onsdag 31. juli 2013

ANA - Oppsiktsvekkende kjøp og kvartalsregnskap

 

UPDATE 1-Japan's ANA says to buy 3 Boeing 777s, one 767

Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:23am BST
* Boeing orders worth $1.1 billion based on list price

* ANA says 787s remain central to its fleet strategy
* ANA reports 5.61 bln yen operating loss for April-June

TOKYO, July 30 (Reuters) - All Nippon Airways, affirming its confidence in Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner was unshaken by a fire on one of the jets in London, said it would buy three Boeing 777 aircraft and a 767 freighter worth $1.1 billion based on their list price.
ANA said there was no change to its 787 Dreamliner orders and the advanced aircraft remained central to its fleet strategy despite a spate of incidents involving the plane this year.
The airline reported a 5.61 billion yen ($57.3 million) operating loss for the three months ended on June 30.
"The 787 is an aircraft that overall has had few problems," Kiyoshi Tonomoto, an executive vice president at ANA, told an earnings briefing.
ANA operates the world's biggest fleet of 787s with 20 in operation and another 46 on order.
Accident investigators in Britain have traced the fire on an Ethiopian Airlines Dreamliner at Heathrow airport this month to an area housing the plane's built-in emergency locator beacon, made by Honeywell International Inc.
ANA has removed the beacons from eight Dreamliners that fly domestic routes, with local regulators' permission, and has inspected those on its 787s that fly overseas. During checks, theJapanese airline said it found slight damage to the battery wires on two beacons, which it has sent to Honeywell for analysis.
Earlier this year, regulators worldwide grounded the 787 for more than three months after overheating battery incidents on two of the planes.
The 777-300ER has a list price of $315 million, while the 767 freighter carries a list price of $185.4 million

The Gimli Glider - 30 år siden

Mange norske flygere ble utdannet på CFB Gimli i Manitoba. Undertegnede besøkte mine kolleger der julen -67. Jeg gikk da på Williams AFB, og var offiser. Mine kolleger var kadetter...... Hvem som fikk den beste treningen har vært diskutert mye.  Jeg regner med at Bob Pearson fikk sin trening i Canada...

Photo Courtesy of Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press
The Gimli Glider
by Wade H. Nelson
Copyright WHN 1997 All Rights Reserved
Published in Soaring Magazine
2800 Words including sidebars

