Pictured: Lion Airlines Boeing 737-46B
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer JKSC
What: Lion Air Boeing 737-400
Where: Pekanbaru airport, Sumatra
When: December 14, 2009
Who: 165 passengers
Why: On landing, the flight skidded off the runway. It took an hour to evacuate the panicked passengers via mobile stairway.
After a maintenance check, a replacement crew resumed the flight hours later.
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Giovanni Verbeeck
What: British Airways Boeing 777-200 en route from London Heathrow to Boston,MA
Where: Shannon
When: May 23rd 2011
Who: 221 passengers
Why: En route over the Atlantic, smoke developed in the cockpit and the pilots declared emergency and diverted to Shannon.
(There is some speculation that the smoke was ash drawn into the cabin.)
The smoke increased on descent, but the pilot made a safe landing. The smoke is being blamed on an undesignated mechanical problem.
Above FL200, the atmosphere was (reported as) clear of Grimsvotn ash.
Passengers were provided hotel accommodations until the replacement flight arrived (May 24.)
Boeing warned 15 carriers to avoid flying the 747 and 787 near “high level thunderstorms” because of a risk of engine-icing problems. Six incidences of GEnx engines losing thrust at high altitude because of a buildup of ice crystals behind the front fan led to Boeing issuing a notice probating flying at high altitude within 50 miles of thunderstorms.
In the meantime, GE and Boeing are working to control the problem.
Pictured: The plane in question at Sao Paulo – Guarulhos International (Cumbica) (GRU / SBGR) Brazil, June 12, 2010
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Junio Gracielo
What: British Airways Boeing 747-400 en route from Hong Kong to London
Where: Copenhagen
When: Jul 30th 2010
Why: While en route over Russia, the plane developed engine problems and had to shut down. The crew decided to continue instead of return to Hong Kong, and diverted to Copenhagen where they made a safe landing. The plane spent some thirty plus hours on the ground and on the return to the UK has not yet been returned to service.
The report of the UK’s Air Accident Investigation said windmilling of the engine without engine oil supply over an extended period of time increased engine damage and recommended that regulators review engine shut down policy.
Royal flight RL-8772 made an emergency landing in Delhi, India, on April 7th.
The Boeing 767-300 plane heading from Phu Quoc, Vietnam, to Yekaterinburg, Russia, was diverted after the crew noticed an engine failure.
The plane landed uneventfully. All three hundred and forty-five people aboard remained safe.
Everyone following Aviation News by now has already heard of the sixteen-year-old boy who rode stowaway in the wheel well of a 767 from California to Kahului Airport in Maui Hawaii, surviving impossible conditions of 38,000 feet. Surviving outside of a plane is nothing short of a miracle. Conditions outside of a plane in flight are sub-human, making suffocation a certainty; and if one somehow were to manage the lack of air, then the trick would be surviving freezing conditions and decompression sickness. Hypoxia is almost a certainty at -80 degrees Fahrenheit, with no air.
Most people who attempt such a feat end up frozen solid, or fall off. Plus, should I not mention that an emotional sixteen year old who ran away from home should not be able to breach airport security;
Should not be able to survive the trip;and after he did, the story
… should not be publicized in such a way that future idiots be inspired to follow in his idiocy. Newscasters may as well have posted an invitation to every idiot, prankster, and t-word in town.
So all you stupids inspired to save yourself the cost of a plane ticket, if you are inspired to sneak on to a wheel well because you have a winter coat, and think you’re invincible, the truth is that this is how idiots die.
Of course, the story is the breach of security not that the kid survived. Obviously in a real-life kind of way, it’s good the boy survived. Obviously in a real-life kind of way it is horrible and stupid that his survival is now going to be an idiot’s guide. But now let’s talk about what happened here.
Security failed so many times and so many ways that it boggles the mind. The perimeter of the airport should not have been breached; the security of the plane should not have been breached; and on arrival, the boy should immediately have been discovered. At least the ground crew did eventually find the boy “wandering the tarmac, dazed and confused.” But then the news got ahold of the story and made it global. Good job, news people.
In an interview at San Jose airport the spokesperson there said that no security is 100 percent fool proof.
I disagree. Airport security, access to planes, especially those planes ready to board passengers and take off must be fool-proof.
There are just too many fools out there.
TSA security checks at airport are tedious and essential. Security cannot afford to have one single gun or nut job to get through their security wall, not a single one.
Someone in California PLUS someone in Hawaii failed to do their job. Multiple someones. Aren’t security checks deliberately redundant? Surely someone at Hawaiian Airlines failed in a last-minute maintenance and/or security walk-around.
I do find it ludicrous that all of these security experts and specialists interviewed for news programs about this security breach, industry professionals like the grounds operations coordinator at O’Hare, essentially post detailed “how to” instructions to climbing inside a wheel well.
This is a wake-up call to security teams to plug the holes in their process, just as it is a wake—up call for idiots looking to die at 38,000 feet. Let’s hope the next one who tries this blunders into a security hole that has been filled with a smart security operative with some inescapable handcuffs in his pocket. Then let’s see how the news covers it.
Austrian Airlines flight OS-65 made an emergency landing in Vienna, Austria, on October 26th.
The Boeing 767-300 plane took off for Chicago, Illinois, but had to turn back due to multiple bird strikes.
The plane landed uneventfully. All two hundred and ten passengers and thirteen crew members remained safe.
