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Aviation History
1990
1990 - 2831.PDF
OPERATIONS: AIR TRANSPORT Lufthansa leases Berlin 737 base Lufthansa has signed an agree-i ment with the operator of East Berlin's principal airport, the Schoenefeld Airport Com pany, to rent up to three large maintenance hangars. The West German carrier's aim is "to set up and equip an overhaul base for Boeing 737 airliners". Overhaul implies work to D- check level. Investment in modernising the base is expected to total DM15 million ($9.47 million) between now and mid- 1991. Lufthansa says it would SAS sells Swedish domestic stake Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) has confirmed weeks of speculative rumour by selling its 50% share in Swedish domes tic carrier Linjeflyg. SAS president and chief exec utive Jan Carlzon says that even though Linjeflyg has operated independently ". . . without interference from SAS, it now seems correct to terminate our ownership interests as the market is liberalised". The SAS share has been bought for Skr475 million ($83 million) by Bilspedition, a major European transport company with interests in road-haulage and shippling. Linjeflyg links 25 Swedish provincial centres through the joint SAS hub in Stockholm, carrying 7.7 million passengers last year. The remainder of the Linjeflyg is owned by AB Aerotransport, one of three half- Stateowned companies, which owns 43% of SAS. • lkg bomb wrecked Pan Am 747 "in 3s" The forward fuselage section of Pan American Boeing 747- 100 N739PA separated com pletely within 3s of the. improvised explosive device (IED) exploding in the baggage hold, says the report by the UK Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB). The aircraft had been cruising at 31,000ft (9,000m) for 7min when the IED, containing lkg of Semtex, detonated. Heavy sec tions of the aircraft fell on or near Lockerbie, Scotland; lighter debris was strewn over a trail 130km long. All 259 people on board and 11 Lockerbie residents died. "The initial explosion trig gered a sequence which effec tively destroyed the structural integrity of the forward fu selage," says the report. "Little more then remained between sta tions 560 and 760 than the window belts . . . although much of the cargo-hold floor structure appears to have re mained briefly attached." The aircraft immediately nosed down and rolled left, "... probably as a result of inputs to the flying control cables by movement of the struc ture". The sudden rolling torsion destroyed the left window belt. This led to sharp starboard deflection of the forward fuselage, pivoting about the star board window belt and then peeling away, striking the No 3 engine and causing it to detach. All this happened in 3s. The structure and contents of the forward fuselage then dam aged the tailplane. Descent steep ened, structure continually breaking away from both sec tions, until descent was vertical at 19,000ft and the fin started to disintegrate—probably as a result of flutter. Yaw sideload caused the remaining three en gines to detach complete with pylons, and rear fuselage break up occurred probably as a result of loads induced by yaw. The only airborne fire was in an engine and the main ground fire was associated with the wing tanks. A section of cabin floor and baggage hold and three land ing gear units hit the ground close together. The complete main wing structure impacted with a high yaw angle. D otherwise have had to extend its already considerable capabilities at Hamburg to meet the in creased need for 737 mainte nance brought about by an expansion in its 737-300 fleet and the arrival of its 737-500s. The work should create 670 jobs, says Lufthansa. Recruit ment began last week. Lufthansa's scheduled services to Schoenefeld start on 28 Octo ber, making 737 maintenance services at turnaround and B-check level also important. . D Bumped passenger can fight back Airline passengers "bumped" XVfrom overbooked flights can sue the airline for damages, a US appeal court judge has ruled. Judge Dorothy Nelson of the San Francisco Appeal Court found that the US Airline De regulation act of 1978 (which bans direct state regulation of airlines) does not prevent a pas senger from suing under or dinary state law for harm caused by airline practices. The ruling allows Montana patent lawyer William West to sue Northwest Airlines. West is seeking punitive damages from Northwest for selling restricted tickets that cannot be exchanged or refunded but which subject the passenger to "bumping" (being turned away because the flight is overbooked). Federal law only allows a "bumped" passenger to get a ticket price refund up to $200 if a substitute flight is more than 60min later, or twice the amount if delayed more than 2h. West was represented by con sumer champion Ralph Nader's Public Citizen Litigation Group, a civil rights advocate group. West could be awarded size able damages if Northwest is found to have acted in bad faith under Montana law. He was "bumped" from a flight from Great Falls to Arlington in September 1986. • BAe controls One-Eleven corrosion British Aerospace is close to completing corrosion-con trol work for One-Eleven op erators under the airworth iness-assurance task-force proce dure—although the final part of its earlier structural-modification programme is behind schedule. Paperwork covering corro sion-control proposals by the ageing-aircraft study group is complete and BAe is now accom modating industry comment. Final integration of the corro sion-control programme into the One-Eleven maintenance plan ning guide is imminent, accord ing to assistant chief structures engineer Peter Bashford. The final structural modifica tion work involves renewing fu selage-skin lap joints before 85,000 cycles have been re corded. BAe aims to set a life of 105,000 cycles for modified aircraft. This third part of the One- Eleven modification programme has slipped three or four months from the original late-1990 target date. Bashford says that the One- Eleven industry task force work ing group hopes to have a US Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA)airworthiness directives in place by mid-1991. The second part of the pro gramme, covering One-Eleven rear pressure bulkhead door re building with new thicker cross members and door skin, is essen tially complete. This "lowest priority" work was developed by USAir and can be done in a few days "in the field", says Bashford. The next One-Eleven industry task force consideration is to develop a programme to assess past repairs from a damage-tol erance viewpoint. A third meet ing of the One-Eleven task force in a few weeks' time will con tinue to generate guidelines for operators to do their own work. The FAA has invited comment by 9 October on proposed struc tural modifications to One- Eleven Series 200 and 400 aircraft. •
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