August 2005 Archives

Andy Cook, the newly appointed Gate Gourmet HR director who walked straight into the industrial dispute that brought the company and British Airways to a halt, puts his personal side of the story in our sister publication Personnel Today. He has minor regrets and major justifications concerning the affair. You can read his views here.

As I've said before, unfortunately I think this sort of firestorm is going to recur until the whole business model in the catering and handling sectors changes. These are largely dysfunctional businesses, failing to reward shareholders, management or staff. And often not exactly delighting the customer airlines - let alone paying passengers.

There's a further problem in the UK in particular - although it's true elsewhere - which is that both handling and catering need further consolidation. Right now everyone is trying to be the last to blink, but there are winners beginning to emerge and we can only hope that they create a sounder structure for the future as they negotiate with airlines. 

In this job I've been round an awful lot of factories - some of them fascinating, some of them, umm, not so fascinating. But the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen close-up is friction stir welding. (The Boeing 777 folding wing mechanism was pretty neat too - and the only thing in Seattle that Boeing flatly refused to let me photograph.)

Airbus UK has been the great champion of FSW in the aerospace industry and they've just confirmed that they're going to be using it in the manufacture of the A340-500 and -600. It will replace riveted joints in a longitudinal fuselage skin join and Airbus hopes the regulators will sign off the process at the start of 2007.

I saw a demonstration at the technology centre of Airbus shareholder EADS in Paris last year. You can see what the machine looks like below - although this is not an Airbus one.

The way it works is that the pieces to be welded are held in place together and the rotating tool bit - which is only about 2cm (1in) across underneath that huge machine - is inserted into the join line and then slowly moved along the line creating the join. When it's removed at the end, the weld is already in place. No fireworks, little heat and next to no noise.

The whole thing looks like magic. What is actually going on, in extremely simple terms. is that the tool 'plasticises' the metal by stirring it, but without melting it. As the bit moves on, the two pieces fuse behind it. Doing away with rivets and panel-overlaps on the aircraft cuts the risk of corrosion and fatigue of course - and Airbus reckons it saves 0.9kg (2lb) per metre (3ft) of fuselage panel joint.

At EADS I wondered if they would even let us look at the bit close-up, and if they did what on earth it would look like. This NASA picture of a similar bit shows just how exotic it isn't!

In fact you've probably got power tools at home with more interesting looking drill bits. How it really works at the physical level I'm not sure, but it was originally invented at The Welding Institute in Cambridge, UK and, if you're interested, they explain here what's going on with some very high quality movies like this one.

With the A380 getting on for 200 hours in the air and aircraft bearing airline liveries sitting in Toulouse it seems almost bizarre that not so long ago things like the upper-deck loading were being seriously mentioned by critics as show-stoppers.

I first wrote about this issue in March 2001 when Airbus had just persuaded FMC Technologies of Houston in the USA and Air Marrel of Saint Chamond, near Lyon in France to take on the challenge.

Both companies already made loaders but the A380 upper deck needs the scissoring mechanism to reach up to 8m (26ft) instead of a maximum of 5m (16ft) on existing aircraft.

As you can see in this new picture from Toulouse, at least one of them (not sure which is in the picture) has succeeded. You can read about FMC's work here.

Of course 8m is a long way to fall, and the A380 will undoubtedly present new challenges in ramp safety. My colleague David Learmount wrote extensively about that recently.

The loss of a TANS Boeing 737 yesterday was the fifth major airliner accident in 21 days and takes the death toll to at least 338. That is a pretty awful record and the cost in human misery scarcely bears contemplation. So just what is going on?

I wish I knew. What we've seen is a mixture of some very odd things and some depressingly familiar things.

On the familiar side we have the two Latin American losses: we don't know the root causes, but it remains true that the combination in that part of the world of wild terrain, often challenging weather, earlier generation aircraft, and thinner infrastructure are unforgiving when anything goes wrong.

Less familiar are the losses of two well-equipped aircraft with experienced crews in the benign operating conditions of the Mediterranean summer, and both in yet to be explained circumstances.

Stranger still are the losses of two aircraft with double engine failure - rare enough at any time, an extraordinary coincidence within 10 days of each other.

And then there is the A340 loss in Toronto - thankfully non-fatal - involving an aircraft boasting the finest design features that today's industry can offer, operated by one of the world's premir airlines, and being lost at one of the world's most modern airports.

At this stage in the investigations the common factors are not obvious, though they may become so, and it is difficult to see what conclusions can be drawn.

