All Safety News – Page 1415
-
News
Report slams world pilot standards
David Learmount/LONDON A damning indictment of pilot training standards in the world's air-transport industry is revealed in the official accident report on the fatal 6 February Birgenair Boeing 757 accident near Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. The investigators say that basic internationally accepted requirements for pilot-training standards have fallen ...
-
News
Fairchild Dornier nears engine selection on 328 jet
Guy Norris/Palm Springs Fairchild Dornier expects to select a turbofan for its proposed 30-seat 328-300 "later this month", according to vice-president for sales, Andrew Jampoler, and is targeting an entry- into-service date for the new aircraft of late 1998. Engines being considered include General Electric's CFE738, ...
-
News
Volga passengers
The Russian heavyweight cargo specialist Volga-Dnepr Airlines has begun scheduled passenger services between its base in Ulyanovsk and Moscow. The carrier is flying 30-seater Yakovlev Yak-40s on the route, leased from the Ulyanovsk-based regional airline JSC Simbirsk Aero, which ceased flying in September because of debts of over 14 billion ...
-
News
Taped vents probed in Peruvian accident
David Learmount/LONDON The failure by Aero Peru maintenance employees to remove protective adhesive tape placed over an aircraft's pilot/static vents during maintenance may have caused a Boeing 757 to crash on 2 October, says a Peruvian transport ministry statement (Flight International, 9-15 October). Tape covering static ...
-
News
Reverser suspected in TAM Fokker crash
Pilot exclamations on the cockpit voice recorder of the crashed TAM Brazilian Fokker 100 (Flight International, 6-12 November) have led investigators to suspect that the No 2 engine thrust-reverser may have operated in flight, say sources close to the investigation. This is supposed to be impossible, because the thrust-reverser actuators ...
-
News
Canadian future is threatened if cost cuts are not endorsed
Brian Dunn/MONTREAL Canadian Airlines International could be forced out of business by the turn of the year if employees and shareholders fail to endorse a sweeping programme of cost-cutting being proposed by the management, warns president Kevin Benson. The cost cuts, which are planned to add ...
-
News
German buyers thwart IPTN hopes for stake in ASL
Three anonymous German investors have emerged as buyers for the former Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA) maintenance subsidiary Aircraft Services Lemwerder (ASL), ending plans by Indonesia's Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara (IPTN) to take a 25.1% stake. Two local investors from Lower Saxony, where ASL is based, and a third from ...
-
News
Admit it
If anyone in global air-transport still believes that the legal minimum standards for airline pilot training are adequate for today's aircraft and air-traffic enviroment, they would do well to read the official report on the Birgenair Boeing 757 accident (P14). It states that the pilots involved in the accident, although ...
-
News
Acceptable errors
The human-factors element in flight safety is now being taken seriously. David Learmount/WARSAW The world's flight-safety specialists have given up trying to eliminate human error. Now, the aim is to understand error and to control, or "manage" it. This strategy holds the key to improving airline flight ...
-
News
Thomson and Siemens discussions on air-traffic management venture make progress
Talks between Thomson-CSF and Siemens on a joint venture which would create the "biggest air-traffic management [ATM] enterprise in Europe and the second-biggest in the world" are expected to be concluded in "several months", says Siemens. The French and German concerns already have several joint industry programmes and ...
-
News
Langkawi to expand as training school
Langkawi Helicopter Services (LHS) is set to expand following the purchase of 30% of the firm by Amanah Saham Anak Langkawi. Chief executive Mohammad Abdullah says that LHS will set up a helipad and helicopter-training school in Langkawi on land near the airport provided by the Langkawi Development Authority. ...
-
News
Safeguards are needed on reporting
Sir - The leader "No-gain pain" (Flight International, 16-22 October) was interesting reading. It is important to protect the identities of those accused by confidential incident-reporting systems. Most systems make strenuous efforts to protect the identity of accusers, because otherwise the flow of information would dry up. ...
-
News
Airbus completes high-altitude landing tests
Airbus has completed a series of high-altitude landing and engine-out take-off demonstrations at China's Lhasa Airport with an A340. The trials at the 11,700ft (3,600m) Tibetan airport included a take-off with a simulated No 1 engine failure at V1 and climb-out of the Lhasa valley to an altitude ...
-
News
USAir and Emirates boost Airbus
Ramon Lopez/Washington DC and Max Kingsley-Jones/London Airbus Industrie has won two significant orders, securing agreements with USAir for up to 400 single-aisle aircraft and with Emirates for as many as 23 A330-200s. Both deals were won in the face of fierce competition from Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. ...
-
News
Australia accepts AlliedSignal runway monitor
Air Services Australia has accepted the AlliedSignal Aerospace precision runway-monitor (PRM) installed at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport. Sydney is the first airport outside the USA to be equipped with the PRM, an electronically scanned, monopulse, secondary-surveillance radar which, enables simultaneous approaches to multiple parallel runways. The PRM scans ...
-
News
GAO reports on US airline safety
New US airlines suffer higher accident rates than those of established carriers, Congressional investigators say. Start-up carriers during their first five years of operation were also shown to have higher incident- and enforcement-action rates. The US General Accounting Office says that the analysis highlights the need for better ...
-
News
Boeing considers options for fixing 737 rudder units
Guy Norris/SEATTLE Boeing is sifting through the data from worldwide inspections of almost 2,700, 737 rudder power-control units (PCUs) and will make recommendations on possible design changes to the US Federal Aviation Administration by the end of the month. The action follows an alert service-bulletin from ...
-
News
Boeing ups 777-200X weights
Boeing's studies of a heavyweight, very-long-range "-200X" derivative of the standard-body 777 are now focusing on an even heavier maximum take-off-weight design which has a strengthened wing, increased fuel capacity and a new wingtip design. "We're getting feedback from the airlines on these models", says 777 product development ...
-
News
IATA raises five-year passenger forecast
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has raised its five-year growth forecast for international passenger traffic, predicting an average yearly increase of 7.1%, to give an annual total of 522 million passengers in 2000. The organisation's two previous five-year forecasts both envisaged lower annual growth of 6.6%. ...
-
News
Icao slams airlines on safety
David Learmount/WARSAW The International Civil Aviation Organisation's (ICAO) safety chief has hit out at the airline industry, accusing it of having a reactive approach to safety which requires accidents to show operators when they have "-overstepped the boundaries" of acceptable practice. Speaking at the 28-31 October, ...