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Aviation History
1989
1989 - 1342.PDF
Gatwick lighting changes recommended by Kieran Daly The UK Department of Trans port Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) recommends five changes to the runway lighting at London Gatwick Airport in its report on the incident in which a British Island Airways BAe One- Eleven mistakenly landed on a parallel taxiway (Flight, April 23, 1988). The One-Eleven landed on taxiway 2 on April 12, 1988, making a night visual approach to runway 08L during resurfacing work on the main runway (08R), and stopped 190m short of a Boeing 737. The 737 became bogged down after turning off the taxiway. The report says the One- Eleven commander "changed from an accurate to an inaccu rate interpretation of the cues provided to him by the visual scene on the approach ... The Gatwick lighting confuses, say acci dent investigators change of interpretation was occasioned by a well- intentioned query from the first officer in an attempt to resolve his personal uncertainty about which runway was being approached." It adds that the misinter pretation was helped by: Virgin chooses Qualitair Virgin Atlantic and Qualitair Aviation have signed an agreement under which the companies will co-operate in the maintenance of Virgin's Boeing 747 aircraft. The airline has agreed a one- year contract with Qualitair, in which the companies' engin eering staff will work alongside one another at Qualitair's Stansted base. Virgin's team will retain the responsibility for the comple tion of routine maintenance, but will use both Qualitair's personnel and new hangar for the work. According to Virgin, the contract enables it to retain control while developing its own maintenance capacity with Qualitair's expertise. The Qualitair Holdings Group plans a third major UK aircraft maintenance centre, to be built in co-operation with East Midlands International Airport and worth £12 million. The proposed centre will initially consist of a three-bay maintenance hangar with an associated apron and taxiway at the far western end of the airport. Up to 150 jobs could be created initially, growing to more than 300 over four years. Qualitair's Stansted mainte nance base is Europe's largest independent commercial air craft maintenance centre, its diamond-shaped design provid ing sufficient floor space to accommodate two 747s or mixtures of aircraft types. The £20 million Stansted commercial aircraft mainte nance centre was due to open last November, but structural defects and problems with contractors delayed the open ing. The first aircraft will be accepted in the next few weeks. Construction of the com pany's £15 million mainte nance centre at Manchester Airport is ahead of schedule, and will open in November. H NFVPS /A/- MR/FJ* Hi D Lufthansa buys more DLT Lufthansa which has for some time held 40 per cent of major German regional carrier Dl.T, has gained approval from DLT's current major share holder. AGIV, to buy another 12 per cent, taking its total holding to 52 per cent. Tin: plan is that DLT is to take over all of Lufthansa's domestic and intra-European regional services. • The "similar visual appear ance at night" of runway 08R and the taxiway, which both had green centrelines; • the use of 08L both as a runway with edge lighting and as a taxiway with centreline lighting; • the red LIMA stop bar on taxiway 2 implying a threshold and enabling the impression to be formed of a poorly lit runway; • the failure of the crew to brief themselves on the lighting they were expecting to see. The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) implemented two recommendations—to make the LIMA stop bar unidirectional to the east and to reduce further the mini mum-intensity setting of the taxiway 2 and 08L/26R centreline lighting. It rejected recommendations to make the same lights unidirectional and switchable because, it says, the system would be "completely non standard", and to provide sequenced strobe lighting on the active runway, because trials indicated a danger of pilot vertigo or even nausea. The CAA says that it is committed to an eventual requirement for airliners to carry 120-minute-duration cockpit voice recorders rather than the 30-minute "endless loop" recorders used at present. The AAIB is concerned that the crew pre-descent briefing and conversation on approach were not stored because the tape continued running after landing and recorded over that sequence. Commercial companies are to be encouraged to develop the necessary technology. Other recommendations regarding Gatwick operating procedures and published data have been acted upon. Dan-Air's space shop Dan-Air Engineering, the maintenance arm of British charter and scheduled airline Dan-Air, has opened a new 8,100m2 maintenance building at London Gatwick Airport. The main hangar, with a floor area of 4,620m2, can accommodate a Boeing 747 plus one small airliner such as a BAe 146, or an Airbus or McDonnell Douglas DC-10 plus two Boeing 727-sized aircraft, or four 727s. Alongside there are offices, workshops, and stores, including a wheel and lyre shop, a composite structures shop, an electrical test centre and a cabin maintenance and refurbishment shop. As a result of opening this new building, Dan-Air is now able to service its own large aircraft Cone of its two Airbus A300s was the first major customer), and to offer much more extensive third-party maintenance services. Over SO per cent of Dan-Air Engineering's workload is now for third-party customers. 12 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 13 May 1989
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