Not for the first time there is a statistical blip in the distribution of accidents - albeit an unusually marked one - but 2005 overall remains a generally safe year. It is now going to be less safe in terms of fatalities than 2004, but on current trends will still be better than almost any other year - depending of course on events in the remaining four months.

In a week that saw a damning report on how NASA worked the agency's administrator, Michael Griffin, finally seemed to be recognising what its capabilities really were.

The report, published 17 August, was produced by the 26 member Return to Flight Task Group.

The Group was created to monitor NASA's efforts to restart shuttle missions after the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident.

Seven of its 26 members, including five shuttle flight veteran Susan Helms, criticised NASA heavily in the report for an absence of managerial accountability and management arrogance, which saw ideas dismissed out of hand.

In a press conference in Washington DC on 18 August, with his associate administrator for space operations, William Gerstenmaier, Griffin said he would consider the report and take on board all its comments.

The European Commission has been talking about creating a so-called blacklist of unsafe airlines for just short of a decade now. It hasn't managed to produce one yet, but suddenly transport commissioner Jacques Barrot is planning to come up with a firm proposal. Good luck to him, he'll need it.

Frenchman Barrot's remarks were at least partly in response to the deaths of his countrymen in this week's MD-82 crash in Venezuela, but the EU has also been embarrassed by the conflicting actions taken by member nations in respect of airlines that some banned and some didn't. Matters came to a head over the case of Onur Air of Turkey.

On this occasion the individual nations are ahead of the commission. The only sort of blacklist that works is one that bans the airlines on it.

What on earth is a traveller supposed to make of a list that effectively says "we have safety doubts about the airlines on this list"? The only rational response is not to fly with the airline. And if you are the airline your only choices are to sort out the problem, sue, or hassle your own government for some heavy diplomatic action.

But if the Commission is ready for that sort of response then it should bite the bullet and ban airlines, not smear them.

That's when things get tricky. How do you know an airline is unsafe? In particular, how do you know an airline based in a far away country is unsafe? The reality is that the non-European charter carriers that are actually the focus of the EU's concerns are almost invariably revealed as being unsafe only in the wake of a disaster - when blacklisting them is pretty superfluous. And in any case the fact that your airline had an accident does not mean you were or are an unsafe airline.

The troubled birth of EASA really does give the Commission a chance to tackle the issue properly - but it will take tough-minded thinking to make it work.

There are mysterious aspects to the loss of the Helios Airways Boeing 737 last weekend, but the fact is that if the depressurisation emergency procedure is not followed rapidly and efficiently then things can quickly go wrong. At least two reports of earlier incidents show just what can happen.

In this 1998 incident the highly experienced captain of a UK-registered Boeing 737 lost consciousness at 35,000ft when his oxygen mask became entangled with his spectacles as he tried to put it on following a suddent depressurisation. A flight attendant who tried to help him also collapsed. Only the first officer remained conscious. Investigators found that a 17 year-old fatigue crack finally led to the failure of a cargo door at altitude.

And in this 1996 incident the captain of a Boeing 727 in the USA collapsed at 33,000ft when he delayed putting on his mask while manipulating the controls to cure a pressurisation problem probably caused by human-error in using the system. Again in this case a flight attendant collapsed in the cockpit and so did the flight engineer who fell across the central console. Once more only the first officer remained conscious.

In both cases the cabin emergency oxygen systems for passengers worked pretty as much as advertised.

But masks can be donned very quickly, as this movie produced by emergency equipment manufacturer Avox-Eros, which equips some 737s, illustrates.

Flight International subeditor Simon Rees writes about his experiences at the recent Blenheim Festival of Flight:

Despite the dicey weather, Blenheim Palace was the place to be for fans of classic aircraft and air displays last weekend. To celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the ending of Second World War, the palace and Flight Festivals had put on a big 1940s bash. The slogan for the event was ‘Chocks away! For a rip roaring day’, and it certainly was.

Arriving at noon after waiting in an interminable traffic jam, the weather cleared up just enough for the sun to poke through

 the clouds. Attendance was large and there was definitely a buzz of excitement about the forthcoming display.

Peppering the crowds were re-enactors dressed as soldiers, sailors, airmen, wives in their Sunday best and 40s glamour girls. Even Laurel and Hardy could be seen tootling along in their old banger of a car. Before the flying got underway we went to register at the press tent next to the bandstand. We had arrived as Swing Dance lessons were being given, which my girlfriend, Maria, tried hard to force me into. There was no way with my two left feet and my sense of timing that I was going to get up and have a go. I wriggled out of it by saying my new shoes were hurting.

