Always Check NOTAMs

Here's an account of an aviatrix who found that her computer wasn't working to pick up the NOTAMs. She could have called 1-800-WX-BRIEF (this takes place in the USA) and asked, but she hadn't flown in a week and was anxious to get back in the sky. What possible NOTAM could affect her flight in and out of her own backyard strip, in very familiar airspace? She was so used to people admiring her prize-winning airplane that she wasn't fazed by the intercepting F-16s. I won't mention her age, because as the last line of the story mentions, she was a little put out that the FAA released it to the media.

May we all be flying as long, but further from the scrutiny of military aviators.

Unfair Fight

An A380 struck a CRJ while manoeuvring on the ramp at JFK Monday night. No one was injured, but look at how far the Airbus spun that little jet around.

Opportunity Calls, Among Others

My tax guy calls me. It's not about my taxes. He talked to one of his other clients, a guy who owns a skydiving business. I name his name before the accountant does. He's been in business in Canadian skydiving a long time, owns places across Canada. My accountant mentioned me, said he couldn't understand how a pilot could be overqualified. Skydiving guy explained in terms he could understand. "Return on investment." I thought I told him that, but I guess with accounting people you have to use the exact words. He's calling to tell me skydiving guy says he'll look at my resume. I send him one. Dropping meat bombs is generally an entry level job, but I think the company has some larger airplanes, and there might even be an opportunity to travel to big skydiving meets. I've never jumped, but I used to work with a guy whose wife was a pretty well-known skydiver, well known in that community, I mean. I'm not sure there are any generally famous skydivers.

The maybe job guy doesn't call me. Maybe I should call again. I'll call again tomorrow.

A charity calls to ask me if I have any used clothing or housewares to donate. I tell them not this time. Try again some other time. It's convenient having people haul off your stuff, and if I get a job out of town I'll have give stuff away rather than store it.

A telemarketer calls. I can tell it's a telemarketer because they use a weird version of my name. But this one not exactly a telemarketer. What? She says she's calling from "Computer Maintenance Optimizers" and they have detected a "Junk Malicious Virus" in Microsoft Windows on my computer. The bafflegab is so fluent and hilarious I let her keep going for a while before I interrupt to ask.

"How did you get my telephone number?"

"We have a research department."

"What kind of scam is this?"

"It's not a scam. We are calling to tell you about a junk malicious virus detected on your computer."

"And you're calling me from India to tell me this?"

"I am calling from 'Computer Maintenance Optimizers'."

Eventually she admits that it is in India. They want me to download some software to allow their 'technician' access to the computer to remove the virus. And replace it with spyware, or recruit my computer into a botnet, no doubt. I ask what their revenue model is, and she says it's not my concern, or maybe not her concern, I missed it in the accent.

At one point she asks,"Are you really interested, or are you just wasting my time?" I tell her truthfully that I'm absolutely fascinated by how this all works, and to learn more about this virus, but you know times are tough everywhere and if labour and telephony is cheap enough for them to use human beings making phone calls as a malware vector, she can't be making much. I ask her, if she is paid an hourly wage, per call, or by how many people she entices to download the information. She assures me somewhat indignantly that she is PAID. I tell her I actually use Linux, so their Microsoft Windows virus detector isn't working, but I'm still interested in what she is doing. She ignores that, or doesn't understand Linux and continues. I'm truthfully very interested in this whole scam, or whatever it is. It's hilarious. Are we going to get personal phonecalls from Nigerian princes next? She won't tell me at what point money is extracted from me, or anything more about the company, so eventually I've had enough. I really don't know whether or not she knows that she's peddling a scam, or at best a useless service. I admit that I am wasting her time, because I'm not going to do it. She says this is my choice, but I really should, because the virus may harm my computer. I tell her the Linux story again and she buys it this time, but doesn't seem to be in a hurry to hang up. I tell her I hope she is paid well for her work, that she and her family are well, and that she is enjoying her work. I'm usually civil with telemarketers, but how bored do I have to be? That was so weird, though.

A little internet research turns up their business model. This has been going on for a few years now, and they're doing it all over the world. They sometimes pretend to be from Microsoft or your ISP. They direct you to look at Windows Event Viewer, which always contains a long list of scary looking events, and tell you that's proof of the infection. They have you download a program to give their 'technician' remote access to your computer, and then they charge you a whack of money for it.

Actually, this is the second time I've had this call. I hope I didn't blog about it the first time. Sorry for the repeat if I did. The thing is, when you're job hunting, you have to keep answering the phone.

---

In breaking news, it looks like the French have found the wreckage of AF447.

Mad Woman

I call back about the job, after waiting a day. I get voice mail and leave a message. I wonder if we're going to enter a passive-aggressive battle over this.

I look through what is available on Netflix. The Canadian selection is really terrible, because we have different copyright laws than the US, and the content providers are afraid to let Netflix licence their shows in Canada. Most of the "movies I'd like to see" list is not available, and it suggests some laughable substitutes when I search for them. It does turn up some suggestions I like, but they are movies I already own. I start watching the TV series Mad Men, because I've heard some good things about it.

It's a meticulously crafted period piece about the 1960s, and not the Vietnam War or the flower children, but the buttoned down conservatives of the era, at an ad agency. They have a lot of fun with establishing identifiable, fairly timeless situations and then smashing the viewer upside the head with anachronisms we weren't expecting, like when they get up from a picnic and just leave all their trash behind. I keep wondering whether it's a clever social commentary or just an an excuse to produce misogynist, racist television, glorifying old fashioned attitudes. Its redeeming feature is perhaps that it will remind some people that the good old days never really were, and by removing the role of advertising to another era, perhaps show people how easy it is to be manipulated.

But the weird thing about psychological manipulation is that it often works even when you're aware it's happening. Just watching this darn show makes me want to mix an old-fashioned martini. If I watch another season I may get the urge to vacuum in pearls and high heels and bake a meatloaf for some man. If you watch people doing something, even if it's only fiction, even if you don't approve, it makes it more likely that you'll accept that behaviour as normal. That's why the conservative right objects to gay couples being treated unblinkingly as normal human beings on television, why my wacky relative (please tell me everyone has one) believes that shows about friendly space aliens are Hollywood grooming us for when the aliens come to help us, and why some parents don't let their kids play violent video games. Or maybe those parents just want their kids to stop playing video games and help make dinner.

Those of you who read comments will remember the calorie counter discussion from a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to tell the non-comment-reading people about this too. If you like to keep an eye on weight, fitness and nutrition all in one little app, I recommend myfitnesspal. You don't even need an iPhone/iPad Touch to use it, because it has a web interface too. You may not be into counting calories, or eat weird stuff that is never in calorie look up tables, but this app has almost everything I've eaten in a month, and allows me to specify the ingredients in a recipe or just tell it the caloric value, if I know. It lets you log exercise, and automatically adjusts your remaining calories for the day. It didn't have "plumbing" as an exercise, but it had automobile maintenance, which was about the same level of physical activity. Its strength is that it is completely effortless to use. You just have to resist the temptation to round out your caloric allocation for the day with a few tablespoons of chocolate chips. They're high in iron, I justify.

The water still comes out of my tap really straight, and that potential employer doesn't return my call. Plus it's apparently open season on B737s in North Carolina. Would you have found it on your preflight walkaround? If they hadn't found the bullet on board I might have believed it had been there a while. The airplane would probably have pressurized without a problem. The Screaming Whippet groundschool instructor described an incident where he did a flight, warm and happy up in the flight levels, only to discover after landing at destination that an entire window had blown out right after take-off. It had accidentally been left unsecured after routine maintenance.

Another Look Through Airplane-Coloured Glasses

As I mentioned before, when world events are so immense that it is hard to take in the enormity, there is a tendency to narrow ones focus to some aspect that is familiar and relate-able, even at the risk of trivializing the real impact. Animal lovers focus on stranded pets. American talk show hosts discuss how the earthquake influences political candidates' polling numbers. And airline geeks look at the effect on the supply of jet fuel.

There are two intertwined issues, production and transportation. Japan, according to the article linked above, produces four percent of the world's kerosene, and about 1.5 million barrels per day production is offline due to the earthquake. This includes the Cosmo Oil refinery at Chiba which caught fire on fire and other refineries shut down for lack of power because of the nuclear reactors being offline. Other refineries in Japan and elsewhere may have the ability to meet the demand by increasing production, but it also has to be transported through a country with a compromised infrastructure.

