Recently in Safety Category

After a few quiet months air safety is suddenly smack-bang back on the news agenda. The Spanair crash in Madrid and the 737 loss in Kyrgyzstan over the weekend have seen that. And so it's hard luck on Ryanair to have a depressurisation a couple of days later, and make-your-own-luck for Air Canada Jazz for going public with plans to take lifejackets out of some aircraft. Expect more of this for a while anyway.

Every once in a while things happen in aircraft that you simply couldn't make up. This email, currently doing the rounds, appears to be authentic and the pix below back it up.

Pilots may feel that there is a certain step in the sequence of events which may have been, how can I put this, more optimally executed.

Kudos to Lockheed for building them to last.

Full story below....

I've banged on about this before, but a new accident report from Taiwan rams the point home for anyone who wasn't paying attention. If you only do one thing to keep yourself safe as an airliner passenger, just make sure it's fastening your seatbelt.

This particular accident wasn't caused by turbulence, it was due to a collision-warning alert and the ensuing events. The report makes interesting reading - but the photos and injury descriptions are the bits passengers need to pay attention to.

The fact is that in a jet airliner your soft body is being projected through space at several hundreds of miles per hour surrounded by necessarily hard stuff. Anything that happens to distub the equilibrium of your trajectory is likely to end badly for you. And such things do happen quite a bit.

Read my earlier post here.

An Unusual Attitude salute for an unnamed (I think) United Airlines captain, and international soccer referee Lubos Michel who both made difficult calls in public over the weekend.

Following the Eclipse 500 VLJ incident reported earlier, the FAA has overnight issued an emergency AD on the type. It's a real 'emergency' emergency AD. You can't fly the aeroplane again until you've done the checks and made the amendments - and of course depending on what you find in the checks you may have a grounded aeroplane on your hands.

This sort of thing happens of course and the world gets over it. But in the embryonic VLJ world the regulatory sensitivity is huge. Good luck to all concerned.

Details have emerged, (as we journalists say about things that we didn't know about at the time) of a dire incident on the VLJ that everyone is watching - the Eclipse 500. (Not the one in this pic.)

It's got the NTSB understandably spooked as you can read at the link below.

Fortunately some highly professional piloting saved the occupants and aircraft.

Here's the scenario: double engine control failure during a windshear influenced final approach. FADEC reverts to last recorded power setting, which unfortunately is full power on both engines. Quite handy for the subsequent go-around, not so great for the desired landing. And then things get worse...

There is of course a major issue over the experience levels of at least some of the owner-pilots likely to end up flying this and other VLJs. The debate, I think it is fair to say, is likely to continue. 

Don't blame me - if the FAA says it's a MacDac then a MacDac it is. Anyway, David YJ Hsu in the Los Angeles Aircraft Certification Office, whose happy job it is to keep a caring eye on the nation's Daks, wants you to know that the tailwheel may fall off. He just wants you to know that - he's not saying you should necessarily worry or anything, and he's issued a Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin, the recommendations of which, he stresses, are not mandatory.

What happened was that on 25 February a Dak experienced tailwheel fork failure during rollout after landing. Turned out to be due to a crack from a fastener hole which was probably "present for some time". As the aircraft had 19,482 hours on the clock it's hard to know for just how much time.

Mr Hsu notes that "currently there is no specific inspection requirement of the tailwheel area" (apart from checking that you've got one) and so he's devised a rigorous inspection regime to prevent the above related embarrassment happening to you too. It involves "proper lighting" and a "magnifying glass". He comments that you could do this "during other maintenance activities". (Phew!) And he feels that you should repeat it annually. Up to you though. Gratuitous Daks pic below from Classic Flight.

The UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) has issued its third update on the British Airways Boeing 777 accident at Heathrow on 17 January - and it's making it pretty clear that it's going to be a long, detailed investigation. No surprise to be honest.

So, I hear you say, wouldn't it be neat if there was one place with all the world's safety wisdom gathered on it, and where sensible people like you could go and add your bit, and there was all sorts of stuff explaining operational concepts that you one day meant to go and understand properly.

Indeed it might: so welcome to Skybrary, brought to you by Eurocontrol with considerable support from Flight Safety Foundation and ICAO. ("Skybrary" - damn I wish I'd thought of that - but Dr Christine Shea did instead.)

Like everyone else who has anything to do with aviation I get asked: so what's your hot safety tip?

People generally seem to want to know should you sit towards the rear, over the wing, near the exits - and so on. I tell them I have one tip above all else: stay strapped in.