When I Was Young

A new plane to catch…

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Posted: 22 June 2009 0645 hrs

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

WASHINGTON: US aerospace giant Boeing is readying its 787 Dreamliner for first test flight in the coming days, banking on the new fuel-efficient plane to sail above stiff market headwinds.

Boeing expects the much-delayed Dreamliner to have its maiden flight by June 30 on a schedule that puts delivery of the plane to first customer, All Nippon Airways (ANA), in the first quarter of 2010.

"We're very much looking forward to seeing our airplane take to the skies," Marc Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, said in a phone interview with AFP Friday.

No specific date has been announced for the flight.

Nearly two years behind the initial schedule, the company has delayed the Dreamliner's first flight four times since launching the program in 2004 because of production problems.

The Chicago-based company announced Wednesday final assembly had begun on the first aircraft destined for ANA, which has ordered 50 Dreamliners.

"This is a great day for the 787 team," Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of the Dreamliner program, said in a statement.

"In 2004, ANA demonstrated great faith in Boeing and the 787 by placing the largest launch order for any new airplane in Boeing history."

Boeing has built six Dreamliners that will be used in the flight-test program to assure the plane's safety for the company and for regulators, including the Federal Aviation Administration and foreign authorities, Birtel said.

"The main mantra is safety," he said.

Boeing says it has 865 orders from 56 airlines for the cutting-edge plane, claiming it is the "fastest-selling all-new jetliner in aviation history."

The 787 Dreamliner is the company's first new model in more than a decade and features 50 percent plastic composites, compared with 12 percent on its 777s, helping lower fuel consumption.

According to Boeing, the 787 will use 20 percent less fuel than similarly sized airplanes, reducing emissions by a similar amount.

Plagued by problems from a complex international production system and a two-month machinists strike last year, the Dreamliner's delays have irked customers and resulted in order cancellations.

The latest delay, announced last December, postponed first flight into the second quarter of 2009, from the fourth quarter of 2008. Launch customer ANA complained about the new delay for first delivery of the plane which initially was set for the third quarter of 2009.

In January, Russian carrier S7 Airlines announced the cancellation of an order for 15 Dreamliners. The next month Boeing said that Dubai-based aircraft leasing company LCAL had cancelled 16 of the 21 planes ordered.

The launch of the new plane comes amid turbulence in the aviation industry as the global economy slumps in the worst economic crisis in decades.

A plunge in passenger air travel has led to massive cancellations and deferrals of aircraft orders.

The International Air Transport Association projects that passenger traffic will fall eight percent this year and airlines could lose nine billion dollars, almost double the estimate three months ago.

That would be on top of 10.4 billion dollars lost in 2008, according to IATA.

Boeing earlier this month lowered its outlook for the world commercial airplane market over the next two decades because of the global economic downturn, slumping air traffic and volatile fuel prices.

But it forecast the growing Asia Pacific region will lead the commercial airplane market in both units and value.

Japanese carriers buy almost exclusively from the US aerospace giant, which is keeping a close eye on arch rival Airbus.

The France-based manufacturer, a unit of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, has begun working on a new long-range A350 plane aimed at competing with the Dreamliner, expected to fly in mid-2013.

Boeing's financial losses have shaken investor confidence and the company has announced 10,000 job cuts for 2009, including 4,500 in the commercial aircraft division. - AFP/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 15 June 2009 0602 hrs

Journalists look at debris of the missing Air France flight 447 after being recovered from the ocean.

RIO DE JANEIRO: The search for bodies and remnants of a lost Air France airliner enters its third and possibly final week on Monday with the focus now on locating the "black box" recorders that could hold the key to its plunge into the Atlantic.

The fate of flight AF 447, which vanished on the night of May 31 to June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, has not been explained though data indicating the presence of defective speed sensors raised the first alerts of a crash.

But on Sunday, EADS, the mother company of the aircraft's builder Airbus, called for "prudence."

"It's the convergence of different causes that led to such an accident," said Louis Gallois, EADS president and chief executive, on the eve of the Paris air show at Bourget.

"We do not know whether the Pitot tubes (the sensors that measure airspeed) played a role in the accident. No one knows," Gallois said.

Air France and France's Bureau of Investigations and Analyses, BEA, which is in charge of the investigation, have also refused to link the crash to the Pitot sensors.

