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Regrettably even in the Hypersafety conscious world of Civil Aviation there is a tendency for the good old steady as she goes, conservative let’s not rock the boat character traits of people with turf to protect to work against innovation and constant vigilance in the search for a better way. Just as the People of the State of Victoria in Australia are discovering as they look at the aftermath of their recent tragic fires even a quick look at this disaster shows that there are very doable technological fixes which may have contributed to avoiding this diaster as well as very doable strategies for ensuring the retrieval of the vital black boxes (which are actually red).
Real time satellite surveillance of Airlines en-route with real time satellite derived weather could radically reduce the probability of a weather induced in-flight break up (which seems to be the current favoured theory) and an automatically ejecting and buoyant Black box is quite easily possible now.
Risk will never be absent but lessons should be heeded and what ever actions will reduce the possibility of such a terrible event in the future should be implemented.

Radical Sky Tain

Stage lengths of between 185km (100nm) and 1,850km create a competitive problem for conventional air transport. For a typical 1-2h flight, would-be airline customers must pass through a non-flying gauntlet, from commuting to and from remote airports to facing clogged lines for security, check-in and baggage claim. It is often easier and cheaper to drive.

This basic conundrum has produced a series of radical solutions by aviation entrepreneurs, ranging from exotic business models, such as air taxis, to exotic aircraft designs, such as vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) airliners. For various reasons, including lack of infrastructure and technical complexity, none is yet to topple the imperfect primacy of the fixed-wing turboprop or jet.

Now Abe Karem, a widely respected aerodynamicist and innovator, has entered the mix. As founder of Karem Aircraft, he has quietly launched a new programme called the TR53 AeroTrain, a 120-seat, optimum speed tiltrotor (OSTR) dedicated to solving the 185-1,850km air transport problem. Read more…

Path of AF 447

It is possible that the fury of an equatorial storm brought down Air France flight 447.

The plane’s flight path seems to have taken it through what meteorologists call the inter-tropical convergence zone.

This is where two air masses meet, sending huge storm clouds more than 40,000ft (12,000m) into the sky.

Eight years ago, former British Airways captain Roger Guiver was confronted with an enormous storm during a flight from Cape Town to London Heathrow.

“You take weather like that extremely seriously,” he says. “You don’t go anywhere near it.” Read more…

Small Fragments of aircraft wreckage have been sighted along the flight path of the Lost Air France Airbus A330. In addition Airline crew on an opposite direction flight reported flaming debris sighted in the area of the last report. This last report incuded indictaions of depressurisation in addition to mutiple electrical anomalies. Loss of cabin pressure is a particularly ominous sign.

From ABC

Air France A 330

The Horrifying loss of an Airbus raises many questions but one thing it does underline is the wisdom of the constant real-time information sharing which is now possible and which is being incorporated in the next Gen Airliners such as the A330 and A380.

Unfortunately the last data transmission from the stricken A330 suggests an in flight break up possibly after a lightning strike. For all their sophistication one thing often missed by the general public when they are shuddering at the thought of a flight in a little GA aircraft is that the big ones are like a blob of Jell-O compared to the little one. Anyone with reasonable skill should survive a C172 or  Cherokee 140 being turned on its back but if a 747 were to be turned totally upside down it would be a very risky business to recover it successfully from such an upset.

Let us hope for a speedy closure for all those involved

Air France-KLM Group, whose Rio de Janeiro-Paris flight disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean today, hasn’t suffered a fatal accident since the Concorde disaster almost nine years ago.

The twin-engine Airbus SAS A330 model involved has never had a fatal crash in a commercial flight.

Air France flight 447 with 228 people on board went missing after taking off from Brazil bound for Charles de Gaulle airport, according to a statement from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said he was “deeply concerned.” Air France said the plane had encountered an area of strong turbulence during the flight and an automatic message was received indicating a breakdown in the electrical circuitry. Read more…

Tenerife collision

MUMBAI: Two aircraft carrying nearly 250 passengers between them were speeding down separate runways of the Mumbai airport on Sunday morning before aborting their take-offs, seconds before reaching the intersection point of the runways.

The planes were seconds away from a collision which would have been catastrophic. Read more…

Ryanair charges passengers to print their own tickets

Ryanair, the European budget airline, has added another extra charge to its low base fares, after abolishing check-in desks in favour of on-line ticketing.

The Dublin-based company said everyone booking a seat on a Ryanair flight from May 20 will be required to print out their own tickets at a mandatory cost of 10 euro ($A17.85) per passenger per round-trip journey.

Anyone who fails to do this will suffer a 40 euro ($A71.40) penalty at the airport.

This fee policy replaces Ryanair’s previous practice of offering free on-line ticketing and charging extra for anyone who opted for face-to-face check-in. The old policy discriminated against passport-holders from outside the European Economic Area, who were barred until recently from checking in via Ryanair’s Web site.

Under the new policy, everyone will be treated the same because now nobody can avoid paying to check in.

Ryanair says the only exceptions will be on tickets offered at fee-included prices of five euros ($A9.03) or less.

From AP

Boeing has unveiled details of its next-generation 737 to drum up business among airlines – including Air New Zealand – as demand for planes is hit by global recession.

The planemaker has seen its first-quarter profit drop by half in the first part of this year, but says demand for its 737, the world’s most popular passenger plane, remains strong despite “market dynamics” with a backlog of 2203 aircraft.

The next-generation aircraft is due to be delivered to airlines in 2011. In an international launch yesterday for media in Seattle and elsewhere via video conference, Boeing plugged the features of the new model, including reduced fuel consumption of up to 2 per cent through airframe and engine improvements and a remodelled interior. Read more…

The Australian Transportation Safety Board have released their preliminary factual report stating, that the tail of the airplane struck the ground past the end of the runway. The crew subsequently noticed, that the aircraft weight entered into the laptop for takeoff computations was 100 tonnes less than the actual takeoff weight.

The first officer was pilot flying for the leg, the captain was pilot monitoring for the reduced power takeoff. During the takeoff run on runway 16 the captain called rotate, the first officer attempted to rotate the aircraft, which however did not respond. The captain called again “rotate”, the first officer applied more backpressure resulting in the nose lifting and the tail struck the runway surface, but the airplane did not begin to climb. The captain applied maximum thrust and the airplane eventually commenced a climb. “During the take-off, the aircraft’s tail contacted the ground beyond the end of the runway and a number of airport landing aids came into contact with the aircraft.”
Read more…