Recently in Safety 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.