All Safety News – Page 1461
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BA could use UK unemployed pilots
Sir - It would appear that the British Airline Pilots Association is the lapdog of British Airways, which could not recognise the stick when it was thrown in early 1995. There are still about 1,000 unemployed UK pilots (plus European colleagues), many of whom have the Boeing 737 ...
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Pilot fatigue caused Coventry crash
PILOT FATIGUE, combined with a disregard for a published minimum decision height, caused the fatal 21 December, 1994, Air Algerie Boeing 737-200 freighter crash on the approach to Coventry Airport in the UK, according to the official report. The aircraft had been on a surveillance-radar approach (SRA), ...
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Seizing the initiative
Russia is taking steps to improve air-safety and save its international reputation. Paul Duffy/MOSCOW THE INTERNATIONAL furore, which followed the loss of an Aeroflot Russian International Airlines Airbus A310, en route from Moscow to Hong Kong, in March 1994, proved to be the catalyst, which prompted Russia's ...
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Off target
1995's world airline safety performance shows that targets are not being met. David Learmount/LONDON FIGURES FOR 1995 confirm that numbers for world airline fatal accidents are showing an upward trend. The 1995 fatal-accident total (57) and the number of resulting fatalities (1,215) are significantly above the annual ...
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Dornier pushes for laminar-wing funding
Andrzej Jeziorski/MUNICH DORNIER LUFTFAHRT, the regional-turboprop subsidiary of Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA), is pushing for Government funding to test a laminar-flow wing on the Dornier 328 regional turboprop. The German company says that the project is one of several technology investigations applicable to future regional-turboprop designs, ...
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Burkhart Grob sacks half of its workforce as funding deadlock threatens Strato 2C
Andrzej Jeziorski/MUNICH GERMAN COMPOSITE-aircraft manufacturer Burkhart Grob has sacked half of its employees because of continuing delays in the release of Government funding for the Strato 2C high-altitude research programme. The whole project now faces cancellation. Grob has made 131 of its staff redundant, shattering ...
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Delta used UK slots in disguise
Sir - In reply to the letter "US carriers should think again" (Flight International, 3-9 January, P39), Mr Howard is mistaken in thinking that Delta ever had slots at London Heathrow. What he recalls seeing were McDonnell Douglas DC-8-33s painted in Delta Air Lines' colours, beginning in 1969, which were ...
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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 ...