| • | Safety’s Future Moves Beyond Business As Usual |
| • | GAMA Will Take Part 23 Safety Message To Heli-Expo Show |
| • | ICAO Moves To Suspend Battery Exemptions |
| • | Keeping the Runway Clean Is Now a Little Easier |
| • | Jury Indicts Two in Helicopter Accident |
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Safety Spotlights...
DOT To Audit FAA’s NextGen Program
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general will begin a congressionally mandated audit of the FAA’s air traffic management modernization effort next month. “While the FAA has committed to improve the management of NextGen and its other major modernization programs, key programs continue to experience schedule delays and cost overruns that could compromise the expected benefits from NextGen initiatives,” said DOT assistant inspector general Jeffrey Guzzetti in a February 14 letter.
FAA Publishes Hawker 400 Wiring AD
Newly issued airworthiness directive AD 2013-03-07 for the Hawker 400A was prompted by a report that the cockpit wiring for the 5-volt direct current (DC) system on the aircraft is undersized and does not have adequate circuit protection for the smaller gauge wire. The directive, which is effective as of March 19, requires installation of an in-line fuse in the 5-volt DC system for each of the five instrument lighting control power supplies. The work is designed to prevent failure of the wiring, which could result in smoke in the cockpit, loss of cockpit lighting and potential damage to surrounding wiring for other cockpit equipment such as the stick shaker function or angle-of-attack indicators.
AFL-CIO Issues Sequestration Warning
The Transportation Trades Dept. of the AFL-CIO union group says the clock is ticking toward a March 1 federal “sequestration” deadline the organization says will imperil the U.S. National Airspace System, with $483 million in cuts to the FAA’s operations budget. Sequestration will entail mandatory furloughs among agency employees, including air traffic controllers, aviation safety inspectors and systems specialists.
Top Gear Korea Helicopter Crash Caught on Video
While filming a stunt for the Asian version of the popular TV show “Top Gear” in which a Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 races a Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter across a racecourse finish line, the pilot of the Cobra lost control of the aircraft and struck the ground. The pilot escaped with minor injuries but the Cobra was destroyed in the crash. The stunt was planned to duplicate one that ran on the original BBC show in 2008.
Russia Briefly Grounds Some Aeroflot Superjets
Citing design issues, on February 11 Russia’s Rosaviatsia aviation authority ordered Aeroflot to ground four of its 10 Superjet 100 airliners. Manufacturer Sukhoi Civil Aircraft Co. said the issues related to a service bulletin about aircraft slats and landing gear. On February 15, Sukhoi announced that all four aircraft had been cleared to resume operations.
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“The absence of an accident doesn’t mean your [flight operation] is safe,” new Flight Safety Foundation president and CEO Kevin Hiatt told AIN. Hiatt,
who is a former vice president of safety at World Airways as well as a retired Delta Air Lines pilot, said the excellent U.S. aviation safety record the past few years has some critics wondering how it could ever be any better. But, according to Hiatt, that’s yesterday’s thinking and is precisely why the foundation initiated a campaign against complacency. “We’ve operated in a reactive mode for years, but moved into the more proactive mode we use these days,” he said. Hiatt said the work is not over. “The next phase will be a predictive mode that will happen when safety data can be de-identified and added to a single worldwide database–tentatively called the Center for Safety Excellence–that is just now sprouting with the help of ICAO,” he explained. While it’s still years away from completion, the new database will allow pilots anywhere in the world to query the safety history of any airport from hazard reports by the flight crews who have already flown there. One of the prime locations for those hungry for safety data is China, where many new operators are still learning how to use their business airplanes. “An effective flight department demands recurrent training, as well as some kind of safety program to track operational data and identify risks,” Hiatt said. “That also includes some kind of regular safety audit.”
GAMA Will Take Part 23 Safety Message To Heli-Expo Show
The General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) is planning to spread the safety recommendations contained in a government/industry rewrite of Part 23 certification rules to next month’s Helicopter Association International (HAI) convention in Las Vegas. “One of the primary focuses that we have had over the past year is to try to look at how we are regulated, and how those regulations just strangle our abilities to get safety-enhancing technologies into the cockpit,” said GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce last week. GAMA has been working with the FAA and regulators from more than eight countries on the Part 23 rewrite issue. “At the HAI convention [Heli-Expo]…we are going to jump into being able to work the same lessons learned that we found in Part 23 into Part 27 [small helicopters] because there, too, we can get safety-enhancing technologies into the hands of the operators and we can save lives,” he explained. Last year, GAMA expanded its aircraft delivery data to include helicopter manufacturers.
ICAO Moves To Suspend Battery Exemptions
The International Civil Aviation Organization approved a temporary ban on carrying lithium-ion batteries as standard cargo on passenger aircraft last week. An interim amendment approved on February 13 rescinded ICAO’s earlier exemption that allowed lithium-ion batteries weighing up to 35 kg (77 pounds) to be carried. Batteries weighing approximately 66 pounds were responsible for two recent fires aboard the now-grounded Boeing 787 airliner. The exemption had been in place for two months and was initially requested by airlines as an efficient method to ship new batteries to aircraft that might be grounded for replacements. Final approval of the amendment by the full ICAO Council is expected when the group returns to session in March. “This amendment to Special Provision A51 is a temporary measure, taken to ensure that safety considerations remain paramount while the related investigations in the United States and Japan remain ongoing,” said ICAO Council president Roberto Kobeh González. ICAO stressed that the new amendment does not affect the carriage, under A51, of other aircraft [smaller] battery types on passenger airplanes, nor will it place additional restrictions on lithium-ion aircraft batteries being carried as cargo on all-freight aircraft.
Keeping the Runway Clean Is Now a Little Easier
Israel’s Xsight has developed its new FODetect system to help airport managers keep runways clear during rainstorms or even in the middle of the
night. Using a small swiveling radar transmitter and sensor unit installed near the runway’s edge, the FODetect beam sweeps the runway as often as every 30 seconds and, like traditional radar, highlights–both visually and aurally–objects as tiny as a rivet that may have fallen unnoticed from vehicles. The operator watching the FODetect screen will also see a high-resolution image of the object that caused the alarm. During nighttime hours, the unit uses a laser pointer to indicate objects on the runway to airport personnel. The crash of an Air France Concorde in July 2000 soon after takeoff from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport was attributed to the supersonic jet running over a piece of metal that had fallen off the Continental Airlines DC-10 that departed just a few minutes before. The metal was not detected prior to the Air France flight taking the runway for takeoff.
Jury Indicts Two in Helicopter Accident
Two former Carson Helicopter Services executives, Steven Metheny and Levi Phillips, were indicted by a federal grand jury February 1 for “endangering the safety of flight” by falsifying aircraft documents, including weight-and-balance and performance charts on a Sikorsky S-61N helicopter owned and operated by the company. The helicopter crashed in December 2008 while performing firefighting duties for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Nine of 13 people aboard were killed in the crash, while four others received serious injuries. Metheny was a former vice president of Carson, and Phillips was the former director of maintenance and reported directly to Metheny. Both were charged with conspiracy to defraud the USFS involving contracts awarded to Carson in 2008. Metheny was also charged with mail and wire fraud, making false statements to the USFS, endangering the safety of aircraft in flight and theft from an interstate shipment.
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