Airlines: July 2009 Archives

Having taken the train to Kazan I fly back courtesy of Tatarstan Airlines. To my slight distress the flight is scheduled to be on a boring old Boeing 737 and not the Tupolev Tu-134 or -154 that I'd love to try. Still it turns out to be a 737-500 and I can't remember the last time I took one of those, if I actually have done. Must have, surely???

It's all a pretty sorry tale and I'm not really planning to say anything more about it after this unless it's plain wrong. According to various United sources the captain was on his first trip back after extended sick leave.

About 45min into the flight he asks for a document called the crew declaration. There's a delay because the in-flight service is underway and for various reasons relating to security procedures the female purser eventually ends up pushing it under the door.

Fast forward a bit and the captain apparently ends up yelling at her and still later the cabin crew is suddenly told that the aircraft is about to land at Miami. Nobody really seems to know what is going on and eventually they end up at the gate at Miami with, so I'm told, police, TSA and fire department in attendance.

One way or another the purser ends up on the ground and the aircraft departs for Chicago where it is met by appropriate UAL officials. Captain still off flight duty.

I don't think this has much to do with CRM, though obviously there are some HR and procedural questions that UAL and the FAA will be talking about. But in my view it's just life.

That's it.

Happened plenty of times before and no doubt will do again. Although a distressing surprise to see American managing it. Reportedly at Fort Worth Alliance during ground checks after a test-flight after a heavy check.

 

Well it's all true as first suggested. The skipper of UA842, a Boeing 767 operating Sao Paulo-Chicago on the night of 13 July really did get sufficiently fed up with his purser that he landed at Miami and ordered him or her off the aircraft.

Update: Reply 33 here is an interesting account of the situation from someone whose profile is of a purser based in San Francisco and says the UA842 purser was female.

ALPA and the AFA are saying they haven't got details of the event yet, but I'm pretty sure that they have really. In fact a good chunk of the United pilot force knew about the incident before the aircraft even landed and could hardly believe what they were hearing.

As I understand it the pilot was taken off flight status one way or another within a couple of hours of landing. Apparently there may have been some history between these two people.

I suspect United's main issue is the idea of a captain taking it upon himself to cheerfully lob into an arbitrary airport in the middle of the night in his multi-million dollar machine on less than compelling grounds and then continue on his merry way. One can only imagine (or more likely one can't imagine) the atmosphere in the aircraft during the rest of the flight.

Definitely one for the crew resource management literature. We're running the story on Flightglobal. Do comment if you know more.

Details to be confirmed, I should caution, but an extraordinary tale if true.

If you're quick you can see here that UA 842 from Sao Paulo to Chicago O'Hare diverted into Miami this morning. That's a pretty serious decision of course - adding an unexpected stop to what is already getting on for an eleven hour flight.

Here's what United is saying about it on its website:












So what is that 'customer service' issue exactly? Well, I'm told it's the small matter of the captain not liking the attitude of one of the flight attendants. Yikes! Anyone know anymore?

No ifs or buts, there is an actual whacking great hole in the fuselage as you can see in the picture below. Full depressurisation drill and diversion from best part of FL350. No explanation so far. Going to be a busy day for 737 operators (or else an extremely quiet one!)



Here's what Southwest says:

SOUTHWEST AIRLINES INFORMATION REGARDING FLIGHT 2294

Scheduled Nashville-Baltimore Flight Diverts to West Virginia

DALLAS, TX--July 13, 2009--Southwest Airlines confirms Flight 2294, the 4:05 pm Eastern scheduled departure from Nashville to Baltimore/Washington diverted to Yeager Airport in Charleston, W. Va at approximately 5:10 pm Eastern today after a cabin depressurization. All 126 passengers and crew of five onboard landed safely and are awaiting a replacement aircraft in Charleston that will take them to Baltimore/Washington International Airport later this evening.

The aircraft cabin depressurized approximately 30 minutes into the flight, activating the passengers' onboard oxygen masks throughout the cabin. Medical personnel in Charleston assessed passengers and no injuries are reported. Southwest Airlines is sending its maintenance personnel to Charleston to assess the aircraft, and the airline will work with the NTSB to determine the cause of the depressurization. According to initial crew reports, the depressurization appears to be related to a small-sized hole located approximately mid-cabin, near the top of the aircraft.

There is no responsible way to speculate as to a cause at this point. We have safety procedures in place, and they were followed in this instance to get all passengers and crew safely on the ground. Reports we have are that our passengers were calm and that our Pilots and Flight Attendants did a great job getting the aircraft on the ground safely.

In an abundance of caution, we have initiatied an inspection of all 737-300s tonight. We expect only minimal impact to tomorrow's schedule until all of those inspections are complete.

The captain of the Emirates Airbus A340-500 that suffered the multiple tail-strike at Melbourne has told his story to the Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun and an interesting tale it is. Nice scoop guys.

You can read the whole thing here. But here's a couple of points of interest. First is that the pilot, who's a 42 year-old European who doesn't want to be identified, says he had slept for 3.5hr in the previous 24. On the other hand he appears to be ambivalent about the effect of that in the wider picture. Clearly the eventual Australian report is going to be an important document in the ongoing fatigue debate.

Second, the pilot is very clear about what happened to him when he arrived back in Dubai. According to the paper: He and his co-pilot were ordered to resign. They were handed pre-prepared letters of resignation when they returned to Emirates headquarters.

So, contrary to what Emirates said in a formal public statement, they were in fact sacked. And furthermore it looks as if it had been decided before they returned to Dubai that they were to be sacked. As I've said before, I don't see any way that that can be justified.

The press conference is still going on. It's being given head of investigation Alain Bouillard. Not a huge amount to say, but here it is so far.

He says: "As of today we are far from having any real idea of the causes of this accident."

• No pre-existing faults reported by crew or ACARS
• Aircraft did experience inconsistent speed indications
  
• Aircraft "was not destroyed while it was in flight and the aircraft seems to have hit the water on bottom of fuselage with a sharp vertical acceleration" - derived from damage to recovered parts, especially galleys
• The aircraft reached the sea whole - it had not been damaged at that point
  
• Aircraft did not blow up in flight
  
• More than 640 pieces of debris found from all over the aircraft. Notably internal furnishings.
• No distress call of any type
• No inflated lifejackets been recovered
• Black box pingers last for 30 days nominal with up to 10 days possible after that
• Search with submarines and robots to continue to 10 July
• Second phase using different techniques to begin 14 July
• Other aircraft encountered storms and diverted by 10-80nm and all had trouble communicating with Dakar.

More to come