I was also saved by the bell, as it were, because the flying display had begun in earnest. Kicking off the proceedings was a First World War re-enactment. Being so old, these birds flew more straight and level than up, down and around. I shall have to ask Uncle Roger if that was the way they did things back then.

I missed the next two aircraft because I was waiting in line to get two beers, but I was back in time to witness those two goddesses of the sky the Spitfire and the P-51 Mustang get put through their paces. Against the dark clouds in the distance and bathed in glorious sunlight, the silhouetted outlines of these two marvellous creatures were crystal clear.

Sally B the Flying Fortress was having technical delays and was moved down the agenda, so we were treated to some more Spitfire manoeuvres, which didn’t matter a jot as this aircraft is such a joy to watch.

Next up came the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight of a Hurricane, a Lancaster and a Spitfire. It was an amazing sight and one that I’ll always remember. The crowd burst into spontaneous applause on at least three occasions. Over the speakers came patriotic music and voices of those who had experienced the war.

Sally B did eventually arrive and again it was a magnificent sight. It seems so ridiculous that EU regulations almost grounded this grand old dame.

There were many other wonderful displays put on that day, including an excellent parachute drop, but stealing the show were the Red Arrows. As always their manoeuvres, tricks and stunts – done in time to some gung-ho, testosterone-fuelled rock n’ roll – were spot on and wowed the onlookers. The red, white and blue smoke that they released hung over the palace grounds long after they had departed.

Before I left I could not resist clambering into the cockpit of the static Spitfire. I was surprised both at the complexity of the machine and by its simplicity. The target, for example, was simply a metal stick stuck into a metal hoop.

Maria and I finished the day back at the bandstand, first listening to a Vera Lynn impersonator, who wasn’t my cup of tea, and then the brilliant John Miller (nephew of the late great Glenn) band. It was a fantastic end to a fantastic day.

(Sally B and Red Arrrows photos by Aviation Photographs International)

Although the US Air Force has got into difficulties with its RQ-4A Global Hawks, the incident that sparked the trouble is actually quite comforting.

One of our reporters listened in as military controllers warned nearby aircraft that a Global Hawk was returning Edwards AFB after an engine failure. It's the sort of situation that, if it had been a manned aircraft, would have had everyone for miles around fearing for the safety of the crew, other aircraft, and even people on the ground.

But the outcome was entirely benign, with the aircraft following a pre-planned pattern to glide back to base. That's impressive: up close the Global Hawk is a fair-sized aeroplane, powered by a serious jet engine, and generally to be treated with considerable respect. Such a smooth outcome to what was a challenging situation bodes well for the unmanned aviation community, especially to the parts of it with aspirations to operate in civil airspace.

Systems will malfunction on these aircraft just as they do on manned types, but, as with manned types, it's what you do next that counts.

Everybody is surprised at how this tiny dispute was able to leap from one little-known company to a major flag-carrier in a few hours and then bring the giant to its knees within minutes - rather like a computer virus. But it doesn't take much.

Behind the Gate Gourmet dispute is the chronically deficient business model in which airlines rely utterly on robust, 24/7, service from caterers, ground-handlers and so on but are not willing to pay a sensible price for them. So margins and reward-packages at those suppliers are in perpetual conflict - in this case a dose of heavy-handed US labour relations (Gate Gourmet is owned by Texas Pacific Group) was all it needed to ignite the tinderbox.

In the extended Heathrow village of west London there are plenty of BA workers with friends and relatives in Gate Gourmet, but perhaps more importantly there are plenty who are spoiling for a fight to show incoming CEO Willie Walsh just what he will be taking on next month. That's because they've been on the end of BA's cost-cutting ever since 911 and because Walsh brings his own rancorous labour relations baggage with him from Aer Lingus. And all that in turn is because both BA and Aer Lingus were finally forced to address decades of dysfunctional business practices in a compressed timescale in order to survive.

There is precisely nothing unique to the UK in all of that - and every reason to think we will see similar horrors worldwide.

As far as unmanned aviation has come in the last decade, it remains the rare niche aviation market that can't agree on what to call its signature product.

As an acronym, do we call them a UAV, UA or UAS? As a word, should we describe them as unmanned, uninhabited or unpiloted?

Never one to join the crowd, the US Air Force has coined its own new term: Remotely Operated Aircraft (ROA, anyone? Frankly, we think that's already DOA, or should be).

