AircraftNews.Com

The mumbling about replacing pilots is getting louder and any moment soon one suspects there will be cries to replace the fallible humans with the infallible (?!!?) computers which we have come to trust with so much of our lives. This has not been an unalloyed success as the Global finanacial Crisis and episodic web meltdowns have shown but there seems little likelyhood of going back
In the next months the University of Queensland will be conducting trials with unmanned aircraft to explore the blending of unmanned with manned traffic in normal airspace and researchers at Boeing, Airbus and numerous academic groups are progressively defining traffic management algorithms for UAVs.
There will be the predictable knee jerk from pilots with much muttering about how Apollo was saved by humans and dark mouthings off about Airbus computers but obviously the time is coming when the issues should be debated and options examined. Read more…

As has been noted in many places Boeing is a great company with a great past and we all hope a great future. It seems to have become the latest victim of near death as a result of Corporocidal Managerism.
Corporocide is a new word for death by Spin Doctors and incompetent management. There is a clear pattern apparent here yet to be adequately addressed.
The Boeing 777 is now a mature and superb product (Although still having its teething troubles – consider the RR ice crystal thing). It was however years late and associated with serious cost overruns.
The A 380 similarly ran into serious trouble and was also years late and a huge embarrassment to Airbus.
The fact that such huge projects run into this sort of trouble is a clear indication of a major problem and it is up to management to find the answers.
In the case of Boeing it is said by many to be a matter of denial, shoot the messenger and technical ignorance or even worse, contempt on the part of Management for all others.
Looking back over the history of groups like the Skunk Works of Lockheed with a history of superb performance in delivering on time and on budget (even early and under budget) high Tec project it seems obvious that there is a way to avoid these problems.
If you think this is unfair consider what is involved in the latest delay of the first flight of the Dreamliner. What sort of management can announce a first flight on a given date and then delay yet again after a stream of delays years long?? Who is it that does not know what and why?
The various bloggs of disgruntled employees and generally interested parties have some consistent themes very much to the point. There are some total gems in the blogs eg very descriptive and seemingly accurate “MacDonnell Douglas used Boeing money to buy Boeing” and another “The management of MacD bit Boeing severely before finally dying”.
So what are the lessons? One is that stratospheric salaries do not buy common sense and another surely is that Management as a specialty has a long way to go before it is a Science and that maybe applied psychopathology has a good dealt to offer. To some extent we have the situation where the monkey is in charge of the cookie jar.
Lets see how Boeing gets out of this one. I am sure they will but who will be hung out to dry??

Air France pilots have accused French and European air safety bodies of failing to prevent the crash of Flight 447 off Brazil last month because they ignored a history of dangerous failures in Airbus speed probes.

The Union of Air France Pilots (SPAF) made their charges amid suspicion in parts of the aviation world that French investigators, the airline and the Airbus firm may be reluctant to pinpoint a design flaw as the cause of the disaster that killed 228 people.

Their view was reinforced today when Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, chief executive of Air France, suggested that pilots’ failure to manage weather radar correctly may have led to the June 1 crash of the Rio-Paris flight.
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There is a telling moment in a recent interview Richard Quest of CNN did with an Airbus spokesperson while sitting in the cockpit of the company’s 330-200 model, the same one that crashed in the Atlantic on May 31.

Quest is going over with the spokesperson all the incredible features in the giant aircraft, noting that it is controlled by a central computer, which controls the plane automatically, receiving instructions from the pilot on what to do when necessary.

As the spokesperson explained, when there are problems the computer is programmed to automatically degrade functions to the basics. Quest next asked what happens in the event of a complete electrical failure. Does the pilot then have the ability to take over control of the plane completely so he or she can fly it himself without the computer. The spokesperson continues with his story of the back-up systems, in effect avoiding answering the question directly.
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French officials out of SAINT-DENIS, Reunion now say the black boxes of the Yemeni Airbus 310 that crashed off the Comoros Islands have not been found.

The French army says a signal detected from the debris of the downed plane was from a distress beacon and not one of the plane’s black boxes.