The company, however, has accelerated replacement of the sensors on its Airbus A330-A340 aircraft, under pressure from pilots and after several incidents in 2008 were linked to airspeed sensor malfunctions.

Airbus president Thomas Enders indicated that teams from the manufacturer were with BEA investigators in Brazil and on ships searching for debris from the aircraft.

As of Saturday night, the Brazilian and French navies had recovered 49 bodies as well as pieces of the aircraft, including a large fragment of its tail.

Most of the bodies have been transported to Recife, on Brazil's northeastern coast, where a team of doctors is examining them to establish their identities.

Laid out in an enormous hangar at the Recife air base, the pieces of the aircraft indicate that its descent was sudden and that it was not caused by an explosion on board, according to experts consulted by the Brazilian press.

These opinions are supported by a photograph that shows seats reserved for the crew folded up, suggesting that crew members were taken by surprise by the disaster.

Among the 228 victims were people of 32 nationalities, including 72 French nationals, 59 Brazilians and 26 Germans.

The French government's special emissary, Pierre-Jean Vandoorne, met with relatives of the victims Saturday in Rio de Janeiro.

"Their principal concern is to recover the bodies and understand the causes of the catastrophe," Vandoorne told AFP. He was scheduled to meet Sunday in Recife with the Brazilian military officials in charge of the search.

For the past two weeks, a French-Brazilian flotilla has been combing an enormous expanse of the high seas 1,350 kilometres from Recife.

However, even though sailors initially reported that they were navigating through "a sea of (aircraft) pieces," sightings of debris have become rare, possibly because they sink or are dispersed by the currents.

The Brazilian military has begun talking about an end to the search, with Brigadier Ramon Cardoso saying it will continue "at least until June 19." A reassessment will be made on June 17, he said.

Meanwhile, the search for the two "black boxes," which may be on the ocean floor at a depth of 3,500 metres, should intensify.

The French nuclear submarine "Emeraude" already has begun patrolling the area where the plane went down in hopes that its ultra-sensitive sonars will pick up signals emitted by the flight recorders.

Two other ships brought in by France are supposed to work with two "pinger locators," sonars installed on a kilometres-long cable supplied by the US military.

The French underwater exploration vessel "Pourquoi pas" also arrived in the area of the search with a submarine and a robot. - AFP/de

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 12 June 2009 1140 hrs

Brazilian Navy divers recover a part of the rudder of an Air France jet lost in midflight over the Atlantic.

PARIS: The French agency probing the crash of Air France flight 447 said Thursday it had yet to find conclusive evidence pointing to faulty airspeed monitors as the cause of the disaster.

Speculation surrounding the doomed Rio to Paris flight, which crashed with the loss of 228 people on board, has focused on the Airbus A330's airspeed sensors, known as pitot probes, which may have malfunctioned.

"There is as yet no link between the pitot and the causes of the accident," said a spokeswoman for the Investigation and Analysis Bureau (BEA) leading the technical inquiry into the June 1 crash.

Air France's chief executive Pierre-Henri Gourgeon told reporters the devices would be replaced on all planes as a precaution, after the worst air disaster of the airline's 75-year history.

But he added: "I'm not convinced the probes were the cause of the accident."

Error messages emitted by flight 447 in the minutes before the disaster have suggested that the twin-engine airliner's computers were receiving contradictory airspeed readings.

Investigators say this has been a factor in other incidents in which pilots had to battle to control Airbus jets, and aircrews worldwide have been warned to review their procedures in case of false speed measurements.

And a company report seen by AFP Thursday, showed that Air France Airbus jets experienced at least five incidents last year in which airspeed probes malfunctioned.

"These are all serious incidents," said Guy Ferrer, an official from the Alter pilots union, which represents some Air France flight crews.

The BEA spokeswoman, however, said that agency director Paul-Louis Arslanian had said on Saturday that the team had yet to conclude that a malfunction of the probe led to the plane's demise.

"Problems, and incidents, have been identified. We are studying them," said Arslanian.

"But that's not to say that without replacements a plane is dangerous and with them it isn't," he said.

Gourgeon confirmed that Air France had stepped up a plan to replace and modernise the pitots in all its A330 and A340 long-haul jets.

"This programme has been accelerated because we know that during this accident there was a problem with measuring speed," he said.

"Airbus insists, and they're right, that the probes are safe. It's possible that icing incidents will be reduced with the new type of probes.

"Perhaps there won't be an improvement. We are talking with the crash investigators about this," he said.