Initially reports were that Japan had enough fuel for a week, but airline schedules and policies have changed around the disaster. Japan asked airlines to tanker (i.e. carry in the tanks even though it wasn't needed for the flight) fuel coming into Japan to reduce the amount that needed to be taken there. Some companies are no longer overnighting crews in Japan, giving them an additional leg to Seoul or other nearby Asian cities, so they need to take less fuel in Japan. This partial list of airline changes is interesting to me as it shows some companies cancelling or flying less, but some more capacity, or switching to fewer flights but larger airplanes, depending on passenger demands and other needs of the operation.

AEROFLOT Capacity increase on selected Tokyo flight, as well as extra flight on 17MAR11
SU2575 SVO2145 – 1330+1NRT 763 17MAR11
SU2576 NRT1530 – 2050SVO 763 18MAR11

Service on 17MAR11-19MAR11 from SVO, 18MAR11-20MAR11 from NRT, operates with Ilyushin Il96-300 instead of Boeing 767-300

Air Canada Tokyo departure to Toronto and Vancouver operates via Osaka on 18MAR11/19MAR11
AC002 NRT1710 – 1835KIX1935 – 2100YYZ 77W
AC004 NRT1905 – 2040KIX2140 – 1710YVR 333

Air China Selected Tokyo scheduled service CANCELLED until 26MAR11
Beijing – Tokyo Haneda CA183/184 CANCELLED (Reduce to 1 Daily)
Chengdu – Beijing – Tokyo Narita CA421/422 CANCELLED (PEK NRT Reduce to 12 weekly)
Chongqing – Shanghai Pu Dong – Tokyo Narita CA157/158 CANCELLED (PVG NRT Reduce to 2 Daily)

Larger capacity aircraft to be operated on existing Tokyo flights and other local cities in Japan

AIRFRANCE Stop over at Seoul Incheon in both direction extends to 23MAR11 (24MAR11 from NRT)
Paris CDG – Tokyo Narita
AF276 CDG1050 – 0535+1ICN0655+1 – 0935+1NRT 77W 17MAR11-23MAR11
AF278 CDG2100 – 1545+1ICN1705+1 – 1945+1NRT 77W 17MAR11-23MAR11

AF275 NRT1305 – 1540ICN1655 – 2105CDG 77W 18MAR11
AF277 NRT2155 – 0030+1ICN0145+1 – 0555 +1CDG 77W 18MAR11-24MAR11
AF275 NRT1145 – 1420ICN1535 – 1945CDG 77W 19MAR11-24MAR11

Air India Service until 19MAR11 operates at approximately 2hrs later for DEL departure. Boeing 747-400 or 777-300ER operating
Delhi – Tokyo Narita
AI306 DEL2300 – 0950+1NRT 744 18MAR11-19MAR11

Air Tahiti Nui
Papeete – Tokyo Narita service on 18MAR11 (19MAR11 from NRT) Canceled

Alitalia Until 20MAR11, Tokyo Narita service is CANCELLED, these service will operate into Osaka Kansai
Milan Malpensa – Tokyo Narita
AZ786 MXP2155 – 1730+1NRT 772 18MAR11/20MAR11
AZ787 KIX1700 – 2130MXP 772 19MAR11

Rome – Osaka Kansai Extra flights in operation to replace service to Tokyo Narita from 16MAR11 to 19MAR11
AZ782 FCO1555 – 1200+1KIX 772 19MAR11
AZ784 FCO1855 – 1500+1KIX 772 18MAR11/20MAR11

AZ783 KIX1400 – 2005FCO 772 17MAR11
AZ783 KIX1400 – 1845FCO 772 18MAR11/20MAR11
AZ785 KIX1700 – 2145FCO 772 20MAR11
AZ785 KIX1930 – 0015+1FCO 772 18MAR11/19MAR11

ASIANA AIRLINES Extra one Daily flight on Seoul Incheon – Tokyo Narita planned until 22MAR11
OZ1083 ICN0520 – 0730NRT 321 16MAR11-22MAR11
OZ1073 NRT2125 – 2350ICN 321 16MAR11-22MAR11

Austrian Operation from VIE is delayed on 18MAR11 and return on 19MAR11. Return flight operates via Seoul. Schedule after 19MAR11 will be announced pending on latest situation

Japan's refinery woes compared with unrest in Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East is driving up not just jet fuel but ordinary mogas prices. Japan being so technologically advanced and diversified in manufacturing, there is probably no industry unaffected by the events there. I'd be interested in hearing how the earthquake has affected you, even if you're nowhere near Sendai.

Amazing Little-Known Aircraft

I really should spend some of the energy I expend reading webcomics and watching Law & Order reruns on keeping up with the coolness of experimental aviation. Here are a few I've been collecting to share with you, none of which I found out about as soon as I should have, so don't expect any breaking news.

The Goodyear Inflatoplane was built long before I was born, but really that is the sort of thing that legend should keep alive in everyone's hearts, even though the project is long gone. I love inflatable stuff. Inflatable Christmas decorations, punching bags, air mattresses, pool toys, you name it. And "Inflatoplane" is the best name. They really knew how to name things back then. The airplane I learned to fly in was designed in the same age of naming, and its features includes omnivision, paralift and land-o-matic.

Fortunately the fifties named inventions that were yet to be invented, so that this is still called a rocket pack or a jetpack or a rocket belt. It's a bit like the personal videophone though, into the proof of concept phase, but still not really there. Another model leaves the fuel on the ground, and removes dangerous exhaust from the vicinity of the user, allowing for much more flight time, but restricting the flight path to over relatively calm water.

This experimental miniature airplane uses the same flight techniques as the birds I love to watch, controlling their momentum with such precise timing that they come to a full-stall landing on a single point. It's awesome to watch them adjusting everything to make that landing. They mess up sometimes, but because their wingtips and tail sections are made of feathers, they don't need to report for major repairs or inspections when they do. Birds land on power lines because they are available and away from predators, so it's doubly cool that the MAV is using the power line as a food source, actually poaching the current to recharge its batteries.

And finally, last month the Solar Impulse has completed a flight of over twenty-six hours (yes, through the night and into the next day) entirely on solar power. The team is planning to build an even more efficient solar-powered airplane and do a round the world trip. I'm embarrassed that I didn't know about this the same day it happened, because it's the coolest thing ever. I'd love to fly a solar or human-powered aircraft. I should really get my glider licence. Started it once, but then I moved for a job, to somewhere there weren't gliders.

Old Joke - New Ending

This post started out as me just posting a joke, but then I thought too hard about it.

Passenger: Why was the flight delayed?
CSA: The pilot didn't like the sound of the engine.
Passenger: Did they get another engine?
Old Ending: No, they got another pilot.
New Ending: No, they downloaded new sounds.

They're talking about putting artificial sounds on electric cars so that blind people can hear them. They already have artificial pre-stall warning symptoms (i.e. the stick shaker) on airliner flight decks, to mimic the feeling of the stall buffet in the airplanes most pilots learned to fly in. Perhaps someday there will be a reason to use artificial engine sounds to mimic the sounds pilots are accustomed to in monitoring our engines. Detonation, backfiring, missed cylinders, loose flyweights, or "scary banging sounds."

Usually gauges provide the information we need, but there have certainly been many times when an engine sound has made me look at the gauges. Gauge irregularities make us listen to the engines (make us look at them too, that's actually part of the procedure, to make sure they aren't on fire).

---

There's an unexpected aviation connection to breaking news. Prince William, who is second in line to the throne and will probably become the King of Canada someday, has just announced his engagement to a woman who is the progeny of a flight attendant and a flight dispatcher. Long live the Queen!

Not All Malfunctions in a Simulator are Simulated

I'm on vacation at a lake in British Columbia, just as I threatened. The lake is lovely, as is the town, the accommodations and the company, But I'm not saying who that was nor blogging about my vacation. I'm blogging about the fact that I have to leave this lovely lake and drive an hour or so to the airport, and renew my IFR. I find the school and check in with dispatch, where I do some paperwork. They tell me my instructor's name. I've never met anyone with this name before. It's the same as the name of a plant, and it doesn't tell me anything about them, except that perhaps my instructor is the child of late-blooming hippies.

Oak (not the real name, but I'll use that to avoid excessive circumlocution) arrives and he is a he. He doesn't look like a hippy, is familiar with the information I gave the school on my experience and needs, and seems to know what he's doing. He proposes we sim today, then fly tomorrow. He's concerned that the fact that I've never flown this airplane before might be a problem. I'm concerned that I have to take a flight test, and AAAAAHHHH! FLIGHT TEST! I'm not worried about flying a new airplane compared to that. Every time I have flown a new airplane, it's turned out to work like all the other ones I have flown. The only tricky bit is usually landing nicely. On an instrument ride if you get to the flare without screwing up too badly, you've passed. I know someone who had to have the instructor land the airplane for him on his initial IFR, because the instructor had arrived late and postponed the flight test later into the dark, for a candidate who did not yet possess a night rating or any night landing experience. (And if he's reading this, please get in touch: both paper and e-mail is bouncing).