Commander Bertrand Mortemard de Boisse has told The Associated Press that the frequency of the signal detected corresponded to one of the plane’s distress beacons.

Earlier Wednesday, two top French ministers had said one of the black boxes from Yemenia Flight IY626 that crashed early Tuesday had been found.
From AAP

So much for experts. Consensus about the tragedy had been that the A 330 lost airspeed indications and then suffered an in-flight upset from which it did not recover.
Available evidence contained in a report issued on 2nd of July by the BEA the French investigation agency, is that the aircraft was intact at the time of impact, traveling essentially in a straight line at high speed and with a high vertical velocity.
The fact that initial evidence conflicts with expert expectations makes the retrieval of the data recorders even more important.
On this front the French have announced that they will continue the search for the pingers until July 10 after which other strategies including Sonar will be utilized.

Report: Airbus may be asked to ground all long-range jets
French investigators are expected to release Thursday their first report on what happened to Air France Flight 447.
The Airbus A330 crashed into the Atlantic on June 1 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
The Times UK is reporting a possibility that would be a doozy if it were to happen: Airbus could be asked to ground its worldwide fleet of long-range airliners.
Charles Bremner, reporting from Paris, says:
Airbus is expected to face calls to ground its worldwide fleet of long-range airliners tomorrow when French accident investigators issue their first account of what caused Air France Flight 447 to crash off Brazil on June 1.
It is believed that the accident bureau will report that stormy weather was a factor but faulty speed data and electronics were the main problem in the disaster that killed 228 people.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is likely to be asked why it had never taken action to remedy trouble that was well known with the Airbus 330 and 340 series. Nearly 1,000 of the aircraft are flying and until AF447, no passenger had been killed in one.
Airbus on June 10 denied a report that it was considering grounding its long range A330 and A340s.
AFP reported that an Airbus spokesman denied another newspaper report saying so.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) “has issued a press release that all A330s and other aircraft are safe to operate,” he told AFP. “We will take legal action against such irresponsible reporting.”

Such a highly charged issue often generates much smoke. There is considerable Shadenfreude here but it is very important that rumours not be spread. We report this to emphasise that there is no official statement yet. We await clarification with baited breath.
From http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/archives/172777.asp

Probably the most important outcome of the ATSB investigation into the Lockhart River Metro crash is the recommendation for a redesign of the RW 12 GNSS NPA. This is a result of recognising that GPWS terrain warnings could still arise even if the approach was flown within correct tolerances. Repeated spurious warnings can lead to crew becoming complacent in the face of such warnings. If they then decide to ignore the warnings the purpose of the system is obviated. The situation could even be aggravated because the crew might well believe they are still protected. This is a good example of the traps of designing your own approach and that is what a crew would be doing if they were to decide to ignore the GPWS alerts.

Aviation investigators, running out of time to find the “black boxes” with key information on the crash of Air France Flight 447, suspect a rapid chain of computer and equipment malfunctions stripped the crew of automation today’s pilots typically rely on to control a big jetliner.

An international team of experts is building a scenario in which it believes a cascade of system failures, seemingly beginning with malfunctioning airspeed sensors, rapidly progressed to what appeared to be sweeping computer outages, according to people familiar with the probe. The Airbus A330, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean during a storm 26 days ago, killing all 228 aboard.
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Those with attention spans longer than a gnat will well remember the triumphant announcement of the Dreamliner was it a century ago? Well the last century anyway. Those who do may well have thought there was a little hubris in it. Now even Boeing must have the message. Did someone break some mirrors or have they not paid enough attention to Feng Shui?
In the words of the Australian sage tell em they’r dreaming. And maybe ask what they were smoking.

Boeing shares fell 9% after the company admitted tests show signs of stress in the aircraft body and the the maiden flight of its Dreamliner aircraft was delayed yet again today after the discovery.

The first airborne test of the 787 had been planned for next week and Boeing had been insisting everything was on schedule as recently as last week’s Paris Air Show.

But the company said today it had identified an area on the side of the aircraft where the new model had shown signs of stress in a static test. It now has to reinforce the aircraft to make it ready for its first flight and delivery, the schedule for which will not be available for several weeks.
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