Avia Global Update-Issue 69 - Feb & Mar 2017
By Vivienne Sandercock
1. Message from the Editor
2. A small matter of knowledge
3. Africa's 2017's Hazards, Incidents, Accidents and Safety Occurrences
4. Emergency Response Planning
5. Henley Global Safety and Quality Training
6. Rwanda - Parliament passes new law to regulate Civil Aviation Authority
7. Helicopter Safety on the Rise as Accidents Decline
8. US helicopter accidents decrease for the third consecutive year
9. Has my Pilot had too much to drink? It depends where you fly
10. Want to be a better learner? How Pilots train to fly a plane
11. Failure to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 leaves many questions unanswered
12. News from the Johannesburg Airports
13. Finale
14. IATA Global Aviation Data Management
1. MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR
The increase in safety by the rotor wing part of our industry is very comforting to those of us involved in Aviation Safety. However, the down side is that MH370 is still missing, so the causal factors for its disappearance are still not apparent. Meaning that we cannot do anything to counteract what we do not know.
There is a Safety Workshop/Forum for SMS Implementation being held on the 30th March - details can be found on the SA CAA website. See you there!
Vivienne
2. A SMALL MATTER OF KNOWLEDGE
SATELLITE TRACKING TO KEEP TABS ON AIRLINERS OVER OCEANS
WASHINGTON -- Nearly three years after a Malaysian airliner vanished, it's still possible, if unlikely, for a plane to disappear. But that's changing with new satellites that will soon allow flights to be tracked in real time over oceans.
New international safety standards also begin to kick-in beginning next year, although the deadline for airlines to meet most of the standards is still four years away. Even then, it could be decades before the changes permeate the entire global airline fleet because some of the requirements apply only to newly manufactured planes.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished from radar on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. An exhaustive search of a remote corner of the southern Indian Ocean has failed to turn up the aircraft's remains, and search efforts were called off this week.
"If the exact same thing happened today, I think we'd have the same result," said William Waldock, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, and former accident investigator. There has been change, but we haven't put anything physical into practice yet," he said. But Atholl Buchan, director of flight operations at the International Air Transport Association, which represents most international carriers, said a repeat of MH370 is "highly unlikely" since many airlines have already increased their efforts to keep tabs on planes over open ocean where they are beyond the reach of land-based radar.
"In a few years, new systems and technology, if adopted universally by (air traffic control providers), will allow for global surveillance coverage," he said.
Among the changes in the works:
• The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, approved a series of new global safety standards last year in response to MH370, including a requirement that airline pilots flying over ocean out of the range of radar report their position by radio every 15 minutes. Previously, they were required to report every 30 minutes. The new requirement kicks in next year, but many airlines have already switched.
• Another new standard requires new planes beginning in 2021 to be able to transmit automatic, minute-by-minute reports on their location if they're in distress. At normal flight speeds, minute-by-minute reports would provide authorities with a search area of a little over 100 square miles. If reports are less frequent, the search area grows much larger.
• However, the requirement doesn't apply to existing planes. Since airliners often have a lifespan of 20 years or more, it could take decades before all airliners meet the new requirement.
• Satellite flight tracking services may solve much of the problem sooner. This week, Aireon, a satellite joint venture, launched the first 10 satellites in what is planned to be a 66-satellite constellation that can track airliners equipped with the latest satellite surveillance technology, known as ADS-B.
• Aireon expects to have all its satellites launched by the first quarter of next year, providing 100 percent coverage of the globe. It will receive signals every one to eight seconds from all equipped planes, regardless of whether the airline subscribes to the service. Not all planes have ADS-B, but Aireon vice president of aviation services, Cyriel Kronenburg, estimated that 90 percent of planes on long-haul routes over the ocean are already equipped.
"Aviation Safety, in all of its guises, is Avia Global and GAAC's' first and only concern and to that end our clients' safety on the ground and in the skies, is our Alpha and Omega."
However, the technology works only if ADS-B is turned on. In the case of MH370, the plane's surveillance technology was inexplicably shut off.
Aircraft "black box" flight data recorders must be equipped with locator beacons that last at least 90 days beginning next year under another standard. The beacon on MH370's black box was required to last only 30 days.
But the beacons are only helpful if searchers already know where to look. Because currents and water temperatures can weaken the signals, searchers usually have to be pretty close to pick them up. --ICAO approved a requirement that new aircraft designs certified after Jan. 1, 2021, have some means for retrieving a plane's flight data recorder, or the information contained in it, before the recorder sinks to the ocean floor. One possibility is a deployable recorder that automatically ejects from a plane upon impact and floats to the surface. But the cost of retrofitting new planes could be prohibitive, and there is a risk that recorder could deploy accidentally.
An alternative is to have planes automatically relay the data via satellite to ground stations, eliminating the need to search for the box. But there are many unanswered questions about security and custody of the information.
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2017/01/19/satellite-tracking-keep-tabs-airliners-oceans
2. AFRICA'S 2017 HAZARDS, INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY OCCURENCES
Source, amongst others, PlaneCrash info.com; News24, Aviation Herald, Flight Safety Information, SACAA
ACCIDENTS INVOLVING FIXED WING AIRCRAFT IN AFRICA DURING 2017
DATE A/C TYPE FATALITIES LOCATION
03 Jan 17 Passenger TBA 1 Jufra Airbase, Libya
05 Jan Cessna Caravan 0 Sasakwa Airstrip, Serengeti, Tanzania
11 Jan Cessna 206 0 Kenilworth, Zimbabwe
29 Jan Falcon 0 Wonderboom, GP, RSA
14 Feb B737-300 0 Nairobi, Kenya
22 Feb Beech Bonanza 0 Stellenbosch, WC, RSA
01 Mar 17 Baron 2 Grand Central Airport, GP, RSA
14 Mar Beech Baron 58 0 Joshua Nkomo Airport, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
18 Mar Cessna 172 0 Potchefstroom Airfield, GP, RSA
20 Mar 17 An26 0 Wau, Sudan
20 Mar 17 Cessna 172 0 Hekpoort, GP, RSA
ACCIDENTS INVOLVING ROTOR WING AIRCRAFT IN AFRICA DURING 2017
22 Jan 17 Mil Helicopter 6 Bogo, North Cameroon
24 Jan Bell 407 3 Central African Park, Central African Republic.
25 Feb 17 RH22 1 Mpande, Eastern Cape, RSA
3 Mar 17 RH44 0 Tutume, Botswana
INCIDENTS AND OCCURRENCES DURING JANUARY & FEBRUARY 2017
DATE A/C TYPE LOCATION OCCURRENCE
01 Jan A300-600 En-Route Ostende, Belgium to Cairo, Egypt A/C climbed above its assigned level FL210 resulting in TCAS with an A320-300. Separation was 300' vertical and 0.74 nm horizontal. Cargo
04 Jan A346 En-route New York, USA to Johannesburg, RSA A/C experienced a flap retraction fault and returned to JFK, New York. COM
05 Jan B737-700 En-route from Maputo to Tete, Mozambique A/C suffered radome structural failure. COM
07 Jan ELA-08 Buena Vista Farm, Eastern Cape, RSA During landing the nose wheel dug into the soft soil and the gyrocopter rolled over PVT
09 Jan A333 Outbound from Cairo, Egypt At 3,500' crew reported gear problems and returned to Cairo COM
16 Jan B744 En-route Amsterdam, Holland to Nairobi, Kenya At FL370 and about 180nm SW of Cairo, Egypt the crew decided to return to Amsterdam due to a loose part on a wing COM
20 Jan Beech F33A Hoedspruit, NW, RSA Undercarriage collapsed on runway TRNG
22 Jan Cessna U206G Limpopo, RSA During take off the pilot could not gain enough speed PVT
28 Jan Bantam B22J Mpumalanga, RSA A/C landed hard and the nose wheel suspension collapsed PVT
29 Jan Falcon 402 Wonderboom, GP, RSA A/C experienced engine power loss. PVT
03 Feb Thunderbird MK II Thabazimbi, Limpopo, RSA A/C rate of climb was not sufficient and it lost power PVT
05 Feb AT72 El Oued, Algeria A/C landed on RWY 13 and came to a stop on its nose gear strut without its nose wheels
13 Feb PA36-200 Settlers, Limpopo, RSA Engine failure during aerial spraying of the farm AG
15 Feb T188C Limpopo, RSA 10 Mins into flight the pilot could not maintain height. AG
17 Feb ERJ170 En-route Aswan to Cairo, Egypt At approx. 100nm North of Aswan the crew decided to divert into Luxor due to a crack in the F/O's windshield COM
18 Feb A342 En-route Cairo, Egypt to shanghai Pudong, China The crew stopped the climb at FL190 and returned to Cairo, Egypt due to a cargo door warning. COM
01 Mar B733 En-route Khartoum, Sudan to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Crew decided to divert into Port Sudan due to a burning odour in the cabin
AERODROME HAZARDS
Entebbe, Uganda
ATC Staff under training
Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo
ATC
Beni, DRC
Runway condition very poor
Juba, Sudan
Poor ATC, heavily congested airfield.
3. EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLANNING
Blake Emergency Services is the International Crisis Management and Contingency Planning and Response Specialist who, although based in the UK, have extensive experience in Africa having handled accidents, incidents, counselling, repatriation, DNA sampling and confirmation, in amongst others Lagos, Nigeria; Fez, Morocco; Pointe Noire, Congo; Moroni, Comores; Maputo, Mozambique and more recently Ukraine, The Netherlands, Indonesia and Mali. Please go to www.blakeemergency.com or contact rethea.mitchell@blakeemergency.com
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer for Blake Emergency Services, please contact Rethea at the address given above.
An Emergency Response Plan is a required section of your SMS and may also be added to your Operations Manual.
Emergency Response, Incident Response, Operations Control and Family Assistance training together with the writing of Emergency Response Plans and Procedures is now offered through Blake Emergency Services. For more information, please contact Rethea on rethea.mitchell@blakeemergency.com
4. HENLEY AVIATION TRAINING
Should you wish to make a booking for any of these courses please contact Candice on +27 (0)72 211 7866 or by email to training@henleyglobal.org.za.
DATES COURSE LECTURER COST EXCL. VAT PER DELEGATE
22 March 2017 CRM - Refresher Verity Wallace R 980-00
22 March 2017 DG - Refresher Verity Wallace R 800-00
27 - 28 March 2017 Quality Assurance Auditor Course Dan Drew R 2,500-00
10 - 11 April 2017 Human Factors Dr. Joel Hughes R 2,500-00
19 April 2017 DG - Refresher Verity Wallace R 800-00
19 April 2017 CRM - Refresher Verity Wallace R 980-00
24 - 25 April 2017 Quality Assurance Auditor Course Dan Drew R 2,500-00
3 May 2017 DG - Refresher Verity Wallace R 800-00
3 May 2017 CRM - Refresher Verity Wallace R 980-00
8 - 12 May 2017 Integrated Safety Officer Course Various R 6,500-00
24 May 2017 CRM - Refresher Verity Wallace R 980-00
24 May 2017 DG - Refresher Verity Wallace R 800-00
22 - 23 May 2017 Human Factors Dr. Joel Hughes R 2,500-00
29 - 30 May 2017 Quality Assurance Auditor Course Dan Drew R 2,500-00
Notes:
Cost per delegate includes all training materials, refreshments and lunch.