Air France decided on April 27 to replace the pitot probes, but received delivery of the first improved models on May 27, less than a week before the crash. The doomed plane had not been updated.

"We began this programme because we thought it would diminish the number of non-catastrophic incidents," said Gourgeon.

The deep-sea hunt for the jet's black boxes intensified off Brazil, with a tugboat equipped with underwater listening devices joining a French nuclear submarine in the search.

If they find a signal, a mini-sub on board a French scientific ship will be deployed to recover the flight recorders, thought to be key to explaining why the jet went down.

The Air France chief however said the chances of finding the black boxes in waters thought to be as deep as 6,100 metres (20,000 feet) were slim.

The Brazilian navy said on Thursday the bodies of three more victims had been retrieved, bringing the total to 44.

Brazil said it was determined to bring back to shore as many bodies and pieces of debris as possible from the crash zone, some 1,100 kilometres (700 miles) from the coast.

In Paris, the family of a passenger signed up as a civil plaintiff in a manslaughter probe to gain access to files on the crash, a lawyer said.

"What the families want is just some legitimate answers to their legitimate questions, such as: the plane sent out its last message at 04:10 am and yet no one wondered until 06:30 am why there was no news of the crew. Why is that?" said lawyer Sophie Bottai.

Two other French families have separately filed suit for manslaughter.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 11 June 2009 0845 hrs

SYDNEY - An Australian flight was forced to make an emergency landing on a remote Pacific island Thursday, just days after an Air France tragedy involving the same model of Airbus plane, officials said.

The budget flight from Japan landed on Guam after a fire broke out in the cockpit, company officials said.

Smoke and then flames were seen near a cockpit window about four hours into Jetstar flight JQ20 from Osaka to Australia's Gold Coast, prompting flight crew to scramble to douse the fire before landing on Guam.

Nobody was hurt among the 203 mostly Japanese passengers and crew travelling on the Airbus A330-200, which touched down at about 2:20 am (1620 GMT Wednesday) and they were sent to nearby hotels.

The incident involves the same model of aircraft as the Air France disaster on June 1 when all 228 on board an A330 flying from Brazil were killed after a mystery accident over the Atlantic.

"It is understood there was smoke in the cockpit followed by the right hand cockpit window area catching fire before being extinguished by technical crew," a Jetstar statement said.

"The cockpit window fire was contained to the cockpit only of the aircraft before it was extinguished."

Australian officials were flying to Guam to probe the fire while Jetstar, operated by flag-carrier Qantas, was sending another A330 from Sydney to pick up the passengers and crew.

"A team of investigators... will travel to Guam this morning to commence the investigation," the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said in a statement.

One aviation expert said early suspicions would focus on a short-circuit in the window's heating system.

"These sorts of things just aren't supposed to happen. They will want to know why it happened," Geoffrey Thomas, senior editor of Air Transport World, told Sky News.

"It's exactly the same model as the Air France one, although different manufacturers provide different parts for these aircraft."

Airbus has stressed the safety of its A330s after the Air France tragedy, in which investigators believe an air-speed sensor fault may have caused the pilot either to fly too slow and stall, or too fast, ripping the plane's body apart.

Qantas this week said it had no plans to replace the air-speed sensors on its A330s as they are made by a different manufacturer.

It rejected any link between the Air France accident and October's mishap when a Qantas A330 went into two sudden and steep dives over Western Australia, causing several serious injuries and prompting an emergency landing.

- AFP/ir

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 11 June 2009 0836 hrs

An Airbus A330-200 jetliner

PARIS - Airbus on Thursday denied a press report that it was considering grounding all long-haul A330 and A340 jets to change airspeed sensors after an Air France plane crashed into the Atlantic.

The French newspaper Le Figaro said in its Thursday edition that the aircraft manufacturer "does not rule out grounding its fleet of 1,000 A330s and A340s to change the (speed) sensors."

An Airbus spokesman denied the report, telling AFP "This is wrong."

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) "has issued a press release that all A330s and other aircraft are safe to operate," he said, adding: "We will take legal action against such irresponsible reporting."

Airbus has written to clients to assure them its A330 planes were safe, including those with older speed sensors seen as a possible cause for last week's Air France crash, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Air France flight 447 from Rio to Paris plunged into the Atlantic on June 1 with the loss of all 228 people on board.

