After Muhammad Abu Tahir drank 5 airline bottles of wine, when the crew refused to give him any more, he became abusive and belligerent and locked himself in the bathroom. For this, the Air Tran Airways jet had a fighter jet escort. The Department of Justice says Tahir faces “up to 20 years in federal prison, a fine of up to $250,000, as well as restitution to the airline. ”

I really hate to see drunks go to jail for being drunk and stupid but really, keeping this guy in jail and out of harm’s way might be doing him a favor.

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Qantas A380 Engine Disintegration Far More Serious

Rolls said in a statement that the failure was confined to a specific component in the turbine area of the engine. This caused an oil fire. The British company added that it would replace the faulty part. Safety continues to be Rolls-Royce’s highest priority. See their statement

Qantas is grounding its Airbus A380 superjumbos until further notice, and Singapore Airlines is grounding 3 of its A380s. EASA is calling for inspections. See the directive.

What Happened
The cause of the Rolls Royce engine failure has been pinned down to a faulty bearing box, the underlying cause of the oil leak. The bearings allow the drive shaft to move. The leaking bearing box dripped oil into the QANTAS A380 whose engine exploded (uncontained) into the wing, and dropping its turbine onto a house in Batam. The wing damage included electrical cables and hydraulic lines inside the wing, so that pilots were dealing with hydraulic damage (inability to close the landing gear doors), and electrical damage (trouble shutting down the engine beside the damaged one.)

The Qantas meltdown is one of at least five documented A380 engine malfunctions.

  • Qantas A388 near Singapore on Nov 4th 2010
  • Lufthansa A388 near Frankfurt on Aug 6th 2010, engine shut down in flight
  • Emirates A388 near Zurich on Jul 13th 2010, engine shut down in flight
  • Singapore A388 near Krakow on Sep 27th 2009, engine shut down in flight
  • Singapore A388 near London on May 25th 2009, engine failure

Newer Trent 900 engines have a different bearing box. Although the new box promises to eliminate the problem, newer models also have system software to shut down the engine before the leak causes a meltdown similar to the QANTAS A380 event over Singapore.

George’s Point of View

Although one might say that regulators did not adequately check the engine before approving it for commercial use, I think of Boeing’s response to its recent 787 test flight, and I point out that no one made Boeing step back and pull the 787 back on to the drawing board for more tests and adjustments. Boeing did that, because such remediation is what testing is all about. It is part and parcel of the paradigm of safety in design. It is up to each manufacturer that every item off of their assembly lines be as well designed and as safe as humanly possible. This includes fixing design flaws as soon as they are known. So I wonder, if newer Trent 900 engines have an improved bearing box, this of course begs the question why the older ones were not replaced.

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Caution: Volcano Crossing

George’s Point of View

A disaster not in California…

From June 12 to June 15, the Sarychev Peak on the Russian Kuril Islands erupted, causing air traffic disruptions between Northern American and Japan. The ash clouds are reaching “estimated heights of 45,000 feet.” (Danger zone for aviation from from E152 to W155 over a distance of 2000nm and N40 to N48).

The dust clouds are drifting east and dispersing.

Alaska Volcano Observatory

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Notes on Air France Flight 447: Thoughts on the CVR Facts

So there you have it: the short version of the investigation’s reading of the Cockpit Voice recorder.
If you missed it, we have posted it here in this blog in it’s entirety:

https://airflightdisaster.com/?p=17147

If you don’t like the visual rendition, you can click at the bottom for the .pdf.

The problems seem to begin at 2 h 08 min 07; then at 2 h 10 min 05 autopilot & auto thrust disengages. The pilots note that the speeds do not agree,( which means the speeds are incorrect, and it is an indication that pitot tubes are malfunctioning. Around this time, ACARS sent a PITOT error message, which was not mentioned in the CVR summary.) The PIC (captain) re-enters at 2 h 11 min 40 and it is all downhill from there.