Attendees paying in cash on the day are eligible for a 10% discount
Both Recurrent CRM and Dangerous Goods Training Courses are available upon request - even at short notice.
On request we also offer -
Air Cargo Security (Part 108), Health and Safety (Medical) Cargo and Warehouse Security Risk Management & Investigations, First Aid and the Law, NEW - Maintenance Reliability Programme and NEW - Maintenance Management
5. RWANDA: PARLIAMENT PASSES NEW LAW TO REGULATE CIVIL AVIATION AUTHORITY
Legislators in the Lower House have unanimously passed the new law governing Rwanda Civil Aviation Authority (RCAA), which will take away direct provision of aviation services from the agency and leave it with the mandate of being a regulator for the services.
Currently, RCAA operates as a regulator, manager of national airports and provider of air navigation services.
The combination of these activities means that, besides regulating the airport operations and Air Navigation Services (ANS), RCAA is also involved in commercial activities within and around airports in the country. That has to change within the next 12 months after publication of the new law in the Official Gazette. The new law enacted by the MPs yesterday stipulates a deadline by which RCAA will have to transfer its business assets and liabilities to other companies and remain with the sole role of a regulator.
"It's like RCAA had two hats and it has ceded one," said MP Adolphe Bazatoha, the chairperson of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Economy and Trade, which reviewed the law. The Government introduced the changes in order to have a sound legal framework for the aviation industry and allow Rwanda to be a regional hub for the industry, officials said. Emphasising the need to separate the regulator from direct provision of services to clients, the State Minister for Transport, Dr Alexis Nzahabwanimana, told the committee last month that RCAA is currently in charge of giving people services and suing itself in case it harms their interests.
With the new law enacted, the agency will now be there to ensure that those who provide aviation services do it well in line with the right regulations to protect clients. "Sometimes RCAA was both plaintiff and defendant in cases of accidents or any other disasters in the aviation area," Nzahabwanimana said.
This small team of data scientists has made an algorithm that is turning a giant 19 billion dollar industry up-side-down. In line with making RCAA a regulator instead of a service provider, the Government, in October 2015, established a new company to manage the aviation industry activities as a way to simplify the industry operations and make it more vibrant and competitive.
The company, Aviation, Travel and Logistics Ltd (ATL Ltd), is a holding corporation with its subsidiary companies; national carrier RwandAir, Airports Company Rwanda, Rwanda Tours and Events, Links Logistics Rwanda, and Akagera Aviation. It will provide aviation services, including travel, logistics, ground freight and cargo handling, as well as charter services. "One of the main reasons why this law was urgent is because ATL has already started operations and the RCAA needs to free up certain assets to allow their access and use,"
Nzahabwanimana told MPs in the plenary on Wednesday.
Officials say the new law governing RCAA will come as a boost to the country's aviation legal framework in line with the government's plan to turn Rwanda into a regional aviation hub for tourism, cargo and logistics-related activities. http://allafrica.com/stories/201701060107.html
7. HELICOPTER SAFETY ON THE RISE AS ACCIDENTS DECLINE
According to a number of industry sources it would appear that the number of rotor wing accidents and fatal accidents in 2016 experienced a 17% decline year-over-year, according to raw data from 50 countries compiled by the International Helicopter Safety Team and released at Heli-Expo. Last year, the industry experienced 254 accidents, including 52 that were fatal. This was down from 306 accidents, 63 of them resulting in fatalities in 2015.
It is possible that some of this decrease is because, in some places, they aren't flying as much, Yet comparing the data from 2013 to 2016 total accidents decreased by 29 percent, and fatal occurrences declined by 31 percent among those countries who report Safety Data. The FAA believes that there is an outstanding culture of safety within the helicopter community. Over the last five years or so, there has been a great push forward around the world in the safety of helicopter operations, and we're seeing more increased cooperation between the governments and industry."
More refined data from the United States Helicopter Safety Team shows that the U.S. civil helicopter accident rate declined from 3.67 accidents per 100,000 flight hours in 2015 to 3.19 accidents per 100,000 flight hours last year. Yet, the number of fatal accidents in the U.S. remained nearly static at 17 in both years, or approximately 0.51 accidents per 100,000 flight hours. This has led the FAA to concentrate its efforts on examining those incidents. They have noticed the causes of fatal accidents are different than the causes of every [other] type of accident, when you look at total accidents, a lot of them happen in the training area. A lot of that drops away when you talk about fatal accidents, because in the US of A there aren't a lot of fatalities happening in the training area.
Based on its prior analysis of accidents, the group has categorized a large portion of accidents into three areas: in-flight loss of control, unintended flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and low-altitude operations. The group is currently examining each accident over the past year to determine the root causes. Currently prevailing themes are: issues with performance planning; issues with weight and balance; pilot instrument-flying proficiency; need for improved weather reporting; and fatigue management. Once the group finishes its analysis later this spring, it will begin developing safety enhancements aimed at mitigating those accidents.
8. US HELICOPTER ACCIDENTS DECREASE FOR THE THIRD CONSECUTIVE YEAR
WASHINGTON DC - The U.S. helicopter accident rate and the fatal helicopter accident rate have fallen for the third consecutive year, according to Federal Aviation Administration data.
The overall accident rate fell to 3.19 accidents per 100,000 flight hours in 2016 compared with 3.67 accidents in 2015. The fatal accident rate fell slightly to 0.51 accidents per 100,000 flight hours in 2016 compared with a 0.52 rate in 2015. However, the rate is down from 0.65 in 2014 and 1.02 in 2013.
In raw numbers, there were 106 helicopter accidents in 2016, including 17 fatal accidents. That is a 12 percent decrease compared to the previous year and a 27 percent decrease compared to 2013.
Year Total Accidents Total Accident Rate Fatal Accidents Fatal Accident Rate
2016 063. 09 17 0.51
2015 121 3.67 17 0.52
2014 138 4.26 21 0.65
2013 146 4.95 30 1.02
"The FAA and the helicopter industry have worked together to educate the civil helicopter community about safe practices, to drive these improved results," said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. "The FAA and the industry also are taking an active role in advancing safety through new technology, collaborative policy changes and proactive outreach."
The FAA and the helicopter industry have worked together through groups such as the International Helicopter Safety Team and the U.S. Helicopter Safety Team to prevent accidents. The effort is achieving success through a series of proactive measures:
Creating a culture of safety - The FAA has encouraged helicopter companies and individual pilots to promote safety in the workplace. Efforts include establishing a system where anyone can report an unsafe condition without fear of reprisal, making every employee a champion of safety, and establishing safety training programs for mechanics, pilots and other employees.
Cutting the red tape - The FAA issued the Non-Required Safety Enhancing Equipment policy in 2013 after consultations with industry. The policy allows operators and manufacturers to install safety equipment through a streamlined and less expensive approval process. The policy seeks to strike a balance between risk and safety through a "common-sense" approach.
New technology - Both the FAA and industry are using technological advances to promote safer helicopter flights. For example, the FAA mandated that the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast system (ADS-B) be installed in U.S. helicopters by Jan. 1, 2020 if they intend to operate in busy airspace. ADS-B's satellite-based technology can provide three-dimensional information (latitude, longitude, altitude) about a helicopter's position, along with information about its direction and size, without the geographic drawbacks posed by radar.
Collaborative rule-making - The FAA is working with industry representatives to ensure that newly-manufactured helicopters can help prevent injuries, post-crash fires and catastrophic damage from bird-strikes. Some manufacturers and operators are already voluntarily stepping up and installing the life-saving equipment. In addition, the FAA required in 2014 that certain (Part 135) commercial helicopter operators, including air ambulances and air taxis, have stricter flight rules and procedures, improved communications, training, and additional on-board safety equipment.
FAA International Rotorcraft Safety conference - For the past two years, with industry's support, the FAA has hosted a three-day gathering focused on a variety of safety topics. The conference includes presentations about decision-making, fatigue, safe autorotations, protective equipment, a culture of safety, and first-person experiences.
FAA News, Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, DC 20591. Contact: Tony Molinaro, Phone: 847-294-7427
9. HAS MY PILOT HAD TOO MUCH TO DRINK? IT DEPENDS WHERE YOU FLY
Every country has different rules on pilot alcohol consumption and testing. How much alcohol is too much for a pilot who's about to take flight?
Believe it or not, the answer varies depending on where your flight departs from -- and where it lands. There are no standardized international rules on pilot alcohol consumption and testing. Instead, the International Civil Aviation Organization issues guidance and then countries set their own regulations, limits, testing regimes and punishments.
Despite being a rarity, it's an issue that has received extra attention after a series of high profile incidents. In late December, a pilot was found passed out in the cockpit before a scheduled Boeing 737 flight in Canada. In mid-2016, two pilots were arrested in Scotland on suspicion of violating alcohol rules before a flight to New Jersey.
The December arrest prompted Canada to take another look at its rules. The European Union is also considering changes.
Here's a look at how the rules work:
Who can fly
In India, which boasts the world's strictest rules, pilots aren't allowed to drink within 12 hours of a flight and must have absolutely zero alcohol in their system. "0.001% is also a violation," said Lalit Gupta, a senior official at India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
In the U.S., pilots are allowed to have a trace amount of alcohol in their system -- up to 0.04% blood alcohol concentration -- and must have eight hours between "bottle to throttle". (The 0.04% level is half the 0.08% legal limit for U.S. drivers on the roads.)
Who gets tested and when
Alcohol testing also varies by country: India subjects pilots to a breathalyser test before each of its 2 million annual flights, while the U.S. conducts between 11,000 to 13,000 random alcohol checks in a typical year.
The U.S. tests caught 10 pilots violating the rules in 2015.
India's stricter regulations caught 46 pilots in 2016, according to the country's Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
"If you set a zero percent tolerance limit and test everyone, you're going to have more positives," said James Stamp, global head of aviation at KPMG. "It's just a fact."
In Europe, each nation sets their own alcohol rules and then airlines develop and implement compliance procedures.
Safety risk
Testing can help ground pilots before they do any real damage. But there are still documented cases of alcohol contributing to aviation accidents. The most comprehensive data, from consulting firm JACDEC, showed there were 11 commercial aviation accidents linked to alcohol since 1980, out of a total of nearly 12,000 incidents.
The private accident-tracking group Aviation Safety Network counted five global commercial aviation accidents linked to alcohol since 1980.
