When I Was Young

Creeps and jeeps at high…

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Posted: 22 June 2009 0918 hrs

Qantas plane

SYDNEY: Seven people were hurt when a Qantas Airbus A330 hit severe turbulence flying from Hong Kong to Perth Monday, the company said, rejecting any links to other incidents involving the same type of plane.

Six passengers and one crew member were treated on board after the mishap, which happened about four hours after take-off. The plane, with 206 passengers and 13 crew, landed safely in Perth.

One passenger described hearing a loud bang before a sudden drop in altitude sent people flying. Two overhead panels were slightly damaged and two oxygen masks were dislodged.

"As the plane was flying we got the normal turbulence but what happened this time was a sudden drop in altitude," the passenger, named John, told Fairfax Radio.

"I was sitting at the exit door and I had this lady, (who) was waiting at the restroom and she flew up and hit the ceiling and came crashing down to the floor," he said.

"It was just a matter of a few seconds but it was really sudden and things went flying."

The incident comes just 11 days after a cockpit blaze forced a Jetstar A330 to make an emergency landing, and follows the June 1 Air France disaster when 228 died in a mysterious accident involving the same model of plane.

Last October, a Qantas A330 went into two steep dives over Western Australia, causing several serious injuries and forcing an emergency landing.

Australian flag-carrier Qantas, which also operates budget airline Jetstar, dismissed any links between Monday's incident and previous ones.

"There is no reason to link the incident to other recent in-flight incidents involving A330 aircraft," Qantas said in a statement.

It said an investigation had been launched.

- AFP/yb

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here

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.

updated 3 hours, 57 minutes ago

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: Family identifies pilot as Craig Lenell
  
• Passenger says he responded to request for doctor, pronounced pilot dead
  
• Flight 61 landed at 11:49 a.m. ET; jet was carrying 247 passengers, airline says
  
• Flight was headed from Brussels, Belgium, to Newark, New Jersey
  

Pilot Craig Lenell is shown with daughter Jennifer Lenell-Small, a former Continental employee.

(CNN) -- The pilot of Continental Flight 61 died Thursday as the plane flew from Brussels, Belgium, to Newark, New Jersey, the Federal Aviation Administration and Continental Airlines said.

The 60-year-old Newark-based pilot died of "apparently of natural causes" about halfway through the flight, the airline said. He had 32 years of service with Continental, it said.

The pilot's family identified him to CNN as Craig Lenell.

The airline said the crew on the flight included an additional relief pilot who took the place of the deceased man, and "the flight continued safely with two pilots at the controls." The Boeing 777 landed safely at Newark International Airport at 11:49 a.m. ET Thursday, the airline said.

No further details were given. Continental did not release the pilot's name.

Asked whether the plane's 247 passengers had been told of the situation, a Continental spokesman said only that the plane had arrived safely.

Passengers told CNN that they were not informed, and that the only indication of a problem was that an announcement for a doctor was made during the flight.

"I haven't heard anything," passenger Chris Balchuas, from Houston, Texas, told reporters after the flight. "They just said there was a medical emergency and were there any doctors aboard."

Another passenger, Dr. Julien Struyzen, said he responded to the request for a doctor and pronounced the pilot dead.

"He was clinically dead when I came in," Struyzen said. Flight personnel asked him if anything was possible, and he said "it was not."

He did not give additional details.

Struyzen said all flight personnel were "very professional."

Balchuas, after being told what had happened, said, "Oh, that's scary. I didn't know anything about that."

He said nothing was unusual about the flight, just that about "four or five fire trucks and a whole bunch of medical emergency teams" met the plane when it landed.

Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, said the FAA told Newark airport officials to have emergency crews standing by for the landing.

The plane landed without any problem, he said, and a medical examiner met the plane to help handle the situation.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

Image via Wikipedia

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.

Image via Wikipedia

06/04/2009 | 09:43 AM

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil – Military planes located new debris from Air France Flight 447 Wednesday while investigators focused on a nightmarish ordeal in which the jetliner broke up over the Atlantic as it flew through a violent storm.

Heavy weather delayed until next week the arrival of deep-water submersibles considered key to finding the black box voice and data recorders that will help answer the question of what happened to the airliner, which disappeared Sunday with 228 people on board. But even with the equipment, the lead French investigator questioned whether the recorders would ever be found in such a deep and rugged part of the ocean.

As the first Brazilian military ships neared the search area, investigators were relying heavily on the plane's automated messages to help reconstruct what happened to the jet as it flew through towering thunderstorms. They detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to an aviation industry official with knowledge of the investigation, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the crash.

The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time saying he was flying through an area of "CBs" — black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning. Satellite data has shown that towering thunderheads were sending 100 mph (160 kph) updraft winds into the jet's flight path at the time.

Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: Automatic messages indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.

Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well.

The last automatic message, at 11:14 p.m., signaled loss of cabin pressure and complete electrical failure — catastrophic events in a plane that was likely already plunging toward the ocean.

"This clearly looks like the story of the airplane coming apart," the airline industry official told The Associated Press. "We just don't know why it did, but that is what the investigation will show."

