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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…

YIKES!!. What a coup for photographer Stefan Sonnenberg. You can find him here…http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/profile.main?username=Whisperjet

Germania Boeing 737-300  registration D-ADII flight ST-8656The starlings had a bad day, as well as Germinia who have to fix the engines.

It was a lovely VFR day and the pilots did it well as a procedural engine fail on takeoff. Hopefully Stefan will get an award for his image, he certainly deserves that. In the event the aircraft returned to Dusseldorf with no problems other than those for the passengers to explain their late arrival. More here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1217035/Bird-strike-The-moment-200-starlings-sucked-passenger-jet-engine-off.html

Getting back to aviation, think about what would have been the situation if some of the unfortunate birds had shut down the pitots as well, clearly visible in Stefans pic. Under the VFR conditions applicable the pilots would have done just as well, except that they would have been challenged a little. If however they were entering turbulent IMC they would be challenged greatly. Such is the importance of airspeed in aircraft operation.

More on this in a later post. Hope you liked the pic.

It was inevitable that there would be an engine incident in the A 380. Yesterday a Singapore airlines flight from France to Asia was returned to Paris after an engine warning lead to one of its four RR Trent 900 engines being shut down. The engine will be changed and the passengers put up in Hotels overnight. The Trent was the launch engine for the A380 and at present 52% of the A380 orders carry the RR engine. The other option is the GE, P&W Engine Alliance GP7000. The RR Trent 900 developed from an earlier version of the highly reliable Trent 500 has a number of advance features including light weight wide chord swept fan blades and Hamilton Sundstrand Fuel controllers.

Given there are four engines on each aircraft and the operators have been doing their best to fly the pants of them it is no surprise that there has been an in flight shut down and in fact one could even say it has been an eagerly awaited event for the voyeurs and pundits of aviation not to mention the industry in general. Read more…

Southwest Airlines inspected Nearly 200 Boeing 737 belonging to Southwest airline had to be inspected after a hole in the aft fuselage of one of their aircraft forced an emergency landing.

Federal safety officials at Dallas are investigating how a foot-long hole opened in the top of the jet, forcing the emergency landing in Charleston, W. Va.

The Boeing 737 jet lost pressure in the cabin, but no one was injured on Monday’s Nashville-to-Baltimore flight that carried 126 passengers and five crew members.

The plane was built in 1994, and government records indicated that an inspection in January turned up eight cracks in the frame that required repairs.

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THE inability of radar on a Perth-bound Qantas Airbus to detect ice crystals will be at the centre of an air safety investigation into severe turbulence that threw passengers out of their seats, injuring up to 12 people.

The A330-300 aircraft plunged suddenly over Borneo early yesterday before landing safely at Perth International Airport just before 8am.

“All of a sudden the plane dropped — I reckon about a 30-storey building — and there was a hell of a kerfuffle in the plane,” passenger Keith Huckstable told ABC radio.

Qantas said crew on the Airbus, which was carrying 206 passengers and 13 crew, were given little notice of the approaching turbulence, four hours after leaving Hong Kong.
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