The most recent documented commercial incident occurred in east Russia in 2012. A small plane crash killed 10 of the 14 people on board, and alcohol was later found in the blood of its two crew members. An earlier Russian crash, in 2011, killed 47 people. The incident was linked to alcohol, leading authorities to revoke the airline's license.
Still, only a tiny fraction of aviation accidents are linked to alcohol. "Let's be fair, air travel has become an extremely, extremely safe way of travel," said Jan Richter, founder of JACDEC. That's a sentiment echoed by pilots unions, which defend current regulations as sufficient. "Instances of substance abuse are extremely rare among the approximately 100,000 professional airline pilots in the United States who safely fly passengers and cargo on more than 27,000 flights every day," the U.S.-based Air Line Pilots Association said in a statement.
New regulations?
Stricter regulations are on the way, however, in some countries. Canada's transport minister has pledged to "enhance aviation safety" after the December incident in which a pilot was charged with having control of an aircraft while impaired.
Europe's top regulator is also expected to introduce rules requiring more systematic alcohol tests later this year.
The changes are a response to the 2015 Germanwings crash that killed 150 people. The plane's co-pilot, who was being treated for depression, crashed the aircraft into the French Alps. The crash has not been linked to alcohol, but it prompted officials to get more serious about testing pilots to ensure they're fit to fly.
Russia is also reportedly considering stricter pilot testing, but the country's regulators did not respond to requests for comment.
The modern U.S. rules on testing were implemented in response to several alcohol-related accidents in the late 1980s.
A number of countries are looking to reform their drug and alcohol regulations for pilots.
Crime and punishment
There are also differences in the punishments doled out to pilots found to be violating alcohol rules. In India, pilots have their licence suspended for three months after a first offense, and three years after a second offence. A third offence means they're booted from the profession for life. India does not offer a rehabilitation programme for pilots.
Meanwhile, pilots caught in the U.S. are more likely to face criminal charges and must reapply for their pilot's license after successfully completing a rehab program.
The U.S. substance abuse program for pilots is run by industry unions, aviation firms and the Federal Aviation Administration. The program has helped rehabilitate over 4,500 professional pilots, according to the program's administrators.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/24/news/pilots-alcohol-drink-rules/ = Curt Lewis - Flight Safety Information
10. WANT TO BE A BETTER LEARNER? HOW PILOTS TRAIN TO FLY A PLANE
CREDIT: Getty Images
Research shows it's possible to improve even the most elusive skills through targeted training and a focused process.
In his book, Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything, Ulrich Boser discusses methods for learning how to learn. This edited excerpt tells the story of how a grad student developed a program to help airline pilots learn a key skill to avoid deadly errors after a Northwest crash in Detroit killed nearly 150 people. At the time of the Northwest accident, Mica Endsley was living in Los Angeles. She was studying for her PhD. in systems engineering at the University of Southern California. The Detroit crash occurred late on a Sunday night, and Endsley would have heard about the incident on the news, with accounts like "Life or Death Turned on Twists of Fate" continuing in the papers for days.
In her graduate school work, Endsley had been thinking a lot about the causes of airline crashes, and she believed that something called "situational awareness"--a type of ambient perception--might be the root cause of the issue. As a skill, situational awareness has a good amount of history, and at least since World War I, pilots have been debating the true nature of the skill and its role in flying.
At the time of the crash, situational awareness was still a vague concept, often understood as something innate, a roll of the DNA lottery.
Endsley found, for instance, that just about every pilot could misread a problem if they didn't have sufficient background knowledge. She also found that skills like awareness and metacognition were crucial, and pilots without these skills were more likely to make major mistakes. For the first time, she also demonstrated that situational awareness required planning as well as a type of relational knowledge that allowed pilots to solve problems during stressful moments.
Endsley soon developed a training initiative, taking her research to airlines and flight schools, helping them develop better educational programs. In her teaching, Endsley encouraged pilots to ask themselves "what if" questions to help them develop a more systemic understanding of flying: What if this didn't work? What if this didn't happen? What if the engines stopped functioning?
Endsley also pushed for the direct application of the skill of situational awareness, of learning as mental doing, and she and her staff would often sit with pilots in a flight simulator, helping them develop a more concrete sense of how situational awareness works. At the same time, Endsley underscored the value of thinking about thinking, and she recommended that pilots engage in self-talk, explaining situations to themselves, examining their patterns of reasoning.
Today, many programmes--from Air Force basic training to medical school programmes--teach Endsley's approach, and while there's no clear way to track the impact of her work, there's little question that her efforts have helped stave off airline accidents. By giving the pilots a learning process, she helped them gain a skill that they clearly needed.
Or just consider that at the time of the Northwest wreck, 2,000 people would die every year in plane crashes. Now it's less than 500.
Math or reading, biochemistry or gaming, playing the piano or knitting a sweater, there are proven ways to improve our skills and knowledge, and even something that seems as vague and ill-defined as situational awareness can be developed. The key, it turns out, is to make learning a dedicated process, to use a targeted approach that relies on focus, practice, and reflection.
For her part, Endsley has mapped out three stages of situational awareness--perception, comprehension, and projection. here are the steps for learning that you can use to strive for mastery:
Value. It's impossible to learn if we don't want to learn. To gain expertise, we have to see the skills and knowledge as valuable. What's more, we have to create meaning. Learning is a matter of making sense of something.
Target. In the early part of gaining mastery, focus is key. We need to figure out what exactly we want to learn and set goals and targets.
Develop. Some forms of practice make people more perfect than others. In this stage of learning, people need to hone their skills and take dedicated steps to improve performance.
Extend. At this point, we want to go beyond the basics and apply what we know. We want to flesh out our skills and knowledge and create more meaningful forms of understanding.
Relate. This is the phase where we see how it all fits together. After all, we don't want to know just a single detail or procedure--we want to know how that detail or procedure interacts with other facts and procedures.
Rethink. When it comes to learning, it's easy to make mistakes, to be overconfident, and we need to review our knowledge, to reconsider our understanding, and learn from our learning.
These steps don't always occur sequentially. Sometimes we need to simply hone our skills. On other occasions, motivation is plain. If you're studying for an exam--or checking your flaps--the rethinking stage is always going to be central.
At the same time, we often get ahead of ourselves. One reason that hands-on learning doesn't work in many schools and colleges is because it's introduced too early. Same with practice: Too often, people try to develop their skills without knowing what exactly they're developing, without any sort of goals or targets. This brings us to again to the idea that learning is a process, a method, a system, and in the end, people can get better at gaining any sort of expertise.
http://www.inc.com/ulrich-boser/how-to-learn-anything-better.html = Curt Lewis - Flight Safety Information
11. FAILURE TO FIND MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370 LEAVES MANY QUESTIONS UNANSWERED
After three years and no sign of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, officials have officially suspended their search. See how we got here. USA TODAY NETWORK. Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this story misstated the fatal-accident rate among airliners. The story has been updated with the correct statistics. As governments sail away from the nearly three-year search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, failing to find the wreckage and explain what went wrong for the 239 people aboard could haunt the industry that has reached lofty levels of safety.
The Boeing 777 disappeared without a distress call March 8, 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Based on clues from the plane's electronics, the governments of Malaysia, China and Australia spent $160 million scouring a section of the Indian Ocean floor the size of Pennsylvania. The suspension Tuesday of the underwater search leaves fundamental questions unanswered: What went wrong? Was there a mechanical problem? Did somebody aboard the plane make a mistake - or crash it intentionally?
The search's end comes two months after investigators took another detailed look at the clues that dictated where they were looking, and a month after they found that another area of ocean floor the size of Vermont might be more promising. "They're going to be haunted by what might or might not be in that zone," said David Gallo, who helped find Air France Flight 447 at the bottom of the Atlantic in 2011 and who is now senior advisor for strategic initiatives at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "This should really drive them crazy." Investigators say the plane's wreckage - and potentially the data and voice recorders - could explain whatever problems happened so that they could be avoided in the future. The Boeing 777 is a workhorse of the long-haul fleet, with 1,200 flying worldwide.
We really do need to find the wreckage to ensure that there's no problem with the aircraft," said Al Diehl, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. For example, the recovery of Air France Flight 447 revealed that pilots made mistakes flying in a snowstorm, but also a problem with pitot tubes, sensors that stick out of the fuselage of the Airbus A330, that gave the pilots bad information. Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said the manufacturer has been fully dedicated to the Malaysia search and investigation. The company's thoughts continue to be with the families, friends and colleagues of those aboard the flight, he said. "We accept the conclusion of government authorities leading the investigation and search that, in the absence of credible new information that leads to identification of a specific location of the aircraft, there will be no further expansion of the search area," Alder said. The disappearance came at a time of dramatic improvements in safety. The number of fatalities aboard passenger airliners worldwide from 1959 through 2015 was 29,165, according to a Boeing study. But the total for the last decade was 3,133, according to the study. The last fatal crash of a U.S. passenger airline was in February 2009. "Historically, we've achieved this very high level of aviation safety by finding the wreckage and other data, and analysing it - lessons learned from previous accidents," Diehl said.
Finding sunken planes is hard, even when the location is better known than the Malaysia flight. A Northwest Airlines plane that crashed in Lake Michigan in 1950 without modern tracking equipment has never been found. The Aviation Safety Network counts 84 planes, each with at least 14 people aboard, that have gone missing since 1948, typically over oceans, mountains or other remote areas. The Malaysia flight's transponder and automated maintenance system stopped signalling less than an hour into the flight. But a satellite caught hourly pings from the plane, which suggested it flew far out over the ocean until running out of fuel.
Because the ocean is several miles deep in the search area, the vessels first mapped the ocean floor and then dragged sonar vehicles on miles-long cords to scan the bottom. They found details as small as anchors and as large as a shipwreck. But no airliner. "It's probably one of the largest continuous maps of the seafloor ever made, with the resolution they made it," Gallo said. He called deep-sea exploration one of the hardest tasks on Earth, comparable to space expeditions. "You're actually mounting an expedition into an unknown world where the mountains are taller, the valleys are deeper and wider. There are volcanoes and earthquakes," Gallo said. "It's almost like going to Mars, to look for a plane. You're mounting an expedition to an unknown world."
More than 20 fragments of the Malaysia plane have washed up on distant shores, along the coast of Africa, and the islands of Mauritius, Reunion and Rodriguez. Damage to flaps from the wings suggested that they were in position for cruising rather than landing when the plane plunged into the sea. The search committee conducted a November review of how those fragments drifted and other data. In December, the committee changed its interpretation of where the wreckage might be, to north of where search vessels were focused, in an area of about 9,600 square miles. "The experts concluded that, if this area were to be searched, prospective areas for locating the aircraft wreckage, based on all the analysis to date, would be exhausted," the committee said in a Dec. 20 report. But without a more precise location, the transport ministers of the three countries in charge of the search announced Tuesday the last vessel had left the search area located about 1,000 miles west of Australia.
