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Aviation History
2003
2003 - 0005.PDF
& ADVERTISER CONTACTS - 54 EDITORIAL +44 (20) 8652 3842 Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 SAS, UK Fax +44 (20) 8652 3840 email flightMernatitmal@rbi.co.uk Editor Murdo Morrison +44 (20) 8652 4395 murilo.morrison@rbi.coMk Editor's PA Debra Warburton (maternity leave) Acting Editor's PA Andrew Costerton +44 (20) 8652 3835 andrew.costerton@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 stemrt.penney@rbi.co.uk Operations/Safety Editor David Learmount +44 (20) 8652 3845 david.tearmount@rbi.co.uk Business Editor Alexander Campbell +44 (20) 8652 3990 alexander.campbell@rbi.co.uk Business & General Aviation Editor Kate Sarsfield +44 (20) 8652 3885 kate.sarsfield@rbi.co.uk Reporter Justin Wastnage +44 (20) 8652 3863 justin.mstnage@rbi.co.uk Technical Reporter Michael Phelan +44 (20) 8652 3843 michael.phelan@rbi.co.uk Spaceflight Correspondent Tim Furniss +44 (1237) 471960 tim@spaceport.co.uk EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST European Editor Christina Mackenzie +33 (1) 64 23 68 89 christina.macken2ie@rbi.C0.uk Israel Correspondent Arie Egozi +972 (3) 9413132 Middle East Correspondent Gerald Butt +357 22 771967 gbutt@spidernet.com.cy AMERICAS Washington DC Office Fax +1 (703) 836 8344 Americas Editor Graham Warwick +1 (703) 836 3448 graham.mrwick@rbi.co.uk East Coast Editor Paul Lewis +1 (703) 836 3084 ipaul.lems@rbi.co.uk West Coast Editor Guy Norris +1 (949) 252 8971 Fax +1 (949) 252 8972 guy.norris@rbi.co.uk Brazil Correspondent Jackson Flores Jr +55 212439-6062 Fax 00 55 212349-6090 fubar@uol.com.br Canada Correspondent Brian Dunn ASIA/PACIFIC Singapore Office Fax +65 6789 7575 Regional Managing Editor Nicholas lonides •65 6780 4311 nicholas.ionides@rbi.co.uk Deputy Asia Editor Andrew Doyle +65 6780 4309 andrew.doyle@rbi.co.uk Australia Civil Aviation Correspondent Paul Phelan +61(7)40532791 Fax+61(7)40533003 pdphelan@optusnet.com.au Australia Military Aviation Correspondent Peter La Franchi +61 (0) 419 246 620 Fax +61 (2) 62312795 nutka@ozemait.com.au COMMENT EDITORIAL PRODUCTION Group Production Editor Graeme Osborn +44 (20) 8652 3828 Group Art Editor James Mason +44 (20) 8652 4994 Chief Sub-Editor Chris Thornton +44 (20) 8652 4997 Deputy Production Editor Jackie Thompson +44 (20) 8652 3850 Sub Editor Megan Turner +44 (20) 8652 3848 Photographer Mark Wagner +44 (20) 8944 5225 Senior Technical Artist Giuseppe Picarella +44 (20) 8652 8054 Editorial Artist Tim Brown +44 (20) 8652 8043 WWW.FLIGHTINTERNATIONAL.COM Webmaster Sheena Buchanan +44 (20) 8652 4432 SUBSCRIPTIONS +44 (1444) 445454 rbi.subscriptions@rbi.co.uk THE FLIGHT COLLECTION kim.hearn@rbi.co.uk © and Database Rights 2003 Reed Business Information Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publishers A~fJ J Air Transport Intelligence (ATI), Flight International's sister _/~\J J onlineserviceatwww.rati.com, contains the full text of Flight nmviim 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 Business Information Mutual assistance Airlines do not seem to be learning from each other's safety errors. Is it their fault, or is there something lacking in the industry? Crews flying into Agana Airport, Guam, have been alerted again to the fact that the approach can be highly dangerous. It is fortu nate that this time no-one died, but it is also remarkable that the industry has such an incredibly short memory for safety issues - even specific, serious ones - and appears not to be able to profit from experience. It has just come to light that, on 17 December, a Philippine Airlines (PAL) Airbus A330 scraped power lines on Nimitz Hill, Guam. The crew were carrying out a go-around in response to a ground proximity warning system (GPWS) alert that saved the aircraft and those on board from the fate that befell a Korean Air Boeing 747-300 on 6 August 1997. In that acci dent 228 of 245 people on board died when the aircraft, on approach to runway 06L at Agana, hit Nimitz Hill. There are so many similarities between the circumstances surrounding the Agana In a worldwide industry there needs to be a global safety culture approaches on 6 August 1997 and on 17 December five years later that it begs the question as to why agencies like the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) bother to investigate and report in detail on accidents. The theory is that the industry learns lessons from the process. Identifying the lessons was the NTSB's job after Nimitz Hill in 1997. Perhaps Korean was the only air line to read the report. If anyone at PAL did read it, they seem not to have passed the lessons on to the airline's operations depart ment and its flight crews. Or if they did, the lessons have already been forgotten. The NTSB's report said that almost every one involved in the Nimitz Hill crash could have performed better. The crew and the airline that trained them; the air traffic controllers and the system they worked with; the Federal Aviation Administration for allowing the minimum safe altitude warning system on the approach/en route radar system to be suspended. Both in 1997 and last December the airport navigation aids were only partially serviceable, but the flights left for Guam in the full knowledge that this was the situation. There is no real recognition in the world air line industry that particular safety lessons learned by others apply to everyone in the same business. When an accident report comes out, who reads it? The only certain readers appear to be lawyers representing the bereaved families, and the airline's and the air craft manufacturer's legal teams. Other readers would include senior pilots and opera tions people at the airline that had the accident. The press may take a temporary interest, but more often than not the media shows greater interest in the questions at the time of the accident than the answers when they become known a couple of years later. There are a few others; engineers like Don Bateman, originally of Sundstrand, now Honeywell, who develop and improve equip ment - like the GPWS and now Enhanced GPWS -that provides the chance of saving an aircraft from a similar fate in future. There is no industry system for persuading airlines to take each other's accidents seri ously. The International Civil Aviation Organisation is supposed to be the repository for all reports but often is not even sent copies. ICAO has been promoting the idea of GAIN, a global aviation information network, but this has been going nowhere for a long time. About 120 airlines have acquired BASIS, the British Airways Safety Information System, but this system for spotting incident trends is a series of in-house units. The International Air Transport Association has pledged to use the BASIS model to build up something wider, but today gives the impression that current financial dis ciplines have forced the issue well down its priority list. The Flight Safety Foundation per haps comes nearest to enabling airlines to learn from others' experiences by summarising significant major reports in digest form and dis seminating them to members. But information is simply not used by people who consider it irrelevant to them. In a worldwide industry there needs to be a global culture. There are some things, like safety, that the whole industry should hold in common. They transcend considerations like competition or corporate confidentiality - com peting commercially on safety is something that even safer airlines do not dare because it implies that industry standards are suspect. At present, however, global safety cohesion is missing, and no single organisation is charged with creating the awareness that it is essential. Leadership, data, and effective propaganda is needed, and IATA, having started, is the best organisation to take responsibility for it. SEE AIR TRANSPORT PIO www.fliqhtinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 14-20 JANUARY 2003 3
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