Now, the US Department of Defense is proposing to settle this nomenclature madness once and for all. Here is DOD's new and long-awaited Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap. Among other things, it decrees the term UAV is passé.

Henceforth, the DOD will recognize two terms: an unmanned aircraft (UA) and an unmanned aircraft system (UAS). The UA is to be used when referring to the flying component of a UAS, which refers to a ground station linked with one or more UAs.

"This change in terminology more clearly emphasizes that the aircraft is only one component of the system, and is in line with the Federal Aviation Administration's decision to treat 'UAVs' as aircraft for regulatory purposes," a footnote reads.

There may be some logic to this. It reflects the fact that unmanned flight requires more than just an aircraft to work - and, thus, for governments to regulate. And it substitutes the smoother word, "aircraft", for the clunky and possibly anachronistic term,"air vehicle." (Who came up with "unmanned air vehicle" anyway? Any theories?)

But there is a catch. Even if the aim is to clarify, it doesn't do you any favours if few others in the English-speaking world know the difference between a UAS and a UA. Or, for that matter, a UAS and a UAV.

It is something we're thinking about among our editorial team. Flight International uses the term UAV, which has its flaws but at least is commonly understood. This may have to be discarded at some point, but we are asking two questions: when? and with what?

The Space Shuttle Discovery lands safely at Edwards AFB, also known as NASA's Dryden Center, on runway 22 after taking 66 minutes to descend 220 miles to Earth but what of the fleet's future?

Television and radio seems to many like a glamorous world. Apparently adoring millions tune into to listen to the popular disc jockey or to watch the latest television presenter, whose love life adorns the pages of the tabloids.

It's a world that the print journalist can enter occasionally as 'the expert'. Pop oracle from Smash Hits magazine or for Flight journalists, crash analyst or industry pundit, you can find us appearing for a few minutes on a channel near you amongst the 500 plus now available.

It has been a while since a major world airline operating a state-of-the art aircraft has been involved in an accident sufficiently telegenic for the 24h news media to stay with it for a day. Telegenic maybe, but thankfully the Air France flight AF358 accident was not tragic - nobody on board or on the ground was badly hurt.

It seems no-one in the broadcasting media has noticed that serious airline accidents rarely happen nowadays. Listening and watching, it was if flight safety was still back in the early 1980s, despite the fact that - according to ICAO figures - fatal accident rates then were six times what they are now.

On publishing our annual airline flight safety review the last two years (Flight International, 20-26 January 2004 and 25-31 January 2005) we put out a media release providing the figures and a synopsis. The figures were good, and so were the long-term trends. The feature - and the release - made the point about how devoid of major accidents the world was happily becoming, and cataloguing the technology, ideas and effort that had made the difference between then and now. Only one station in the world took up the good news - BBC News 24. It was really surprising to them, and they ran it as a kind of freak fact. Both years.

Now AF358 happens, and all the old clich駸 roll out once more on all the stations. When it became clear that there had been no fatalities, it was universally agreed that this was a miracle.

It may have been many things, but a miracle it was not. The fuselage had clearly not suffered major impact damage despite ending up in the notorious shallow ravine at the end of Toronto Pearson's runway 24L that has taken lives before now. It is no miracle when passengers all escape from an un-deformed modern aircraft fuselage before a fire takes hold. That is what the aircraft design, the airline's procedures, the crew training, the airport crash rescue and fire services all aim to ensure, and the system worked. That is not a miracle: that is science, training, and hard work. Why is it that even quality media stations and newspapers revert to the language of religious superstition when people survive an airline accident?

Winston Churchill said of Russia's intentions in 1939 that it was a 'riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'. Fortunately today the future of its space programme is much easier to determine, and finding out about that was one of the reasons for my arrival in Moscow on 2 July on an Aeroflot Ilyushin 96-300.

My final destination was Russia's Federal Space Agency's (FSA) residential training complex just outside Moscow called IPK. This would be my home, restaurant and lecture theatre when not on the tour bus. That bus would take me and the other participants to the museums and offices of the Moscow area's Soviet space giants, Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, Khrunichev Scientific and Production Center (see photo below), Zvezda Scientific and Production Association and the Gargarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. The ten-day comprehensive tour was organised by Russia's oldest and biggest technical university, the Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

Winston Churchill said of Russia's intentions in 1939 that it was a 'riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma'. Fortunately today the future of its space programme is much easier to predict, and finding out about that was one of the reasons for my arrival in Moscow on 2 July on an Aeroflot Ilyushin 96-300.