"The decision to suspend the underwater search has not been taken lightly nor without sadness," said the statement from Liow Tiong Lai of Malaysia, Li Xiaopeng of China and Darren Chester of Australia. "Whilst combined scientific studies have continued to refine areas of probability, to date no new information has been discovered to determine the specific location of the aircraft." Chester told reporters that he understood the "disappointment and frustration" of relatives of the passengers, some of whom he met with, and that he shared their disappointment even if he couldn't "possibly understand their grief." They have been waiting for answers now for almost three years, and it is the unanswered questions for them which is the most difficult part for them to deal with," Chester said.
But the three governments agreed in July that they would suspend the search if they didn't develop any more precise information about the plane's location. "If I continue the search effort and came to you today and said I have reached agreement with Malaysia and China to find another 20, 30, 40 or 50 million dollars, you'd be saying to me well, 'Why are you spending taxpayers' money in this way?'" Chester said. "But by coming to you and saying that we agreed in July last year that in the absence of any credible new evidence leading to the specific location of the aircraft, we intend to suspend the search, you are now asking well why won't you extend it to a new area. I don't think there's a perfect answer." The advocacy group Voice 370, which represents families of the passengers, urged the search to continue. The group called the November review "a mere smokescreen" and said requiring the "precise location of the aircraft" before continuing the effort would "bury the search." "In our view, extending the search to the new area defined by the experts is an inescapable duty owed to the flying public in the interest of aviation safety," the group said on its Facebook page.
HOWEVER, IT NOW APPEARS THAT BOEING MAY BE TAKING OVER THE SEARCH
Boeing is expected to take over a newly privately funded search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. The news comes as the underwater search - jointly funded by Australia, China and Malaysia - has ended.
John Goglia, a safety consultant and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, reportedly said that while the current search led by Australia is wrapping up, the quest for answers is far from over. The search will continue but it will be privately run with Boeing most likely to take the lead. It will be smaller and more focused - but that is probably better.
Last month, investigators said in a report that the missing Boeing 777-200 will not be found in the area in a remote part of the South Indian Ocean that officials have searched for two years. The plane's wreckage may have instead travelled further north based on flight simulations and new analysis of satellite communications, according to a team of international investigators searching for the plane.
"There is a high degree of confidence that the previously identified underwater area searched to date does not contain the missing aircraft," the report stated. "The experts concluded that, if this area were to be searched, prospective areas for locating the aircraft wreckage, based on all the analysis to date, would be exhausted.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the $145 million search for the aircraft, said that the operation will be suspended if there are no credible clues as to the plane's whereabouts after the completion of the underwater search of the 46,000-square-mile area in a remote part of the ocean. http://www.ibtimes.com/flight-mh370-update-boeing-taking-over-search-aviation-expert-claims-underwater-2468201
12. NEWS FROM THE JOHANNESBURG AIRPORTS
Users of the Johannesburg aerodromes must be aware of the fact that they all take Aviation Safety and AVSEC seriously. If you want to use these airports as a Pilot or are employed in any way on them, then we would recommend that you make yourself more than familiar with Part 139 in the SACARs and the Rules and Regulations applicable to that particular aerodrome. Be prepared for fines being levied if you breach any of the SARPs.
RAND AIRPORT, GERMISTON - www.randairport.co,za
Next Safety Meeting - Tuesday 4th April 2017 at 09.00 in the Old Customs Hall
• The wearing of high visibility jackets/waistcoats is mandatory for all persons, excepting for passengers under escort, on airside. (SA CAR 139.02.22(6))
• Drivers found to be speeding on airside will have their access remote taken from them.
• Vehicles being driven on airside must carry proper mandatory insurance cover
• All delivery vehicles and visiting vehicles requiring access to airside MUST be escorted from the access gate to the premises and then after closure of their business back to the gate for egress.
• Cranes are not allowed onto Rand Airport unless their use has been specifically authorised by airport management
• All operators are required to report Bird Strikes to the Safety Office even if there has been no structural damage to the aircraft as a result of the strike.
• Fuel must not be "trucked" into Rand Airport from other sources. Should there be a special requirement permission must be sought from the Airport Manager.
LANSERIA AIRPORT - www.lanseriaairport.co.za
Next Safety, Security and Stakeholders Meeting will be held on Tuesday 11th April 2017 at 12.00 in the LIA Training School.
• The wearing of high visibility jackets/waistcoats is mandatory for all persons, excepting for passengers under escort, on airside. (SA CAR 139.02.22(6))
• Drivers shall obey the published speed limits which are 30 on airside and 40 on landside - these have been enforced as from 1st May 2015
• Major earthworks to be carried out during the building of a new 3 story car park across the road from the main terminal building. Work should commence on 1st May 2017.
GRAND CENTRAL AIRPORT, MIDRAND
Next Safety Meeting will be held on Tuesday 4th April 2017 at 12.00 in the Boardroom
• The wearing of high visibility jackets/waistcoats is mandatory for all persons, excepting for passengers under escort, on airside. (SA CAR 139.02.22(6))
• Drivers found to be speeding on airside will have their access revoked
• Should an emergency occur pedestrians are requested to stand still in a safe area out of the way of responding AR&FFS vehicles.
• During any emergency Pilots, Instructors and students should try to keep the frequencies as clear as possible.
13. FINALE
SITUATIONS VACANT.
If you are interested and qualified, please send your CV to admin@aviaglobal.net
Part Time Consultant Air Safety Officers required who comply with the requirements of SA CARS Part 135, Part 121, Part 127, Part 140, Part 141 and Part 145 - must have had appropriate SMS training, previous experience and preferably been approved by the South African Air Services Licencing Council.
Part Time Quality Assurance Consultants required who are appropriately qualified and comply with the requirements of Part 135, Part 121, Part 127, Part 140, Part 141 and Part 145.
Part Time Aviation Security Consultant required who is appropriately qualified for RSA and International Operations
2017 SKYTRAX WORLD AIRPORT AWARDS
The following list of airports are as voted for by frequent flyers. It is sad to see that none of the African Airports made the grade this year.
1. Singapore Changi Airport
2. Tokyo International Airport (Haneda)
3. Incheon International Airport (Seoul, South Korea)
4. Munich Airport (Germany)
5. Hong Kong International Airport
6. Hamad International Airport (Doha, Qatar)
7. Chubu Centrair Nagoya (Japan)
8. Zurich Airport (Switzerland)
9. London Heathrow Airport
10. Frankfurt Airport (Germany)
Global Aviation Data Management (GADM)
- a data management platform aiming at integrating all sources of operational data received from various channels and IATA unique programs such as Flight Operations, Infrastructure, IATA audits, etc. into a common and interlinked database structure. Techniques to improve aviation safety have moved beyond the analyses of isolated accidents to data-driven analyses of trends and the interaction between the links in the air transport chain. This is what the GADM program is all about.
Pulling from all areas of operations sources such as the IATA accident database, the Safety Trend Evaluation Analysis and Data Exchange System (STEADES) database, IOSA and ISAGO audit findings, the Flight Data Exchange (FDX), the Ground Damage Database (GDDB), maintenance-related and other operational databases - GADM is the most comprehensive airline operational database available.
GADM offers a comprehensive cross-database analysis supporting a proactive data-driven approach for advanced trend analysis and predictive risk mitigation. More than 470 organizations around the globe submit their data to the GADM. Over 90% of IATA member carriers are participants to this program. All GADM data contributors have access to applicable aggregated and de-identified reports and analyses.
Join GADM via this link: (https://extranet.iata.org/registration/pages/getemailpage.aspx?siteurl=gadm).
Access to multiple sources of industry data
1. Flight Data Connect (FDC)
# Flight data; extracted directly from the aircraft's Flight Data Recorder (FDR) or optional Quick Access Recorder (QAR) is routinely analysed enabling you to highlight risk areas in your daily operations. IATA's Flight Data Connect (FDC) service is a flight data analysis service for airlines wishing to outsource this function to an external provider.
http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/Pages/fdc.aspx
To join, please send your request to flightdataconnect@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
2. Flight Data Exchange (FDX) - free of charge for IATA member airlines
#FDX is an aggregated de-identified database of FDA/FOQA type events. It allows flight operations and safety departments to proactively identify safety hazards. Raw binary flight data is processed and analysed; and the results are merged and aggregated into a single de-identified database. http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/Pages/fdx.aspx To join this service please send your request to fdx@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
3. STEADES - free of charge for IATA member airlines
# A database of de-identified airline incident reports, offering a secure environment for airlines to pool safety information for global benchmarking and analysis needs. http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/steades/Pages/index.aspx
To join this service please complete the STEADES participation form and email it to
steades@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
4. Ground Damage Database (GDDB) - free of charge for IATA member airlines -
# GDDB is designed to facilitate data-driven decisions to measurably reduce aircraft ground damage. It is a database of ground damage incident reports and its and allows participants to compare their performance to a baseline of global ground damage information. http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/Pages/GDDB.aspx
Download and send a copy of the signed agreement and the participation form to gddb@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
5. Cabin Safety - free of charge for IATA member airlines
# The concerns of Cabin Safety go beyond the safety demonstration before a flight and encompass a range of different disciplines, topics and processes which are not always evident to airline customers. IATA seeks to offer operational solutions for airlines in order to promote the reduction of incidents or accidents in the cabin, thus resulting in enhanced operational safety and/or significant cost savings for airlines.http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/safety/Pages/cabin-safety.aspx
To join this service send your request to cabin_safety@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
Get more information from our website: http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/Pages/index.aspx
Should you require assistance or further information on above please kindly contact: Ranga DANDAJENA, Manager, Safety & Flight Operations - Africa & Indian Ocean DandajenaR@iata.org www.iata.org
BANNER
Can we help you with your aviation safety
and / or quality assurance requirements?
Under SA CAR 140.01.2 if you and your organisation hold one of the following
# a category 4 or higher aerodrome licence;
# an ATO approval;
# an aircraft maintenance organisation approval;
# a manufacturing organisation approval;
# an ATSU approval;
# a design organisation approval;
# an AOC issued in terms of Part 101, 121, 127, 135, 141;
# a procedure design organisation approval; and
# an electronic services organisation approval,
then you shall establish a Safety Management System for the control and supervision of the services rendered or to be rendered by that organisation.
If you do not already have an approved Air Safety Officer and an approved Safety Management System then please contact us for assistance.
Avia Global in conjunction with Henley Air deliver the following SA CAA Approved training courses at Rand Airport;
# Integrated Safety Officer Course
# Quality Assurance Auditor
# Crew Resource Management (Initial and Recurrent)
# Dangerous Goods
# Human Factors for AME's
Should your operation be of a size whereby the full time employment of an Air Safety Officer and/or Quality Assurance Officer is not financially viable then we can provide you with Consultants who have previously held Air Services Licensing Council approval. We can also provide you with a tailor made SA CAA approved Safety Management System and all Manuals as required by your Regulatory Authority for your operation.
