Recently in Safety Category

In a dimmed hangar on the side of Charlotte-Douglas International Airport lies N106US, the US Airways Airbus A320 that landed on the Hudson River one chilly January morning in 2009.

Edward Russell

The famous "Miracle on the Hudson" aircraft is now an exhibit at the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Flight 1549 was bound for Charlotte after departing New York's LaGuardia airport on the morning of 15 January 2009 before its fateful meeting with a flock of Canadian geese over New York.

While solemn in its presentation, the exhibit celebrates all of the factors that combined to allow for a successful ditching in the Hudson with no loss of life. Elements highlighted range from the experience of the crew and aircraft avionics to the fact that the A320 was one of only a handful in US Airways' fleet with extended overwater certification, which requires life vests and rafts for every passenger. One interesting fact that stood out - less than a third of the passengers on the aircraft had reviewed the safety card before the flight.

Edward Russell

N106US ended up at the museum after its president Shawn Dorsch was inspired by a visit to a memorial to JAL Flight 123 at the Japan Airlines' Safety Promotion Centre near Haneda Airport in Japan, which had a flow chart of safety improvements since the 1985 accident and ending at US Airways 1549.

"When I saw this, I realised that 1549 was an international aviation icon," Dorsch told Flightglobal in 2011. "For me, having it in the museum would give the opportunity to tell something much bigger than the event itself."

Edward Russell

Next time you're passing through Charlotte and have a few hours, the museum is a highly recommended diversion only a few minutes drive from the terminal.

Airbus has hit a rough patch this year with revelations that cracks are developing in the wings on its A380 superjumbos, a problem first identified on three Qantas and Singapore Airlines aircraft back in January. But while the problem has attracted much media attention and is being taken seriously by Airbus engineers, the accountants are non-plussed.

Yesterday in Paris, EADS chief financial officer Hans Peter Ring didn't let the issue detract much from his presentation of 2011 results that show the Franco-German aerospace giant and its dominant Airbus division racking up satisfactory - if not impressive - revenue and profits growth. Asked about the latest troubles to dog a programme that has historically been a severe drag on EADS's earnings, Ring was clearly pleased to be able to report that fixing the wing cracks will fall within the normal warranty cost provision already made for the A380.

So, expect no charges against 2012 operations, which Ring and chief executive Louis Gallois promise will result in further profitability growth. Last year, EADS revenue gained 7% to €49.1 billion and earnings before interest and taxes rose 38% to nearly €1.7 billion, taking the profit margin higher by nearly a percentage point to 3.45%. Airbus commercial sales grew 10% to €31.2 billion ($41.1 billion) and divisional EBIT gained 87% to €543 million on the back of a tenth consecutive year of increased production - to 534 deliveries - and a record net order intake for 1,419 aircraft.

Resolving the A380 cracks problem will involve detailed visual inspection of wing-rib feet and an interim repair that relieves stresses believed to have been introduced by the original assembly process. A more permanent repair may involve replacing the wing-rib feet - each wing rib has 30-40 of these L-shaped brackets that connect them to the wing skin - with beefier parts of a different alloy, as well as altering the assembly process.

The problem needs addressing but is not grounding aircraft; nearly 70 have been delivered and for many it will be adequate to delay inspection until routine maintenance comes due.

Videos of landing aircraft in challenging conditions is nothing new, but this video - currently popular on YouTube - showcases how an afternoon of bad weather at Düsseldorf airport can make landing an aircraft a real test of skill for pilots.

A Qantas Airways Airbus A380 was forced to take a diversion from its scheduled flight from Singapore to London, due to an oil problem, causing one of its four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines to shut down.

Flight QF31 flew for around two-and-a-half hours with only three functioning engines before landing safely in Dubai. The aircraft had 250 passengers and 25 members of staff who all disembarked safely.

Avid Twitter user Stephen Fry was a passenger onboard this flight tweeted his reactions: ''Bugger. Forced to land in Dubai. An engine has decided not to play.'' Adding: ''I should in all conscience add that staff are being wonderful & that morale is high and the passengers understanding & cheerful.'' 

He colourfully expressed anger at leaving his wallet on the grounded flight: "I've left my wallet on the sodding plane. Hell's teeth this really isn't my day." 

This isn't the first time Qantas has had engine-related problems. Almost exactly one year ago, in November 2010, a fault in a Trent 900 oil feed tube caused the number two engine of a Qantas A380 to fail, resulting in an emergency landing in Singapore. Oddly similar to today's events.

