FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
2000
2000 - 1151.PDF
DISPLAY ADVERTISEMENT SALES UK and EUROPE Display Advertising Enquiries +44 (20) 8652 3315 Display Advertising Fax +44(20)8652 8981 Group Advertisement Director Richard Thiele +44 (20) 8652 3319 Advertisement Manager Simon Lees +44 (20) 8652 3904 Sales and Events Co-ordinator Lisa Devlin +44 (20) 8652 3315 Advertisement Production Display/Classified Howard Mason +44(20)86523267 UK, IRELAND, BENELUX, IBERIA, GREECE, THE MIDDLE EAST and ISRAEL, AFRICA GERMANY, SCANDINAVIA and EASTERN EUROPE Sales Manager Shawn Buck +44(20)86524998 Area Manager Warren McEwan +44 (20) 8652 3316 FRANCE and SWITZERLAND Sales Director France Pierre Mussard Tel +33(1) 55959513 Reed Business Information France. 2. rue Maurice Hartmann. 92133 Issy-les-Moulineaux, France. Fax +33 (1) 55 95 9515 ITALY Managing Director Roberto Lauren Tel -39(2)2362500 Laureri Associates SRL, Via Vailazze 43,20131 Milano, Italy Fax +39 2 236 4411 E-mail laureri assoc@netitalia.IT NORTH AMERICA Vice-president US Sales John Tidy Tel +1 (949) 7561057 Reed Business Information. 3700 Campus Drive. Suite 203, Newport Beach. CA 92660 Fax +1 (949) 756 2514 Sales Director. Eastern US and Canada Robert Hancock Tel-1(703)8367444 Sales Manager Chris Sweet Tel+1 (703)8363719 Reed Business Information. 333 N Fairfax Street. Suite 301. Alexandria. VA 22314. USA. Fax+1 (703)8367446 Traffic Manager Debbie Kolb Tel +1 (212) 370 7446 Head Office, Reed Business Information, Tel t1 (212)370 7440 125ParkAvenue,NewYork,NY10017,USA Fax+1 (212)3707441 ASIA Singapore Grace Wong Tel +65 434 3303 Reed Asian Publishing Singapore, No.1 Temasek Avenue, #17-01 Millenia Tower. Singapore 039192. Fax+653383213 Hong Kong Jan Lai Tel +852 29651555 Reed Elsevier (Greater China) Ltd. 19th Floor. 8 Commercial Tower. 8 Sun Yip Street. Chaiwan. Hong Kong. Fax +852 2976 0706 AUSTRALASIA Sales Director Simon Webster Tel+61 (3192457350 Reed Business Publishing. 18 Salmon Street. Fax +61 (3) 9245 7511 Port Melbourne, Victoria 3207, Australia Business Manager Alison Weller Tel +44 (20) 8652 4438 CLASSIFIED & RECRUITMENT Classified Advertising Enquiries +44(20)8652 3811 Classified Advertising Fax +44 (20) 8652 4802 Group Advertisement Manager Ian Burke +44 (20) 8652 8228 Advertisement Manager Katherine Bellamy +44 (20) 8652 3811 International Sales Executives Catherine Harrison +44 (20) 8652 4322 Simon Rogers •44(20)86524896 Matthew Pullen +44(20)86524898 Kerry Manolasses +44(20)86524897 Daniel Sedman +44 (20) 8652 4806 Classified Asia/Pacific Grace Wong +65 434 3303 Classified/Recruitment USA US Classified Sales Director Chris Sweet +1 (703)8363719 Classified/Recruitment Sales Traffic Manager Debbie Kolb Tel+1 (212)3707446 Publisher Allan Winn +44(20)86523882 Publisher's PA Lisa Jenkins +44(20)86523882 IT ll^MUlllC* The text of Flight International and Airline Business can be found on the following databases: Lexis-Nexis, Knight-Ridder DataStar, FT Profile. IAC/ Predicasts. and Reuters Details from tel: +44 (2018652 8721 Published by Reed Business Information, Quadrant House. The Quadrant. Sutton. Surrey. SM2 5AS.UK Right International'is sold subject to the following conditions: namely, that it is not without the written consent of the publishers first given, lent, re-sold, hired col or in any unauthorised cover by way of trade; or affixed to. or as part of. any publication or advertising, literary or pictorial matter whatsoever The publishers of Flight International ate prepared to accept unsolicited material, but only on the understanding that such material is submitted wholly at the risk of the provider, and that the publishers cannot guarantee the receipt, safekeeping or return of non-commissioned work in any format, including manuscripts, digital data, photographic prints and transparencies. Flight International' is a registered trademark of Reed Business information Ltd © 2000 Reed Business Information Ltd. COMMENT DIFFERENCES THERE IS NO LONGER any doubt that the safety standards between cargo and passenger operations are massively differ ent - and the latest figures prove it. Acrording to a study by the Netherlands