For further information on how we can help you please contact Rethea or Candice on +27 (0)11 024 5446/7 or e-mail admin@aviaglobal.net
2. A small matter of knowledge
3. Africa's 2017's Hazards, Incidents, Accidents and Safety Occurrences
4. Emergency Response Planning
5. Henley Global Safety and Quality Training
6. Rwanda - Parliament passes new law to regulate Civil Aviation Authority
7. Helicopter Safety on the Rise as Accidents Decline
8. US helicopter accidents decrease for the third consecutive year
9. Has my Pilot had too much to drink? It depends where you fly
10. Want to be a better learner? How Pilots train to fly a plane
11. Failure to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 leaves many questions unanswered
12. News from the Johannesburg Airports
13. Finale
14. IATA Global Aviation Data Management
1. MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR
The increase in safety by the rotor wing part of our industry is very comforting to those of us involved in Aviation Safety. However, the down side is that MH370 is still missing, so the causal factors for its disappearance are still not apparent. Meaning that we cannot do anything to counteract what we do not know.
There is a Safety Workshop/Forum for SMS Implementation being held on the 30th March - details can be found on the SA CAA website. See you there!
Vivienne
2. A SMALL MATTER OF KNOWLEDGE
SATELLITE TRACKING TO KEEP TABS ON AIRLINERS OVER OCEANS
WASHINGTON -- Nearly three years after a Malaysian airliner vanished, it's still possible, if unlikely, for a plane to disappear. But that's changing with new satellites that will soon allow flights to be tracked in real time over oceans.
New international safety standards also begin to kick-in beginning next year, although the deadline for airlines to meet most of the standards is still four years away. Even then, it could be decades before the changes permeate the entire global airline fleet because some of the requirements apply only to newly manufactured planes.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished from radar on March 8, 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. An exhaustive search of a remote corner of the southern Indian Ocean has failed to turn up the aircraft's remains, and search efforts were called off this week.
"If the exact same thing happened today, I think we'd have the same result," said William Waldock, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona, and former accident investigator. There has been change, but we haven't put anything physical into practice yet," he said. But Atholl Buchan, director of flight operations at the International Air Transport Association, which represents most international carriers, said a repeat of MH370 is "highly unlikely" since many airlines have already increased their efforts to keep tabs on planes over open ocean where they are beyond the reach of land-based radar.
"In a few years, new systems and technology, if adopted universally by (air traffic control providers), will allow for global surveillance coverage," he said.
Among the changes in the works:
• The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency, approved a series of new global safety standards last year in response to MH370, including a requirement that airline pilots flying over ocean out of the range of radar report their position by radio every 15 minutes. Previously, they were required to report every 30 minutes. The new requirement kicks in next year, but many airlines have already switched.
• Another new standard requires new planes beginning in 2021 to be able to transmit automatic, minute-by-minute reports on their location if they're in distress. At normal flight speeds, minute-by-minute reports would provide authorities with a search area of a little over 100 square miles. If reports are less frequent, the search area grows much larger.
• However, the requirement doesn't apply to existing planes. Since airliners often have a lifespan of 20 years or more, it could take decades before all airliners meet the new requirement.
• Satellite flight tracking services may solve much of the problem sooner. This week, Aireon, a satellite joint venture, launched the first 10 satellites in what is planned to be a 66-satellite constellation that can track airliners equipped with the latest satellite surveillance technology, known as ADS-B.
• Aireon expects to have all its satellites launched by the first quarter of next year, providing 100 percent coverage of the globe. It will receive signals every one to eight seconds from all equipped planes, regardless of whether the airline subscribes to the service. Not all planes have ADS-B, but Aireon vice president of aviation services, Cyriel Kronenburg, estimated that 90 percent of planes on long-haul routes over the ocean are already equipped.
"Aviation Safety, in all of its guises, is Avia Global and GAAC's' first and only concern and to that end our clients' safety on the ground and in the skies, is our Alpha and Omega."
However, the technology works only if ADS-B is turned on. In the case of MH370, the plane's surveillance technology was inexplicably shut off.
Aircraft "black box" flight data recorders must be equipped with locator beacons that last at least 90 days beginning next year under another standard. The beacon on MH370's black box was required to last only 30 days.
But the beacons are only helpful if searchers already know where to look. Because currents and water temperatures can weaken the signals, searchers usually have to be pretty close to pick them up. --ICAO approved a requirement that new aircraft designs certified after Jan. 1, 2021, have some means for retrieving a plane's flight data recorder, or the information contained in it, before the recorder sinks to the ocean floor. One possibility is a deployable recorder that automatically ejects from a plane upon impact and floats to the surface. But the cost of retrofitting new planes could be prohibitive, and there is a risk that recorder could deploy accidentally.
An alternative is to have planes automatically relay the data via satellite to ground stations, eliminating the need to search for the box. But there are many unanswered questions about security and custody of the information.
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2017/01/19/satellite-tracking-keep-tabs-airliners-oceans
2. AFRICA'S 2017 HAZARDS, INCIDENTS, ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY OCCURENCES
Source, amongst others, PlaneCrash info.com; News24, Aviation Herald, Flight Safety Information, SACAA
ACCIDENTS INVOLVING FIXED WING AIRCRAFT IN AFRICA DURING 2017
DATE A/C TYPE FATALITIES LOCATION
03 Jan 17 Passenger TBA 1 Jufra Airbase, Libya
05 Jan Cessna Caravan 0 Sasakwa Airstrip, Serengeti, Tanzania
11 Jan Cessna 206 0 Kenilworth, Zimbabwe
29 Jan Falcon 0 Wonderboom, GP, RSA
14 Feb B737-300 0 Nairobi, Kenya
22 Feb Beech Bonanza 0 Stellenbosch, WC, RSA
01 Mar 17 Baron 2 Grand Central Airport, GP, RSA
14 Mar Beech Baron 58 0 Joshua Nkomo Airport, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
18 Mar Cessna 172 0 Potchefstroom Airfield, GP, RSA
20 Mar 17 An26 0 Wau, Sudan
20 Mar 17 Cessna 172 0 Hekpoort, GP, RSA
ACCIDENTS INVOLVING ROTOR WING AIRCRAFT IN AFRICA DURING 2017
22 Jan 17 Mil Helicopter 6 Bogo, North Cameroon
24 Jan Bell 407 3 Central African Park, Central African Republic.
25 Feb 17 RH22 1 Mpande, Eastern Cape, RSA
3 Mar 17 RH44 0 Tutume, Botswana
INCIDENTS AND OCCURRENCES DURING JANUARY & FEBRUARY 2017
DATE A/C TYPE LOCATION OCCURRENCE
01 Jan A300-600 En-Route Ostende, Belgium to Cairo, Egypt A/C climbed above its assigned level FL210 resulting in TCAS with an A320-300. Separation was 300' vertical and 0.74 nm horizontal. Cargo
04 Jan A346 En-route New York, USA to Johannesburg, RSA A/C experienced a flap retraction fault and returned to JFK, New York. COM
05 Jan B737-700 En-route from Maputo to Tete, Mozambique A/C suffered radome structural failure. COM
07 Jan ELA-08 Buena Vista Farm, Eastern Cape, RSA During landing the nose wheel dug into the soft soil and the gyrocopter rolled over PVT
09 Jan A333 Outbound from Cairo, Egypt At 3,500' crew reported gear problems and returned to Cairo COM
16 Jan B744 En-route Amsterdam, Holland to Nairobi, Kenya At FL370 and about 180nm SW of Cairo, Egypt the crew decided to return to Amsterdam due to a loose part on a wing COM
20 Jan Beech F33A Hoedspruit, NW, RSA Undercarriage collapsed on runway TRNG
22 Jan Cessna U206G Limpopo, RSA During take off the pilot could not gain enough speed PVT
28 Jan Bantam B22J Mpumalanga, RSA A/C landed hard and the nose wheel suspension collapsed PVT
29 Jan Falcon 402 Wonderboom, GP, RSA A/C experienced engine power loss. PVT
03 Feb Thunderbird MK II Thabazimbi, Limpopo, RSA A/C rate of climb was not sufficient and it lost power PVT
05 Feb AT72 El Oued, Algeria A/C landed on RWY 13 and came to a stop on its nose gear strut without its nose wheels
13 Feb PA36-200 Settlers, Limpopo, RSA Engine failure during aerial spraying of the farm AG
15 Feb T188C Limpopo, RSA 10 Mins into flight the pilot could not maintain height. AG
17 Feb ERJ170 En-route Aswan to Cairo, Egypt At approx. 100nm North of Aswan the crew decided to divert into Luxor due to a crack in the F/O's windshield COM
18 Feb A342 En-route Cairo, Egypt to shanghai Pudong, China The crew stopped the climb at FL190 and returned to Cairo, Egypt due to a cargo door warning. COM
01 Mar B733 En-route Khartoum, Sudan to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Crew decided to divert into Port Sudan due to a burning odour in the cabin
AERODROME HAZARDS
Entebbe, Uganda
ATC Staff under training
Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo
ATC
Beni, DRC
Runway condition very poor
Juba, Sudan
Poor ATC, heavily congested airfield.
3. EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLANNING
Blake Emergency Services is the International Crisis Management and Contingency Planning and Response Specialist who, although based in the UK, have extensive experience in Africa having handled accidents, incidents, counselling, repatriation, DNA sampling and confirmation, in amongst others Lagos, Nigeria; Fez, Morocco; Pointe Noire, Congo; Moroni, Comores; Maputo, Mozambique and more recently Ukraine, The Netherlands, Indonesia and Mali. Please go to www.blakeemergency.com or contact rethea.mitchell@blakeemergency.com
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer for Blake Emergency Services, please contact Rethea at the address given above.
An Emergency Response Plan is a required section of your SMS and may also be added to your Operations Manual.
Emergency Response, Incident Response, Operations Control and Family Assistance training together with the writing of Emergency Response Plans and Procedures is now offered through Blake Emergency Services. For more information, please contact Rethea on rethea.mitchell@blakeemergency.com
4. HENLEY AVIATION TRAINING
Should you wish to make a booking for any of these courses please contact Candice on +27 (0)72 211 7866 or by email to training@henleyglobal.org.za.
