Unusual Attitude

Passenger creates big debate at American - I mean big!

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:48:01 +0000

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?

Another one for Pratt & Whitney fans

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:22:02 +0000

First frost of the year in London this morning and northern hemisphere aviation is entering the winter. There will doubtless be much airport angst ahead, especially in the US mid-west and northeast - so a quick reminder of just how remarkable it is that the video below is pretty unremarkable. Didn't even take a century to make this sort of thing routine.

Would you take off with this much snow on the wing?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:30:21 +0000

This picture taken by someone who says they were an off-duty flight attendant is causing considerable consternation in UK regulatory circles. And it's being energetically discussed on Pprune.

It was sent to the UK's greatly respected CHIRP operation which is a confidential safety reporting system in which incidents are disidentified.

The F/A says (s)he told the senior F/A about the snow before take-off but the aircraft departed anyway. This picture was taken during the ensuing flight.

I'm not sure what type it is - no obvious sign of a nacelle, but maybe it's out of frame. If it's a hard-wing type though then this is really not a great situation.

In the Flight office we several times discussed what we would do if we found ourselves on an aircraft which appeared to be about to take-off with something amiss. I mean even if you knew you were right, what do you do exactly to stop the take-off going ahead? Imagine you're just about to roll on an MD-80 with no slats/flaps deployed.

Staying awake on the flightdeck

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:29:34 +0000

Obviously the main thing pilots now do to pass the time on boring sectors is discuss what happened to the Northwest crew who overflew Minneapolis on a boring sector. But the bloggers among them are starting to put their thoughts into print.

Aluwings at The Wings Stayed On is educational about the inventive uses to which the flight management system can be put, but he's also good on why you really don't want to play with the aircraft systems and why SOPs are generally there for a reason.

And Aviatrix at Cockpit Conversation has been whiling away the hours by recording how she was whiling away the hours. In remarkable detail. She sounds good company.

All good, innocent fun. Although when the ACARS datalink was first introduced back in the early 90s, airlines were surprised by some of the data bills they started getting. Investigations followed and one carrier felt impelled to issue an edict banning the game of searching the weather data in order to bet with other crews on which airport had the lowest temperature in the world.

Great article on pilot fatigue (and a strange RAA comment)

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:40:58 +0000

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.

What is wrong with this photo at Atlanta?

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:07:43 +0000

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.

Another reason why China will not soon overtake Western aerospace

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:37:14 +0000

Scott Hamilton's story about US questions to the WTO about Chinese aerospace subsidies, published first on our CAO subscription service, and then on his own Leeham site, deserves much more attention than it's been getting. It hints at one of the most powerful reasons why China's aerospace industry is not going to match the major Western airframers for many, many years to come.

I am leaving Flight

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:45:34 +0000

Tomorrow actually. I couldn't quite bring myself to make it public until now.

It's almost exactly 21 years since, in an astounding stroke of luck, I was in the right place at the right time to land a job on Flight International. And the experience since has lived up to, and then wildly surpassed, whatever expectations I had. I've been incredibly fortunate to live the life of a Flight journalist and I'm acutely aware of the fact.

The people here are the most splendidly intelligent, amusing and affable bunch anywhere in aviation publishing. I've had marvellous times with them and I'll miss them.

It didn't really occur to me in 1988 that I would announce the news of my departure on a laptop computer, via something called the internet, in the form of another thing called a blog to which readers could instantly respond. I think I would have been terrified.

I''ll be continuing the blog. In its two years as Unusual Attitude it's been viewed nearly 650,000 times and I hugely appreciate your interest. Receiving your comments from all over the world in realtime has been a salutary, educational and frequently encouraging experience and I'd like to thank you for that. I hope it's improved my journalism.

I don't in fact know what I'll be doing next in my professional life. All reasonable offers considered!

Thanks for reading. Kieran

Should I sue Boeing over the British Airways 777 crash

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:52:11 +0000

I only ask this because I'm being urged to do so by a firm of London lawyers - "the UK's leading aviation claimant law firm" apparently. They understand that I was a passenger on BA038, which you'll recall crashed short of the runway at Heathrow probably due to fuel icing, and they believe I "may have suffered a physical or psychological injury as a result".

God it's tempting! But I don't think I'm going to take up their offer, partly because I'm the sort of tedious individual who tends to think that, in life, stuff happens and you shouldn't really go around sueing hard-working, talented people who were doing their best but may have got something complex wrong. (A bit like BA038 passenger Francis Charig.) Oh, and partly because I wasn't actually on BA038.

Northwest A320 crew find rostering more interesting than flying

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:52:00 +0000

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 pilots tell management like it is concerning AF447

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:17:34 +0000

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.

Air France tells its pilots like it is regarding AF447

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:36:29 +0000

In a quintessentially French document, Air France's heads of flight ops and safety have written to the carrier's pilots telling them what the company thinks about the AF447 situation. In a lengthy analysis of the current position, bordering on the philosophical, Pierre-Marie Gauron and Etienne Lichtenberger basically say the public debate in the media and elsewhere is misguided, pilots should rise above it, nobody knows exactly what happened and may never do, and AF and Airbus are doing everything reasonable in the circumstances.

Here's the French version, released to Le Point magazine at least, following the leaking of parts of the document. Sorry, but I don't have time right now to translate it myself, so here's a Google translation which is not too bad.

The French attitude to this kind of horrific affair is roughly: these are serious matters deserving a serious response; let's be grown-up about it; and let's rise above the public debate. As a journalist I like dealing with French industry more or less for those exact reasons. But French interests often come unstuck in the English-language media which doesn't really view things the same way.

Video: Northwest pilot denies sleeping or arguing

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:41:55 +0000

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.

Delta/Northwest incident - bust-up in cockpit, not sleep

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:34:29 +0000

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.

More on that Delta/Northwest incident

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:56:19 +0000

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.