If a Boeing 767 runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet what do you have? Answer: A 132 ton glider with a sink rate of over 2000 feet-per-minute and marginally enough hydraulic pressure to control the ailerons, elevator, and rudder. Put veteran pilots Bob Pearson and cool-as-a-cucumber Maurice Quintal in the cockpit and you've got the unbelievable but true story of Air Canada Flight 143, known ever since as the Gimli Glider.
Flight 143's problems began on the ground in Montreal. A computer known as the Fuel Quantity Information System Processor manages the entire 767 fuel loading process. The FQIS controls the fuel pumps and drives all of the 767's fuel gauges. Little is left for crew and refuelers to do but hook up the hoses and dial in the desired fuel load. But the FQIS was not working properly on Flight 143. The fault was later discovered to be a poorly soldered sensor. An improbable sequence of circuit-breaking mistakes made by an Air Canada technician independently investigating the problem defeated several layers of redundancy built into the system. This left Aircraft #604 without working fuel gauges.
In order to make their flight from Montreal to Ottawa and on to Edmonton, Flight 143's maintenance crew resorted to calculating the 767's fuel load by hand. This was done using a procedure known as dipping, or "dripping" the tanks. "Dripping" could be compared to calculating the amount of oil in a car based on taking a dipstick reading.
Among other things, the specific gravity of jet fuel is needed to make the proper "drip" calculations.
The flight crew had never been trained how to perform the calculations. To be safe they re-ran the numbers three times to be absolutely, positively sure the refuelers hadn't made any mistakes; each time using 1.77 pounds/liter as the specific gravity factor. This was the factor written on the refueler's slip and used on all of the other planes in Air Canada's fleet. The factor the refuelers and the crew should have used on the brand new, all-metric 767 was .8 kg/liter of kerosene.
After a brief hop Flight 143 landed in Ottawa. To be completely safe, Pearson insisted on having the 767 re-dripped. The refuelers reporting the plane as having 11,430 liters of fuel contained in the two wing tanks. Pearson and Quintal, again using the same incorrect factor used in Montreal, calculated they had 20,400 kilos of fuel on board. In fact, they left for Ottawa with only 9144 kilos, roughly half what would be needed to reach Edmonton.
Lacking real fuel gauges Quintal and Pearson manually keyed 20,400 into the 767's flight management computer. The flight management computer kept rough track of the amount of fuel remaining by subtracting the amount of fuel burned from the amount (they believed) they had started with. Their fate was now sealed.
According to Pearson, the crew and passengers had just finished dinner when the first warning light came on. Flight 143 was outbound over Red Lake Ontario at 41,000 feet and 469 knots at the time. The 767's Engine Indicator and Crew Alerting System beeped four times in quick succession, alerting them to a fuel pressure problem. "At that point" Pearson says "We believed we had a failed fuel pump in the left wing, and switched it off. We also considered the possibility we were having some kind of a computer problem. Our flight management computer showed more than adequate fuel remaining for the duration of the flight. We'd made fuel checks at two waypoints and had no other indications of a fuel shortage." When a second fuel pressure warning light came on, Pearson felt it was too much of a coincidence and made a decision to divert to Winnipeg. Flight 143 requested an emergency clearance and began a gradual descent to 28,000. Says Pearson, "Circumstances then began to build fairly rapidly." The other left wing pressure gauge lit up, and the 767's left engine quickly flamed out. The crew tried crossfeeding the tanks, initially suspecting a pump failure.
Pearson and Quintal immediately began making preparations for a one engine landing. Then another fuel light lit up. Two minutes later, just as preparations were being completed, the EICAS issued a sharp bong--indicating the complete and total loss of both engines. Says Quintal "It's a sound that Bob and I had never heard before. It's not in the simulator." After the "bong," things got quiet. Real quite. Starved of fuel, both Pratt & Whitney engines had flamed out.
At 1:21 GMT, the forty million dollar, state-of-the-art Boeing 767 had become a glider. The APU, designed to supply electrical and pneumatic power under emergency conditions, was no help because it drank from the same fuel tanks as the main engines. Approaching 28,000 feet the 767's glass cockpit went dark. Pilot Bob Pearson was left with a radio and standby instruments, noticeably lacking a vertical speed indicator - the glider pilot's instrument of choice. Hydraulic pressure was falling fast and the plane's controls were quickly becoming inoperative. But the engineers at Boeing had foreseen even this most unlikely of scenarios and provided one last failsafe&emdash;the RAT.
The RAT is the Ram Air Turbine, a propeller driven hydraulic pump tucked under the belly of the 767. The RAT can supply just enough hydraulic pressure to move the control surfaces and enable a dead-stick landing. The loss of both engines caused the RAT to automatically drop into the airstream and begin supplying hydraulic pressure.
As Pearson began gliding the big bird, Quintal "got busy" in the manuals looking for procedures for dealing with the loss of both engines. There were none.. Neither he nor Pearson nor any other 767 pilot had ever been trained on this contingency. Pearson reports he was thinking "I wonder how it's all going to turn out." Controllers in Winnipeg began suggesting alternate landing spots, but none of the airports suggested, including Gimli, had the emergency equipment Flight 143 would need for a crash landing. The 767's radar transponder had gone dark leaving controllers in Winnipeg using a cardboard ruler on the radar screen to try and determine the 767's location and rate of descent.
Pearson glided the 767 at 220 knots, his best guess as to the optimum airspeed. There was nothing in the manual about minimum sink - Boeing never expected anyone to try and glide one of their jumbo jets. The windmilling engine fans created enormous drag, giving the 767 a sink rate of somewhere between 2000 and 2500 fpm. Copilot Quintal began making glide-slope calculations to see if they'd make Winnipeg. The 767 had lost 5000 feet of altitude over the prior ten nautical (11 statute) miles, giving a glide ratio of approximately 11:1. ATC controllers and Quintal both calculated that Winnipeg was going to be too far a glide;the 767 was sinking too fast. "We're not going to make Winnipeg" he told Pearson. Pearson trusted Quintal absolutely at this critical moment, and immediately turned north.
Only Gimli, the site of an abandoned Royal Canadian Air Force Base remained as a possible landing spot. It was 12 miles away. It wasn't in Air Canada's equivalent of Jeppensen manuals,but Quintal was familiar with it because he'd been stationed there in the service. Unknown to him and the controllers in Winnipeg, Runway 32L (left) of Gimli's twin 6800 foot runways had become inactive and was now used for auto racing. A steel guard rail had been installed down most of the southeastern portion of 32L, dividing it into a two lane dragstrip. This was the runway Pearson would ultimately try and land on, courting tragedy of epic proportions.