DATES COURSE LECTURER COST EXCL. VAT PER DELEGATE
22 March 2017 CRM - Refresher Verity Wallace R 980-00
22 March 2017 DG - Refresher Verity Wallace R 800-00
27 - 28 March 2017 Quality Assurance Auditor Course Dan Drew R 2,500-00
10 - 11 April 2017 Human Factors Dr. Joel Hughes R 2,500-00
19 April 2017 DG - Refresher Verity Wallace R 800-00
19 April 2017 CRM - Refresher Verity Wallace R 980-00
24 - 25 April 2017 Quality Assurance Auditor Course Dan Drew R 2,500-00
3 May 2017 DG - Refresher Verity Wallace R 800-00
3 May 2017 CRM - Refresher Verity Wallace R 980-00
8 - 12 May 2017 Integrated Safety Officer Course Various R 6,500-00
24 May 2017 CRM - Refresher Verity Wallace R 980-00
24 May 2017 DG - Refresher Verity Wallace R 800-00
22 - 23 May 2017 Human Factors Dr. Joel Hughes R 2,500-00
29 - 30 May 2017 Quality Assurance Auditor Course Dan Drew R 2,500-00
Notes:
Cost per delegate includes all training materials, refreshments and lunch.
Attendees paying in cash on the day are eligible for a 10% discount
Both Recurrent CRM and Dangerous Goods Training Courses are available upon request - even at short notice.
On request we also offer -
Air Cargo Security (Part 108), Health and Safety (Medical) Cargo and Warehouse Security Risk Management & Investigations, First Aid and the Law, NEW - Maintenance Reliability Programme and NEW - Maintenance Management
5. RWANDA: PARLIAMENT PASSES NEW LAW TO REGULATE CIVIL AVIATION AUTHORITY
Legislators in the Lower House have unanimously passed the new law governing Rwanda Civil Aviation Authority (RCAA), which will take away direct provision of aviation services from the agency and leave it with the mandate of being a regulator for the services.
Currently, RCAA operates as a regulator, manager of national airports and provider of air navigation services.
The combination of these activities means that, besides regulating the airport operations and Air Navigation Services (ANS), RCAA is also involved in commercial activities within and around airports in the country. That has to change within the next 12 months after publication of the new law in the Official Gazette. The new law enacted by the MPs yesterday stipulates a deadline by which RCAA will have to transfer its business assets and liabilities to other companies and remain with the sole role of a regulator.
"It's like RCAA had two hats and it has ceded one," said MP Adolphe Bazatoha, the chairperson of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Economy and Trade, which reviewed the law. The Government introduced the changes in order to have a sound legal framework for the aviation industry and allow Rwanda to be a regional hub for the industry, officials said. Emphasising the need to separate the regulator from direct provision of services to clients, the State Minister for Transport, Dr Alexis Nzahabwanimana, told the committee last month that RCAA is currently in charge of giving people services and suing itself in case it harms their interests.
With the new law enacted, the agency will now be there to ensure that those who provide aviation services do it well in line with the right regulations to protect clients. "Sometimes RCAA was both plaintiff and defendant in cases of accidents or any other disasters in the aviation area," Nzahabwanimana said.
This small team of data scientists has made an algorithm that is turning a giant 19 billion dollar industry up-side-down. In line with making RCAA a regulator instead of a service provider, the Government, in October 2015, established a new company to manage the aviation industry activities as a way to simplify the industry operations and make it more vibrant and competitive.
The company, Aviation, Travel and Logistics Ltd (ATL Ltd), is a holding corporation with its subsidiary companies; national carrier RwandAir, Airports Company Rwanda, Rwanda Tours and Events, Links Logistics Rwanda, and Akagera Aviation. It will provide aviation services, including travel, logistics, ground freight and cargo handling, as well as charter services. "One of the main reasons why this law was urgent is because ATL has already started operations and the RCAA needs to free up certain assets to allow their access and use,"
Nzahabwanimana told MPs in the plenary on Wednesday.
Officials say the new law governing RCAA will come as a boost to the country's aviation legal framework in line with the government's plan to turn Rwanda into a regional aviation hub for tourism, cargo and logistics-related activities. http://allafrica.com/stories/201701060107.html
7. HELICOPTER SAFETY ON THE RISE AS ACCIDENTS DECLINE
According to a number of industry sources it would appear that the number of rotor wing accidents and fatal accidents in 2016 experienced a 17% decline year-over-year, according to raw data from 50 countries compiled by the International Helicopter Safety Team and released at Heli-Expo. Last year, the industry experienced 254 accidents, including 52 that were fatal. This was down from 306 accidents, 63 of them resulting in fatalities in 2015.
It is possible that some of this decrease is because, in some places, they aren't flying as much, Yet comparing the data from 2013 to 2016 total accidents decreased by 29 percent, and fatal occurrences declined by 31 percent among those countries who report Safety Data. The FAA believes that there is an outstanding culture of safety within the helicopter community. Over the last five years or so, there has been a great push forward around the world in the safety of helicopter operations, and we're seeing more increased cooperation between the governments and industry."
More refined data from the United States Helicopter Safety Team shows that the U.S. civil helicopter accident rate declined from 3.67 accidents per 100,000 flight hours in 2015 to 3.19 accidents per 100,000 flight hours last year. Yet, the number of fatal accidents in the U.S. remained nearly static at 17 in both years, or approximately 0.51 accidents per 100,000 flight hours. This has led the FAA to concentrate its efforts on examining those incidents. They have noticed the causes of fatal accidents are different than the causes of every [other] type of accident, when you look at total accidents, a lot of them happen in the training area. A lot of that drops away when you talk about fatal accidents, because in the US of A there aren't a lot of fatalities happening in the training area.
Based on its prior analysis of accidents, the group has categorized a large portion of accidents into three areas: in-flight loss of control, unintended flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and low-altitude operations. The group is currently examining each accident over the past year to determine the root causes. Currently prevailing themes are: issues with performance planning; issues with weight and balance; pilot instrument-flying proficiency; need for improved weather reporting; and fatigue management. Once the group finishes its analysis later this spring, it will begin developing safety enhancements aimed at mitigating those accidents.
8. US HELICOPTER ACCIDENTS DECREASE FOR THE THIRD CONSECUTIVE YEAR
WASHINGTON DC - The U.S. helicopter accident rate and the fatal helicopter accident rate have fallen for the third consecutive year, according to Federal Aviation Administration data.
The overall accident rate fell to 3.19 accidents per 100,000 flight hours in 2016 compared with 3.67 accidents in 2015. The fatal accident rate fell slightly to 0.51 accidents per 100,000 flight hours in 2016 compared with a 0.52 rate in 2015. However, the rate is down from 0.65 in 2014 and 1.02 in 2013.
In raw numbers, there were 106 helicopter accidents in 2016, including 17 fatal accidents. That is a 12 percent decrease compared to the previous year and a 27 percent decrease compared to 2013.
Year Total Accidents Total Accident Rate Fatal Accidents Fatal Accident Rate
2016 063. 09 17 0.51
2015 121 3.67 17 0.52
2014 138 4.26 21 0.65
2013 146 4.95 30 1.02
"The FAA and the helicopter industry have worked together to educate the civil helicopter community about safe practices, to drive these improved results," said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. "The FAA and the industry also are taking an active role in advancing safety through new technology, collaborative policy changes and proactive outreach."
The FAA and the helicopter industry have worked together through groups such as the International Helicopter Safety Team and the U.S. Helicopter Safety Team to prevent accidents. The effort is achieving success through a series of proactive measures:
Creating a culture of safety - The FAA has encouraged helicopter companies and individual pilots to promote safety in the workplace. Efforts include establishing a system where anyone can report an unsafe condition without fear of reprisal, making every employee a champion of safety, and establishing safety training programs for mechanics, pilots and other employees.
Cutting the red tape - The FAA issued the Non-Required Safety Enhancing Equipment policy in 2013 after consultations with industry. The policy allows operators and manufacturers to install safety equipment through a streamlined and less expensive approval process. The policy seeks to strike a balance between risk and safety through a "common-sense" approach.
New technology - Both the FAA and industry are using technological advances to promote safer helicopter flights. For example, the FAA mandated that the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast system (ADS-B) be installed in U.S. helicopters by Jan. 1, 2020 if they intend to operate in busy airspace. ADS-B's satellite-based technology can provide three-dimensional information (latitude, longitude, altitude) about a helicopter's position, along with information about its direction and size, without the geographic drawbacks posed by radar.
Collaborative rule-making - The FAA is working with industry representatives to ensure that newly-manufactured helicopters can help prevent injuries, post-crash fires and catastrophic damage from bird-strikes. Some manufacturers and operators are already voluntarily stepping up and installing the life-saving equipment. In addition, the FAA required in 2014 that certain (Part 135) commercial helicopter operators, including air ambulances and air taxis, have stricter flight rules and procedures, improved communications, training, and additional on-board safety equipment.
FAA International Rotorcraft Safety conference - For the past two years, with industry's support, the FAA has hosted a three-day gathering focused on a variety of safety topics. The conference includes presentations about decision-making, fatigue, safe autorotations, protective equipment, a culture of safety, and first-person experiences.
FAA News, Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, DC 20591. Contact: Tony Molinaro, Phone: 847-294-7427
9. HAS MY PILOT HAD TOO MUCH TO DRINK? IT DEPENDS WHERE YOU FLY
Every country has different rules on pilot alcohol consumption and testing. How much alcohol is too much for a pilot who's about to take flight?
Believe it or not, the answer varies depending on where your flight departs from -- and where it lands. There are no standardized international rules on pilot alcohol consumption and testing. Instead, the International Civil Aviation Organization issues guidance and then countries set their own regulations, limits, testing regimes and punishments.
Despite being a rarity, it's an issue that has received extra attention after a series of high profile incidents. In late December, a pilot was found passed out in the cockpit before a scheduled Boeing 737 flight in Canada. In mid-2016, two pilots were arrested in Scotland on suspicion of violating alcohol rules before a flight to New Jersey.
The December arrest prompted Canada to take another look at its rules. The European Union is also considering changes.
Here's a look at how the rules work:
Who can fly
In India, which boasts the world's strictest rules, pilots aren't allowed to drink within 12 hours of a flight and must have absolutely zero alcohol in their system. "0.001% is also a violation," said Lalit Gupta, a senior official at India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
In the U.S., pilots are allowed to have a trace amount of alcohol in their system -- up to 0.04% blood alcohol concentration -- and must have eight hours between "bottle to throttle". (The 0.04% level is half the 0.08% legal limit for U.S. drivers on the roads.)
Who gets tested and when
Alcohol testing also varies by country: India subjects pilots to a breathalyser test before each of its 2 million annual flights, while the U.S. conducts between 11,000 to 13,000 random alcohol checks in a typical year.
The U.S. tests caught 10 pilots violating the rules in 2015.
India's stricter regulations caught 46 pilots in 2016, according to the country's Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
"If you set a zero percent tolerance limit and test everyone, you're going to have more positives," said James Stamp, global head of aviation at KPMG. "It's just a fact."
In Europe, each nation sets their own alcohol rules and then airlines develop and implement compliance procedures.
Safety risk
Testing can help ground pilots before they do any real damage. But there are still documented cases of alcohol contributing to aviation accidents. The most comprehensive data, from consulting firm JACDEC, showed there were 11 commercial aviation accidents linked to alcohol since 1980, out of a total of nearly 12,000 incidents.