Qantas isn't having much luck recently, as earlier this week it was forced to ground its fleet due to a dispute with its staff and unions, before resuming limited flights. All of these incidents are continuing to put a strain on Qantas' revenue.

Related blog posts

Airline Business: The Qantas A380 drama - QF32 a year on

Learmount: Handling The Big Jet: the human story of QF32

 

This post was written by Rebecca Springfield

Full marks to Lyon-Saint Exupery airport for deploying technology to good effect. Noting that "wait times to pass through security are often a source of stress for passengers", the airport now features signs on the public side of the concourse indicating estimated time from the end of the queue to the security gates, to help passengers better manage their time in the airport.
The system - installed at security point 15 (Terminal 1) and set to be airport-wide by year-end - uses several cameras that count the number of passengers in the queue; an algorithm calculates the estimated time to reach the departure lounges.
Why has nobody thought of this before?

Since the two aircraft ploughed into the twin towers in New York and other attacks on the US Pentagon, airport and airline security has had to change to prevent hijacks and ground attacks. But it has affected the ease of people travelling.

Flight has reported on developments from the security industry including a Honeywell device to be fitted to Boeing 787s and Airbus A350s called the pilot override system that works as a recovery system using the automatic flight control system in fly-by-wire airliners to override pilots who set a course that would enter restricted airspace or intentionally collide with buildings.

Another article headlined USA acts to avoid 9/11 repetition with temporary flight restrictions, one of which includes a a 30 minute which involves a "30min seat rule" on commercial flights where passengers will be required to remain seated for 30min after take-off and prior to landing, and limiting general aviation flights.

Have new measure been effective? This article was published in 2006 in which Safety and operations editor David Learmount concluded that there had been no hijack attempt since September 2001, "with the exception of an event in Colombia where lawless elements dominate some parts of the country. But even then the aircraft and its passengers survived."

• What are your views on airport and airline security?
• Is there less of a threat of terrorism now which should lead to rules and regulations being relaxed?
• Have the security measures put in place been a success? 

See a whole host of other security related features post 9/11 in the Flightglobal Historic pages to see how the industry has changed.
 

• Security concerns cockpit lock  
• AAR cockpit security attracts strong interest
• Air Canada Jazz pilot trapped on 'wrong side' of cockpit door incident re-opens security questions
• On Board defences   
• USA pilots speak
• Eye-in cabin 
• Winning passengers confidence of security back 
• Industry upturn after 9/11 
• Beating the Bombers
• Table of illegal interference with aircraft since 9/11
• Slump since 9/11
• 9/11 not cause of downturn
• 10 year anniversary pushes security
• Short Term and long term effects

"When the plane appeared over Jumun island, soldiers mistook it as a North Korean military aircraft and fired," a Marine Corps official told Yonhap, the AFP says.

The aircraft was "flying normally" and following a normal route from Chengdu, China, an air traffic controller told the AFP.

An Asiana spokeswoman said the military checked-up with the airline after the incident, and confirmed to the AFP there was no damage.

The AFP adds that local newspaper Yonhap says the Marine Corps will step up training for soldiers to help them distinguish civilian aircraft from enemy jets.

In other aircraft shootings incidents, the military of the French overseas territory of Reunion needs no help distinguishing jets but does require help distinguishing blank cartridges from live ones after a counter-hijacking exercise used real bullets and left a hole in one of the carrier's Boeing 777-300ERs.

And then of course there was the 737 from US Airways Airlines that encountered a stray bullet in March.

This presentation by Airbus test pilot Xavier Lesceu (click here), given before a performance and operations conference in Dubai in May 2011, contains a detailed explanation of the blanket revision of procedures for stall recovery adopted last year.

It's particularly interesting to read in light of the revelations about Air France flight AF447, notably the observation that the previous recovery procedure could result in "reluctance to apply nose-down input".

France's Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses has released details of the final few minutes of flight AF447, following the two-year recovery effort to retrieve the Airbus A330's flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders. Presented here are the main sections of the BEA's statement (in bold) and an explanation of the significance of each point:

 

01:35:46

The controller asked the crew to maintain FL350 and to give their estimated time at TASIL.

Flight AF447 is told to keep cruising at 35,000ft and inform Brazilian air traffic control when it expects to reach the waypoint 'TASIL' - the entry point into Senegalese airspace, where responsibility for watching over the flight will transfer to the control centre in Dakar.