To say that runway 32L was being used for auto racing is perhaps an understatement. Gimli's inactive runway had been "carved up" into a variety of racing courses, including the aforementioned dragstrip. Drag races were perhaps the only auto racing event not taking place on July 23rd, 1983 since this was "Family Day" for the Winnipeg Sports Car Club. Go-cart races were being held on one portion of runway 32L and just past the dragstrip another portion of the runway served as the final straightaway for a road course. Around the edges of the straightaway were cars, campers, kids, and families in abundance. To land an airplane in the midst of all of this activity was certain disaster.
Pearson and Copilot Quintal turned toward Gimli and continued their steep glide. Flight 143 disappeared below Winnipeg's radar screens, the controllers frantically radioing for information about the number of "souls" on board. Approaching Gimli Pearson and Quintal made their next unpleasant discovery: The RAT didn't supply hydraulic pressure to the 767's landing gear. Pearson ordered a "gravity drop" as Pearson thumbed frantically through the Quick Reference Handbook, or QRH. Quintal soon tossed the QRH aside and hit the button to release the gear door pins. They heard the main gear fall and lock in place. But Quintal only got two green lights, not three. The nose gear hadn't gone over center and locked, despite the "assist" it was given by the wind.
Six miles out Pearson began his final approach onto what was formerly RCAFB Gimli. Pearson says his attention was totally concentrated on the airspeed indicator from this point on. Approaching runway 32L he realized he was too high and too fast, and slowed to 180 knots. Lacking divebrakes, he did what any sailplane pilot would do: He crossed the controls and threw the 767 into a vicious sideslip. Slips are normally avoided on commercial flights because of the the tremendous buffeting it creates, unnerving passengers. As he put the plane into a slip some of Flight 143's passengers ended up looking at nothing but blue sky, the others straight down at a golf course. Says Quintal, "It was an odd feeling. The left wing was down, so I was up compared to Bob. I sort of looked down at him, not sideways anymore."
The only problem was that the slip further slowed the RAT, costing Pearson precious hydraulic pressure. Would he be able to wrestle the 767's dipped wing up before the plane struck the ground? Trees and golfers were visible out the starboard side passengers' windows as the 767 hurtled toward the threshold at 180 knots, 30-50 knots faster than normal. The RAT didn't supply "juice" to the 767's flaps or slats so the landing was going to be hot. Pearson didn't recover from the slip until the very last moment. A passenger reportedly said "Christ, I can almost see what clubs they are using." Copilot Quintal suspected Pearson hadn't seen the guardrail and the multitude of people and cars down the runway. But at this point it was too late to say anything. A glider only gets one chance at a landing,and they were committed. Quintal bit his lip and remained silent.
Why did Pearson select 32L instead of 32R? Gimli was uncontrolled so Pearson had to rely on visual cues. It was approaching dusk. Runway 32L was a bit wider, having been the primary runway at Gimli in prior year. Light stantions still led up to 32L. And the "X" painted on 32L, indicating its inactive status, was reportedly quite faded or non-existent. Having made an initial decision to go for 32L the wide separation of the runways would have made it impossible for Pearson to divert to 32R at the last moment. Pearson says he, "Never even saw 32R, focusing instead on airspeed, attitude, and his plane's relationship to the threshold of 32L."
The 767 silently leveled off and the main gear touched down as spectators, racers, and kids on bicycles fled the runway. The gigantic Boeing was about to become a 132 ton, silver bulldozer. One member of the Winnipeg Sports Car Club reported he was walking down the dragstrip, five gallon can full of hi-octane racing fuel in hand, when he looked up and saw the 767 headed right for him. Pearson stood on the brakes the instant the main gear touched down. An explosion rocked the 767's cabin as two tires blew. The nose gear, which hadn't locked down, collapsed with a bang.. The nose of the 767 slammed against the tarmac, bounced, then began throwing a three hundred foot shower of sparks. The right engine nacelle struck the ground. The 767 reached the tail end of the dragstrip and the nose grazed a few of the guardrail's wooden support poles. (The dragstrip began in the middle of the runway with the guardrail extending towards 32L's threshold) Pearson applied extra right brake so the main gear would straddle the guardrail. Would the sports car fans be able to get out of the way, or would Pearson have to veer the big jet off the runway to avoid hitting stragglers?
The 767 came to a stop on its nose, mains, and right engine nacelle less than a hundred feet from spectators, barbecues and campers. All of the race fans had managed to flee the path of the silver bulldozer. The 767's fuselage was intact. For an instant, there was silence in the cabin. Then cheers and applause broke out. They'd made it; everyone was alive. But it wasn't over yet. A small fire had broken out in the nose of the aircraft. Oily black smoke began to pour into the cockpit. The fiery deaths of passengers in an Air Canada DC-9 that had made an emergency landing in Cincinnati a month before was on the flight attendants' minds and an emergency evacuation was ordered. The unusual nose-down angle the plane was resting at made the rear emergency slides nearly vertical. Descending them was treacherous.
The only injuries that resulted from Pearson's dead-stick landing of Flight 143 came from passengers exiting the rear emergency slide slamming into the asphalt. None of the injuries were life-threatening. The fire in the aircraft's nose area was battled by members of the Winnipeg Sports Car Club who converged on the plane with dozens of hand-held fire extinguishers. Pearson had touched down 800 feet from the threshold and used a mere 3000 feet of runway to stop. A general aviation pilot who viewed the landing from a Cessna on the apron of 32R described it as "Impeccable." The 767 was relatively undamaged.
Air Canada Aircraft #604 was repaired sufficiently to be flown out of Gimli two days later. After approximately $1M in repairs, consisting primarily of nose gear replacement, skin repairs and replacement of a wiring harness it re-entered the Air Canada fleet. To this day Aircraft #604 is known to insiders as "The Gimli Glider." The avoidance of disaster was credited to Capt. Pearson's "Knowledge of gliding which he applied in an emergency situation to the landing of one of the most sophisticated aircraft ever built." Captain Pearson strongly credits Quintal for his cockpit management of "Everything but the actual flight controls," including his recommendation of Gimli as an landing spot. Captains Pearson and Quintal spoke at the 1991 SSA Convention in Albuquerque about their experiences. Pearson was, at the time, still employed and flying for Air Canada, and occasionally flying his Blanik L-13 sailplane on the weekends; he has since retired to raise horses. Maurice Quintal is now an A-320 Pilot for Air Canada,and will soon be captaining 767's; including Aircraft #604. Copyright 1997 WHN
An amusing side-note to the Gimli story is that after Flight 143 had landed safely, a group of Air Canada mechanics were dispatched to drive down and begin effecting repair. They piled into a van with all their tools. They reportedly ran out of fuel en-route, finding themselves stranded somewhere in the backwoods of Manitoba

