Safety News In Brief

Air Safety Week, April 23, 2007

Porpoising (a Pilot Induced Oscillation with a difference): see video at tinyurl.com/2pqfx8 From the comments on avsim.ru (where the video was originally posted): "Russian military multi-engine flight school; 2 students on their 2nd solo. No injuries but A/C was written off (nose-gear went through the floor, plus other damage).

Left-seat student was expelled, the other is to repeat a term." From the annals of that ever poignant aviation series: "Cheap lessons learnt dearly..."

Date: 19-Apr
Incident: VIRGIN Atlantic may sue Airbus claiming the front end of its A340-600
super jet is dangerously overweight. To rebalance the jet, the airline has had
to reduce fwd hold cargo loads by up to five tonnes a flight at a cost of
millions of pounds a year. The extra weight is caused by beds, stand-up bars,
bulky furniture and TVs fitted in premium cabins. Virgin boss Sir Richard
Branson is unwilling to cut out any luxury items for fear of making the option
less attractive to high-paying passengers. But without sacrificing cargo space,
the safety of travellers cannot be guaranteed. Flying one tonne overweight costs
the equivalent of 12 passengers daily. Flying five tonnes overweight, each jet
would be losing income equivalent to 21,900 passengers a year. Virgin insists it
did not know of the problem until it had bought 19 of the jets, which carry 380
passengers.

Date: 18-Apr
Incident: Canadian actor Eric McCormack reportedly caused a stir on a flight to
Vancouver when he was told his son's booster seat had to be stowed with the
baggage. McCormack was on an Alaska Airlines flight from Los Angeles with his
wife and their 4-year-old son Finnigan when crew members told him the booster
seat was too big. The star was told the seat violated airline regulations and
had to be stowed and he protested volubly - until an attendant turned over the
seat to reveal a warning label, 'Not to be used on aircraft!'

Date: 17-Apr
Incident: The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the
Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) say no charges will be laid against
the airline at the centre of one of Australia's worst air disasters. Fifteen
people died when the Transair Metroliner crashed two years ago at Lockhart River
in far north Queensland. An ATSB investigation showed Transair had failed to
report 25 safety incidents in the two years leading up to the crash. Seven were
serious matters such as a cabin pressurization warning. The DPP was alerted to
the incidents but says it is now too late to prosecute because of a 12-month
statute of limitations. The airline lost its airline operating certificate some
few months after the crash.

Date: 17-Apr
Incident: The UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) will be hosting the
International Federation of Airline Dispatcher's Associations' (IFALDA) Annual
General Meeting and World Airline Flight Dispatcher's Conference on May 7-9,
2007.The theme of the Conference in Dubai is 'Exploring New Frontiers in Flight
Dispatch/Operational Control'.

Date: 15-Apr
Incident: The International Air Transport Association told its 251 members in
2005 that to maintain their membership, they would have to submit to an
extensive safety audit. Six carriers became ex-members for failing to initiate
their audits by the end of 2006. The audits must be finished ? and flaws
corrected ? by the end of next year, and officials expect to expel another half-
dozen or so carriers then. IATA provides vital commercial functions, like
settling up between airlines when a passenger uses a ticket on one carrier to
board another carrier's plane. US carriers cannot enter code-share agreements
with foreign airlines unless those airlines have had safety audits. Successfully
audited airlines are listed at tinyurl.com/28rwu9

Date: 13-Apr
Incident: Cabin crew had difficulty communicating with passengers during a 2005
Flybe DHC-8 emergency landing at Edinburgh UK because the crew were wearing
smoke hoods, according to a UK accident report. The report said the smoke
prevented the cabin crew from seeing the length of the cabin and "severely
hindered communications with passengers". It added that the hoods had proved a
barrier to "both hearing and being heard". As a result of the hearing
difficulties, the cabin crew did not hear calls made from the flight deck.
During the incident several passengers had asked if they could also have
breathing protection, but the report said that "smoke protection for passengers
is not a requirement on public transport aircraft". The report said there were
153 cases of fumes, abnormal odor, smoke or haze in either the flight deck or
cabin, or both, of UK-registered passenger planes in the three-year period to
August 2006.

Date: 13-Apr
Incident: ICAO's 2006 safety report says there were 13 aircraft accidents
involving passenger fatalities on scheduled air services worldwide for aircraft
with a maximum take-off mass of more than 2250 kg (usually seven passengers or
more). Total passenger fatalities numbered 755. In 2005, there were 712
passenger fatalities from 17 accidents. Despite an increase in passenger
fatalities, the accident rate, measured in fatalities per 100 million passenger-
kilometers, increased only marginally from 0.0191 in 2005 to about 0.0193 in
2006 - due to an increase of around 5 per cent in passenger-kilometres. For non-
scheduled operations, there were 13 accidents involving fatalities for aircraft
with a maximum take-off mass of over 2250 kg in 2006 - the same as in 2005.
These accidents accounted for 81 passenger fatalities in 2006 compared with 249
in 2005.