Airline Incident in 2010, News Comes out Now (2012)

A budget airline in Australia had a human error (pilot error) incident in May 2010. The gist of the story is that, the pilot forgot to lower the landing gear while making a landing approach, because he was distracted by incoming cellphone messages. At about 392 feet from the ground, the pilot realized the mistake, aborted the landing and then landed safely thereafter on a subsequent approach. (full report over at yahoo travel). The incident took place on a  220-seat Airbus A320 and the Australian

According to news reports, the pilot was no rookie with over 13000 flights hours experience and the co-pilot had over 4000 hrs as well.

Full Yahoo Travel Coverage

My biggest concern here is not the incident itself, but the huge delay (almost two years!!) since the incident for this news to come to surface. The issue of fatigue is also raised in the article, but the bigger reason is clearly the cellphone distraction. The fact that airline pilots are allowed to have cell phones on and active during take off and landing is a matter of huge concern - especially when passengers are repeatedly asked to switch them off.

Read Full ATSB Report Here (pdf)

Apart from the yahoo travel report, we dug further into the report published by the ATSB (pdf here) and found further mentions of communication issues between the FO (first officer) and the Captain.
Here are some excerpts from that report:

"Phone records showed that there were no texts sent or answered by the captain during the approach."

"By the time the captain was interviewed as part of this investigation, he had erased the messages from his phone. The investigation was unable to obtain the exact timings of the mobile phone messages."

The pilot(s) as well as the airline were not fined or charged over the incident.

http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/distracted-pilot-forgets-to-lower-landing-gear.html

Crazy Air Travel

I have nt written much on air travel or airline miles for a while now. Most of the blame goes to the roller coaster ride happening in the financial sector right now. Anyhow, I came across an article on about scariest runways on CNN's website. Bhutan's Paro airport and Honduras' Toncontìn Airport in Tegucigalpa (this was one place where I have been thinking of going recently, haha, should be fun!) both top the list of scary runways mainly due to the terrain surrounding the airport.
Even an airport like Washington DC's Reagan National feature on the list. Another notable mention was an airstrip in Lesotho, the story of which reminds of James Bond's flight in Golden Eye.
To quickly jump to the spot I am referring to, go to time 6:35 on video and watch from there.

So if you are out to earn more and more airmiles, but do not pay attention to the destination, you might be in for some roller coaster rides! Watch out.

Air Miles Across English Channel in a Jet Pack

A Swiss adventurer Yves Rossy (pronounced Eve Ross-e) found a new way to add some air miles to his own FF program. Just kidding, Mr Rossy made a sort of pioneering flight by crossing the English Channel using jet packs after being released over French landmass at about a height of 8200 ft (~2500 m). You can read more about it on CNN. Nicknamed the human jet, the 49 year old former military pilot made this the first solo flight using a jet pack/jet propelled wing. A video of the final stages of the flight before he landed in Calais, England using a parachute is available on BBC. The BBC news report has a lot of details on its news page.

While I was talking about this (jet pack flight) to my friend, I mentioned that perhaps a more challenging feat would be to use hang glider and cross the channel. I also mentioned that since a hang glider is a little larger than a jet pack, the person could go up on a hot air balloon and then be dropped from a height. He started arguing that "one needs thermal currents to hang glide and that the probability of thermal currents over the english channel were very low". I ran a simple search on google of the query 'can you glide over the english channel". The results showed me that wayyyy back in 1989, a woman named Judy Leden had successfully glided across the channel, after she was hoisted along with her glider in a hot air balloon. I was very happy to see that something almost exactly recreated as I had imagined a few moments back. You can see the video below:


For losing the bet, my friend agreed to eat a whole garlic raw.

Airlines removing lifevests

Just heard that Air Canada's regional carrier Jazz is removing life vests from the planes in order to reduce loads carried. Since Jazz is an airline that does not fly over the oceans, it is reasonable safe. However, they do fly over the Great Lakes, which are not your backyard ponds. So just relying on the seat cushions as flotation aids if your plane is forced to land on water in Lake Superior may not be fun. Life vests add about a pounds of weight per piece, so the regional planes are expected to reduce their loads by about 50 lbs each. But then, the probability of water landings is fairly low, so it is a reasonable decision. However, this still adds a question marks against the safety guarantee on Jazz planes. It remains to be seen if other airlines also follow suit on domestic-over land only- flights with this type of policy. Airline safety is one of the best established industry practices and fairly well regulated compared to many industries. Air Canada, the larger airline group, however will retain life vests on its planes which fly over the oceans of the world to different continents.
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American Airlines Fined for Safety Violations

The FAA has proposed a fine against American Airlines (NYSE: AMR) up to $7.1 million for deferring much necessary safety and maintenance actions on two of its planes. The fine also covers some other violations relating to substance abuse, etc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp (NYSE:AMR - News), knowingly flew planes that needed safety repairs, the U.S. government charged on Thursday in a letter that proposed a $7.1 million fine against the carrier.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the fine, one of the biggest ever, also covered accusations of deficiencies in American's drug and alcohol testing programs and alleged violations of inspection procedures for aircraft exit lighting. Earlier this year FAA had fined Southwest (LUV) about $10 million.
Click Here for More (takes you to an external site).

This action did not seem to have much of an impact on the stock price however because oil prices have been on a downtrend lately. In somewhat unrelated news, but in a bid to bolster public relations, American Airlines announced that it is waiving the third bag fee which was imposed on active duty military members. Although the fee was reimbursable, the effort the military members had to spend to recoup the charges were recognized as substantial by AA and hence they are removing the fee as a goodwill gesture. You can read about it here in a St. Louis newspaper.
American is a member of the Oneworld Airline Alliance.