EC225 flyr


Eurocopter’s EC225 is back in the air following the grounding of the type since October 2012 related to a shaft failure issue. African oil and gas operator SonAir is the first to resume EC225 missions, conducting a series of three flights with two helicopters from its base at Luanda to a pair of offshore platforms.


SonAir EC225. Photo by Anthony Pecchi


SonAir has headquarters in Angola, serving as the aviation division of Sonangol, the country’s national oil company. There are 11 EC225s at SonAir’s base in Luanda, with nine conducting crew change missions for the offshore sector. The aviation division also flies four AS332 L2s and three AS365 N3s. Joao Andrade, chairman and CEO, notes that the three “routine” flights confirmed that the EC225’s return-to-service “is backed by strong safety measures” that boost the confidence of its clients.

Earlier in July, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) validated the safety measures that Eurocopter recommended in connection to the shaft failures. The main focus of the investigation has been to prevent cracking in the main gear bevel shaft.

Kina og Oshkosh


China Plants Flag at Oshkosh

AIN NEWS LIVE » EAA AIRVENTURE » 2013
The 50-member Shandong Aviation Industry Association has pitched its tent in the shadow of the Oshkosh control tower. (Photo: Mark Huber)
July 31, 2013, 10:25 AM
Chinese entities already have bought several well-known U.S. general aviation companies including Cirrus and Teledyne Continental Motors. Here at AirVenture this year, Chinese companies are looking to expand two-way trade with U.S.-based GA companies and have set up several tents and pavilions aimed at showcasing the potential of China’s growing, albeit slowly,GA market.
The Shandong Aviation Industry Association has pitched its tent in the shadow of the Oshkosh control tower. The association was established in 2011 with 50 members in the air transport, MRO, flight training and aerospace education, aviation finance, and other related companies. The association’s self-proclaimed mission is to “promote the development of the aviation industry” in China including motivating the opening of low-altitude airspace.
Li Long is sales director for Binao Diamond Aircraft in Shandong, a member of the association. AirVenture is “very exciting” Long said, and “we are working with the EAAto promote private aviation in China. We are here to learn. You can fly in China but it is not so easy.” Long said he hopes to see increased liberalization of Chinese airspace within three years as more GA airports are constructed. However, he said the bureaucratic hurdles to doing so are steep. “You need to get approvals from both the government and the air force.”
Nevertheless, Long said that private companies in China are developing their own airports to service future GA demand. This includes Long’s home airport of Binzhou. “Airports are good for economic development,” Long said.

Manual skills - Sjekk artikkel av Jean Paries

But in the longer term, most “manual  flight” skills will inexorably be lost. Lost in modernity. The next generation of “modern” aircraft will probably be “fly-by-autopilot” only. The issue will not be manual skills, but automation reliability: a failure of the “permanent autopilot” will not be an option anymore.

Sjekk artikkel her: http://tinyurl.com/ovm6fdp

Byggesett med gratis tegninger og samarbeid gjennom www

Open-source airplane could cost just $15,000



There's an open-source airplane being developed in Canada, and now its designers are looking to double down on the digital trends, turning to crowdsourced funding to finish the project.


The goal of Maker Plane is to develop a small, two-seat airplane that qualifies as a light sport aircraft and is affordable, safe, and easy to fly. But unlike other home-built aircraft, where companies or individuals charge for their plans or kits, Maker Plane will give its design away for free.
The group behind the project consists of pilots and engineers who are designing the airplane, allowing it to be built using the kind of personal manufacturing equipment somebody in the maker community might already have at home or can easily purchase. The idea of a home-built airplane is nothing new. It dates back to the earliest days of flight, after Orville and Wilbur made and flew their own airplanes (and engine), the homemade plane movement - literally - took off.


Today, the home-built movement continues, and this week tens of thousands of pilots and fans of home-built airplanes are descending on the annual Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
This cross-section shows the wing's design.

In the spirit of the open source and maker movements, the Maker Plane group is including components from many designers and builders outside their circle. As they focus on the design of the airplane (fuselage, wings, etc.), the Maker Plane team helps connect those interested in building their own with other open source components such as an air data computer and radios. They even show you where you can get plans to build your own traffic and collision avoidance system.
The structural parts of the airplane, including the fuselage, will be built from composites. There are many home-built composite airplanes already taking to the skies, so the techniques are well proven. Smaller pieces such as knobs and handles will be made using 3-D printing. And after a year and a half of design, the Maker Plane team has started to build the first prototype. That's why they're turning tocrowdsourced funding to help the project along.


