February 2009 Archives

Rescuers are attending the scene of a serious accident involving a Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 aircraft at Amsterdam Schiphol.

Amsterdam Schiphol's operator has confirmed that the aircraft was operating flight TK1951 from Istanbul.

Read the initial report on this incident and read our profiles of Turkish Airlines and Boeing 757, which include news,blogs, images and historical archive material.

Here is a map of Schiphol International Airport at Amsterdam:

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Nine people were sucked to their death when part of a United Airlines Boeing 747 fuselage came apart over the sea 20 minutes from takeoff from Honolulu.  

US accident investigators are concentrating on the forward cargo door as the possible source of the cabin structural failure suffered by a United Airlines Boeing 747-100.

A bomb, fatigue failure, and corrosion have all been discounted. Nine people died in the rapid cabin decompression at 23,000ft caused when a 10ft by 20ft hole appeared in the starboard side. Continue reading from the pdf archive...

Something that didn't attract much attention on its release, largely because of the antics taking place on the Hudson River, was the Danish final report into the first of Scandinavian Airlines' three Q400 landing accidents - captured on video at Aalborg.

 

 

You can find all 142 pages of it here, but the abridged version is this: condensed water collected in the right-hand retraction actuator piston rod, leading to corrosion which eventually allowed the rod end to separate. The right-hand landing-gear free-fell into position and the resulting stress prevented it from locking in place.

 

Approved maintenance procedures contained no specific inspection requirement for the actuator or the rod end. "The aircraft maintenance records were in compliance with the established maintenance program," says the accident report. It adds that while the right gear collapsed, inspection of the left gear showed it wasn't looking too clever either.

For a bit of Friday fun, here is an unfortunate CNN Anchorwoman's slip of the tongue as she continues to confuse peanuts with something altogether different:

How could a pilot allow this to happen? Or was it unavoidable?

China Airlines Flight 006 operating a Boeing 747 landed safely in San Francisco despite a 30,000 foot plunge over the Pacific Ocean. Here's a video showing a simulation of what is said to have occured. There was no mention of it in our pdf archive however.

On this day in 1965 Boeing decided to build the 737 short-haul jet, following an order for 21 from Lufthansa. It was the first time that an American aircraft manufacturer had launched a new airliner on the strength of an export order.

 

Read more and see how Flight reported the story which included a graphic showing payload/range performance, with typical airline fuel reserves, for three Boeing jets plus a provisional Flight general arrangement drawing.

KLM celebrated 90 years in business with a Boeing 737 in its retro livery.

Aircraft profile: Boeing 737

Note this image from Rex Features shows the Lufthansa 737 aircraft that was the subject of a Palestinian hijack in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1977 and is the closest to the Lufthansa livery of the day.

Flight recorded the death at age 85 of aviation engineer and industrial designer John Knudsen "Jack" Northrop (pictured).

Flight said at the time that the aviation world had lost its second pioneer in a month with the death of "Jack" Northrop.

The aviation career of John Knudsen Northrop began in 1916 when he worked for the Loughead (later Lockheed) brothers designing seaplane wings.

The operation folded and in 1923 Northrop joined the Douglas company, his first assignment being to work on the World Cruiser.

 The first death Flight referred to was that of Donald Douglas, who died earlier in the month as Flight reported in its 14 February issue...

His 'DC-3 became a legend, setting standards which earned Donald Douglas both the Collier Trophy and the Daniel Guggenheim Medal in 1936 "for outstanding contributions to the design and construction of military and transport airliners".'

In this picture you see the garland-adorned Royston Pollard and his wife Eileen from Filton, Britsol, UK, proudly clutching a glass of Champagne and it's not even pub opening time!

The Pollards were greeted on 17 February with all this pomp and ceremony because Singapore Airlines was celebrating the fact that Mr Pollard was the SIA A380's one millionth passenger.

As part of the prize the pair were treated to an upgrade to Business Class, as well as a 3-night stay at Singapore's famous Raffles Hotel with limousine transfers, a spa experience, a 5-course set dinner, complete with champagne and a choice of either a safari or a tour of Singapore Zoo.

Some people have all the luck!

The fact bit:  

• The Pollards were onboard the 10.55am Singapore-bound SQ317 flight from London Heathrow.
• Singapore Airlines A380 service to Sydney began on 25 October 2007.
• The airline currently flies the A380 daily between Singapore and Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo, and twice daily between Singapore and London.
• It will commence daily services between Singapore and Paris from 1 June. Since its launch, the A380 has clocked more than 2,400 commercial flights.

A Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 operated by Colgan Air has crashed in New York state. There are no indications of survivors from the 48 passengers and crew on board flight 3407. Continental Airlines states that it has dispatched representatives to Buffalo to assist with the inquiry.

Read the initial report into the incident and listen to edited air traffic transmissions with the Colgan Air Bombardier Q400 from the ATC Control Tower.

Here is a graphic showing the approach of the crash:

Read our profile of the Bombardier Q400 and see images from the incident, plus join the discussion on this tragedy.

 Here are the latest Twitter updates on the #buffalo incident:

Qantas is only now celebrating the fact the its A380 has arrived at London's Heathrow, as of 16 January. .

The press office at Qantas in London have been bigging up the launch event for the last month which was held yesterday at the IMAX in London's Waterloo, so naturally, we at Flightglobal got equally excited and salivated in anticipation of the visual delights that we could produce from it. But how deflated did I feel when I got back to the office.