Officials have not identified the cause of the crash, but so far the investigation appears to have focused on the stormy weather and a possible problem with the Airbus A330's airspeed monitors, known as "pitot probes."

An Airbus spokeswoman said earlier a joint memo with the French transport ministry bureau in charge of the investigation into the crash was sent Monday to its clients.

"The note says that at the current stage of the inquiry, we confirm that the fleet equipped with various pitot probes can be used in its current condition," she said.

Airbus and Air France say older pitot probes have been problematic on other Airbus A330s and A340s, and the airline has stepped up a programme to install a newer type after pilots' unions threatened to refuse to fly.

The European air safety agency said Tuesday that Airbus models were "safe to operate," but added that a bulletin had gone out to remind airlines of what to do "in the event of loss of, or unreliable, speed indication."

There has been speculation that the A330's speed probes could have iced up during a storm at high altitude and supplied false airspeed data to the cockpit.

This, in turn, could have caused the pilots to fly too slow and stall, or too fast and rip the airframe apart, aviation experts say.

The crash is the worst aviation accident since 2001, and unprecedented in Air France's 75-year history.

- AFP/ir

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

Posted: 07 June 2009 1500 hrs

Relatives and Air France employees outside the Notre-Dame cathedral during an ecumenical church service for relatives and families of the passengers of Air France's flight 447

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil: Ships and planes scoured the Atlantic Ocean Sunday after the first two bodies and debris were recovered from an area off the coast of Brazil where an Air France passenger jet went down nearly a week ago.

"As well as the bodies there are various remains of the aircraft," Brazilian Air Force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Henry Munhoz told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife.

"Plane seats, part of the wing and various other items were localised," he said.

The finds - the first from the crash - were being brought to the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, the closest inhabited spot to the zone where they were found, for initial inspection by five Brazilian forensic police.

From there, they were to be flown to the mainland city of Recife for further analysis by French officials leading the investigation into what sent Air France flight 447 plunging into the ocean June 1 with 228 people on board.

The two male bodies the Brazilian navy recovered in the zone earlier Saturday would be catalogued here and also flown to Recife, Munhoz said.

"Recife will be the final destination for the bodies as well as the debris from the aircraft," he said, adding that "details of the (personal) items collected will be divulged to the relatives and only to the relatives."

The spokesman added that "the state of the bodies will not be divulged."

Relatives of those aboard the Air France flight have already given DNA samples to help identify their loved ones.

Although the black boxes containing vital data on the flight's final minutes have not yet been located, early suspicions are focusing on a possible malfunction of the Airbus A330's air speed sensors as it flew into a fierce storm.

French investigators said Saturday the plane, four hours into a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, suffered multiple systems failures in its final moments and that speed monitors had failed on other Airbus planes.

Airbus on Friday issued a notice urging all pilots of its jets to review a 2001 warning on the procedures to follow if speed indicators give conflicting readings and force the autopilot to cut out.

Meanwhile Air France said it was stepping up replacement of speed monitors on its Airbus A330s, amid speculation that a faulty indication might have been a factor in the loss of the Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight.

In a statement, Air France said that in May last year it began noticing "incidents of loss of airspeed information during cruise flight" on its twin-engine A330s and four-engine A340s, and informed Airbus of the problem.

The device in question is the pitot probe - usually affixed to the leading edge of a wing - which measures the force of the air through which an aircraft passes.

Combined with a pressure reading from a static port on the fuselage, it tells the flight crew how fast the aircraft is going through the air.

French submarines were on their way to help with the hunt for the black boxes, as experts scrutinised the debris found so far searching for clues.

On Saturday Brazilian Colonel Jorge Amaral told reporters in Recife that the air force was able to "confirm the recovery from the water of debris and bodies from the Air France plane."

A blue plane seat, a nylon backpack containing a computer and vaccination card, and a leather briefcase with an Air France ticket inside were the first objects plucked from the sea, according to Amaral and an official statement.

The discoveries took place 450 kilometres (300 miles) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands, themselves 370 kilometres from the mainland.

The precise spot was 70 kilometres northeast of the point of last communication with the plane, a series of automatically sent messages signalling multiple shutdowns of onboard systems.

Air France was trying to confirm that the recovered seat came from the flight by checking the serial number, which Amaral gave as 23701103B331-0.

French investigators said the Air France airliner sent 24 automatic error messages just before the crash, and its autopilot was disengaged immediately after ones showing conflicting speed readings given by sensors.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.