The basic specifications of the airplane follow the guidelines of the light sport aircraft regulations. The aviation industry and the Federal Aviation Administration created the LSA category to encourage more people to fly. The airplanes are limited to two seats, a maximum weight of 1,320 pounds, and a top speed of 120 knots (138 mph).


Maker Plane says they expect their design will fall within these requirements and have a range of 400 miles. More ambitious: They hope the cost to build the airplane will be under $15,000, including the engine.


The aviation world is filled with optimistic ideas that don't always get off the ground, but the Maker Plane is the first attempt at sourcing the entire airplane from the open-source community, which should help keep costs down, assuming you have the skills to build the various components. And if they succeed, Maker Plane hopes to fly the first prototype in 2015.

See the original article at Wired.com .

http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/29/open-source-airplane-could-cost-just-15000/?hpt=te_r1


EADS = Airbus

EADS to Adopt Airbus Name to Reflect Aircraft Unit's Role


Adopting its most recognizable brand for the entire group ends a decade-long attempt to create a balance between Airbus and other operations, most recently with last year's attempted merger with BAE Systems Plc that failed amid government opposition.
European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. will adopt the Airbus name for the entire group to reflect the dominance of commercial aircraft and plans to combine defense and space operations to help weather shrinking demand.


EADS Adopts Airbus Name as Commercial Air Dominates

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg News' Robert Wall reports on the reasons behind EADS adopting the Airbus name for its combined operations. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "The Pulse."
EADS, which also reported earnings today that beat analyst estimates, said it will reorganize into three divisions, including civil aircraft, helicopters and defense and space. EADS rose as much as 3.3 percent to 45.75 euros, the most since it was formed and began trading in 2000.

London City legger restriksjoner på avgangsvekt

Passengers kicked off 'heavy' London City Airport flights


Passengers at London City Airport are being routinely denied boarding due to safety concerns caused by the hot weather.
Passengers kicked off 'heavy' London City Airport flights
The take-off weight of a plane had to be reduced due to safety reasons


On Sunday 15 passengers were removed from a Swiss flight to Geneva after the plane was deemed too heavy to take off. Airlines have admitted it is a recurring problem that has been exacerbated by the recent heat wave.

London City's single 4,900-foot runway is one of the smallest in the country, meaning many larger aircraft models cannot use it. By comparison Gatwick's runway is 10,879 feet and Heathrow's are 12,008 feet and 12,799 feet.

In hot weather it often takes longer for a plane to take off, meaning - as was the case on Sunday - passengers may need to be offloaded to reduce the aircraft's weight.

Asiana fall out

FAA no longer letting foreign airlines land alongside another plane at San Francisco airport

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - U.S. aviation officials are no longer allowing foreign airlines to land alongside another plane when touching down at San Francisco International Airport in the wake of the deadly Asiana Airlines crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement Tuesday it implemented the change "to minimize distractions during a critical phase of flight."

In the past, two planes could approach SFO's main parallel runways at the same time in clear weather. Domestic carriers can still do that, but air traffic controllers are now staggering the arrivals of foreign carriers.

The shift away from side-by-side landing came Sunday, on the same day the FAA started advising foreign airlines to use a GPS system instead of visual reckonings when landing at SFO. The agency said it had noticed an increase in aborted landings by some foreign carriers flying visual approaches.

HEMS - Rart FAA ikke tenker på det åpenbare: Krav til to sertifiserte flygere

FAA to Collect Operating Data from Air Ambulance Services

The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 included a mandate to do this, with the first report to be provided to Congress by Feb. 14, 2014.

The Federal Aviation Administration has published a notice about a new information collection it is starting. Complying with the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, FAA will collect operational data from 73 helicopter air ambulance certificate holders and will begin providing annual summary reports to Congress early next year. The first is due by Feb. 14, 2014.

The law requires all helicopter air ambulance operators to begin reporting the number of flights and hours flown, along with other specified information, during which helicopters they operate were providing air ambulance services. "The helicopter air ambulance operational data provided to the FAA will be used by the agency as background information useful in the development of risk mitigation strategies to reduce the currently unacceptably high helicopter air ambulance accident rate, and to meet the mandates set by Congress," FAA states in the notice published July 31.

Data will be collected quarterly.

The National Transportation Safety Board issued a report in 2011 that listed 55 EMS aircraft accidents -- some involved fixed-wing aircraft - occurred in the United States between January 2002 and January 2005, resulting in 54 deaths and 18 serious injuries. The HEMS average accident rate rose during from 3.53 to 4.56 per 100,000 flight hours during that period, NTSB reported.

However, helicopter EMS organizations assert the industry's fatal accident rate has been steadily declining during the past three decades, Flying magazine Senior Editor Stephen Pope reported July 26.