We go into the simulator room and start one up. It's a typical flying school simulator with a yoke and pedals and movable controls on a dashboard, into which is set a simulated instrument panel on a computer monitor, connected to a console running some flavour of flight simulator, possibly even the Microsoft one. Once upon a time school simulators had real gauges all the way across with little motors running everything, but those are more expensive to construct and maintain. Real airplanes are going towards glass now, so the simulated ones do too. The pilot seat is on rails bolted to the floor, and after it has been adjusted to the comfort of the pilot, it does not move in any way related to the simulated movement of the airplane. The whole things has been certified by Transport Canada as conforming sufficiently to the characteristics of whatever it simulates to be used for certain types of flight training. As this training is just to acclimatize me to the local navaids and procedures and to assure the poor flight instructor it's okay to fly with me, its certification doesn't currently matter anyway.

I start running through the instrument checks. This is partly a simulation of how I will test all the instruments on the flight test to show that I am a good little pilot, partly a test to make sure the simulator is working properly, and partly a chance for me to familiarize myself with the location and operation of all the instruments. You know how in your car you can put your finger on any control pretty much without looking, but in a rental you have to wait for a stoplight and hunt around for it? Well same in an airplane. In a simulator of this type some of the switches tend to be rinky-dink little things and not located in logical places, either. "Where are the cowl flaps again?" All the installed instruments are familiar ones to me, and I know how to use them, but figuring out how to adjust the rightmost digit of the ADF frequency can be like trying to turn off the windshield wipers on the rental car. Just when you think you have killed them, they turn out to be set on intermittent.

Above is a literal museum example of the oldest kind of ADF I have used. I think anything older would require separate manual tuning of the sense antenna.

I think I may have ranted thusly about ADFs before. Those of you who know or don't care about the various ways one might set the frequency on an ADF receiver can safely skip the following two paragraphs with no loss to the narrative. If you want to know what it's actually for and what it does, not just how to tune it, go here.

An ADF can be set to either a three or four digit frequency, that is between approximately 190 and 1750 kHz: the AM radio band. I believe all the NDBs that the ADF has to receive are in the three digit range, from 190 to 600 kHz, but I speculate that ADF was designed to also receive higher AM radio frequencies, so as to use commercial radio stations for navigation. Radio towers are published with their frequencies on old charts and still better than nothing in the middle of nowhere. The oldest sort of ADF I have used has one big knob that moves an indicator along a scale which you carefully examine to see which frequency you have selected, and then you listen really carefully to the Morse identifier, because you could easily be a few off. That sort is a museum piece now, and pretty much was then, but I doubt I was the last person in the world to use one of those in IFR conditions. The next oldest kind has three frequency adjustment knobs, the way an analogue transponder has four knobs to change the squawk code. The leftmost knob changes its corresponding "digit" through the range one to seventeen (or maybe fourteen, I don't remember) and the other two change their digits through the zero to nine range. The more modern kind (although "modern" and "ADF" don't go together well) has a digital display and the knobs are more compact. Typically there is one big knob with a smaller knob in the centre. They correspond to the three knobs on the older unit like this: the big outside knob does the job of the leftmost knob; the smaller inside knob does the job of the middle one, and then you can pull out the middle one and then when you turn it, it does the job of the rightmost knob on the old unit. You could be stuck for a long time if you didn't know the pulling out trick.

In simulators like this one, for some weird reason, you don't get to pull out the inside knob to set the frequency. I guess someone was shown how it was supposed to work, didn't realize that the person showing him had pulled out the knob, so made up his own way, and pilots are so used to ADFs working different ways that they shrugged and considered it a limitation of the device. So in the sim you turn the outside or first knob to set the first one or two digits, the 1-17 thing, then you turn the second knob to set the second two digits, from 00 to 99. Like that's not a pain. You have to do this sometimes during a missed approach, where one beacon is the missed approach point and the missed approach required you to track to a subsequent NDB, so you have to scroll through up to 50 frequencies while cleaning up the airplane in a simulated go around.

I dial in the frequency of the NDB nearest my simulated airport so I can test the device. It identifies and points, so I then try to tune the first NDB I'll need during the flight. It's at this point that I notice that as I adjust the third digit, I'm only getting even numbers. "How do I get odd numbers on this?" I ask Oak, who is sufficiently confused by the question to clue us into the fact that it's broken. We switch to the other simulator and go through testing everything again before flying.

The simulated ATIS unexpectedly (to me) works, and I copy it, then address Oak as "ground" for my clearance. He gives me the Abbotsford Seven departure off runway 07, The first seven means that there have been six revisions to the procedure since it was first published and the second seven means that the runway is oriented such that the airplane will be on a heading of 070 degrees magnetic as I take off. The departure procedure is a number of instructions, such as the fact that I'm supposed to climb on runway heading to six hundred feet then hang a right to 202 degrees and wait for ATC to give me vectors on course.

The procedures are not a problem, but I do get caught up in getting every detail right, and my altitude control is abysmal. That's not abnormal for the sim. The trim is in the wrong place and doesn't have the same feedback as in an airplane. I make a few dumb mistakes but demonstrate a basic knowledge of how to fly an airplane, so tomorrow we are scheduled to fly one.

I don't want to spend too much time in the simulator because it doesn't even try to simulate the airplane I will be flying, and you do gain habits to appease the simulator. This article suggests that because much better simulators that are used for airline pilot training do not do a good job of modelling aircraft behaviour as the airplane goes out of control, simulator training may be to blame for pilots responding incorrectly to emergency situations, causing some crashes, such as the Continental runway excursion in Denver and the Colgan Dash-8 stall in Buffalo.

Uncontained Failure

A Qantas Airlines Boeing 747 jet climbing out of San Francisco on Monday experienced an uncontained failure of the number four engine. That means that the outside right-side engine failed so spectacularly that pieces of it penetrated the cowling, the case around the engine. The linked article has photos, and even though they were taken in the dark you can still see some of the turbine fan blades through the hole.

The pilots of course couldn't see the hole in the engine, only feel the vibrations through the airframe and see whatever indications the engine instruments reported. They certainly wouldn't have been normal. They shut the engine down, dumped fuel to get down to landing weight (you can see a couple of orbits on the Flight Aware track in the Flightglobal piece linked above), and returned for landing at San Francisco to investigate. Passengers saw flames and sparks coming from the engine; one of them took a video of the sparks streaking by, even after the engine was secured.

It's always interesting to see how pilots handle PAs in situations like this. (You can hear a little bit of the captain's announcement in the above video). Some companies give you a script, but the nature of emergencies is that they don't always suit the script. This captain emphasized that the crew train for this, and then I think he tried to throw in a bit of humour by saying, "in the simulator." He sounds calm, and I hope that calmed people down. Passengers tend to think they're all going to die whenever anything happens. The problem with reassuring people is that they always think you're lying to them, or at least that there's a reasonable chance of whatever you are saying won't happen, happening. My approach is to be honest, but a little bit vague about the problem and then distract them from worrying about imminent death by reassuring them that we will find them another airplane, and make sure they get to their destination. They can then worry about missed connections and lost baggage, which is not life threatening and returns them to the comfort of the habitual concerns of the air traveller.

This could have been worse if the containment failure had been on the left side of the cowling, (or the right side of an engine on the left of the airplane) because debris could have damaged the other engine or penetrated the cabin. Components leaving a turbine engine have a lot of energy. Those things rotate at over 10000 rpm.

LiveATC recording of the event from the perspective of the radio communications is available buried in this file. The Qantas pilots report their difficulties 18:20 into the recording. Eric M. has edited it down to the eighteen minutes directly concerned with the incident flight but you can only hear that version if you register (for free) at LiveATC.net. There's some confusion on the part of ATC, as Australia and the US seem to have different standards for the information an aircraft with an emergency must convey. Although the Qantas crew do deny they have an emergency. That means they don't believe they need any kind of priority to ensure safety.

An interesting detail about of the B747 is that it is equipped with a hardpoint for carrying a spare engine. Not connected up to fuel and power, just sitting there ready to be installed, like a spare tire on the back of your SUV. They don't carry one around all the time because they add a lot of drag and are very rarely needed. It's just a provision for transporting them. Another Qantas B747 will bring a spare in today for the one on the ground at SFO.

That's today's blog entry early, although I'll edit it to make it look like it appeared at 00Z as usual. Tomorrow's will be at the usual time.

Visual Lookout

Depending on how closely you follow NASCAR and/or the EAA Airventure (a.k.a "Oshkosh") you may know that NASCAR owner Jack Roush crashed his Hawker-Beechcraft jet during arrival at the Oshkosh event. The above link is to news coverage after the fact. The NTSB report refers to amateur video of the crash, but I haven't found it posted.