 

I videoed the film on the IMAX big screen but Qantas didn't want me to upload it onto Flightglobal "for legal reasons" which I would like explained to me.

All I could see was that the film was full of the usual marketing guff. You know how it goes: "Qantas is the most experienced airline etc etc." with some great footage of the airline's first A380 flying over some fantastic Aussie scenery. But what would have improved the film would have been awesome footage of the aircraft taking off and landing to demonstrate the aircraft's quietness.  

I cannot share this video with you, and I know you would have loved to have seen it, but alas a silly rule (do correct me if I'm wrong) prevents this. If you want to know what was in the film I can tell you, personally.

I'd like to add that in my opinion the interior of the Qantas A380 interior is wholly uninspiring (sorry designer Marc Newson) when compared with the cabin interiors of the Singapore Airlines and Emirates Airline A380. But will concede that it's premium economy seating is a first in an A380.

Unfamiliarity with the way attitude information is presented in different cockpits is a potentially-lethal problem that emerged decades before the prevalence of Western aircraft in the former Soviet states, and the loss of Aeroflot-Nord 821.

 

This extract from a US Civil Aeronautics Board report concerns a Beech Bonanza which crashed shortly after departure from an airport in Iowa, whose pilot was "forced to concentrate and rely greatly on the attitude gyro" as the aircraft flew in darkness and poor weather, with an overcast sky and "no definite horizon".

 

When [the pilot's] instrument training was taken, several aircraft were used and these were all equipped with the conventional type artificial horizon and none with the Sperry Attitude Gyro such as was installed in [the Bonanza]. These two instruments differ greatly in their pictorial display.

 

It explains that the conventional instrument featured a moving 'aircraft' bar against a fixed horizon, while the Sperry gyro used a moving horizon behind a fixed 'aircraft'.

 

The pitch display of this instrument is the reverse of the instrument [the pilot] was accustomed to; therefore, he could have become confused and thought that he was making a climbing turn when in reality he was making a descending turn.

 

In an attachment to the report the investigators supplied a special 'safety message' to pilots pointing out the risks, too late for the unfortunate Bonanza pilot, Roger Peterson, killed in the 3 February 1959 crash with his three passengers: Richard Valenzuela, JP Richardson and Charles Hardin - better known as Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper and, of course, Buddy Holly.

As the more regular readers of this blog will know, i am not adverse to clever advertising and novel ways of self-promotion. Sex especially is often an exponent of this type of promotion, as our Online Editor highlighted last year on his blog.

©Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines today unveiled SI One, a Boeing 737-7H4 registered N922WN, but i guess you will distinguish it from the pack for what's painted on the side of it first. SI stands of course for Sports Illustrated, and it features on its livery the not at all unpleasant sight of model Bar Refaeli.

Now i don't want to pick Southwest up on hypocrisy here, but for the Flightglobal reading sisterhood out there i feel i have to ask this question. Wasn't Southwest the airline that late last year banned Kyla Ebbert from boarding a flight after adjudging her skirt to be too short?And if so, isn't it a little rich to be using sex so overtly now to publicise the brand?

Before you phone a friend on this question here is a dictionary definition of hypocrisy:

1.     a pretense of having a virtuous character, moral or religious beliefs or principles, etc., that one does not really possess.
2.     a pretense of having some desirable or publicly approved attitude.

I'll leave it up to you to decide but here is a clue on one of them...

WARNING: This video has rather strong language and is not for the easily offended

Film actor Christian Bale's now legendary rant at a crew maker during the making of Terminator Salvation has been mixed with the ATC tapes of Chesley Sullenberger's US Airways ditching to create a funny (if slightly inappropriate) version of what could happen if an angry actor had to ditch an Airbus A320.

Tom Cruise has already denied he wanted to make the Hudson river incident into a movie,so maybe we can get a Michael Bay directed big budget film version with Christian Bale as lead. Or maybe not...

This is how Flight reported the event at the time.

Flightglobal users voted the Boeing 747 to be their favourite civil aircraft in its 100 Greatest campaign last year to celebrate its centenary in publishing, which neatly coincided with 100 years of powered flight.  

 

Picture credit Boeing (note - this is a 747-400ER and it flew for the first time on July 31, 2002.)

Flight's 100 Greatest top 5 civil aircraft - Boeing 747

Aircraft profile: Boeing 747 including news, images, a cutaway, blogs, videos, forum discussions and Boeing 747 results from Flight's PDF archive.

FlightBlogger blogging about the 747

Boeing charts the 747 milestones

AirSpace discussion on the 747 roll-out (40th anniversary last September)

 

 

You'll appreciate this... Air New Zealand making fun of low cost airlines' hidden costs.

The grounds of Cranfield's School of Engineering, like much of the UK last week, was under a blanket of snow.

While practically all the nation's children were busy tabogganing down hills on trays and building snowmen the students here were busily crafting an aircraft. Here are a few pictures of show off their efforts.

I, for one, am disappointed they couldn't engineer any landing gear. And could it be an A340? Hmm, a variation on a theme.

 

American pilot Charles Lindbergh, who died 35 years ago, would have been 107 years old today.

He was launched into the world of fame in May 1927 for his solo non-stop flight from New York to Paris. This is how we recorded the event at the time:  

"The fact that the 3,600 miles between New York and Paris has been covered by air in 33 and a half hours nonstop flight is, in itself, a remarkable and recordbreaking event, but the circumstances under which this record has been achieved make it without doubt the "biggest noise" that has yet happened in the history of aviation." Continue reading....