As far as we can tell, everything in the cockpit voice recorder still indicates that the main cause for this crash is Thales defective pitot tubes which froze over and sent incorrect data back. How could anyone make correct decisions without knowing the speed at which the plane was traveling? How would the pilots have discerned when the incoming data was faulty and which of it—if any—was correct?

Based on the pilots’ response to the stall, we can also reiterate points made at the February 24 hearing, where Justice Zimmerman pointed out a lack of training for pilots on how to respond to a catastrophic failure. Shouldn’t pilots (and not just the PIC) be trained in this procedure to the point that the correct corrective response is second nature? The time to try to figure out how to respond is not during the catastrophe, with 228 lives hanging in the balance.

There does not appear to be an emergency procedure from the manufacturer. (This was also noted in the February hearing by Justice Zimmerman.)

It appears that the plane stalled, and that could not be corrected in time to prevent the catastrophe.

So now, all eyes will turn to the DVR, which will hopefully help decode what happened mechanically in the stall.

And I do have questions about the notation, which seems to imply that even if autopilot is not online, some (background?) processes continue to be determined by digital input, which may be faulty.
When the measured speeds are below 60 kt, the measured angle of attack values are considered invalid and are not taken into account by the systems. When they are below 30 kt, the speed values themselves are considered invalid. (Or I am misreading the data and the fact of unrecoverability is due to other system factors. It does appear that the Flight Control System is unwieldy or badly conceived.)

It seems to me as a layman, that this is a fly-by-wire conundrum. If the plane is in crisis, but it is logically disregarding the correct input when it is beyond a “safe or logical” range, then how can it be corrected, if there are no manual controls? (Not to mention no emergency procedures to fall back on.)

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Yemenia Air Black Boxes heard

George’s Point of View

Twice now, within a month, Airbus equipment has failed in bad weather, for whatever reason.

That is not supposed to happen. Planes aren’t supposed to fail. There is something wrong with the design of that plane, even my pool of expert pilots of Airbus quietly tell me this.

And the fact-gathering news is still grim. The Air France flight 447 black boxes have not been found, and neither have the Yemenia Air black boxes. They have been “heard” — but the same thing was rumored about the Air France boxes, but that didn’t pan out.

View Comoros in a larger map
But Yemenia is suspending all flights from Marseille to Moroni. 61 of the victims were from Marseille.

Yemenia Flight 626 crashed 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) south of Yemen, between Africa’s southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar. but the black boxes have been by a searching submarine.

Some online opinions state that on the second pass attempting to land, the pilot simply flew into the sea while trying to negotiate the bad weather. There is apparently no radar at the airport where they were attempting to land.

French and US ships are looking for debris and bodies; the BEA and Airbus are investigating.

ILS Approach Runway 02 (Graphics: AIS ASECNA):

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The Investigation of Sukhoi Superjet’s Crash holds Answers to Many Questions


Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Egor Naumenko

Today I read an article saying that the SuperJet that crashed on a promotional flight boils down to one question: pilot or plane? I have to disagree. It is not that simple. It takes a lot of coordinating systems to get a plane in the air, and it usually takes more than one error to take a plane down.

If there is a problem with the plane, it is most likely the investigation will reveal it, and anything that comes out before the investigation is just speculation. (How much of the investigation will be made public often depends on the transparency policies of government, however.) So I am speculating here.

Russian Aviation does have a lot riding on the success of this entry into the global aviation marketplace so we know it’s not a paper airplane they folded together in ten seconds or as many months. We suspect that the quality of the teams performing the design, construction, training and troubleshooting that went into the jet’s creation is about par for contemporary jet design. Which is to say the teams are probably very good. The plane has fly-by-wire technology but Sukhoi consults with Boeing on a “step-by-step project management … fully explored and translated into business reality by SCAC.”

There are a number of problems that are coming to light with this flight.

