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Aviation History
2001
2001 - 3827.PDF
& ADVERTISER CONTACTS - P43 EDITORIAL +44 (20) 8652 3842 Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS, UK Fax +44 (20) 8652 3840 email tHqM.international@rbi.co.uk Editor Murdo Morrison +44 (20) 8652 4395 murdo.morrison@rbi.co.uk Editor's PA Debra Warburton •44 (20) 8652 3835 debra.mrburton@rbi.co.uk News Editor Andrew Chuter •44 (20) 8652 3843 andy.chuter@rbi.co.uk Deputy News Editor Emma Kelly +44 (20) 8652 3096 emma.kelly@rbi.co.uk Features Editor DeeDee Doke +44 (20) 8652 3852 deedee.doke@rbi.co.uk Commercial Aviation Editor Max Kingsley-Jones +44 (20) 8652 3825 max.kingsley.jones@rbi.co.uk Defence Aviation Editor Stewart Penney +44 (20) 8652 3834 stewart.penney@rbi.co.uk Operations/Safety Editor David Learmount +44 (20) 8652 3845 david.learmount@rbi.co.uk Business Editor Alexander Campbell +44 (20) 8652 3990 alexander.campbeli@rbi.co.uk Business & General Aviation Editor Kate Sarsfield +44 (20) 8652 3885 (maternity leave) Business S General Aviation Reporter Justin Wastnage +44 (20) 8652 3S63justin.wastnage@rbi.co.uk Spaceflight Correspondent Tim Furniss +44 (1237) 471960 tim@spaceport.co.uk Editorial Assistant Francesca Everett +44 (20) 8652 3842 (maternity leave) EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST Paris Correspondent Simon Warburton +33 (I) 42 33 6710 simon.narburton@rbi.co.uk Israel Correspondent Arie Egozi +972(3)9671155 Middle East Correspondent Gerald Butt +357 2 771967 gbutt@spidernet.com.cy AMERICAS Washington DC Office Fax +1 (703) 836 8344 Americas Editor Graham Warwick +1 (703) 836 3448 graham.warwick@rbi.co.uk East Coast Editor Paul Lewis +1 (703) 836 3084 jpaul.lewis@rbi.co.uk West Coast Editor Guy Norris +1 (949) 252 8971 Fax +1 (949) 252 8972 guy.norris@rbi.co.uk ASIA/PACIFIC Singapore Office Fax +65 338 6171 Regional Managing Editor Nicholas lonides +65 434 3311 Fax+65 338 6171 nicholas.ionides@rbi.co.uk Deputy Asia Editor Andrew Doyle +65 434 3309 andrew.doyle@rbi.co.uk Regional Reporter David Fullbrook +65 434 3314 david.fuilbrook@rbi.co.uk Australia Civil Aviation Correspondent Paul Phelan +61(7)4053 2791 Fax+61 (7)40533003 pdphelan@optusnet.com.au Australia Military Aviation Correspondent Peter La Franchi +61 (0) 419 246 620 Fax +61 (2) 62312795 nulka@ozemail.com.au ADVERTISING UK & Europe+44 (20) 8652 3319 France & Switzerland Tel +33 (I) 53 2188 00 Italy Tel+39 (02) 236 2500 Singapore Tel+65 434 3303 Hong Kong Tel+852 29651542 Australasia Tel+61 (3) 9245 7350 North America Tel +1 (703) 836 7444 Classified S recruitment +44 (20) 8652 3811 SUBSCRIPTIONS +44 (1444) 445454 rbi.subscriptions@rbi.co.uk THE FLIGHT COLLECTION kim.hearn@rbi.co.uk WWW.FLIGHTINTERNATIONAL.COM iX-r11 Air Transport Intelligence (ATI), Flight international's sister J~\j J online service at www.rati.com, contains the full text of Flight limn mi International and Airline Business since 1996. Full text of the magazines can also be found online with Lexis-Nexis, Dialogue, FT Profile, IAC and Reuters. Editor Kieran Daly +44 (20) 8652 3837 ^£& REED (SS BUSINESS t^ INFORMATION VBPA COMMENT Careful approach Changing operational procedures for environmental reasons is valid, but only if risk analysis is applied to the methods proposed Now is the time for a serious review of pre cisely how the world - but especially Europe - is going to tamper with aircraft operations in the name of environmental benefits. This week provides two compelling reasons. One is a tragic controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accident that took place when an air craft was required to use a non-precision approach at night when there was a precision approach available. The other is the formal capitulation of the European Commission (EC) in its efforts to accelerate progress - at least in its own skies - toward phasing out air craft at the noisy end of the Chapter 3 band. Taking the second issue first: noisier aircraft will inevitably be subject to environmental sanctions sooner than quieter aircraft. Some of these sanctions will