Helikopterhavari - Wirestrike

NTSB Investigators arrive on scene of DEA helicopter crash in Breathitt County


NTSB investigators arrive on scene of DEA

BREATHITT COUNTY, Ky. (WKYT) - The National Transportation Safety Board is now on the scene of a helicopter crash in Eastern Kentucky.

The DEA chopper went down Monday morning near the Evanston community of Breathitt County near the Magoffin County line.

Witnesses say the helicopter hit some power lines, then crashed and burst into flames.
A DEA pilot and a state trooper were on board looking for marijuana at the time. The two were flying a mission for the KSP marijuana eradication team.

A witness told us the pilot pulled the state trooper from the burning wreckage after the crash Both men suffered burns and were flown to a hospital in West Virginia. We're told both are expected to recover from their injuries.

The names of the pilot and the state trooper have not been released yet.

Investigators from the FAA and the DEA are joining the NTSB to look into the cause of the crash.

A preliminary report on the crash is expected to be released in a few weeks, the final report could take up to a year.

UAV - I det sivile samfunns tjeneste V


Biodegradable UAS for Fire Detection

Led by Paul Pounds from the University of Queensland, a team of roboticists created two designs to help record atmospheric conditions in the event of a forest fire. The disposable, self-steering UAS are essentially sensor modules that can be dropped over a forested area to relay environmental data that could indicate potential for fire.
The first prototype looks exactly like a standard paper airplane, only this one’s made of biodegradable cellulose material. Once deployed from a larger aircraft, the so-called Polyplane UAS steers itself using tabs attached to the back of each wing.
An onboard control system bends each tab to direct the craft as close as possible to a pre-determined landing area. Because the circuits can be ink-jet printed directly into the paper-like material, key components can be glued, instead of soldered, onto the lightweight, foldable circuit board.
Made of the same biodegradable material, the second prototype mimics nature’s helicopter, the maple seed pod. Dubbed the Samara, this design incorporates a more traditional, antenna-equipped circuit board that’s attached to the “seed” part of the “helicopter blade.” Though it has a flexible wing, the Samara obviously can’t be steered like the Polyplane. On the other hand, its design allows for the sensor module to float gently to the ground, thus leaving the electronics unharmed and eliminates the need for expensive landing systems.
Photo: University of Queensland

UAV - I det sivile samfunns tjeneste IV


Colorado Wants Fire-Fighting Test Sites for UAS








U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and Jeff Flake filed an amendment last Wednesday night that would create two additional test sites for unmanned aircraft systems to specifically focus on wildfire-mitigation technology.
More than a year ago, Congress passed legislation that President Barack Obama signed, requiring the Federal Aviation Administration to incorporate UAS technology into national airspace. The FAA then released a 68-page document in February outlining how states must go about applying to be one of the six test sites, for which there is intense competition.
Colorado is among the states pursuing test-site designation.
The Bennet-Flake amendment to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act would require the FAA to choose two additional test sites, with the stipulation that they focus significant attention on wildfire monitoring, mitigation and containment.
“Extreme wildfires have become an all-too-common occurrence in Colorado, leaving families without homes and hundreds of thousands of charred acreage in their paths,” Bennet, D-Colo., said in a news release. “We need to employ every tool available to help firefighters in their battles.”
The six designated sites will have a five-year license to test UAS technology in their airspace. Colorado’s aerospace and economic-development leaders see having a test-site as a huge opportunity for gaining a head start in UAS research and development.
Bennet and Flake, R-Ariz., represent states with dry, fire-prone weather conditions and strong aerospace industries.
However, Colorado’s UAS advocates worry they may be nudged out of the top six by some of the larger states, primarily along the coasts.
The Colorado UAS Team is being led by the University of Colorado at Boulder but includes more than 50 stakeholders, including 10 regional economic-development agencies, seven universities, five industry associations, two state agencies and many more private companies.
“Have we been as vocal as some of the others? No. Have we been discussing the value of UAS Colorado to the FAA on a daily basis? No. But in our application to the FAA, I think the information we provided is compelling,” said Stan VanderWerf, executive director of the Colorado UAS Team.
While VanderWerf’s team believes firefighting is one of the most important uses for UAS in Colorado, he says it isn’t limited to that.
“We welcome the amendment. I believe we are competitive for one of the original six, but what Sen. Bennet is offering is relevant and important to Colorado to ensure we have a focus on firefighting,” VanderWerf said. “For those in Colorado who support the environmental efforts, UAS can be used. … It is also about search and rescue, it is also about agriculture and it is about wildlife.”
The bill is on the floor, and Bennet’s office expects a vote early next week.
Photo: Mesa County sheriff’s Deputy Danny Norris launches a Falcon UAS  Mesa County Sheriff’s Department