French and Brazilian officials had already announced some of these details, but the more complete chronology was published Wednesday by Brazil's O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, citing an unidentified Air France source, and confirmed to the AP by the aviation industry source.

Air France spokesman Nicolas Petteau referred questions about the messages to the French accident investigation agency, BEA, whose spokesman Martine Del Bono said the agency won't comment. Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim also declined to comment, saying that the accident "investigation is being done by France; Brazil's only responsibility is to find and pick up the pieces."

Other experts agreed that the automatic reports of system failures on the plane strongly suggest it broke up in the air, perhaps due to fierce thunderstorms, turbulence, lightning or a catastrophic combination of events.

"These are telling us the story of the crash. They are not explaining what happened to cause the crash," said Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation in Alexandria, Va. "This is the documentation of the seconds when control was lost and the aircraft started to break up in air."

Voss stressed that the messages alone were not enough to understand why the Air France jet went down, noting that the black boxes will have far more information to help determine the cause.

One fear — terrorism — was dismissed Wednesday by all three countries involved in the search and recovery effort. France's defense minister and the Pentagon said there were no signs that terrorism was involved, and Jobim said "that possibility hasn't even been considered."

A U.S. Navy P-3C Orion surveillance plane, a French AWACS radar plane and two other French military planes joined Brazil's Air Force in trying to spot debris and narrow the search zone.

Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said debris discovered so far was spread over a wide area, with some 230 kilometers (140 miles) separating pieces of wreckage they have spotted. The floating debris includes a 23-foot (seven-meter) chunk of plane and a 12-mile-long (20-kilometer-long) oil slick, but pilots have spotted no signs of survivors, Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral said.

"Oil stains on the water might exclude the possibility of an explosion, because there was no fire," Defense Minister Nelson Jobim told reporters Wednesday.

The new debris was discovered about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of where searchers a day earlier found an airplane seat, a fuel slick, an orange life vest and pieces of white debris. The original debris was found roughly 400 miles (640 kilometers) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, an area where the ocean floor drops as low as 22,950 feet (7,000 meters) below sea level.

Brazil lacks the equipment needed to reach the ocean floor. If the black boxes are at the bottom of the sea, their recovery will have to wait for the arrival early next week of a French research ship with remotely controlled submersibles that can explore as deeply as 19,600 feet (6,000 meters).

The sturdy black boxes — voice and data recorders — are built to give off signals for at least 30 days, even underwater, and could keep their contents indefinitely.

But the head of France's accident investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian, said in Paris that he is "not optimistic" about recovering the recorders — and that investigators should be prepared to continue the probe without them.

"It is not only deep, it is also mountainous," he said. "We might find ourselves blocked at some point by the lack of material elements."

Arslanian said investigators didn't have enough information to determine whether the plane broke up in the air or upon impact with the sea, and that in the absence of black box data, they are studying maintenance and other records.

"For the moment, there is no sign that would lead us to believe that the aircraft had a problem before it took off," Arslanian said.

He said investigators did not know the exact time of the accident or whether the chief pilot was at the controls when the plane went down. Pilots on long-haul flights often take turns at the controls to remain alert.

If no survivors are found, it would be the deadliest crash in Air France's history, and the world's worst civil aviation disaster since the November 2001 crash of an American Airlines jetliner in the New York City borough of Queens that killed 265 people. - AP

From GMANews.tv; see the source article here.

June 2, 2009 -- Updated 1229 GMT (2029 HKT)

Story Highlights

• Air France Airbus A330-200 encountered heavy turbulence
  
• CEO: "Several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down"
  
• Some experts have said that a lightning strike was a possible cause
  
• Flight 447, traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, was carrying 228 people
  

An airliner is struck by lightning strike at Washington's Dulles airport last year.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The mysterious disappearance of Flight AF 447 over the Atlantic Ocean has fueled speculation among aviation experts about what caused the state-of-the-art airliner to come down.

According to Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, the Airbus A330-200 encountered heavy turbulence about 02:15 a.m. local time Monday (10:15 p.m. ET Sunday), three hours after the jet carrying 228 people left Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for Paris, France.

At that point, the plane's automatic system initiated a four-minute exchange of messages to the company's maintenance computers, indicating "several pieces of aircraft equipment were at fault or had broken down."

The jet, which was flying at 35,000 feet and at 521 mph, also sent a warning that it had lost pressure, the Brazilian air force said. Its last known contact occurred at 02:33 a.m., the Brazilian air force spokesman added.

The assumption is that these electrical problems led to a catastrophic failure of the aircraft's controls.

Some experts have said that a lightning strike was a possibility, particularly since the plane disappeared in a storm-prone area along the equator known as the Intertropical Convergence zone (ITCZ). This is where the trade winds of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres converge. The intense sun and warm water of the equator heats the air in the ITCZ, raising its humidity and making it buoyant. Aided by the convergence of the trade winds, the buoyant air rises, releasing the accumulated moisture in an almost constant series of thunderstorms.

According to CNN's Mari Ramos, these storms can reach altitudes of 52,000 ft -- way beyond the capacity of commercial airliners to fly over.