The NTSB report says:

A review of amateur video taken at KOSH showed the accident airplane in a left base turn to final for runway 18R. The airplane appeared to overshoot the runway centerline during this turn and then level its wings momentarily before entering a slight right bank simultaneously as the nose of the airplane pitched up. The airplane then turned left toward the runway centerline and began a descent. During this descent the airplane’s pitch appeared to increase until the airplane entered a right bank and struck the grass area west of the runway in a nose down, right wing low attitude.

The above, eyewitness accounts on the news, and the following description of the situation from Mark Martin (Roush's friend, former driver for Roush's team, and a pilot) suggest that he was distracted by traffic and slowed the airplane too much while manoevering for the field.

Jack got in a situation where he thought, "How am I going to get out of this without hitting somebody?" Because of all the things that were going on, which is exactly what I thought would happen, because, you know, he's in a jet and there are some very small aircraft at different speeds and those kinds of things, and he just got in a situation where he was uncertain about how he was going to make it all work, got slow and tried to get slowed down and got a little too slow and whatever.

"Stall speed," the lowest possible flying speed for an airplane, increases with bank angle, so a wing that is flying straight and level may stall as soon as the airplane banks, without a reduction in speed.

Oshkosh is an incredibly busy piece of airspace during airshow week, and they do crazy things to accommodate the rate of landing aircraft. Oshkosh arrival procedures are set up for aircraft of different speeds. Pilots choose either the 90 knot stream or the 135 knot stream, but are encouraged to fly at 90 kts if they can. The way they are handled and the spacing they are required to maintain means that Roush shouldn't have been forced to tuck in behind someone in a Cessna on final approach at 55 knots. The NTSB video analysis and eyewitnesses don't mention conflicting traffic. The standard VFR arrival is a right base for a combined final to 18L/18R, with the air traffic controllers directing aircraft left and right. On the left base arrival he was supposed to turn left base directly towards the blue dot, partway down the runway. If he was late on that turn he could have put himself into conflict with arriving slower traffic. We do know his final turn was late so he was slightly past the final approach course where he was supposed to be, right of the centreline on runway 18R, further from traffic on 18L, and towards a shaded "do not fly" zone over airshow guests. I wonder if another aircraft was arriving on a right base for a different touchdown spot for 18R and that was an issue. My internet connection here isn't good enough to download the full NOTAM pdf, or to find some stall speed numbers on the airplane he was flying. The runway "18R" on which he was cleared to land is normally just 18, and runway "18L" is a taxiway the rest of the year. Amusingly the media are calling it "runway 1836" perhaps after NOTAMs or airport signs that would call the piece of pavement "runway 18-36" after its two ends.

Another source, which I don't recommend you click because it is making my computer screen flash--I think it's trying to load pop-ups--states that Mr. Roush was initiating a go around right before the crash. I think that may be just because he went to full power in an attempt to recover from the stall. Mr. Roush doesn't mention that in his description, "Basically a landing accident, based on a conflict in airspace with another airplane, after I'd been given clearance to land."

I assume he was flying with the 135 knot contingent, and not the 90 knot aircraft. I wouldn't try to do an arrival at 90 kts in my bird. It's theoretically possible, but not safe.

The article that caught my attention was this one, with a pull quote from Roush claiming that there is no FAA restriction on private pilots with monocular vision, "except maybe airline pilots." I believe one-eyed US pilots do have to demonstrate ability to compensate, but after that, they can become airline pilots.

ICAO medical standards require binocular vision, but "flexibility based on national experience may be applied," so Canada makes an exception for the licensing of monocular vision private pilots, and on a case-by-case basis, sometimes with restrictions for commercial pilots who lose vision in one eye.

This is Roush's second airplane crash. His first was a crash of an experimental homebuilt into a lake, an accident which the NTSB attributed to "the pilot's decision to fly at low altitude and his improper visual lookout resulting in an in-flight collision static with wires."

He had two car crashes as a racing driver, too. I could say he just lives fast and takes risks, but overshooting the runway centreline when he was already slowed to below his normal approach speed suggests that he didn't have exceptional control of the airplane. Considering the quantity of recording equipment and witnesses involved, there's lots to work with to determine what happened. I'll be interested to see the full report when the NTSB completes their investigation.

Local News

Welcome to a Cockpit Conversation recurring feature: "Aviatrix mocks your town by reading your local newspaper." Today we look at the Regina Leader- Post. I'm not actually in Regina, but, as two readers promptly figured out when I asked, in Estevan, Saskatchewan. This is the complimentary newspaper at the hotel.

Front page news here relates the intriguing tale that "Members of several religions took part [...] to celebrate Good Friday and Easter in Regina." Shouldn't that be "to celebrate Passover, Easter, Songkran, the Feast of Ridvan and the coming of spring?" I suspect that the 'multiple religions' involved in this ceremony were all flavours of the same one. The directory of religious services inside the paper supports that theory: there are forty churches listed under fifteen categories, but every one is Christian. But just when I think I have this community pegged, I see the leftover space on the same page is filled by an open-minded article on Buddhism. Perhaps the multifaith celebrations of other spring festivals were held on other days. The other front page story involves one politician giving another the finger.

Inside the paper we focus mainly on arrests, sentencing, and manhunts. One man who received the minimum sentence for possession of child pornography says he downloaded it because he was curious about whether it really existed. Police are looking for someone who cut across a field in the middle of the night, leaving tire ruts, and for a guy with lots of tattoos who has violated his parole curfew. I wonder if the latter has a tractor. A police spokesman said, regarding other incidents, "There's lots of collisions ... and the people who die, we don't really know what's in their heads." The paper also notes that, "Police say Thursday night and Friday morning were extremely busy, with domestic disputes, fights, and alcohol-fulled incidents." There's a photo of a man in a baseball cap riding his bicycle by sitting backwards on the handlebars and pedalling. He says he was hit by a vehicle once and rides this way to keep an eye on oncoming traffic. I suspect his cycling is alcohol- fuelled, and that if he has a domestic partner, they have had disputes about the wisdom of riding this way.

Last week's paper had a surprising number of reports of unidentified dead bodies. I think all the people that get lost or murdered over the winter here turn up in the same week of spring.

The most interesting news is a wire story on a Canadian named Julia Gaffield who found the Haïtian declaration of independence. No it wasn't lost in the earthquake. It seems that when they originally declared it, they printed up a whole bunch of copies and handed them all out, forgetting to keep one in a safe place. Eventually, as with most ephemera, everyone who had had one had moved or spring cleaned enough times that no one was known to have one anymore. They knew what it says, as they had lots of handwritten copies, just not the original item. Julia found it in the British Library because someone had sent a copy to someone important enough to have had his correspondence archived. Nice timing, and I hope it inspires Haïti during its rebuilding.

There's sports (ice skating, curling, bowling, running, baseball. lacrosse, and hockey, of course), movies (3D everything), homes ($250-600k), and classifieds. The announcements sections has four birthdays, a birth, a graduation, an anniversary and a congratulations to the girl who scored the most points in the playoffs, helping her team win the SFMHL hockey championships.

My favourite part was this cartoon, mostly because I looked at the picture, thought "okay, airliner" and then looked for the joke in the caption, before realizing that the picture is the joke, and the name of the airliner just echoes it.

Oh and the AME at the FBO calls to confirm receipt of the airplane and the work order, and to ask if I happened to notice if the NDB antenna was standing when I arrived. Apparently it blew down. So I guess it was windy enough to be worth tying down the plane.

Also, not local, but way too bizarre not to post, is this story of two eagles crashing into a snowbank while engaged in an aerial mating dance. The male was killed and the female may have a head injury and permanent ligament damage. These birds need to practise safer sex.

Iceland: Not Just Ice

I wasn't going to say anything about the volcanic activity in Iceland shutting down aviation across northern Europe, because I didn't think I'd have anything to add to the news coverage. But then CTV had a piece on it, including an interview with a former airline pilot in which they asked him why volcanic ash was such a threat to airplanes. His answer was that it forms very large clouds that don't show up on radar. That's true, but he never got to the nitty gritty of why, the literal nitty gritty, or at least gritty. Volcanic ash does not vanish to powdery nothing on your fingertips like wood ash: it consists of very hard, sharp particles of well-tempered glass. It flames out jet engines as its volume disrupts the airflow, damages the first stage from the inside by etching and abrading the perfectly machined moving parts, and then the glass can melt again inside the combustion stage of the engine and then re-congeal. Where it doesn't melt, it can mix with atmospheric moisture into a concrete-like slurry. The ash cloud also opacifies windscreens and inundates all moving parts, effectively sandblasting them.