UAV - I det sivile samfunns tjeneste III


Unmanned Aircraft to Take Over Shark Watch in Australia

Unmanned aircraft could soon be seen in the skies above suburbs like Coogee, in an effort to keep the beaches safe from sharks during Sydney’s summer months.
Councillor Ted Seng’s motion at last week’s Randwick Council meeting, that Randwick Council investigate the feasibility of using unmanned aircraft to carry out shark patrols on the beaches, was carried.
“The last few years the cost of a UAS has come right down and they’ve been doing some wonderful things with them,” he said.
“The cost itself is not much but the monitoring of it will be expensive and so that’s why I suggested approaching the other coastal councils and we could all share the cost. It’s more than just sharks though and it’s about what other uses we could have for UAS, too.
“It’s just such a sophisticated technology and has been proven so successful in so many emergency situations.”
Westpac Life Saver Chief executive officer Stephen Leahy at the Westpac Life Saver Helicopter Base in La Perouse said the rescue service had been looking at the possibility of employing UAS over the past 18 months but the eastern beaches coastline threw up some definite challenges.
Mr Leahy said that the proximity to Sydney Airport and existing flight corridors across the eastern suburb’s beaches were hurdles that anyone looking at using UAS.
“UAS also don’t have communication capacities, so there’s a possibility of it colliding into one of our aircraft too for example,” he said.
“The other hurdle is that theUAS must be flown by a qualified pilot, so since it’s not a core business for council it would have to be something they did in conjunction with surf lifesaving and us.”
Unmanned aircraft were zooming around Shark Bay, WA in Australia’s first trial to see whether these military style UAS can help manage and conserve marine mammals. The first trial of the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) focused on dugongs.
Photo: The Westpac rescue helicopter on shark duty at Coogee beach – Erin Byrne/NewsLocal

UAV - I det sivile samfunns tjeneste II


NASA Global Hawks Will Watch Hurricanes from Birth

Starting next month, NASA will remotely pilot two high-flying aircraft into the Atlantic Ocean’s hurricane nursery to track tropical cyclones from birth.
The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (H3) research mission, now in its second of five years, is part of an effort to reveal the environmental and internal factors that control storm growth, and thus improve hurricane prediction. The twin Global Hawks will fly over and around tropical storms and hurricanes from the storms’ source in the East Atlantic Ocean until the cyclones collapse weeks later in the western part of the basin.
Thanks to the UAS, “we can get the storms we normally couldn’t get,” Scott Braun, the mission’s principal investigator and a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said.
Hurricanes in this region arise from tropical storms that form in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. Warm, moist air evaporating from the ocean creates a circular flow, sparking a rotating storm.
Until the Global Hawks were added to NASA’s arsenal, research planes from the United States couldn’t reach the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. There, many hurricanes are born when disturbances move off the west coast of Africa and out over the ocean. NASA’s unmanned aircraft can fly for up to 30 hours, depending on how much weight they carry, and are piloted in shifts by controllers back on the ground.
Researchers are especially interested in how hot, dry and dusty Saharan air affects budding storms, Braun said. Data collected by UAS last summer suggests the arid air may suppress storm formation, but other studies indicate the strong winds heading east from Africa may give swirling storms an extra kick.
“The dry air coming off Africa is a huge mystery,” said Brian McNoldy, a weather researcher at the University of Miami, who is not involved in the mission. “Being able to get wind fields from storms in the far Eastern Atlantic is something we’ve never been able to do,” McNoldy said during the hangout.
The Global Hawks will join manned research planes flown by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force in monitoring hurricanes, Braun said. “We plan to collaborate with them to fly together or fly in series, so we can maintain as continuous a coverage of a storm as we possibly can,” he said. In 2010, six planes from NASA, the NOAA and the Air Force flew together to track Hurricane Karl.
One of the upcoming remotely piloted planes will release dropsondes, disposable weather recording devices that send back real-time data for forecasting. Another will carry a detector to look for gamma-ray bursts, the electrical discharges known as dark lightning. Other instruments will track rainfall, wind speed, temperature, humidity and more.
- See more at: http://www.uasvision.com/2013/07/31/nasa-global-hawks-will-watch-hurricanes-from-birth/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5729684c6f-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_799756aeb7-5729684c6f-297533037#sthash.FBRgRAWJ.dpuf

UAV - I det sivile samfunns tjeneste


ScanEagle Certified for Arctic Survey Exploration

A major energy company plans to fly the ScanEagle off the Alaska coast in international waters starting in August. Plans for the initial ship-launched flights include surveys of ocean ice floes and migrating whales in Arctic oil exploration areas.
The release of two ‘restricted category type certificates’ to a pair of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) represents a milestone that will lead to the first approved commercial UAS operations later this summer, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced. Certificates were issued to two types of unmanned systems – the Scan-Eagle built by inSitu and X200 and AeroVironment’s PUMA AE. Issuing the type certificates is an important step toward the FAA’s goal of integrating UAS into the nation’s airspace. These flights will also meet requirements in the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 that define Arctic operational areas and include a mandate to increase Arctic UAS commercial operations.
Both are categorized as ‘small UAS’, weighing less than 25 kilograms (55 pounds). Each is about 1.37 meter long (4.5 feet), with wingspans of ten and 2.75 meter (9 feet). The PUMA is expected to support emergency response crews for oil spill monitoring and wildlife surveillance over the Beaufort Sea.
The major advantage of having type-certificated UAS models available is that they can be used commercially. The ScanEagle and PUMA received Restricted Category type certificates that permit aerial surveillance. Until now, obtaining an experimental airworthiness certificate – which specifically excludes commercial operations – was the only way the private sector could operate UAS in the nation’s airspace.
Photo: ScanEagle – US Navy

