All Ops & safety articles – Page 1346
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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 ...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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Ansett A330-200 order decision imminent
Max Kingsley-Jones/London Ansett Australia says that it will decide by the end of the year whether to become the Australasian launch customer for the Airbus Industrie A330-200, which would see it placing orders for up to 14 aircraft for delivery starting in mid-1998. According to the ...
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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 ...
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The long march
China faces a massive bill upgrading ATC leverage. It is now looking to CNS/ATM to provide a more affordable solution. Paul Lewis/SINGAPORE China represents one of the fastest-growing air-transport markets in the world and, given the country's large, rapidly prospering, population, it has the potential ...
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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%. ...
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Fuel-surcharge fears increase
Concern is growing, that airlines may soon be forced to start imposing a fuel surcharge on ticket prices, to offset the damage being done by soaring world oil prices. Over the past few months, crude oil prices have been running at their highest levels since the Gulf crisis ...
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SIA's results disappoint
Financial analysts have begun to revise down their year-end profit forecasts for Singapore Airlines (SIA), in the face of weak first-half results which showed the impact of rising fuel prices, declining yields and the strength of the local Singapore dollar. The carrier's operating profit for the first six ...
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Swissair threatens to pull out of Sabena deal
Herman de Wulf/BRUSSELS Swissair has warned that it is prepared to pull out of its investment in strike-hit Sabena if it does not meet the cost-cutting targets being set for the loss-making Belgian carrier. Swissair confirms, however, that it is pressing ahead with a joint fleet-renewal programme to ...
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US Safety Board examines TWA fuel probes
INVESTIGATORS SAY that two fuel probes recovered from the site of the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 show no signs of electrical arcing which could have caused the centre fuel-tank explosion which brought down the Boeing 747-100 on 17 July, killing 230 people. One of the ...
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IATA attacks US DoT on passenger liability
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is again at loggerheads with the US Department of Transportation (DoT) over the issue of passenger-liability limits, describing new US proposals as "unlawful and unwise". IATA appeared to have reached a truce with the DoT in mid-year when it produced a new ...
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Anonymity is important
Sir - The leader "No-gain pain" (Flight International, 16-22 October) made interesting reading. Protecting the identities of those accused under confidential-reporting systems is important. Not all systems protect the identity of the accused. I attended a tribunal in Sydney, Australia, where a pilot had been trying to get ...
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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, ...
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Japanese airlines report mixed results
A combination of higher fuel charges, a weaker yen and increased passenger traffic have produced mixed financial results for Japan's three largest airlines for the first six months of their latest financial years. Net profits slumped by more than 71% at Japan Airlines (JAL), to nearly ´2.7 billion ...