Recently in Airlines Category

This is sent to me with the absolute assurance that it's a genuine picture taken by a flight attendant at American Airlines. The F/A took it to show her manager what was happening on the aircraft (757???) and why she was unhappy about it. Seems the guy paid for only one seat and the gate staff let him board.

You can see the F/A's point of view - how the heck is s(he) supposed to deal with it. Sympathise with the guy or not, he's a major safety hazard in an evacuation, a gross inconvenience for the cabin crew, and I would suggest a totally unacceptable travelling companion for the guy next to him.

I don't know what the actual outcome was but it seems unimaginable that he was allowed to fly in the end. Not that anything on a commercial airline is actually unimaginable, but close anyway. 

A good friend of mine had a similar experience sitting next to a guy who was big but I don't think as big as this, for a long-haul flight and was effectively injured by sitting for several hours in a contorted position with his fellow pax half on top of him. The airline that did that to him was utterly unsympathetic throughout a lengthy correspondence afterwards. OK, Emirates since you ask. Ironically my chum is now in a senior position with another carrier.

Anyone know how how the American affair turned out?

Hats off to Eric Torbenson of the Dallas Morning News for an intelligent and penetrating article on scheduling and pay issues in the US regional airline industry. Another piece of evidence adding to the growing certainty that this is not a sustainable situation.

US Regional Airline Association (RAA) president Roger Cohen is quoted as saying that "there's been very little research in this area". He needs to get out more.

Of course if you're familiar with this story (and who isn't) then the answer will be easy. What's wrong is the skidmarks on the taxiway. But it's still not at all clear what happened.

Interesting take on this incident and the Northwest distracted crew here, It's a sensible argument but I'm not sure I really agree - I think it's too narrow. Clearly the actual potential consequences of the NW incident on the day were not as serious as the DL landing at Atlanta, but I wonder if that's really the point. The question is how come that NW situation could have arisen, and when you've worked out how come, what other consequences could have arisen from those factors in different circumstances. Ditto the DL incident of course.

So DL may perhaps be more important than NW, but until you've worked back to the root causes you can't tell.

Who realised flying airliners had become so boring?

It turns out that the two pilots of the Northwest A320 that overflew Minneapolis St Paul were two old lags within sight of retirement who got talking about the age-old subject of the crew rostering system, pulled out their laptops on the flight deck to look at the software, and next thing they know the flight attendant is asking when they're going to land. They start actually flying the airplane again and realise Minneapolis is a long way behind them.

Captain 53, with 20,000 blameless hours, half of them in the A320 and 7,000 of them in command. First officer 54 with 11,000 similarily clean hours, 5,000 in the A320. What a way to end a career.

They're spared the full embarrasment of having the whole ghastly saga played back to them because the 30min CVR doesn't cover the period in question. Although most of the last half-hour is on the tape and may or may not be educational.

Below is the NTSB statement today after interviewing the pilots for five no doubt excruciating hours.

Air France's letter to its pilots telling them essentially to move on and not get involved in the AF447 blame-game has not gone down well. The biggest of the pilots unions there, SNPL, issued this response under the heading An Unacceptable Letter. It's my translation - feel free to offer alternatives.

The SNPL ALPA Air France, like all pilots of Air France was shocked by the letter to pilots by the Director of Flight Operations and Safety Director.
 
This letter is unacceptable because it suggests, in a denial of reality, the sole responsibility of the situation described lies with the pilots.

In an amalgamation between the AF447 accident and certain operational incidents, the management of Air France calls into question the professionalism and sense of responsibility of Air France line pilots, making them scapegoats .

This letter crystallizes the pilots' loss of confidence in the management of their company, and particularly to the authors of the letter and those who approved it.

In pointing only to the line pilots, the management demonstrates its inability and unwillingness to accept any challenge.

The SNPL had demanded this overall questioning in the aftermath of AF447 by calling for an external audit.  The management of Air France responded positively to our request in early September 2009.

In view of the autism of the Air France management as evidenced by this letter, SNPL Air France insists that the audit is begun as soon as possible. Furthermore, SNPL Air France demands to take part in this audit to assure itself that it examines all the services and modes of operation related to flight safety.

One of the pilots of the Northwest Airlines flight that flew past Minneapolis last week has given at least an indication of what he and the other pilot will be telling the NTSB. First officer Richard Cole told ABC News that he couldn't go into any more detail. Here's the conversation on video below.

 

The NTSB has just confirmed my story that it wasn't a sleeping Northwest crew that caused the no-radio incident at Minneapolis. In fact it was a cockpit bust-up.

Here's their statement:

***********************************************************

                       NTSB ADVISORY

************************************************************

 

National Transportation Safety Board

Washington, DC 20594

 

 

October 22, 2009

 

 

************************************************************

NTSB INVESTIGATING FLIGHT THAT OVERFLEW INTENDED MINNEAPOLIS AIRPORT

 

************************************************************

 

 

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating an

incident where an Airbus A320 overflew the Minneapolis-St Paul

International/Wold-Chamberlain Airport (MSP).

 

On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at 5:56 pm mountain daylight time,

an Airbus A320, N03274, operating as Northwest Airlines (NWA) flight

188, became a NORDO (no radio communications) flight at 37,000 feet.

The flight was operating as a Part 121 flight from San Diego

International Airport, San Diego, California (SAN) to MSP with 147

passengers and unknown number of crew.

 

At 7:58 pm central daylight time (CDT), the aircraft flew over the

destination airport and continued northeast for approximately 150

miles. The MSP center controller reestablished communications with

the crew at 8:14 pm and reportedly stated that the crew had become

distracted and had overflown MSP, and requested to return to MSP. 

 

According to the Federal Administration (FAA) the crew was

interviewed by the FBI and airport police.  The crew stated they

were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost

situational awareness.  The Safety Board is scheduling an interview

with the crew. 

 

The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) have

been secured and are being sent to the NTSB laboratory in

Washington, DC.

 

David Lawrence, the Investigator-in-Charge, is leading the team of 3

in investigating the incident.

 

Parties to the investigation are the FAA and Northwest Airlines.

 

 

The story is starting to turn up, but I'm still not sure the truth is out there.

Here's local television and here's the Wall Street Journal.

Word is that details will emerge today of a peculiar incident last night involving a Delta/Northwest flight into or out of Minneapolis St Paul. The gist is that the aircraft went out of radar contact for something like an hour and that a sleeping crew was suspected. But there's also a suggestion that there's more to it than that. That's all I know for sure - leave a comment if you know more.

But I also suspect that the flight involved - and this is totally unconfirmed let me stress - was Northwest 188 from San Diego. NTSB involved. If you look at the link you'll see that this flight, which has a pretty decent on-time record, on this occasion left 22min late, but arrived more than an hour late. And, more to the point, it apparently overflew its destination of MSP by more than 100 miles before turning back.

All the whispers from Chicago are that Airbus is looking good for the lion's share of United's big aircraft order. Scott Hamilton at Leeham wrote this yesterday, and although Scott does some work for us here at Flight, I'm hearing similar things completely independently.

My information is that UAL executives are spending a great deal of time in Toulouse and, oddly, but persuasively if true, the November board meeting is scheduled to be held in Paris.

Sounds too good a rumour to be true, and yet, and yet, when USAirways defected to Airbus for long-haul a few years back the news very nearly leaked because CEO Stephen Wolf was spotted in Paris 24 hours before the announcement.

I also hear what Scott hears, that United is particularly twitched about the 787 situation and that the A350 is Airbus' surest bet in the deal.