  • Only the cockpit voice recorder was found. The FDR was not found.
  • The Emergency Locator Transmitter (which goes off, like an airbag, on hard impact) did not go off. The Sukhoi only has one(instead of two, which is the norm) Emergency Locator Transmitter which uses 121.5,203 Mhz. Indonesia receivers operate at 121.5,406 MHZ
  • The Terrain map is recorded in the panes database and shows on a display in vertical and horizontal forms. (Did this plane, which was a substitute plane) have an updated terrain map?)
  • The Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System/EGPWS should have gone off with terrain warnings after descending to 6000 feet, and these warnings should be in the black box. Wait…no black box was found.
  • Was this substitute plane compliant with all airworthiness guidelines and laws?
  • Multifunctional Transport Satellites (MTSAT) data revealed that the weather on the Salak Mountain at the time was bad. Cloud and raincover at Salak Mountain was 100 percent.
  • The Halim-Pelabuhan Ratu flight plan was considered safe, but on descent to 6000 feet, the pilot detoured from the flight plan.

Sometimes investigations take the easy path and just blame the pilot. I’ve seen happen a hundred times before, when the pilot was blamed simply because he was not longer able to defend his actions. And while pilots are only human, and sometimes do make mistakes, sometimes those mistakes are caused by corporate pressures, pressure to meet deadlines, fuel quotas, scheduling, etc. What is pressure of corporate expectations on a joy flight pilot? Do we know if he was under orders to showcase the plane’s agility, possibly even to make the very move that crashed the plane?

The pilot, 57 year old Alexander Yablontzev was experienced. He was Sukhoi’s chief test pilot and had spent more than 14 thousand hours flying. After retiring as Lieutenant Colonel from the Russian Air Force, he flew for Transaero and had a lot of hours. But the fatal flight was his first time flying in Indonesia. Did the crash occur because he was flying a strange, possibly wrongly mapped terrain, and recklessly “buzzing” the peak of Mount Salak to show off the plane’s versatility?

No answers here. I’m just saying that the question is not so simply put.

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Wonder Not Why ATC Sleeps-It’s 2 a.m.

There is a lot of buzz going on right now with so many air traffic controllers caught sleeping on the job. Everyone is lowering the boom on these individuals, and perhaps it is rightly so. And yet it seems to me that it is not a complete coincidence that suddenly in 2011, multiple air traffic controllers are caught sleeping on the job. Has this never happened before? Has no one ever noted it?

This is in addition to an increase in controller errors. However, the increase in controller errors is (supposedly) a statistical glitch–not more errors actually but more reportage due to a new non-punative reporting system.

It makes me wonder what has led to the circumstance of lone air traffic controllers manning all-night shifts. Has this been going on for decades? Or is this a recent development of economic cutbacks and our changing fuel economy, and our highly qualified personnel may be fighting to keep a position even on the swing shift, as job alternatives dwindle.

Why is there an evening shift at all when the airlines have been combining flights and canceling flights, and rearranging flights and consolidating fights for economy’s sake? If the fact that an airport with minimal evening traffic chooses to have a lone overnight ATC shift, the act is practically a lagniappe. And if that is the case, then how sad it is that an act of extended service has turned to bite those offering the service.

We do not put a lifeguard on the beach during the night when there are no swimmers, when swimming in dark waters is foolish. And yet, if we did place a lifeguard on that beach, we would not expect him to sleep. But would we expect him to stare out at the waters all night with no concession to human biorhythm? Is that not somewhat cruel? By the way, FAA’s rules forbid a controller from doing anything not directly related to air traffic control.

When I hear the head of the FAA Air Traffic Organization Hank Krakowski has stepped down, it leads me to suspect that there is some scheduling pattern or policy that is directly attributable to him, something he did to disrupt the culture of air traffic control, that may be behind the significant coincidence of six (or more) sleeping ATControllers. I do not know if his stepping down is typical bureaucratic scapegoating, if he is doing the honorable thing because he’s in charge and the buck stops with him, or if he is truly responsible for some policy change that has led to the sleeping ATC.

There are solutions, but they won’t be solutions today’s citizen of “instant everything” will like. There will be either the hiring more than just two controllers to turn night to day; or there will be (eventually) curtailing night flights and a loss of 24 hour conveniences.

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