Comment: April 2012 Archives

This year's meeting of the Global Cabin Air Quality Executive in London was a nexus of scientific, engineering and medical expertise. There was a gathering consensus that the evidence associating "fume events" in aircraft cabins with long-term damage to cognitive capacity and general health is reaching critical mass.

Maybe, but it is unwise to underestimate the spoiling power of those who wish to obscure the correlation of cause and effect by sneeringly accusing the GCAQE and its experts of using a cum hoc ergo propter hoc (with it, therefore because of it) logic.

Among the speakers at the GCAQE meeting was Prof Jeremy Ramsden, who recently lost his job at the UK's Cranfield University after challenging the scientific integrity of Cranfield's report on cabin-fume events. His presentation was on the philosophy of association and causation in science and statistics. It examined the tactics of those in the industry who would prevent this investigation's progress.

Association - the apparent correlation of two events - can, said Ramsden, be the driver for attempts to determine causation; and even if it is not proof they are cause and effect, at least it is a hint that they might be. Meanwhile, the authorities have accepted short-term causation, and soon the bio-markers will be established to yield findings for the long term, so industry had better be ready with its solutions.

(This first appeared as the second leading article in Flight International 1 May) 

The Greek judicial system has just provided a reminder of how little the world has learned about the application of criminal law to airline accidents. A Greek court has just sentenced all four defendants in the Helios Airways case to 123 years each in jail - reduced to 10 years because that is the statutory maximum sentence for the offence.

Indeed, recent evidence from Brazil, France and Italy suggests that governments and judiciaries in most of the world's states are in fact retreating from enlightenment on this much-debated topic, causing upset at the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

Accidents, by definition, are usually accidental. A criminal conviction requires evidence of intent, or at least of a conscious decision to take a line of action in full knowledge of an unreasonable risk.

Significantly, three of those four Helios defendants had already been tried on the same charge in Helios's state of registration Cyprus, and the verdict was "not guilty" in all three cases. Greece took up the case because the accident happened on its soil.

The law seems to have very little to do with cases like this. Put simply, the evidence is the fatal crash itself, and the only legal logic applied to its examination is that someone must be held criminally responsible for it. The only question remaining is who. The Greek court in the Helios case did not seek to establish independent proof of the facts; it just took the technical accident report and used it as legal evidence - which it is not. Information assembled by accident investigators is not gathered using the same methods or criteria required of the police or the courts, and Greece is a signatory to the Chicago Convention, which ratifies that fact.

The harm from verdicts like this, if they become the norm, is that witnesses called to assist at a technical accident investigation, knowing they could be charged with a criminal offence, might seek to be legally represented and to exercise their right to silence. This would cripple accident investigation.

When the chief accident investigator in the Helios case was being examined by the prosecution, he testified that a maintenance action carried out before the accident flight by the only engineer among the defendants was neither wrong in itself, nor causal. That engineer, by giving evidence, was attempting to assist the investigation, but the result of his co-operation was that the court found him guilty. It is to be hoped that the appeal reverses the verdicts.

(This first appeared as the main leading article in Flight International 1 May)

Some leapt on Air Canada's interplanetary close encounter to highlight fatigue risks, but the real irony is that the aircraft and its passengers would arguably have been safer if the tired co-pilot had stayed asleep.

This was not, after all, an unresponsive ghost-ship haunting the transatlantic skies but an aircraft under the control of a capable crew, one of whom understandably felt the other would be better off with a good rest.

And there's the rub. Sleep is counter-intuitive; a prolonged doze can be worse than a short nap. Fatigue is a bogey-man stalking every pilot, not only those on eastbound red-eyes, but how many crews accept and carry out strategies to mitigate the effects of sleep without understanding the principles behind them?

Far less complex, of course, is the principle behind the seat-belt. By fortunate coincidence the captain, expecting turbulence, had switched on the seat-belt sign.

There is no knowing how many of those on board were belted, either because of the sign or because they were sleeping, but several were injured - some needing hospital treatment - as a result of not buckling up.

There is no simple solution to the fatigue problem - an intricate, nebulous issue. The best one can expect is risk management rather than risk elimination. But there is a simple solution to avoid being bounced off the ceiling, whether the cause is turbulence or sleep-induced astronomical hallucinations at the pointy end.

(This article first appeared as the second Comment in the 24 April issue of Flight International)

From all appearances, it seems that the US Air Force has negotiated an exceptionally good deal for itself on the new Boeing KC-46 tanker.

While the programme is costing more than the negotiated contract price of $4.4 billion, USAF and Department of Defense leaders have taken steps to limit the taxpayer liability for cost overruns and delays - which are both all too common in defence procurement.