be local or national gov ernment rules compelling specific airports to pressurise airlines to use other than the safest approach or departure procedures. Aviation shouldn't hide behind pretensions of safety to avoid any operational change In grudgingly accepting the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standard on aircraft noise - which dictates that globally agreed noise standards may be challenged only on an airport-by-airport basis (not on a national or regional basis) - the EC has rolled over to the letter of the law and abandoned all attempts to follow its spirit. The sad thing is that ICAO standards and recommended practices (SARPS) are minima. If any nation, region, or bloc wants to go further than the SARPS, it should be able to, and this principle has not been challenged (so far) in respect of aircraft certification or safe operat ing practices. The irony is that now in Europe - where people are particularly environmentally con scious - a rule to force them to put up with noisy aircraft is going to have the potential sec ondary effect of threatening safety. Two examples of this are Zurich airport and Amsterdam Schiphol airport. The "primary cause" of the recent accident at Zurich is unlikely to be the requirement for the crew to change its approach from a precision to a non- precision procedure, but it will almost certainly be shown to be a causal factor. At Schiphol, the landing or take-off runway in use is deter mined not by the wind direction, but by which approach affects the fewest local people. Aviation should not hide behind pretensions of safety to avoid accepting any operational change, but when changes are proposed they should be thought through properly, and risk analysis should be carried out. There may also be ways of changing operations while acting to mitigate or even eliminate any apparent increase in risk. For example, the installation of an instrument landing system (ILS) for Zurich's runway 28 has been under consideration, so the implementation of the new environmentally driven procedures could have waited until the ILS was in place. But they did not. The Flight Safety Foundation's Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) working group has established from a large statistical base that non-precision approaches increase the risk of serious accident by a mul tiple of between five and seven times. The Swiss and German decision-makers working on the Zurich noise abatement procedures should have known this, but they will plead that no pilot is compelled to fly an approach that he/she deems unwise under the circum stances. That is seriously disingenuous. The real truth is that no pilot flying in instru ment meteorological conditions should even be faced with this decision. It should be out of the question that any consideration justifies the raising of risk to passenger and crew lives by a factor of between five and seven. It took ICAO a quarter of a century to move from specifying the standards for Chapter 3 to phasing out Chapter 2 aircraft. Europe can see the same thing happening with Chapter 4. The standards have been agreed, but there is no sign that the industry has any intention of specifying a date for phasing out Chapter 3 equipment, even in stages. Meanwhile, as a consequence of this procrastination, more and more local noise rules are going to affect operations in the two most critical phases of flight: early climb and the descent to land. For the genuinely worthy cause of allowing people near airports to sleep soundly, dangerous decisions may be made unless the industry is careful. The decision-makers should ask themselves how soundly they will be able to sleep after they have made decisions that could directly contribute to the death of air travellers and crew. The risk may not only be to travellers, but to those living under the glide- path in whose interest the decision-makers claim to be acting. SEE AIR TRANSPORT P8 AND P12 www.flightinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 4-10 DEC EM BER 2001 3
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