National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR), the most dangerous com mercial aviation activi ty in the world is ad hoc cargo charter flying in Africa (Flight International, 14-20 March, PI2), which has a hull loss/fatal accident rate more than 11 times the pas senger operator aver age. But even among major scheduled cargo operators in North America, the NLR study reveals, die acci dent rate is three times that for their passenger counterparts. There is now evi dence that the problem starts with die national regulators, and that it is time for the Inter national Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to raise the standards of freight operations. The traditional explanations ventured for the differences are that freighters are, on average, older than their passenger fleets, and they are more often flown close to their maximum take off weight limits. Freighters more often depart at night when the aircrew's body clocks are in their "circadian low" periods. If this argument were advanced by the freight airlines, it would rightly be seen as a dreadfully passive attitude, an excuse for not being good at what they do. But if those are the problems freight airlines face, why don't they concentrate on overcoming the problems specific to their trade? The NLR study, without actually debunking die traditional explanations, introduces an indi cator that the differences between passenger and freight operations are over-hyped. Freighters do not usually have different kinds of accidents from their passenger counterparts, the NLR says, they just have them more often. There are, however, specific dangers which are much greater threats to cargo aeroplanes, and recent experience bears this out. Bad cargo loading, putting the aircraft's centre of gravity outside limits, can happen more easily with main deck freight, and load shift is more likely because there are usually no bulkheads. There has been a FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 11 - 17 April 2000 "There has been a cata logue of fatal or serious load-caused accidents in the last few years" catalogue of fatal or serious load-caused acci dents in the last few years, and probably many more in those countries where investigative reports never see the light of day This is a matter of increasing seriousness, because pure cargo operations are growing as a proportion of total traffic. If any agency, like the US Federal Aviation Admini stration, for example, cites a cost-benefit analysis for not up grading regulations for freight operations to passenger standards because only a crew of two stands to get killed, they have ignored more than half the equation. Freighters have consistently been the greatest killers of people who live near airports, because it is just after take-off or just before landing that a badly loaded freighter goes out of control. The worst example was in January 1996, when a Scibc Airlift AntonovAn-32 atKinshasa, Zaire, could not rotate for take-off, killing 300 people and injuring 250 in its overrun. The FAA is not the only national agency at fault, but its attitude to freighter safety speaks volumes, providing a poor basis for an airline safety culture: 17 years after traffic alert and col lision avoidance sytems (TCAS) were mandated for passenger aircraft, they are still not compul sory on freighters. Even after the Valujet crash, below-deck cargo compartments in freighters do not have to be fitted with fire extinguishers like their passen ger counterparts, despite the fact that freighters carry the most hazardous cargo. The crew do not have escape slides. There is no requirement for airlines to train the pilots, who have to sign the load sheets, to recognise a badly loaded or badly secured cargo when they go into the hold to inspect it. Indeed, cargo management does not feature among all the theory on which pilots are examined to earn their licences. This failure to train pilots in safe cargo prac tices and how to recognise danger when they see it seems to be universal. This is where ICAO should come in, because somebody has to start the ball rolling. • J See Air Transport, P12.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