Then the reporter set him up perfectly by asking, "Are you saying at an enormous 747 with four big engines could fly into ash and have all four engines snuff out?" By naming that specific type I suspect that the reporter had done some research and wanted the reveal of this flight or this one to be made by an actual airline pilot.

But instead of saying, "It has happened," the pilot said "it would never happen in practice," and went on to describe the satellite imagery and communications that steer aircraft free of ash clouds. I'm sure he knew about the BA flight, and was acting on the side of not panicking people and giving modern information. Technically the ash only shut down three engines on flight 9, as one of the engines had already been shut down as a precaution. That was in what saved them, because the engine that had not been running during the ash encounter was able to restart.

Oh and here's a brilliant piece of ignorance from a commenter on a CNN article. (Sorry I don't have the link, someone forwarded the text to me).

The ash cloud has stopped fights because of the danger of it stopping the aircraft engines? Another blatant lie. How were those aerial photos and videos taken? Those aircraft were far closer to the ash plume than commercial craft would fly. Why didn't their engines stop?

Perhaps the airlines sold this little falsehood because the real problem is that the ash would cause extra wear in some engines and they don;t want the expense of more maintenance. As always, the news media eagerly repeats any "official" story without thinking, "Can this be true?" Follow along now sheeple, nothing to see here. You there! Stop that thinking right now!

That person probably thinks airplanes fly just fine underwater, because he's seen lots of aerial shots of oceans and lakes. Just to be clear, that's from a member of the public in an online comments section, not a paid member of the media. But hey, at least he's not believing everything he's told.

Here's a geekmade tool showing the skies over Britain clearing of aircraft after the warning came out, the largest airspace closure since September 2001. There's an upside, though, according to this infographic on CO2 emissions.

I've never had a volcanic ash encounter, nor had to cancel a flight for ash. I have seen volcanoes and wow. The Earth itself can wreak havoc. Maybe there will be fish to eat in the future after all. Fish that breathe fire!

Not Just the Bush

A captain and first officer for Pakistan International Airlines have been given notice and face an enquiry for following internatial law and their own airline's regulations regarding duty rest. According to the online version of The Nation linked above, Captain Murad Arbab and First Officer S Jamala operated a ten hour flight from Islambad to Manchester. On arrival, they were told to fly as passengers on a noon British Airways flight to London, and then pilot a flight from London to Karachi.

At that point, their own company's air safety manual mandated a 20 hour rest period before their next duty, and the BA flight was only 16 hours away, plus, if I'm reading the article correctly, reporting in time for the connecting flight and then operating the Karachi flight would put them over their legal duty day, not even counting the insufficient rest. They refused the assignment.

The article says that "management is bent upon making these pilots an example for others so that the safety violations are not pointed out."

While a 20 hour mandated rest seems long to me, that was what was prescribed in the company's safety manual and the pilots must, no matter what their dispatcher says, abide by it. I wish I could say that a company that chastises pilots for following the law and the company's own regulations was unheard of, but I've been there. We landed in the early am, told the dispatcher we were dutied out until ten the next morning and went to bed. There were two calls the next day before ten am. One was from dispatch asking us to do another flight that was not within our duty day and the other was from the chief pilot, giving hell for refusing a revenue flight. Both calls, being an interruption of the mandated rest period effectively reset our duty day start eight hours. I was acting captain on the flight but the other crew member a) was the one in a house that had a phone and b) had seniority, so he got the calls. When I found out about the browbeating, I wanted to call that chief pilot back and let it be known that as pilot-in-command I had logged and signed the duty time on the flight and said when we were again fit for duty, and anyone who had a problem with it should call me. I didn't, because I knew it would just bring more wrath upon the other pilot, for not keeping the new hire in line.

No, I wasn't there long.

That's not the way it's supposed to work. I chatted with an Air Canada captain whose entire flying schedule, of flights he had bid on and wanted to make, was messed up because a few minutes after parking at the gate, he released and reset the parking brake. I can't remember why. The onboard computers automatically recorded him parked the second time he set that brakes, which added those few minutes to his duty day, and set off a chain reaction through his whole schedule. That's how seriously a real national airline takes duty days.

But what do you do when your national airline is acting like a ma and pa bush operation? You complain to your union, like the Pakistani crew did (man, a union would have been nice in the bush), and hope that the airline backs down in the face of international scrutiny. So now the few hundred people that read this blog every day, know that PIA doesn't follow its own rules but that pilots Arbab and Jamala stand up for their own and their passengers' safety.

Yesterday's News

In order to have something other than the drink menu to read during dinner, I often buy a newspaper at the gas station before I go to a restaurant. Here's it's the Vancouver Sun, published down south and distributed to the whole province. There are only two copies left. And they are of yesterday's paper. That's normal in the north. If there were a large population up here then the paper might be sent electronically and local print run made for distribution here, but there aren't enough people here to warrant that. They print the paper in Vancouver and I initially assumed that they threw a few bundles on a truck going north. It's the "Final Edition" that I buy, so it's not like they rushed the first print run onto a truck. Maybe they gathered up what they hadn't sold by the end of the day yesterday and put it on an overnight truck. We're not considered too important up here.

Today there was no flying so I went to dinner a little earlier. But the store had no papers. "Could you please tell me where else in town I can get a paper?" I asked.

"The airplane doesn't get in until 7:30," she says. "So we'll get them later."

Oh, I'm surprised, they actually fly them in. "I mean Saturday's paper," I clarify. It's Sunday today. That's what she meant, too. It's on it's way here now.

Okay this is just weird. If they are going to fly the paper up, why not load the edition that was printed the same day the airplane leaves Vancouver. It is a morning paper down there. How is it that they put yesterday's paper on the airplane?

Later I go to another store and ask if they have the paper, and see if I can get more information about why the paper isn't even current when it's loaded. They don't have it either. "Sometimes they have too much baggage and they take the papers off," says the vendor. "Then we get them the next day." I had a feeling she could have easily added, "Or the day after."

Okay that I understand. That is the northern experience of waiting for cargo that gets bumped at every station on the way. I think we're the last stop for the airline that comes here. I've heard that even blood products for the hospital take a day to get here. But why do they ship yesterday's paper? Is it like the groceries stores pawning off spoiled produce on their northern pilot customers because they know that by the time the food gets there the customer won't know it didn't rot on the way?

It doesn't really matter that it's yesterday's news. By the time this posts it will be last week's news, or two weeks ago, but the same things will be going on. In international news, Americans, North Koreans, Iranians, Afghanis are all up to something. In Canada the RCMP will be investigating something and some other body will be investigating the RCMP, and politicians will be calling each other names. There's a romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock. And there will be local news from the city. I feel really disconnected reading the things that are important to the southern city, but obviously have no bearing here. For example the government has cancelled a summer camp subsidy program for low income families, and they're interviewing the parents of tearful kids about that. Not that kids don't learn important lessons at summer camp, but I met an ambitious 20 year old up here, who had never been out of Fort Nelson. The place has six streets and nothing for hundreds of kilometres but bugs and trees and bears. I bet her life could use some enrichment. Vancouver has hundreds of parks and museums and festivals, including a lot of things that are free to take your kids to. True, kids these days in Vancouver probably aren't allowed to go more than six streets from home. But. Ah, weird contrast.

I still have yesterday's paper from here. Which is the day before yesterday's paper going by the date, so I do the crosswords from it. And once again I manage to do an entire crossword between asking for the bill and getting it. I'm not that much of a crossword whiz. The service is just that slow.

And my computer is confirmed dead. When I push the power button the "on" light illuminates, the fan starts to run, the hard drive and CD ROM drive lights flash once, then after a few seconds the light stays on but it goes completely quiet. And I checked right away this time: there's no Buns of Steel CD in the drive.

Continuing the theme of 'yesterday's news,' yesterday someone sent me this link to an article on flight delays at JFK caused by turtles. I think they were copulating on the runway, bu the article is too delicate to make that entirely clear.

Icing Inexperience

Spring has well and truly sprung in Canada and I've been off camping, paying no attention at all to my blog account mail. I peeked at it recently and it's full of unread mail from you guys and news alerts on the Colgan accident investigation. (I originally blogged about the Colgan 3407 crashthe night it happened).

The cockpit voice recorder transcript was released last week, and a lot of information about the pilots' lifestyle was released at the hearing. If you're reading about a fatal airplane crash, the only thing you can read that can really be said to be a relief is that the crash was misreported, and everyone is alright. That's obviously not the case here. It's still a little bit of a relief to find out some of what happened, because it collapses the network of all the possible bad things that could happened into the few that actually did.

