All Safety News – Page 1425
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Strength and weakness
INTERNATIONALLY ACCEPTED operating standards have long been among the greatest strengths of the airline community, but they are now posing one of its greatest challenges - through the failure of national regulators to keep pace with the increasing complexity of the globalising industry they seek to control. Nowhere can this ...
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UK may delay Swanwick ATC opening
Andrew Doyle/LONDON THE UK CIVIL AVIATION Authority is expected to decide by the end of January whether to delay the planned opening date of its £350 million ($535 million) Swanwick air-traffic-control (ATC) centre which is being built near Southampton by US company Loral. Major software ...
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Running Wild
NASA has now selected the fourth mission in its new Discovery interplanetary space programme. Tim Furniss/WASHINGTON DC IN JANUARY 2006, A SMALL Discovery series spacecraft is scheduled to return to Earth after a journey across interplanetary space. The craft will contain a precious cargo of ...
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FAA changes its mind on 747 conversions
Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC THE US FEDERAL Aviation Administration admits that it has made a mistake in approving modifications by GATX Airlog, which turned ten Boeing 747 passenger aircraft into freighters, and it has proposed an airworthiness directive (AD) severely restricting cargo weights. The FAA is ...
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A little learning is a dangerous thing
Sir - In reply to Mark Aroney's letter (Flight International, 13-19 December, 1995, P43), I am an aviation professional holding flight-crew and engineering licences granted from the different countries in which I have worked. For safety reasons, there is only one common language of communication in aviation, and ...
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Sea change
Japan may be about to wave goodbye to convention as it tackles the problem of airport congestion. Michael Fitzpatrick/TOKYO USER-FRIENDLY is not a term you could use to describe New Tokyo International Airport at Narita. It is a Y21,650 ($210) taxi ride away from Tokyo, ...
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No alternative to BALPA/BA deal
Sir - Ivor Bennett has got the wrong end of the stick in his letter "Inconsistency in BALPA policy" (Flight International, Letters, 22-28 November 1995, P68). The facts are as follows. Early in 1995, British Airways proposed the introduction of "cadet cruise-only" pilots, on to the Boeing 747-400 ...
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Researchers glimpse potential in ceramics
Martin Hindley/LONDON APPLICATIONS FOR lightweight, toughened ceramics could be found, in the jet engines of the future, US researchers claim. Materials scientists at Cornell University in New York have developed a technique for "tempering" ceramics - improving their crack resistance at temperatures of up to ...
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Airlines turn to ultrasonic/ eddy-current wheel testing
METOPTIC International is marketing what it claims to be the world's first system for testing aircraft wheels, which combines the use of eddy currents and ultrasonics. Eddy-current inspection systems are used to detect surface faults on the outer surface of a wheel hub, while more sophisticated ultrasonic ...
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US/UK air-safety bilateral finalised
THE USA AND THE UK have signed a bilateral aviation-safety agreement, which eases the oversight of aircraft and simulator certification, as well as maintenance operations. An agreement with the Netherlands was made in 1995 and the US Federal Aviation Administration is also working with Canada, France and Germany ...
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Airborne chooses 767 freighter
Graham Warwick/ATLANTA US CARGO CARRIER Airborne Express has agreed to acquire 12 used Boeing 767-200s for conversion to freighters, and plans to acquire between ten and 15 additional aircraft for a total investment of $600 million over eight years. The 767s will be the first wide-body aircraft operated ...
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Australian training plan sparks row
AUSTRALIA'S FLYING training industry has condemned an Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) plan for its restructure, calling the regulatory proposals "...over-regulation and an attempt to create more jobs in CASA". The review recommends sweeping increases in minimum experience and training for instructor ratings at all levels, with ...
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Boeing re-asserts its lead in recovering airliner market
Kevin O'Toole/LONDON BOEING RE-ASSERTED its dominance of world airliner markets in 1995, revealing a total of 346 new orders for the year, more than treble the result of either Airbus or McDonnell Douglas (MDC). Ron Woodard, president of Boeing's Commercial Airplane Group, is upbeat about ...
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US airlines 'will make $2 billion'
Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC US SCHEDULED airlines are expected to report net profits of $2 billion for 1995, says the US Air Transport Association (ATA) in its year-end report. The ATA says that long-haul carriers earned $2.2 billion in the first nine months of the year, ...
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Air safety takes a dive
David Learmount/LONDON THE AMERICAN Airlines Boeing 757 crash in Colombia on 20 December contributed to a plunge in world airline-safety figures during the last six months of 1995, following the most promising first half-year period in history. Provisional figures show that there were just over 1,200 deaths in ...
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Airbus pressured to speed up A3XX studies
Julian Moxon/PARIS A STRING OF major airline orders involving the Boeing 747/777 combination is increasing pressure on Airbus Industrie to "accelerate its studies" into a rival programme known as the A3XX. "We can't leave the 747 to dominate the market," says an Airbus source, "so ...
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Eurocontrol invites tenders for POEMS radar
EUROCONTROL, THE European air-traffic management organisation, has issued an invitation to tender for the development of two Pre-Operational Mode S (POEMS) radar ground stations. Manufacturers have been invited to bid for the construction of two new ground stations in France and the UK, with a third station in ...
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American 757 crashes
An American Airlines Boeing 757, which left Miami for Cali, Colombia on 20 December, crashed into mountains at night, killing all but four of the 167 people on board. The aircraft was on its descent into Cali from the north, which requires a step-letdown procedure using VHF-omni-range/distance-measuring-equipment navigation beacons. The ...
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Airlines win battle to delay noise controls
Kevin O'Toole/LONDON THE AIRLINE industry has won a reprieve from the threat of a stringent new set of noise and emission controls, which risked wiping billions of dollars off the value of the world fleet. The immediate threat receded as the Committee on Aviation Environmental ...
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USAir predicts surprise profits for 1995
USAIR CHAIRMAN Seth Schofield says that the carrier's profits performance for 1995 is on course to exceed even the most optimistic of expectations among financial analysts. Speaking at a meeting of analysts in New York, Schofield confirmed that traffic figures have stayed strong throughout the fourth quarter of ...