The private accident-tracking group Aviation Safety Network counted five global commercial aviation accidents linked to alcohol since 1980.
The most recent documented commercial incident occurred in east Russia in 2012. A small plane crash killed 10 of the 14 people on board, and alcohol was later found in the blood of its two crew members. An earlier Russian crash, in 2011, killed 47 people. The incident was linked to alcohol, leading authorities to revoke the airline's license.
Still, only a tiny fraction of aviation accidents are linked to alcohol. "Let's be fair, air travel has become an extremely, extremely safe way of travel," said Jan Richter, founder of JACDEC. That's a sentiment echoed by pilots unions, which defend current regulations as sufficient. "Instances of substance abuse are extremely rare among the approximately 100,000 professional airline pilots in the United States who safely fly passengers and cargo on more than 27,000 flights every day," the U.S.-based Air Line Pilots Association said in a statement.
New regulations?
Stricter regulations are on the way, however, in some countries. Canada's transport minister has pledged to "enhance aviation safety" after the December incident in which a pilot was charged with having control of an aircraft while impaired.
Europe's top regulator is also expected to introduce rules requiring more systematic alcohol tests later this year.
The changes are a response to the 2015 Germanwings crash that killed 150 people. The plane's co-pilot, who was being treated for depression, crashed the aircraft into the French Alps. The crash has not been linked to alcohol, but it prompted officials to get more serious about testing pilots to ensure they're fit to fly.
Russia is also reportedly considering stricter pilot testing, but the country's regulators did not respond to requests for comment.
The modern U.S. rules on testing were implemented in response to several alcohol-related accidents in the late 1980s.
A number of countries are looking to reform their drug and alcohol regulations for pilots.
Crime and punishment
There are also differences in the punishments doled out to pilots found to be violating alcohol rules. In India, pilots have their licence suspended for three months after a first offense, and three years after a second offence. A third offence means they're booted from the profession for life. India does not offer a rehabilitation programme for pilots.
Meanwhile, pilots caught in the U.S. are more likely to face criminal charges and must reapply for their pilot's license after successfully completing a rehab program.
The U.S. substance abuse program for pilots is run by industry unions, aviation firms and the Federal Aviation Administration. The program has helped rehabilitate over 4,500 professional pilots, according to the program's administrators.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/24/news/pilots-alcohol-drink-rules/ = Curt Lewis - Flight Safety Information
10. WANT TO BE A BETTER LEARNER? HOW PILOTS TRAIN TO FLY A PLANE
CREDIT: Getty Images
In his book, Learn Better: Mastering the Skills for Success in Life, Business, and School, or, How to Become an Expert in Just About Anything, Ulrich Boser discusses methods for learning how to learn. This edited excerpt tells the story of how a grad student developed a program to help airline pilots learn a key skill to avoid deadly errors after a Northwest crash in Detroit killed nearly 150 people. At the time of the Northwest accident, Mica Endsley was living in Los Angeles. She was studying for her PhD. in systems engineering at the University of Southern California. The Detroit crash occurred late on a Sunday night, and Endsley would have heard about the incident on the news, with accounts like "Life or Death Turned on Twists of Fate" continuing in the papers for days.
In her graduate school work, Endsley had been thinking a lot about the causes of airline crashes, and she believed that something called "situational awareness"--a type of ambient perception--might be the root cause of the issue. As a skill, situational awareness has a good amount of history, and at least since World War I, pilots have been debating the true nature of the skill and its role in flying.
At the time of the crash, situational awareness was still a vague concept, often understood as something innate, a roll of the DNA lottery.
Endsley found, for instance, that just about every pilot could misread a problem if they didn't have sufficient background knowledge. She also found that skills like awareness and metacognition were crucial, and pilots without these skills were more likely to make major mistakes. For the first time, she also demonstrated that situational awareness required planning as well as a type of relational knowledge that allowed pilots to solve problems during stressful moments.
Endsley soon developed a training initiative, taking her research to airlines and flight schools, helping them develop better educational programs. In her teaching, Endsley encouraged pilots to ask themselves "what if" questions to help them develop a more systemic understanding of flying: What if this didn't work? What if this didn't happen? What if the engines stopped functioning?
Endsley also pushed for the direct application of the skill of situational awareness, of learning as mental doing, and she and her staff would often sit with pilots in a flight simulator, helping them develop a more concrete sense of how situational awareness works. At the same time, Endsley underscored the value of thinking about thinking, and she recommended that pilots engage in self-talk, explaining situations to themselves, examining their patterns of reasoning.
Today, many programmes--from Air Force basic training to medical school programmes--teach Endsley's approach, and while there's no clear way to track the impact of her work, there's little question that her efforts have helped stave off airline accidents. By giving the pilots a learning process, she helped them gain a skill that they clearly needed.
Or just consider that at the time of the Northwest wreck, 2,000 people would die every year in plane crashes. Now it's less than 500.
Math or reading, biochemistry or gaming, playing the piano or knitting a sweater, there are proven ways to improve our skills and knowledge, and even something that seems as vague and ill-defined as situational awareness can be developed. The key, it turns out, is to make learning a dedicated process, to use a targeted approach that relies on focus, practice, and reflection.
For her part, Endsley has mapped out three stages of situational awareness--perception, comprehension, and projection. here are the steps for learning that you can use to strive for mastery:
Value. It's impossible to learn if we don't want to learn. To gain expertise, we have to see the skills and knowledge as valuable. What's more, we have to create meaning. Learning is a matter of making sense of something.
Target. In the early part of gaining mastery, focus is key. We need to figure out what exactly we want to learn and set goals and targets.
Develop. Some forms of practice make people more perfect than others. In this stage of learning, people need to hone their skills and take dedicated steps to improve performance.
Extend. At this point, we want to go beyond the basics and apply what we know. We want to flesh out our skills and knowledge and create more meaningful forms of understanding.
Relate. This is the phase where we see how it all fits together. After all, we don't want to know just a single detail or procedure--we want to know how that detail or procedure interacts with other facts and procedures.
Rethink. When it comes to learning, it's easy to make mistakes, to be overconfident, and we need to review our knowledge, to reconsider our understanding, and learn from our learning.
These steps don't always occur sequentially. Sometimes we need to simply hone our skills. On other occasions, motivation is plain. If you're studying for an exam--or checking your flaps--the rethinking stage is always going to be central.
At the same time, we often get ahead of ourselves. One reason that hands-on learning doesn't work in many schools and colleges is because it's introduced too early. Same with practice: Too often, people try to develop their skills without knowing what exactly they're developing, without any sort of goals or targets. This brings us to again to the idea that learning is a process, a method, a system, and in the end, people can get better at gaining any sort of expertise.
http://www.inc.com/ulrich-boser/how-to-learn-anything-better.html = Curt Lewis - Flight Safety Information
11. FAILURE TO FIND MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370 LEAVES MANY QUESTIONS UNANSWERED
After three years and no sign of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, officials have officially suspended their search. See how we got here. USA TODAY NETWORK. Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of this story misstated the fatal-accident rate among airliners. The story has been updated with the correct statistics. As governments sail away from the nearly three-year search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, failing to find the wreckage and explain what went wrong for the 239 people aboard could haunt the industry that has reached lofty levels of safety.
The Boeing 777 disappeared without a distress call March 8, 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Based on clues from the plane's electronics, the governments of Malaysia, China and Australia spent $160 million scouring a section of the Indian Ocean floor the size of Pennsylvania. The suspension Tuesday of the underwater search leaves fundamental questions unanswered: What went wrong? Was there a mechanical problem? Did somebody aboard the plane make a mistake - or crash it intentionally?
The search's end comes two months after investigators took another detailed look at the clues that dictated where they were looking, and a month after they found that another area of ocean floor the size of Vermont might be more promising. "They're going to be haunted by what might or might not be in that zone," said David Gallo, who helped find Air France Flight 447 at the bottom of the Atlantic in 2011 and who is now senior advisor for strategic initiatives at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "This should really drive them crazy." Investigators say the plane's wreckage - and potentially the data and voice recorders - could explain whatever problems happened so that they could be avoided in the future. The Boeing 777 is a workhorse of the long-haul fleet, with 1,200 flying worldwide.
We really do need to find the wreckage to ensure that there's no problem with the aircraft," said Al Diehl, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. For example, the recovery of Air France Flight 447 revealed that pilots made mistakes flying in a snowstorm, but also a problem with pitot tubes, sensors that stick out of the fuselage of the Airbus A330, that gave the pilots bad information. Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said the manufacturer has been fully dedicated to the Malaysia search and investigation. The company's thoughts continue to be with the families, friends and colleagues of those aboard the flight, he said. "We accept the conclusion of government authorities leading the investigation and search that, in the absence of credible new information that leads to identification of a specific location of the aircraft, there will be no further expansion of the search area," Alder said. The disappearance came at a time of dramatic improvements in safety. The number of fatalities aboard passenger airliners worldwide from 1959 through 2015 was 29,165, according to a Boeing study. But the total for the last decade was 3,133, according to the study. The last fatal crash of a U.S. passenger airline was in February 2009. "Historically, we've achieved this very high level of aviation safety by finding the wreckage and other data, and analysing it - lessons learned from previous accidents," Diehl said.
Finding sunken planes is hard, even when the location is better known than the Malaysia flight. A Northwest Airlines plane that crashed in Lake Michigan in 1950 without modern tracking equipment has never been found. The Aviation Safety Network counts 84 planes, each with at least 14 people aboard, that have gone missing since 1948, typically over oceans, mountains or other remote areas. The Malaysia flight's transponder and automated maintenance system stopped signalling less than an hour into the flight. But a satellite caught hourly pings from the plane, which suggested it flew far out over the ocean until running out of fuel.
Because the ocean is several miles deep in the search area, the vessels first mapped the ocean floor and then dragged sonar vehicles on miles-long cords to scan the bottom. They found details as small as anchors and as large as a shipwreck. But no airliner. "It's probably one of the largest continuous maps of the seafloor ever made, with the resolution they made it," Gallo said. He called deep-sea exploration one of the hardest tasks on Earth, comparable to space expeditions. "You're actually mounting an expedition into an unknown world where the mountains are taller, the valleys are deeper and wider. There are volcanoes and earthquakes," Gallo said. "It's almost like going to Mars, to look for a plane. You're mounting an expedition to an unknown world."
More than 20 fragments of the Malaysia plane have washed up on distant shores, along the coast of Africa, and the islands of Mauritius, Reunion and Rodriguez. Damage to flaps from the wings suggested that they were in position for cruising rather than landing when the plane plunged into the sea. The search committee conducted a November review of how those fragments drifted and other data. In December, the committee changed its interpretation of where the wreckage might be, to north of where search vessels were focused, in an area of about 9,600 square miles. "The experts concluded that, if this area were to be searched, prospective areas for locating the aircraft wreckage, based on all the analysis to date, would be exhausted," the committee said in a Dec. 20 report. But without a more precise location, the transport ministers of the three countries in charge of the search announced Tuesday the last vessel had left the search area located about 1,000 miles west of Australia.