The first thing that hits me reading this transcript is the stunning inexperience of the crew in comparison with Canadian aviation. The captain says he was hired with 625 hours. That would have been as first officer, but you'd be lucky to get a job on a Navajo or a King Air in Canada with that time. The first officer had sixteen hundred hours at the time of the accident, but much of that was as a flight instructor in Phoenix. There she would rarely have seen a cloud, nor below freezing temperatures. In her own words, in the recording made not quite five minutes before she died ...

"I've never seen icing conditions. I've never deiced. I've never seen any-- I've never experienced any of that. I don't want to experience that and make those kind of calls. You know I'd have freaked out. I'd have like seen this much ice and thought oh my gosh we were going to crash."

So she has no basis beyond company training on which to judge the severity of icing. She's never flown northern routes in the spring to places where the most distinctive landmarks are the crashed remains of airplanes that didn't make it. She is depending on the captains she is flying her now to teach her how to make those judgements. And that's part of being a first officer. She's smart enough to know that, too. When talking about the people hired at the same time as her, she notes that many are agitating for an upgrade but that she "really wouldn't mind going through a winter in the northeast before I have to upgrade to captain."

It sounds as if upgrades happen pretty quickly there, and as if not everyone thinks of their period of time as a first officer as an apprenticeship. I originally looked at the fact that Rebecca Shaw had been with the company through a winter and assumed that meant she had experienced icing conditions in that airplane. But I wasn't thinking about the short routes that Colgan uses the Dash-8 on, and that with a southern base, it's possible to go through a US winter without meeting ice.

The captain you would think had more experience, but he accepted the autopilot setting "I've got you in pitch hold," in icing conditions. Regardless of your experience, one of the things that icing training teaches you so you don't have to find out for yourself is that an ice accumulation that looks exactly like the one the airplane handled fine last week may result in completely different handling today. Very subtle changes can have a huge affect on aircraft stbility and handling. Hand flying allows you to notice how the ice is affecting you, if the airplane is needing more trim or more power to hold the same parameters. You don't want an airplane on pitch hold, holding its own nose up without you realizing what it's having to do to achieve that. In ice, that can lead to a stall. And this airplane stalled fifteen seconds after a cheerfully unconcerned radio exchange with air traffic control.

Not only are they talking to ATC, but they are talking to each other. We're getting a complete career analysis from both pilots right through the flight, interspersed with their clearances and checklists. A reader asked me if he thought that women,stereotypically more chatty, were more likely to disregard the sterile cockpit than men. Anyone who reads my blog can tell that I have a lot of verbiage to dispense. But I know what a sterile cockpit is and what it is for and I STFU when required to. I want to be a professional pilot and it's about more than having your hat on straight. Act like one, sound like one. I don't think this is a male-female issue. The captain is keeping up his end of the conversation. It's company culture. The FO says she's been flying with a lot of captains, some of whom can't finesse the rudder, but none of whom have apparently instructed her or demonstrated to her that one shuts up about ones career below ten thousand feet. It's not a difficult culture to instill because how many times would an FO have to have a a captain point at the altimeter or say, "sterile cockpit please" before she never opens her mouth for non-essential communication below ten thousand?

Other evidence from the hearing shows that pilots paid far too little to live at their bases were living far from their bases were commuting across the country and then sleeping on crew room couches before their duty periods. Ever flown a redeye and then had a nap on a couch in a room where people were coming in and out, having discussions and watching TV? Ready to handle any emergency right? And ready to handle three back to back 16-hour shifts? Yeah, right.

I commute across the continent that, but only once a month, and the company ensures I've had eight hours in a hotel bed before I'm expected to work. Three back-to-back 16 hour duty days is criminal. I'll work three fourteens and I'm beat. There's no way I'd be safe with another two hours on each of those days. I worked back-to-back sixteens like that back when I was seventeen years old. After a few days of that routine, I slept right through my alarm and was late for work. But I didn't get in trouble. The doughnut shop *manager* got in trouble for scheduling me that way. Yes, I was working in a doughnut shop, not flying an airplane. It seems that Canadian doughnuts and coffee are deemed by company upper management to deserve more alert supervision than the controls of a Colgan commuter airline. The FO also seems to have had a cold--she sneezes more than once during the flight and the captain is inquiring about her ability to clear her ears as they descend, even planning the descent profile for her comfort.

A manager at Colgan suggested random audits of the CVR for compliance with sterile cockpit procedures. That's not where professional flying comes from. Train and examine people to the standards you expect. Spot checks? What is this, summer camp? If you have to do spot checks of basic safety proedures, you're hiring the wrong people or training them incorrectly.

Choose Your Own Misadventure

You are the commander of a Boeing 737 passing through 10,000' and setting up for a visual approach. You realize that you have misjudged the wind and your descent profile. You are likely to be too high and fast. You:
a) extend speed brakes
b) fly further out than usual before turning final
c) recheck your calulations
d) nose down and go faster, hoping it will work out

You are still high and fast. You call for flap 15 but the co-pilot does not respond to your request. You:
a) ask him why he did not do as you asked
b) yell at him
c) extend them yourself
d) continue the approach without flaps

You are on final approach and the flaps are set to five degrees extension. The manual calls for at least thirty degrees of flaps for landing, but the manual also calls for a much lower airspeed before extending that much flap. You:
a) try to extend the flaps anyway
b) leave them up and land anyway
c) conduct a missed approach

You believe the flaps are malfunctioning, as you have selected them down but the airplane is not slowing as it usually does. You:
a) continue the approach at high speed
b) check all your power settings and other parameters
c) conduct a missed approach, extend the flaps at altitude and have a crew member go aft to the passenger cabin to confirm the position visually

You encounter windshear on approach to a runway. You:
a) conduct a missed approach in accordance to your company procedures
b) land with minimal flaps at above normal speed
c) continue at whatever speed and configuration you can attain, just to get the airplane on the ground.

You are at the position on the approach where your company manual calls for you to be stabilized. You are so high and so fast that the airplane automated systems think you are crashing. You:
a) attempt to land
b) conduct a missed approach

You are almost a hundred feet above the runway threshhold, well above landing speed and not in landing configuration. The copilot is telling you to conduct a missed approach, and does not confirm landing checks complete. You:
a) attempt to land
b) conduct a missed approach

You touch down over a third of the way down the runway, at well over maximum tire speed. The airplane bounces twice, pulling almost three Gs, and the nose gear collapses while the copilot yells at you to go around. One of the engines comes off its pylon. You:
a) kill 22 people and injure almost everyone else.

Sadly, there is only one choice in the end, and that is the adventure a real life commander chose.

Indonesian pilot Marwoto Komar has been sentenced to two years in jail after being found guilty of criminal negligence for attempting to land a Boeing 737 in the wrong configurations and at almost twice the normal speed. The jet overran the end of the runway into a rice field. Twenty-two people were killed and fifty were seriously injured in the crash and ensuing fire. The Daily Telegraph story here includes a dramatic photo of the post crash fire.

According to the investigation report, the aircraft was already fast through 10,000' on the approach, as they exceeded the crew accepted a straight in visual approach to Yogyakarta but continued on the ILS approach without informing ATC. As long as someone is looking out the window, there's not a lot of difference between a well-flown long straight in visual and an ILS approach, but unfortunately this was neither. The aircraft arrived overhead the initial approach fix high and fast. Not just a little bit high, but at 3927' instead of 2500'. It wouldn't be the first time a crew had cut a few corners and come in too high, but the captain, who was the pilot flying, elected to rectify the situation by lowering the nose into a steep descent. There's an expression in aviation: you can go down or slow down. They had been trying to do both for the whole descent, at one point reaching 293 knots below 10,000', knowing they had a tailwind.

The captain called for more flaps, but the first officer did not extend them because the airspeed was 33 knots over flap extension speed. The captain continued to ask for flap fifteen right through the approach, but the FO never extended them nor gave a reason why he was not doing so. The ground proximity warning system reacted to the configuration, speed and rate of descent by issuing alerts and warnings, which the crew ignored, fifteen times.

They arrived over the beginning of the runway still 89 feet in the air and travelling at 232 kts with flap 5 (as opposed to the manufacturer's recommended 134 kts with flap 40). The aircraft touched down 860 m from the threshhold (more than a third of the way along the runway), bounced twice, then landed again still well over the recommended tire speed. The nosewheel tire burst, sending up sparks as what was left of the gear scraped along the runway. Both thrust reversers were deployed, and presumably the brakes were applied, but with too much speed and too little runway remaining, the overrun was inevitable.

It does not appear that there were any mitigating issues such as approaching weather, critical fuel, or pre-existing emergency.

There are so many issues here. I'll touch responsibility, training, co-pilot assertiveness and the role of the criminal justice sytem in air safety.

