AircraftNews.Com

What do we look back on. Fuel shocks, peak oil, environmental concerns, civilian space travel, the spread of mass air transport, innovation, war, the rise of killing airborne Robots and terrorism. 9/11 was perhaps the most riveting and defining moment of the last decade with the most wide spread consequences. It was focusing and a watershed and yet its seeds were being sown for many of the preceding years. Osama wrought much more than he knew and we have not yet learned all that we must from this single event. To me one of the central facts is that air travel is not like anything else. It is perhaps outside electronic communications one of the most pivotal of world activities. While people are people there will be those who would do harm and those who would protect. Maybe the aviation community needs to be even more proactive than it has been in exploring the development and administration of aviation. Watching the rise and fall of airlines some of them state supported and others not (with the relevant states breathing many sighs of relief that they are not involved) it is tempting to conclude that some sort of stabilizing interventions at a multinational level are increasingly called for. Meaningful Dialogue between the players would be a good start.
Happy new year to all.

Students of bush fires will know that various authorities claim the Australian Bush fires are as bad as any in the world and the Chauvinists would say they are without parallel. The season has now started and the ghoulish and gleeful but macabre voyeurs are on a countdown to another season of excellence or should it be infamy. It is now clear from the Royal Commission that there was severe mismanagement at very senior levels. This must include the State Government which bears ultimate responsibility. The current Victorian Government has been there for a long time and still seems to think that it can blame previous administrations. It used to be called the mirror government (I’ll look into it) and now seems more and more to be a righteous initiative free area which looks for a scapegoat when pressed and fines them massively while it continues the grand old tradition of Victorian State governments of either stripe, of infra structure inaction. Only the buzz words change: Fiscal responsibility , responsible leadership and so on. A recent little gem surfaced which would seem to bear a bit of closer examination. After a particularly bad summer a number of ultra large helicopters know locally as Elvises (after the name of the first to come to public awareness) have been engaged for fire fighting work. These are the Erickson S 64 (9500 kg of water) of US Military origins and have done a very good job. The first time they came in mass they did not have a lot of wok but subsequently have been veryvaluable. The need is hard to predict and it is a lot of money to spend if they are not needed but still what is the price of insurance? Until that year of disaster, requests for such capability had been steadfastly refused with the usual official smokescreen of reasons.
Even more recently another gem surfaced. During the 2009 prior to the Feb 7th Black Saturday disaster the Russian Government offered the Victorian Government the use of IL 76 very large water bombers (able to drop 11,000 gallons of water). They were turned down for reasons which range from garbage to plausible (Too long to arrange certification, not suitable for the mission, we have enough, time for transit too long etc).
The US fire fighting services have had the same offers and made the same response. Some critics of this decision are very scathing about the reasons. The US at least do have some very heavy metal available but the Vic Government has only Elvises and smaller.
American and some Australian experts have seen the Russian aircraft in action and are very impressed. They put the refusal of the Russian offer by the US Fire Authorities down to Politics. One of the reasons for refusal which seemed implausable was that the water could not be placed where it was needed. At the Kinglake fire this seems very unlikely.
There also seems to have been a lot of politics in the Australian situation. A sort of “don’t question us we are the experts” and “don’t get in the way we know what we are doing”. It would be very interesting to see a detailed account of why the Russian offer was refused and to compare the cost of the Russian offer with the over all cost of fire fighting. More fiddling while civilisation burns?

There is a saying that if one slowly heats a pot of water with a live frog in it the frog will go to sleep and not get out and so get cooked whereas if he is dropped into a hot pot he will leap out. So it is in many situations in life. We have it in aviation where slowly evolving situations get way past a point where some action should be taken because each development is incremental and not so different from the last situation. So it is with Airbus pitots and standby instruments and now with Flight 188 overflying its destination I think we have the same thing. It does not really matter if they went to sleep or lost track of time there was considerable potential for trouble. Much has been made of the poor match of the human physiology and performance and yet steadily the man is being taken out of the loop in flying so that such things can happen. An extraordinary number of RPT flights pass uneventfully but where a trend emerges it should be addressed. Ground control is now possible and studies should be made, discussed and decisions taken. Pilots do not have to leave the cockpit. It is just another logical progression. The Helios tragedy where apparently a cabin crew member was walking about with a portable O2 system but unable to enter the cockpit is another situation where ground control could have saved hundreds. The reasons why this has not happened are many and various and to do with how aviation has evolved a rigid and inflexible regulatory process. Vested interests are many but it is mainly a sort of general inertia and no one has had the courage really to say come on guys wake up or more to the point, hear those who have been saying such. As usual there will be wails of technical difficulty and cost but it seems clear that it is going to be a small cost in the long-term and long over due for considerations. Maybe the risk of different sort of hostile take over is behind the resistance but we seem to find ways to trust our fellow men in many other situations. Why not? Read more…

