be the case, because when all else fails, here comes the Airbus autopilot and the pilot can’t do anything. We’ve seen this bite pilots in the *** in a number of circumstances, but the first one that comes to mind, for me, is the big TAM crash in Sao Paulo. Not being a pilot, I’ve had to ask airbus pilots about this, and believe me, I’ve heard some horror stories that would curl your hair. Maybe that’s what is at the root of my negativity toward the Airbus. The other would be their tendency to crash and kill a lot of people at one time.

    Anyway, Airbus recently started production of the A320 series in China. They just did a maiden flight on the first plane. I like China very much but I don’t know about getting on China-made planes. It is bad enough that they are Airbus.

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    Airbus: Retire Fly By Wire

    George’s Point of View

    While we face a crisis of confidence in the latest evolution of air travel technology, it amazes me how many articles are out there that praise the Airbus. Hull loss statistics and disasters are staring us all in the face. The top criteria of plane design should still be safety.

    All of us–passengers and aviation professionals alike– are still subject to the flaws of performance, design, maintenance and safety standards. It’s hard to know where to start.

    I’m not even going to talk about fly-by-wire philosophy, even though it has contributed to fatal accidents, like the TAM crash where the fly-by-wire system failed to interpret how to cope with an Airbus’s disabled reverser on a slick runway in less than optimal conditions.

    I’m just going to say this because it needs to be said.

    Someone needs to stop defending Airbus, and turn an eye to all those hull losses.

    And all those deaths.

    We have stats that show 5,000+ planes have been manufactured. Thousands of deaths have been attributed to Airbus failure:
    A300 – 1449 deaths
    A310 678 deaths (plus today’s 146=824)
    A320-655 deaths
    A330-236 deaths

    (and this is not a complete list.)

    Just go to go to Aviation Safety Net and examine the hull loss statistics of the Airbus.

    It’s not just ONE problem. There are a lot of problems, especially if you follow some Airbus history.

    The investigation of a 2001 Airbus A300-600 crash led to the discovery that a panel on the tail fin can move beyond its safe limit, which can cause the tail fin to shear off and the plane to crash. Read about Flight 587 and Airbus’s history of non-disclosure of Airbus flaws.

    Historically, alleged problems with construction or computer systems have been instrumental in catastrophic vertical stabilizer or tail fin loss. “One of the 24 automatic messages sent from the plane minutes before it disappeared pointed to a problem in the ‘rudder limiter.”

    The tail fin fiasco has supposedly been improved upon. It’s now better because it’s plastic. ! ? ! In fact, a large percentage of the Airbus is composed of a carbon-fiber composite, which can be a problem, not only because composite parts can bend or twist unpredictably in flight, but also their tensile strength is questionable, AND so is the length of time they can perform before degrading.

    And of course, we’ve all heard about the pitot tubes. While there are other systems out there that seem to be viable, the THALES brand pitot tubes which are known to freeze up, and have not been replaced. Whether flawed readings causes a plane to slow down and fly into a stall or speed up and fly into a dive, either result is catastrophic.

    And then, of course, there’s the computer system which may have just gone haywire. As reported by the Northwest Airlines A330 that experienced problems similar to Flight 447, they ran into turbulence. “Their primary and standby airspeed indicators showed the plane had slowed dramatically. Other systems that automatically maintain speed and altitude also disengaged. The master warning and master caution indications flashed on the instrument panel for three minutes until the captain flew out of the weather.”

    So now we have a less than perfect aircraft, that is 19 years old, and getting decrepit. The public description of this plane makes it sound unbelievable–like the aviation equivalent of the bus to Cartagena in the movie “Romancing the Stone:” Babies on laps, no seatbelts, seats not even fastened down, and some passengers who fly standing up the whole way.

    Is there any surprise when a plane like this (that is banned from French airspace and shunted off to a poor area like Comoros) falls out of the sky and kills all but one passenger? The fact that a plane banned from European airspace is shunted off to serve the inhabitants of an impoverished nation is a failure of the operational practice of the aviation industry. Where are the criteria in place to protect those citizens?

    There ought to be a law.

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    Mechanics Forgot is no excuse


    Remember that British Airways Airbus A319 event we talked about the other day? The one where (oops) the engine cover fell off of the engine on that Oslo flight?

    The one where “the coverings broke off and punctured the right engine’s fuel pipe, damaging the aircraft’s systems?” The Air Accidents Investigation Branch the investigation said evealed that the fan cowl doors on both engines were left unlatched during maintenance.”

    In George’s Point of View

    Oops. FORGET does not work, not even once with an aircraft.

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    Warsaw: An opinion

    What: LOT Polish Airlines Boeing 767-300 en route from Newark,NJ (USA) to Warsaw (Poland) with 220 passengers and 11 crew
    Where: Warsaw
    When: Nov 1st 2011
    Who: 220 passengers and 11 crew

    Belly landings happen frequently enough that there is a checklist of procedures. What makes it difficult? Visualize how a match works. Then think about that plane landing, full of fuel, scraping on the runway. That’s what makes it difficult.

