April 2012 Archives

The FAA is taking a lot of stick for its slack regulation of air race and air show operations, and rightly so. The NTSB, investigating the crash of an air-race-modified P-51D Mustang last September at Reno, Nevada has made recommendations on just about every possible aspect of the FAA's oversight.


This is "The Galloping Ghost". Would you recognise that as a Mustang? I'd struggle! It's been trimmed for pure speed, with other aerodynamic considerations taking a back seat.

One of the NTSB criticisms was that the aircraft was extensively modified with no oversight of the modification process. Then it flew the Reno course at the limits of its performance envelope in front of the crowd without having been tested. No trial runs. No FAA rules requiring it.

Ten people in the crowd were killed by the crashing aircraft, and more than 60 were severely injured.

Here's an NTSB diagram showing how extensive the modifications were. Compare it with the photograph at the top of this post.

Air racing is a thrilling sport, and inherently dangerous. That's why we go to see it. The pilots and the operators know what the risks are, and have the task of balancing them. But the spectators should not face a high risk of death. This crowd did because of where it was: at the apex of the racetrack's high-G final turn.

NTSB head Deborah Hersman says she doesn't intend to bind air racing with paranoic rules, she just wants to make sure common sense is applied to its planning and execution, and says the FAA's guidelines are not up to the job. They aren't.

But I expect they will be.

Tristan Loraine, a professional pilot turned film director, goes around the world looking for real aviation stories to bring back to life. He's certainly done it with Shady Lady, the filmed story of an extraordinary ultra-long-range mission by a USAF Consolidated B-24 Liberator in the Second World War.

The aeroplane ran out of fuel and crash-landed in Australia's remote Northern Territory, but has since flown again.

Such was the impact of the gripping but forgotten story that Tristan uncovered during filming, that President Obama issued a Presidential Citation to the crew last year. It was presented in Sydney to the aircraft commander's widow.

One way of being sure of getting a hostile intercept by a fully armed RAF Typhoon is to get your navigation wrong and penetrate the prohibited airspace over much of London and its surroundings during the 2012 Olympic Games.

This shot of the runway at Vagar, Faroe Islands is copied from Atlantic Airways' inflight magazine Atlantic Review. It's not a recent photograph, and things have changed since then. Not dramatically, but significantly.

This blog post complements the previous one which describes - in pictures - the first commercial operation into Vagar by Atlantic Airways' new Airbus A319, using the new RNP-AR satellite-guided precision approach procedure.

Here we look at some of the enabling changes that led to the introduction of RNP, and the challenges faced by this airline that serves the Faroe Islands.

Since this shot was taken, the magnetic pole has shifted a little, and the runway designation is no longer 13/31, it's 12/30. It has also been lengthened to prepare for A319 operations.

An Atlantic Airways shot (below) taken from above the approach to 30, also before the runway was lengthened, gives a good picture of the terrain aviators face approaching the other end - runway 12.

Here (below) is the approach to 30 on the newly lenthened runway, which I took from the A319 on its first commercial schedule, inbound from Copenhagen on 28 March.

Vagar's runway has been lengthened from 1,250m to 1,799m (5,847ft) by extending both ends on raised embankments. Here are the approach light stanchions for runway 12 in the shadow of the raised runway threshold...

Also evident in the magazine picture is that Atlantic's entire fleet of BAE Systems Avro RJs had converged on Vagar that day. They didn't have the A319 at the time. They still have some RJs now as well as the Airbus.

The approach to runway 12 is reckoned to be the more picturesque, but I didn't get to fly it in the aeroplane.