Safety News in Brief

Air Safety Week,  Nov 20, 2006  

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Date: 15-Nov
Incident: A navigation system that has slashed the number of crashes in Alaska
is poised to go nationwide, according to FAA.FAA is trolling for companies to
take the technology nation-wide. Lockheed Martin Corp. is the only company that
has shown interest in designing and operating the system. It said last month
that it had assembled a team to pursue the FAA's Automatic Dependent
Surveillance-Broadcast program. The system gives pilots and ATC a real-time
depiction of traffic in the air and on the ground.  Contract will be awarded in
July 2007.

Date: 15-Nov
Incident: A380 max crosswind landing trials video (3.8mb wmv format). Believed
to be in Keflavik, Iceland. http://tinyurl.com/yfs5eh

Date: 14-Nov
Incident: NTSB's Most Wanted Hearing. Mbrs Hersman & Higgins voted with Rosenker
and Sumwalt to remove child safety from the Most Wanted. To her credit, Mbr
Hersman said the Board is not consistent about what items are on the Most Wanted
list and that they need to take a hard look at this before the next Most Wanted
meeting. The new vice chair Sumwalt, quoting from an NTSB manual, said that only
those recommendations still open can be on the Most Wanted list. Since the child
safety recommendation was closed with an unacceptable response, there's nothing
more to be done (until the next accident when an infant/toddler is killed), and
therefore there's no justification for keeping closed recommendations in play on
the Most Wanted list.[If that's what the manual says, change the manual].

Date: 14-Nov
Incident: NTSB said a cargo plane and a departing passenger jet came within 35
feet of colliding in July at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. When the incident
occurred, FAA had said the planes were within 300ft of each other. Just how
close the planes truly came to a collision was discussed when the NTSB reviewed
its "Most Wanted List" of safety improvements.

Date: 14-Nov
Incident: ICAO's Air Navigation Commission is to consider a draft strategy early
next year setting out minimum requirements for an international approach to
integrating unmanned air vehicles in controlled airspace. The strategy will
propose adopting a performance-based regulatory environment, and recommend that
future ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPS) be based on existing
work by organizations such as avionics performance specifications organisation
Eurocae, Eurocontrol, and aviation standards body RTCA. It will stress the
urgent need for international agreement on allocating appropriate bandwidth to
allow for safe control of UAVs.

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