    There are basic procedures that are performed. Consider that a 767-300ER has a total of 24,140 gallons, or 161,800 pounds in two wing tanks at 6,070 gallons (or 40,700 pounds), and a center tank at 12,000 gallons, or 80,400 pounds. ( Landing heavy on wheels would cause a wheel or brake fire.) In a gear up landing, the pilot has to lighten the plane by burning off and/or dumping fuel; and in the meantime, the crew does their best to get the gear to work. If they do not, they have to land with the nose up, on a long runway on fire retardant foam. Of course nothing is certain till the investigation is complete, but in my opinion, the crew did a stellar job. And everyone survived, which is what most matters.

    Dumping fuel and spending eighty minutes circling Warsaw would not have been enough to completely burn off fuel. There was still the danger of fire as the flight was landing. Flight and cabin crew took every precaution. The landing appeared picture perfect, sliding smoothy on the fuselage. Inside the plane, the passengers were quietly terrified.

    It may be that the pilot’s glider experience was a help. Between you and me, it looks a lot smoother if you watch the videos with the sound off, so you don’t hear metal screaming against pavement.

    The airport was well prepared, and crews foamed the runway with flame retardant in advance, and stopped any fires from spreading. There is plenty of footage of sparks and flames from the friction of the weight and force of the fuselage driving forward, and yet it came to rest with remarkably little damage.

    The emergency crews did their job. So did the pilots, and so did the flight crew. The flight crew secured the stairs in place as soon as the plane was at a standstill. Passengers could not have moved out of the jet and on to the runway any faster.

    It isn’t that common for all the gears to fail, but less common for all of them to fail at the same time. . My pilot-experts tell me that the most likely way for the hydraulics of all three landing gear to fail is total loss of fluid. There’s an alternate system; the alternate system for landing gear performs as a combination of electricity and gravity. You release the electronic locks, and gravity kicks in. I don’t think I have seen a reason given why the alternative system failed, but that would seem to be an electrical problem.

    But enough speculation–the investigation will reveal everything. For now it certainly appears that even if the gear system failed, the human system did not.

    We hear so many bad things about pilots, and airlines, about the entire industry. Aviation watchdogs were badmouthing the industry yesterday, and will be doing so again tomorrow, but for today, it is refreshing to hear something good. What I am hearing about the expertise of the Polish flight crew and airport is all commendable. LOT, you did well. First Officer Jerzy Szwarc and Captain Wrona, you have made your mark in history with the lives you saved today. The Polish media has been hungry for heroes to balance the April 2010 disaster, and now they have you.

    Already there is already a polish jingle that is a play on the pilot’s name, Captain Wrona. Wrona means “crow.”

    “Lataj jak orze?, l?duj jak Wrona”
    This translates to:
    “Fly like an eagle, land like a Crow”

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    AirBlue in Defiance of Court

    Although the court has ordered compensation, a spokesman of victims told the Peshawar High Court that “AirBlue has communicated to petitioners that compensation will be given to them once they step down and cases are withdrawn from court.” AirBlue also asked for a “universal relief agreement” release form for the 152 companies potentially responsible banning victims from suing.

    The chief justice advised the victims rep to file an application of contempt of court, and promised to continue the case until every heir is compensated.

    In George’s Point of View


    AirBlue should be taking the high road on this, and stop dragging their feet. The tragedy brought to a halt the lives of too many, robbed families of their futures. How can any of these families affected ever have any peace? Why—after already causing the ultimate harm to the victims, and the families of victims—must the airline do everything in their power to make the situation even worse?

    From the moment we are infants who learn to trust our feet to carry us, standing at the sides of our cribs, toddling across our parent’s floors into schools, and adulthood and life beyond, we are only able to stand on our own feet, to walk on our own feet, to negotiate the ground beneath us because we learn a sense of control. We know where the ground is, which way is up. We learn where we can place our feet just so, how to move, to balance, and how to negotiate the rules and laws and physics of the real world so that we can take the next step in our lives, and the next, and the next. All of this occurs because we learn to trust our environment, to trust ourselves in it.

    A tragic event like a plane crash turns our perceptions, our world, our lives inside out. It turns the ground to the ceiling. Our perception of reality is instantly distorted, turning peace and family into an ongoing horror. How can we take the next step when the ground beneath us has been stolen away?

    A tragedy like this shocks everyone–not just the families, but everyone who learns of the event–we are all left with the sense of being a boat unmoored, with the knowledge of a loss of control of the setting and circumstance of our lives. Everyone who learns of a crash like that of Air Blue faces a realization of the frailty of life. The word “shock” is appropriate, for the sensation is not unlike a zap of electricity that sizzles our nerve endings. For those of us who did not lose anyone, we may have an instant jolt, an instant awareness an instant empathy of the depth of grief, horror, pain suffered by survivors; but for survivors that jolt is no instant. It stretches on indefinitely into a future rendered bleak and dead.

    Healing may come; a sense of life may return, or even a sense of carpe diem. But even with healing, there is a loss of innocence, a loss of trust in life, in belief of “the future” because, after all, how grim the future is without our loved ones in it.

    For the families, reparation can never be made. How can they truly be “repaired” if the loved ones they lost can never be returned? The sense of the wholeness of their lives is forever a shattered glass. It is the responsibility for Jet Blue (and even for any of the 152 companies who are indeed partially responsible) to deliver promise instead of excuse, blessing instead of denial, empowerment instead of refusal, expedition instead of delay.

    There is a lot of guilt and responsibility sitting squarely in the lap of Air Blue.

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