Retired airline pilot John Cox told CNN that modern aircraft receive a constant stream of real time weather data which allows them to plot a course around storms. "Because safety is the paramount concern, airliners don't fly into storms. They fly around them," he said.

"The ITCZ is no different. Planes fly through it every day.

"At 8 miles per minute, modern jets can easily fly around storms. Even if they encounter turbulence, they're designed to absorb it."

When lightning strikes a plane, the bolt typically hits a sharp part of it, such as a wing tip. Huge amounts of energy surge through the aircraft before exiting out of another sharp point, such as the tail. But sometimes high voltages can cause electrical damage if components are not well-grounded.

Unlike other aircraft where the pilot's controls are manually attached to the flaps and rudders, Airbus 330 airliners are equipped with a "fly by wire" system that sends electronic signals from an onboard computer to move key control surfaces.

Experts say that it is possible for this system and its back-up computers to be disabled by lightning. "If you have a massive electrical problem it's possible that you could cut off all the commands out to the control surfaces," said aeronautics expert John Hansman.

However, Kieran Daly, from the online aviation news service Air Transport Intelligence, told CNN that this scenario, while not impossible, is inconceivable. "It's more likely that lightning would cause a fire or punch a hole through the aircraft structure," he said.

"It could be significant that the jet reported a loss of pressure."

He added that the aircraft would be able to continue without the fly-by-wire system. The "trim tab," which enables the pilot to manually manipulate controls such as the rudder, would allow the crew to fly the aircraft safely. "Pilots are routinely trained for these kinds of events in a simulator," he said.

Former Airbus pilot John Wiley said on average every airliner is hit by a strike once a year. "They don't go down," he said.

According to Air France, the captain of Flight AF 447 had a record of 11,000 flight hours and had already flown 1,700 hours on Airbus A330/A340 aircraft. Of the two first officers, one had flown 3,000 flight hours (800 of which on the Airbus A330/A340) and the other 6,600 (2,600 on the Airbus A330/A340).

The aircraft had totaled 18,870 flight hours and went into service on 18 April 2005. Its last maintenance check in the hangar took place on 16 April 2009.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.

June 1, 2009 -- Updated 1639 GMT (0039 HKT)

Story Highlights

• The Airbus A330-200 was launched in 1995
  
• There are 600 currently in service with 82 airlines, including Air France
  
• Expert: A330-200 is reliable, ultra-modern, state-of-the-art airplane
  
• Air France said Flight AF 447 reported electrical problems
  

The incident involves an Air France Airbus A330-200.

(CNN) -- Launched in 1995, the Airbus A330-200 is the newest member of the European aircraft manufacturer's twinjet family.

With a range of 12,500 km (6,750 nautical miles) and the capacity to carry 253 passengers, the A330-200 is extremely well-regarded as a medium to long-range airliner.

There are 600 currently in service with 82 airlines, including Air France, worldwide.

Airbus has a further 300 orders for the aircraft.

According to aviation expert Kieran Daly, the A330-200 is a "reliable, ultra-modern, state-of-the-art airplane," with an impeccable safety record.

He told CNN that there has only been one reported incident when an aircraft of this type has crashed.

"The incident took place in 1994 before the aircraft came into service," he said. "It was being flown in test-mode by pilots who were putting it through some extreme maneuvers before it came down.

"Therefore the crash was not caused by the plane itself.

"It is very well-designed and well-equipped, with equally modern and reliable General Electric CF-6 engines."

Air France has said that Flight AF 447 sent an automatic signal indicating electrical problems while going through strong turbulence early in its 11-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris.

However, Daly said that it would take extremely violent weather conditions to cause the catastrophic failure of an aircraft of this size.

"These planes are extremely robust and widely used on transatlantic routes and across Asia," he said.

"They are equipped with an array of sophisticated communication equipment, so it must have been something extremely sudden to cause the loss of contact."

There has also been speculation that the Paris-bound flight was struck by lightning, but that should not bring down a modern airliner, former Airbus pilot John Wiley told CNN.

According to Air France, the captain of Flight AF 447 had a record of 11,000 flight hours and had already flown 1,700 hours on Airbus A330/A340 aircraft. Of the two first officers, one had flown 3,000 flight hours (800 of which on the Airbus A330/A340) and the other 6,600 (2,600 on the Airbus A330/A340).

The aircraft had totaled 18,870 flight hours and went into service on 18 April 2005. Its last maintenance check in the hangar took place on 16 April 2009.

The larger A330-300 aircraft from Airbus entered service in 1993 and has a capacity of up to 335 passengers. It too has an impressive safety record, despite a couple of incidents in the last 10 years.

In August 2001, a Canadian airliner operated by Air Transat experienced double engine failure while traveling to Portugal. Miraculously the captain was able to perform an emergency landing in the Azores by gliding the powerless plane for almost 18 minutes.

Last year, an A330-303 was forced to make an emergency landing in Australia after a sudden change in altitude injured 74 passengers. Qantas Flight 72 was flying from Singapore to the western Australian city of Perth when a sudden change of altitude caused abrasions, contusions, fractures and other injuries. The cause of the sudden drop remains under investigation.

From CNN.com; see the source article here.