"The decision to suspend the underwater search has not been taken lightly nor without sadness," said the statement from Liow Tiong Lai of Malaysia, Li Xiaopeng of China and Darren Chester of Australia. "Whilst combined scientific studies have continued to refine areas of probability, to date no new information has been discovered to determine the specific location of the aircraft." Chester told reporters that he understood the "disappointment and frustration" of relatives of the passengers, some of whom he met with, and that he shared their disappointment even if he couldn't "possibly understand their grief." They have been waiting for answers now for almost three years, and it is the unanswered questions for them which is the most difficult part for them to deal with," Chester said.
But the three governments agreed in July that they would suspend the search if they didn't develop any more precise information about the plane's location. "If I continue the search effort and came to you today and said I have reached agreement with Malaysia and China to find another 20, 30, 40 or 50 million dollars, you'd be saying to me well, 'Why are you spending taxpayers' money in this way?'" Chester said. "But by coming to you and saying that we agreed in July last year that in the absence of any credible new evidence leading to the specific location of the aircraft, we intend to suspend the search, you are now asking well why won't you extend it to a new area. I don't think there's a perfect answer." The advocacy group Voice 370, which represents families of the passengers, urged the search to continue. The group called the November review "a mere smokescreen" and said requiring the "precise location of the aircraft" before continuing the effort would "bury the search." "In our view, extending the search to the new area defined by the experts is an inescapable duty owed to the flying public in the interest of aviation safety," the group said on its Facebook page.
HOWEVER, IT NOW APPEARS THAT BOEING MAY BE TAKING OVER THE SEARCH
Boeing is expected to take over a newly privately funded search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. The news comes as the underwater search - jointly funded by Australia, China and Malaysia - has ended.
John Goglia, a safety consultant and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, reportedly said that while the current search led by Australia is wrapping up, the quest for answers is far from over. The search will continue but it will be privately run with Boeing most likely to take the lead. It will be smaller and more focused - but that is probably better.
Last month, investigators said in a report that the missing Boeing 777-200 will not be found in the area in a remote part of the South Indian Ocean that officials have searched for two years. The plane's wreckage may have instead travelled further north based on flight simulations and new analysis of satellite communications, according to a team of international investigators searching for the plane.
"There is a high degree of confidence that the previously identified underwater area searched to date does not contain the missing aircraft," the report stated. "The experts concluded that, if this area were to be searched, prospective areas for locating the aircraft wreckage, based on all the analysis to date, would be exhausted.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the $145 million search for the aircraft, said that the operation will be suspended if there are no credible clues as to the plane's whereabouts after the completion of the underwater search of the 46,000-square-mile area in a remote part of the ocean. http://www.ibtimes.com/flight-mh370-update-boeing-taking-over-search-aviation-expert-claims-underwater-2468201
12. NEWS FROM THE JOHANNESBURG AIRPORTS
Users of the Johannesburg aerodromes must be aware of the fact that they all take Aviation Safety and AVSEC seriously. If you want to use these airports as a Pilot or are employed in any way on them, then we would recommend that you make yourself more than familiar with Part 139 in the SACARs and the Rules and Regulations applicable to that particular aerodrome. Be prepared for fines being levied if you breach any of the SARPs.
RAND AIRPORT, GERMISTON - www.randairport.co,za
Next Safety Meeting - Tuesday 4th April 2017 at 09.00 in the Old Customs Hall
• The wearing of high visibility jackets/waistcoats is mandatory for all persons, excepting for passengers under escort, on airside. (SA CAR 139.02.22(6))
• Drivers found to be speeding on airside will have their access remote taken from them.
• Vehicles being driven on airside must carry proper mandatory insurance cover
• All delivery vehicles and visiting vehicles requiring access to airside MUST be escorted from the access gate to the premises and then after closure of their business back to the gate for egress.
• Cranes are not allowed onto Rand Airport unless their use has been specifically authorised by airport management
• All operators are required to report Bird Strikes to the Safety Office even if there has been no structural damage to the aircraft as a result of the strike.
• Fuel must not be "trucked" into Rand Airport from other sources. Should there be a special requirement permission must be sought from the Airport Manager.
LANSERIA AIRPORT - www.lanseriaairport.co.za
Next Safety, Security and Stakeholders Meeting will be held on Tuesday 11th April 2017 at 12.00 in the LIA Training School.
• The wearing of high visibility jackets/waistcoats is mandatory for all persons, excepting for passengers under escort, on airside. (SA CAR 139.02.22(6))
• Drivers shall obey the published speed limits which are 30 on airside and 40 on landside - these have been enforced as from 1st May 2015
• Major earthworks to be carried out during the building of a new 3 story car park across the road from the main terminal building. Work should commence on 1st May 2017.
GRAND CENTRAL AIRPORT, MIDRAND
Next Safety Meeting will be held on Tuesday 4th April 2017 at 12.00 in the Boardroom
• The wearing of high visibility jackets/waistcoats is mandatory for all persons, excepting for passengers under escort, on airside. (SA CAR 139.02.22(6))
• Drivers found to be speeding on airside will have their access revoked
• Should an emergency occur pedestrians are requested to stand still in a safe area out of the way of responding AR&FFS vehicles.
• During any emergency Pilots, Instructors and students should try to keep the frequencies as clear as possible.
13. FINALE
SITUATIONS VACANT.
Part Time Consultant Air Safety Officers required who comply with the requirements of SA CARS Part 135, Part 121, Part 127, Part 140, Part 141 and Part 145 - must have had appropriate SMS training, previous experience and preferably been approved by the South African Air Services Licencing Council.
Part Time Quality Assurance Consultants required who are appropriately qualified and comply with the requirements of Part 135, Part 121, Part 127, Part 140, Part 141 and Part 145.
Part Time Aviation Security Consultant required who is appropriately qualified for RSA and International Operations
2017 SKYTRAX WORLD AIRPORT AWARDS
The following list of airports are as voted for by frequent flyers. It is sad to see that none of the African Airports made the grade this year.
1. Singapore Changi Airport
2. Tokyo International Airport (Haneda)
3. Incheon International Airport (Seoul, South Korea)
4. Munich Airport (Germany)
5. Hong Kong International Airport
6. Hamad International Airport (Doha, Qatar)
7. Chubu Centrair Nagoya (Japan)
8. Zurich Airport (Switzerland)
9. London Heathrow Airport
10. Frankfurt Airport (Germany)
Pulling from all areas of operations sources such as the IATA accident database, the Safety Trend Evaluation Analysis and Data Exchange System (STEADES) database, IOSA and ISAGO audit findings, the Flight Data Exchange (FDX), the Ground Damage Database (GDDB), maintenance-related and other operational databases - GADM is the most comprehensive airline operational database available.
GADM offers a comprehensive cross-database analysis supporting a proactive data-driven approach for advanced trend analysis and predictive risk mitigation. More than 470 organizations around the globe submit their data to the GADM. Over 90% of IATA member carriers are participants to this program. All GADM data contributors have access to applicable aggregated and de-identified reports and analyses.
Join GADM via this link: (https://extranet.iata.org/registration/pages/getemailpage.aspx?siteurl=gadm).
Access to multiple sources of industry data
1. Flight Data Connect (FDC)
# Flight data; extracted directly from the aircraft's Flight Data Recorder (FDR) or optional Quick Access Recorder (QAR) is routinely analysed enabling you to highlight risk areas in your daily operations. IATA's Flight Data Connect (FDC) service is a flight data analysis service for airlines wishing to outsource this function to an external provider.
http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/Pages/fdc.aspx
To join, please send your request to flightdataconnect@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
2. Flight Data Exchange (FDX) - free of charge for IATA member airlines
#FDX is an aggregated de-identified database of FDA/FOQA type events. It allows flight operations and safety departments to proactively identify safety hazards. Raw binary flight data is processed and analysed; and the results are merged and aggregated into a single de-identified database. http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/Pages/fdx.aspx To join this service please send your request to fdx@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
3. STEADES - free of charge for IATA member airlines
# A database of de-identified airline incident reports, offering a secure environment for airlines to pool safety information for global benchmarking and analysis needs. http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/steades/Pages/index.aspx
To join this service please complete the STEADES participation form and email it to
steades@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
4. Ground Damage Database (GDDB) - free of charge for IATA member airlines -
# GDDB is designed to facilitate data-driven decisions to measurably reduce aircraft ground damage. It is a database of ground damage incident reports and its and allows participants to compare their performance to a baseline of global ground damage information. http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/Pages/GDDB.aspx
Download and send a copy of the signed agreement and the participation form to gddb@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
5. Cabin Safety - free of charge for IATA member airlines
# The concerns of Cabin Safety go beyond the safety demonstration before a flight and encompass a range of different disciplines, topics and processes which are not always evident to airline customers. IATA seeks to offer operational solutions for airlines in order to promote the reduction of incidents or accidents in the cabin, thus resulting in enhanced operational safety and/or significant cost savings for airlines.http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/safety/Pages/cabin-safety.aspx
To join this service send your request to cabin_safety@iata.org and copy dandajenar@iata.org
Get more information from our website: http://www.iata.org/services/statistics/gadm/Pages/index.aspx
Should you require assistance or further information on above please kindly contact: Ranga DANDAJENA, Manager, Safety & Flight Operations - Africa & Indian Ocean DandajenaR@iata.org www.iata.org
Can we help you with your aviation safety
and / or quality assurance requirements?
Under SA CAR 140.01.2 if you and your organisation hold one of the following
# a category 4 or higher aerodrome licence;
# an ATO approval;
# an aircraft maintenance organisation approval;
# a manufacturing organisation approval;
# an ATSU approval;
# a design organisation approval;
# an AOC issued in terms of Part 101, 121, 127, 135, 141;
# a procedure design organisation approval; and
# an electronic services organisation approval,
then you shall establish a Safety Management System for the control and supervision of the services rendered or to be rendered by that organisation.
If you do not already have an approved Air Safety Officer and an approved Safety Management System then please contact us for assistance.
Avia Global in conjunction with Henley Air deliver the following SA CAA Approved training courses at Rand Airport;
# Integrated Safety Officer Course
# Quality Assurance Auditor
# Crew Resource Management (Initial and Recurrent)
# Dangerous Goods
# Human Factors for AME's
Should your operation be of a size whereby the full time employment of an Air Safety Officer and/or Quality Assurance Officer is not financially viable then we can provide you with Consultants who have previously held Air Services Licensing Council approval. We can also provide you with a tailor made SA CAA approved Safety Management System and all Manuals as required by your Regulatory Authority for your operation.
For further information on how we can help you please contact Rethea or Candice on +27 (0)11 024 5446/7 or e-mail admin@aviaglobal.net
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