The USAF is only liable for $500 million above the negotiated price tag - there is a firm contract ceiling of $4.9 billion. So even though current cost estimates peg the development cost of the new tanker at $5.3 billion, anything over the ceiling price is Boeing's problem.

Boeing is also responsible for not only fixing future production aircraft if problems emerge in testing, but also retrofitting aircraft already built, for free. And the USAF can vary production rates at almost no cost penalty. Risk is borne largely by the contractor.

While in many respects the KC-46 is a model programme, it is probably not something that could be replicated on a new developmental programme which advances the state of the art. The KC-46 is a derivative of an existing, mature, civilian design, and most of the risks are known. On a completely new programme for which new technologies would need to be developed, the risks are far too nebulous and the costs too great to be borne by any other entity than the US government.

The US Navy and the USAF have taken the first steps towards developing a new generation of fighters to replace the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. Such aircraft would require technological leaps in propulsion, airframe design, sensors and stealth technology that individual contractors do not have the wherewithal to develop at their own risk. Publicly traded defence contractors have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, and cannot sign up to open-ended risks. Forcing contractors to do so would stifle innovation: private industry would be reluctant to place bets on promising but unproven technologies that may not provide guaranteed return on investment.

Only the US government has the resources and risk tolerance to develop and mature those game-changing technologies. But the DoD must place its technological bets more wisely rather than continually overreaching.

The DoD must allow advanced technologies to mature to a more reasonable level before incorporating such advances into a developmental aircraft, or it will be forever doomed to repeat past failures.

(This article first appeared as the main Comment article in 24 April issue of Flight International)

Life has been hard in the regional jet business lately. Before 9/11 there was buoyant demand for 50-seaters that offered more passenger comfort than turboprops and also kept crew costs relatively low. But the subsequent era saw high fuel costs start to squeeze out those small jets in favour of 70- and 90-seaters with lower cost per seat mile.

That pressure only heightened, eviscerating the 50-seat market and prompting both market leaders, Bombardier and Embraer, to consider moving up a size category. Bombardier took that plunge with the CSeries airliner project, which has drawn heavy competitive fire from the really big boys, Airbus and Boeing. Embraer sized up its chances and backed away, opting
instead to re-engine its larger regional jets in a bid to keep them competitive by boosting fuel economy. Embraer may even move back into turboprops.

With the established players feeling such a pinch it's hard to get excited about the prospects of newcomers. But while China's Comac ARJ21 and Japan's Mitsubishi MRJ programmes have hit development troubles, Sukhoi's Superjet 100 is in service and winning plaudits from pilots - as well as orders outside of Russia.

Sukhoi from the start built the programme around a global sales campaign and embraced Western partners to fill out Russia's short suits. That was the right decision and it may be poised to bear fruit.

(This first appeared as the second leading article in Flight International, 10 April)

May 1961 it is not. When President Kennedy fired the starting gun for America's Moon rush it was there-and-back or bust in a no-expense-spared drive for global bragging rights - and a wildly exciting eight years before the decade closed, too.

Today, it seems the Russians plan, finally, to send cosmonauts to the Moon by 2030 - if they get around to building a rocket big enough to get them there. Meanwhile, to give the escapade a frisson of 1960s-style tension, the Chinese, whose manned spaceflight capabilities are somewhat more advanced than the USA's were 50 years ago, are also talking about a manned Moon mission - although they would need a rocket about five times more powerful than anything they have got.

Presumably, either of those players would be galled if the other got there first, but neither appears to be forging ahead with anything like the Apollo programme's urgency. Technically, of course, there is no good reason why either Russia or China can't send people to the Moon. But two closely related ingredients are missing, and both trump technology. They are money and will.

In the Cold War-era, the USA was willing to spend a huge amount on Apollo. The breakneck push against a deadline certainly ramped up the cost, but there's no getting around it: a Moon trip is a major undertaking.

China has lots of money, but it also has competing priorities. Russia's budget is already stretched. For either, the will is there - but only up to a point.

The big countries should take a leaf from the European book. Long-since cured by harsh experience of the mindset that drove Great Power competitions from the 19th century rush for colonies to the 1960s space race, Europe's instincts are collaborative. Working together is a political challenge, but it spreads the cost and, by drawing on partners' relative strengths, can be efficient by avoiding too much re-inventing of wheels.

The International Space Station is a triumph of European-style supranational endeavour. It is no surprise that the European Space Agency's own plans for a 2018 robotic Moon landing are modest and geared to validating technologies that could one day be used to help realise an international manned expedition.

But even if ESA's 2018 trip is funded and a success, it will not answer the really big question hanging over a manned mission: why?

The Moon could not conceivably be exploited economically. And, realistically, there is little or nothing to learn that a robot could not tell us.

(This article first appeared as the main leading article in Flight International, 10 April)