The captain never took responsibility for the crash. "Lack of remorse" was even cited as a factor in his sentencing. Compare to Captains Sullenberger and Haynes who saved lives landing airplanes crippled by circumstances beyond their control, but later agonized over what they could have done better. It's almost bizarre how Komar blamed everyone and everything but himself. He attended the trial in uniform, and fully expected to return to work.

He claimed windshear at touchdown. It's a known problem in the area and something a captain with over 13,000 hours of experience should be able to recognize, but there were no other reports of windshear in the area, no indication that it might be present from the detailed winds aloft, and a professional approach marred by windshear is inconsistent with the speed profile recorded throughout the descent.

He claimed that the flaps were faulty and did not extend when selected, but investigation found "no evidence of any defect or malfunction with the aircraft or its systems that could have contributed to the accident." The chief crash investigator, Mardjono Siswosuwarno, said the aircraft's wing flaps failed to extend for landing and that might have been caused by the high speed, but that's not something the captain can blame on the flaps.

The captain also levelled blame at the co-pilot, for not lowering the flaps, and at the poor emergency services. Admittedly the copilot did not clearly refuse the flap extension command by stating "Unable, we're thirty knots high" or whatever his SOP callout was, and the emergency services at the field were poor and contributed to the death toll, but none of that excuses the captain's actions.

The PIC said that he was unaware of the actual airspeed and expected that the copilot would inform him of any speed concerns, but that doesn't align with the comments he made during the descent, or the knowledge that someone with 3700 hours on the airplane would have to possess. The copilot called for a go around before and after touchdown, and the captain did not respond. It has been suggested, (but the captain has denied) that a company incentive to save fuel led to the decision to continue the unstable approach.

Poor training probably contributes to the decisions the crew made. For example, training records showed that the pilots had attended an "introductory" GPWS course with no evidence of related sim training. Non-pilot staff seem to be lacking some basic training in public relations, seeing as they got took their pictures taken, smiling, with the burned out wreckage. But how much training does it take to choose a missed approach at some point in that accident sequence? The copilot doesn't seem to have had sim training in the actions he needed to take in order to take control of the airplane from a captain who has not stabilized the approach. He did try. He said, he had shouted at the captain to go around because "that was the proper procedure ... to ask people to go around with yelling".

And that's tough. You need training, confidence and a company culture that will support taking an airplane away from a captain. This co-pilot stuck up for the captain after the crash. I don't believe that he literally blacked out from the g-forces. I think he needs a story to tell himself to explain why he did not take control and perform the missed approach. It reminds me of Michael Origel, the co-pilot of American Airlines flight 1420 that overran the runway in Little Rock Arkansas during a landing in a thunderstorm. Origel insists that he called for a go around, despite the fact that experts can find no trace of it on the CVR. I believe him. The voice in his head screaming that this was not right was so loud that he can't believe the captain and the recording microphone didn't pick it up. Has there ever been an accident in which a copilot's loud demands that a captain go-around were cited as a cause or contributing factor? Ever hear of a copilot fired for asking a captain to go around? I can name names, hell I have a pocket in my formal coat containing funeral programmes that name names of people who might be alive today had they demanded a go around.

But considering all the things that people did or didn't do, should or shouldn't have known to do, was a criminal act committed? They broke company policy in the lack of a stabilized approach, but I don't know that they broke air regulations. Could the possibility of the CVR being introduced as testimony in court cause pilots not to admit errors in flight?

It is very uncommon for a pilot to be charged with a crime in connection with a crash. It's a somewhat disturbing precedent when you're a pilot. We're usually assumed to be doing what we believe is best for the flight, in defense our own necks, and air law gives us a lot of latitude to do things that would otherwise be against the rules to defend our safety. Any misjudgements we make already force us to face possible injury or death and then we have to defend them to our own conscience, our boss, and the aviation regulatory authority. Do we need to add the civil justice system?

The decisions the captain made during this flight seem reckless. I think his conviction is closer to the correct outcome than having the manufacturer sued for the flaps failing to deploy at excessibe speeds, but I'm not convinced that the justice system should have a role here.

Diversion

This Air Canada incident involving a celebrity wouldn't have even caught my attention but for a peculiar contradiction. The airline insists that the scheduled flight from Heathrow to Toronto was diverted to St. John's, Newfoundland for a medical emergency. But the linked report implies that the only passenger disembarked was an intoxicated woman who was taken by police, not ambulance, and charged with a number of things, including endangering safety of an aircraft.

I'm not certain I've ever heard of Coleen Walsh, but apparently she hosted for radio and TV including CBC in Toronto, and was released on $2500 bail.

Although the Aviation Herald article refers to Ms. Walsh as "the ill passenger" I suspect they have incorrectly inferred that and that in fact Air Canada did divert for a medical emergency and simply have released no information on its nature. This is supported by the fact that Aviation Herald articles normally give no information on the nature of the medical emergency in such diversions and that the police were called 30 minutes after landing. If an airplane needs emergency services, ATC will make the necessary calls to have them meet the plane as soon as they arrive. It looks like the A330-300 diverted for medical reasons, was met by an ambulance for the actual ill passenger and then when Ms. Walsh proved to be unready for their subsequent departure, the crew called police.

The Star article almost makes it look as if Air Canada is trying to cover for her, "No, no, she wasn't sick, she was drunk!" but I'm sure it's just an error in the writing. That just goes to show how easy it is to have the facts:
1. airplane diverted for medical emergency
2. intoxicated person arrested
and just by sewing them together into a paragraph make the article say something else. I'm sure I do it all the time.

A later article in the same newspaper gives Ms. Walsh's side of the story. She apparently offered her first aid skills in relation to the medical emergency and when she was rejected because they wanted an actual doctor, she persisted, and pushed another passenger who told her to shut up. When asked to leave the airplane she complied, but became enraged when she realized that she was being taken into police custody. She cites an alcohol reaction with sleeping pills and a missed dose of other medication as contributing to her overreaction.

Unauthorized Landing?

Interesting story. Pilot lands on roof of shopping mall and someone is injured, while regulatory authority says he shouldn't have landed there. But I'm sure it's not the whole story.

Who wouldn't like to have a helicopter and just be able to fly everywhere and land on the roof, avoiding the traffic, the usual parking problems and the hoi polloi? The Jetsons flew everywhere, why shouldn't you?

As this story takes place in Ireland, their air law applies, so I can't comment specifically on the regulations regarding landing on the roofs of shopping malls. If the story took place exactly the way the pilot said it did, then he knew the shopping mall owner, had general permission from him, and called ahead to make sure he still had permission on that particular day. That's a tough call. I know I've landed on private strips. I call the corporation or group that operates the airport and keep asking to be transferred to someone with authority to grant me landing permission until someone steps up. I thank them, write down their name and go land. I have no way of knowing whether the person was on a power trip or really had that authority. I never considered that it could turn into a run in with Transport Canada or the FAA. Perhaps in future I will ask for faxed permission. Even then, what if it's a fax from a bored guy in the mail room? Who does have the authority? Do you have permission to let someone park in the employee parking lot where you work? Does a security guard have authority to overturn your granting of permission? Does he or she run in front of vehicles to wave them off while parking?

The pilot's account has the attendant only coming onto the roof after landing, while the attendant says he was "ignored" when he tried to wave the helicopter away. There's an easy way to rectify the two accounts. On the first pass, while the attendant was inside, the pilot verified that the landing are was clear, and then approached for landing. While the pilot was maneuvering to land, the attendant, inexperienced in the marshalling of aircraft, came onto the roof and waved at the helicopter from a position where he was not visible to the pilot. He fled the roof, and the pilot only saw him after landing. It was still the pilot's responsibility to ensure that the area was clear, but when people you don't know are present run into your blind spot during final approach you have done all you can.

The pilot's story gets a little fishy when he says he lost his logbook. It does happen, but nice coincidence. And what about the 'subsequent accident?' He also should have (assuming Irish law resembles Canadian in this respect) reported an injury caused by rotor downwash, but I can imagine the conversation.

"Hey! You can't land here!"

"I have permission from the owner."

"No, you can't land here, I told you, and you made the door slam and hurt my hand."

I'm thinking that if the attendant was so unlucky as to catch his hand in a slamming door such that fingers were partially severed or skin was cut through to tendons and bone the conversation would have been more along the lines of "Oh my God, call 999!" Without blood and/or severed appendages is "You hurt my hand" along the lines of "ouch that hurt" or "I require medical attention"? From someone who is angry at you in the first place, you wouldn't be out of line to assume that the hurt is more along the lines of aggrieved than medically afflicted.