Today the Bow Bells will chime 350 times to mark an International Day of Concern about Global warming. Might take quite some time. And hopefully give many pause to think. Many are left more than a little bemused by the various claims made about the climate and who is doing what to whom. The press in an allegedly high minded attempt to achieve balance seems to print back to back articles by doom sayers and climate skeptic which serves to confuse rather than inform. Some actually seem more bent on inflaming the debate than informing or analyzing. An example is the local Australian Provocateur Andrew Bolte in the Sun Herald.
For what it is worth I have been running thru the literature with a view to reaching some sort of understanding. My qualifications are: an interest and a rather stale PhD from a good university in an unrelated field of Science so make of this what you will.
Once one start trolling thru the literature it emerges that there is a consensus that is truly impressive. The globe is warming and man has contributed to this. The closer the area of expertise of the sources is to climate the more there is the agreement. When the arguments of the skeptics are examined they seem to all be readily shot down. The longer it goes on the more the persistent skeptics seem to be willfully blind and self serving (IMHO). Read more…

In the land of Oz we have long distances, high temperatures and a member of the old British colonial family and good mate New Zealand an inconvenient 1200nm or so to the East. One of the results of this is that the aviation oriented members of the Oz community spend a lot of time poring over performance specs, cash flows and maintenance costs not to mention single engine vs twin engine safety analyses so that we can give substance to our dreams of commuting from our place of work in Oz to our hideaway in NZ. Various products come to mind but for the average moderately successful person who is sold on flying their own aircraft to and from there is a slippery slope with no obvious sweet spot. The Cessna Mustang eg looks to be a really good little rocket with considerable charter potential in the SE of Australia as it will cover Vic and NSW Adelaide Melbourne Sydney stuff pretty well but it requires a bit of planning and usually a stop on the way to NZ and certainly one on the way back . The Piperjet looks better but is single engine (on the other hand it is a Turbine and in flight-shut downs are said to be of the order of 1 in 150,000 hrs of operation). It is however still one’s one and only life in the opinion of many and the statistics of twins (likely to lose both engines once in 22.5 trillion hours of operation) are still pursuasive. Since nothing quite fills the bill and the idea of flying a personal aircraft with DOC of more than about $700 per hour starts to look a bit extravagant, people dream on with brochures and business plans spread out before them. As the result of a recent airport purchase the business I am associated with has put the bizjet on the back burner for a few months and this has encouraged a new bout of dreaming. The latest target is the Stratos. Obviously some smart people have got together what they know is about in available technology and decided they can do better than has been done so far. Essentially if they were to achieve their goals there would be an affordable non stop commuter from Oz to NZ. Back to one engine though. Also one engine at 41,000 ft raises some thoughts about emergency descent etc. Probably pie in the sky (one wonders what is in the water they are drinking but does wish them every success). Sooner or later some such will fly and what a buzz that will be.
Read more…

Those with a long term interest in Australian aviation cannot help but bemoan the way government has constantly failed to support the Australian aircraft Industry. While Brazil for example and Israel and Sweden have all demonstrated that small nations can nonetheless build world class capability, Australia has constantly failed to support aviation. A recent publication by one of Australia’s best qualified observers spells this out with well argued and detailed information.

AFTER more than five decades sifting through the history of Australia’s aircraft manufacturing industry, Keith Meggs says the thing that always surprises him is the ineptness of government decisions. Read more…

In a grim reminder of the fact that aviation can bite even the highly gifted it has been reported that Vicki Cruze a past US Aerobatics champion was killed in a crash at Silverstone in the UK. She was flying an Edge 540. The crash is being investigated.
On the local Australian scene in recent months two other Icons of aerobatic excellence Pip Borman and Tom Moon have died in low level incidents.
This underlines that the studied perfection we have so often observed is the result of great dedication and always carries with it the threat of the unexpected. Anyone tempted to aerobat at low level should bear in mind the likely fact that all these people might still be alive if they had been gifted with the cushion of another 1000ft of altitude.