Airlines: March 2009 Archives

Anyone know anymore about this one? And ideally have the original pictures, which my contact doesn't have? (Better still - the CVR tape!) Clearly it's a Delta Connection Bombardier CRJ of some flavour and equally clearly the crew have a story to tell their children, (which fortunately I guess they will have the option of having.)

I don't know how recent it was.

   

You know - repainting, uniforms, cola...the list is endless. (And then there's seniority lists, balance sheets, fleet plans...)

With Northwest and Delta the cola is a particularly knotty problem. What with Delta being in Coca Cola's hometown and all. Should be a shoo-in, but not so, because Northwest carries, yup, Pepsi. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution explains.

The painting task is horrendous. I've talked about it before, but Delta now says it's on top of the situation - and in fact making terrific progress.

With uniforms, the decision is simple: wear Delta or ship out. But for a few more days flight attendants are being allowed to wear vintage uniforms of any carrier in history that's been subsumed into the great Delta/Northwest happy(?) family. Like these for example.

The NTSB has just issued an update on the investigation of the Colgan Air Q400 loss at Buffalo. Full text below. Several interesting hints at where this is going. Basically it is looking rather more as if this investigation will be looking hard at some of the more nuanced factors like training, scheduling, as well as the specifics of how the crash finally occurred - important though that obviously is.

Here's my take on some key pointers:

• icing looking less pertinent
• nothing wrong with the aircraft
  
• Colgan training operation of interest
• Colgan (and perhaps industry) scheduling practices of interest
• experience levels of interest (Capt 3,379hr total with 109 on type, F/O 2,220 total with 772 on type)
  
• sterile cockpit procedures may be pertinent
• questions about Buffalo ILS system not looking relevant
• previously unrevealed recent Colgan Q400 stick-shaker incident at Burlington, Vt being looked at

Feel free to comment if you disagree (or agree) with me after you've read the document below.

Captain Doug Maughan, who was the pilot that made allegations of "casual racism" among the British Airways pilot community, has failed in a legal attempt to claim victimisation in the wake of the affair.

Capt Maughan, (who was on the same course as me in RAF basic training), represented himself at an industrial tribunal. In a previous life I covered umpteen such tribunals and I have to say going in without legal representation is extremely rarely successful.

Nevertheless, he's taking the case to an appeal where he plans to represent himself again since BALPA won't take it on.

Don't do it Doug. Good money after bad.

There's a new FAA airworthiness directive out today stemming from the British Airways Boeing 777 crash on short finals to Heathrow last year, and now taking in additional evidence from a similar incident involving just one engine last November, plus a heap of research by Boeing and Rolls-Royce. Details below.