On the other hand the pilot may be a complete asshole who saw the guy, deliberately angled rotor wash to scare him off and ignored his cries for help as he sashayed off to get his new keys cut. I have no way of knowing which scenario applies. In any event if he has the cash to go to the mall in his own helicopter, he probably bought the appropriate legal counsel to fly out of this situation, licence intact.

The Last Reason for Roman Numerals

That would be Super Bowl XLIII. It's like the seventh game of the Stanley Cup final, for American football. I have to admit I've never watched an American football game before. But indications are that the Super Bowl isn't so much about the football as about the marketing and the hype. And seeing as I'm in the USA, the commercials would be the "real" $5-million Super Bowl commercials. (In Canada they are replaced by ordinary commercials, marketing to Canadians). Plus it won't hurt to know enough about the game to have something to talk to my customers about. Guys apparently have to watch a certain amount of football in order to maintain testicular size, and my customers are all guys.

I only saw a few commercials. I stop watching by habit when the commercials came on, and kept forgetting that I was supposed to be checking them out. What did I learn? Some beer makes it summer wherever you drink it. Some beer is more watery (they call it drinkability) than other beer. Other beer (or possibly the same beer) has nice talking horses. Trucks with aluminum transmissions can drive uphill through fiery tunnels (actual demonstration). Drive recklessly enough and maybe the mouth will fall off the woman who is nagging you to slow down. (I'm hoping that one wasn't a beer or a car commercial). If roadies flew aircraft the runway lights would explode during take-off. (I think that one was an ad for a telephone or an internet provider). Pepsi is now teaching the world to sing. I was completely baffled what one ad was for, and then visited the site. Headsnap! It's a "discreet dating service for married people." A domain reseller (which coincidentally my employer uses) will enhance your assets, or possibly cause women to flash their tits at you. There will be a special edition of The Office on later. Thank you for watching and congratulations to the winning team.

I didn't perceive a level far above regular commercials. The money is in the audience not the production. I suppose the boob flashing was a wink to the halftime "wardrobe malfunction" of a few years ago. I'm guessing the broadcasting standards haven't changed in XLIII years? Considering the audience, a topless halftime show ought to be a hit. I guess it's too early in the evening to show skin on network TV. But if they can digitally put markings and advertisements on the field, they can digitally put bikinis on the performers. I can't see anyone in the target audience being really offended, and I bet more people would watch.

It's too bad the athletes have to be so heavily padded so you can't see the shape of their bodies. I understand it's to prevent injury on the field, but how about if they take off their helmets and shirts at the end of the game. All that time in the weight room just for hitting each other and running around? C'mon, show some muscles. I think I like sports where everyone wears spandex better. Yes, that's right, she watches one football game and she's going to tell you how it should be done.

Except I tuned in to watch a cultural event, and a football game broke out. You don't need to know anything about a game to realize that when there's two minutes left and the score is really close, and the ball is right on the edge of where the team that is behind needs to put it to get ahead, it's exciting. The yellow team guy threw the ball and another yellow team guy caught it, and the red team guys jumped on him. And then they did it again but this time the yellow team guy ran a longer way and caught the ball before the red team guys jumped on him. (But not nearly as far as the guy who earlier ran all the way from one end of the field to the other without getting knocked down). Next they threw the ball to a yellow team guy who was in the goal area, but he missed it, but being American football they got a fourth try, and this time the guy caught it. He then got knocked out of bounds, but apparently that was alright. The red team guys got a try at throwing the ball then, but there were only about 30 seconds left and someone caught it wrong or something and they did not get any more goals so the yellow team won. It was very exciting, I assure you.

A behind-the-scenes quirk that amuses me, but that veteran Super Bowl watchers probably know, goes back to the theme of people without shirts on. In anticipation of one of the teams winning, the marketing people print up gazillions of shirts and other merchandise proclaiming each team the champions. As soon as they find out which team is the loser, they deliver all the correct merchandise to where it can be sold to fans, and then send all the stuff with the wrong team declared the champion off to destitute people in refugee camps and disaster zones, where they care even less than I do who won the game, but presumably can clothe a family of five with a couple of 3XL football shirts, a baseball cap and a foam #1 finger. I'm not certain the foam fingers go to the third world, but the hats and ball caps do.

Go team! And they're getting bigger already, I can tell. See?

For television coverage of a different event, you can see the 60 Minutes interview with Captain Sullenberger and his crew online.

Safety Is Not a Miracle

A few days ago, a US Airways A320 airplane took off from La Guardia, New York and flew through what is suspected to have been a gaggle of geese. Airplane engines are designed to withstand ingestion of small birds, but that is no guarantee. A jet engine requires a precise flow of air controlled by multiple banks of meticulously shaped fanblades, and when those blades are mangled and clogged by the impact of flesh and bones, it is quite possible for the resulting cascade of shrapnel to overwhelm the engine. Or engines, as appears to be the case, the pilot having radioed the control tower about a "double bird strike."

As everyone in the television-watching or newspaper-reading world is aware, the captain ditched the airplane in the Hudson River and all passengers were quickly evacuated before the fuselage submerged, with no loss of life. And then, having interviewed everyone available and panned around everyone's cellphone photographs, for lack of anything else to say about it, the networks and headline writers started calling it 'a miracle,' and making me yell at the TV. Don't get me wrong: this landing wasn't a routine occurrence. It's a stunning, inspiring event. It's good that no one died. It's also good that no one died on the hundreds of flights US Airways conducted that day without incident. But I think it's somewhat insulting to attribute any of that safe flying to divine intervention.

People set standards for training, materials and procedures and people designed and built and maintained that airplane while other people trained and practiced and did their jobs well. Standard operating procedures are a system of a thousand things that are done every day, in a particular way, even when they are annoying, or boring or time-consuming. Pilots practise the required procedures for engine failure after takeoff. We practise in simulators and/or during training sessions in the actual aircraft at altitude, depending on the aircraft and the company. We recite the procedures aloud in our pre-takeoff briefings and practise them in our heads. I suspect that many pilots who regularly fly out of La Guardia have mentally ditched in the Hudson River many times. It appears to be the best clear path for an aircraft that can manage neither to return to La Guardia nor make the runway at Teterboro.

I don't know how many times I've heard people mock the water landing page on the folding safety briefing card, disbelieving that a commercial airliner could be landed on water and sit there floating like the picture. Up to now I've been citing the B727 B707 that landed on Lake Victoria by accident. In that case the airplane touched down with gear extended, because the airplane was too low on the glideslope for the intended airport. The gear sheared off, the engines on the wings sheared off--as they are designed to do--and the airplane came to rest right side up and floated until the next morning. I understand that the engines sheared off the A320 too: the last I read they were still looking for them in the river, in order to investigate the accident and get the DNA of the guilty birds.

Dave estimates that not more than a dozen line pilots could have kept their cool and landed an airplane on the river that well. I shouldn't question his experience, but every line pilot knows the drilled emergency procedures and has practice every-single-flight in touching down perfectly straight, wings level at the prescribed speed, every single time. Given that place and time and the placid river, I think many could have done it. I don't envy Sullenberger the chance to try, though. A lot of things had to go right for that to work as it did.

The incident inspires me to greater professionalism, to know my emergency procedures more fluently, to mentally practise what could go wrong everywhere I work, to make every routine landing as perfect as possible and to ensure my passengers are thoroughly briefed and understand the importance of following them. I'm sure more passengers will pay attention to the safety instructions before departure now, enough that I need a at-shirt now, saying "I paid attention to the passenger briefing before it was cool.

Curiously, it seems that most people exited onto the wings in this case, but the United Airlines A320 safety briefing (I couldn't find one for US Airways) advises passengers not to use the overwing exits in the case of a water landing. I would expect the instructions to come from Airbus and that US Airways would give similar directions, but then not all the passengers obeyed the instructions that were given. One article mentions a woman who tried to retrieve her cabin baggage from the overhead bin. When told to leave it she insisted that she needed her stuff. A man interviewed on CNN was proud of trying to evacuate "women and children first," but I'm suspecting that in the confined space of an airplane cabin any kind of precedence wasted time needed to get everyone off the airplane. Likewise at least one evacuated passenger re-entered the aircraft from the wing in order to reach a different raft. Puzzlingly, this article states that the captain refused a lifejacket, as though it was somehow a heroic gesture. What the hell? I find it hard to believe that that refused a basic safety device in order to look bold and captainly on the news. I understand that he was searching the cabin to make sure there was no one left behind, and possibly anticipated having to dive down to escape if the airplane changed orientation while it sank, but why not wear the thing as an example, and just not inflate it.

There have been two air incidents in the last month, both engine failures at take-off, that could have been tragedies but had one hundred per cent survival. The system is working, but investigators will still comb the wreckage for ways to improve procedures, facilities and aircraft in order to increase safety for future flights.