Asiana - Relaterte opplysninger og inntrykk

Jeg vil komme tilbake til The Gimli Glider. Jeg er ikke enig med Nevil Shute i at Gud har noe med dette å gjøre. Jeg har allikevel boka Round The Bend på listen over de beste bøkene jeg har lest. Sjekk ut boka om flymekaniker Connie Shaklin.

Det under er sakset fra The Atlantic


Asiana 214: Airplane as Hero, and Other Analyses

The role of engineers, pilots, coaches, and God in the path toward disaster -- or safety.

Three weeks after the crash, I hear from several travelers that debris from Asiana 214 is still visible at SFO, apparently as investigators keep working through the clues. I am entering my last day-plus in my current Internet-impaired environment, so a few text-only updates.
1) The landing gear succeeded; they failed. From a reader in the Seattle area:
One factor not mentioned in your posting was the "failure" of the landing gear. That is, in an impact beyond the strength of the LG, they are supposed to detach from the wing without breaking the wing off or ripping open the fuel tanks.
They worked!  (before the frisbee pirouette )
Likewise the engines.  Unfortunately, one of them came to rest snuggled up to the fuselage, and was the ignition source for the post-evacuation fire....

I work for a certain aeronautical enterprise, and actually sent a congratulatory e-mail to the 777 designers...
2) Credit to the airplane as a whole. From another reader in the industry:
I agree that fatigue & a little bit of culture are the broken links in this chain of events. 

I have worked as an aircraft mechanic for United Airlines for [more than 25 years] at [a major US hub], and most of us at work believe the 777 is one of Boeing's finest achievements. The talk around the hanger has always been  the 777 "is so smart it's a very difficult aircraft to have an accident in," and unfortunately without that technology engaged on the aircraft that  is exactly what happened to flight 214. 

3) Other airplanes are strong too. A reader says the crash is a good occasion to remember a previous unusual landing with a happier overall outcome. This was the flight of the "Gimli Glider," whose 30th anniversary occurred last week:
It's a shame that more people in the US aren't aware of that remarkable feat. I live outside of Detroit and was able to watch a short documentary about it on CBC the other night.  Admittedly, I had never heard about this until watching it. The stories of the pilot, crew, and passengers on that flight was far more interesting than the perceived impending crash of Noah Gallagher Shannon's flight.

I'm including a link to the piece, it's about 20 minutes. You might need to use a proxy server in Canada to actually watch it.
Short version of this saga: because of various fuel-management miscalculations, an Air Canada Boeing 767 ran entirely out of gas over Ontario. The crew and passengers all escaped alive only because the crew glided the plane down safely, with no engine power at all, from an altitude of 35,000 feet. Eg:
Captain [Robert] Pearson was an experienced glider pilot, which gave him familiarity with flying techniques almost never used by commercial pilots. To have the maximum range and therefore the largest choice of possible landing sites, he needed to fly the 767 at the "best glide speed". Making his best guess as to this speed for the 767, he flew the aircraft at 220 knots (410 km/h; 250 mph). First Officer Maurice Quintal began to calculate whether they could reach Winnipeg. He used the altitude from one of the mechanical backup instruments, while the distance traveled was supplied by the air traffic controllers in Winnipeg, measuring the distance the aircraft's echo moved on their radar screens.
Lots more in the Wikipedia account and on the video.

4) Previous Asiana landing problems. A report on the SF Gate web site contends that even before the crash Asiana flights had a much higher-than-normal rate of "go-arounds," or aborted landing attempts, at San Francisco Airport. The sources for this claim aren't named, and FAA officials decline comment, although the Airport Director for SFO does go on-record as saying he had been concerned about Asiana's performance. 

In itself, a decision to "go around" on any given landing can be a sign of a competent and safety-conscious flight crew rather than the reverse. When learning to land a plane, you're taught to be ready to go around at any moment before touchdown, rather than trying to save a landing that is shaping up the wrong way. But a pattern of frequently needing to go around can obviously be a bad sign.

5) More on Confucius in the Cockpit. A Western reader who has worked for years in China previously sent in an account of a Dutch soccer coach who greatly improved the Korean national team by (in this reader's view) shaking up some Confucian concepts of hierarchy and group effort. Another reader disagrees:
I'd like to send a brief note in response to your post - specifically, the anecdote about Hiddink [Guus Hiddink, the Dutch coach.] It is usually the case, in a situation in which a new authority changes the fortunes of a team (whether in sports or in business or wherever these inspirational movie theses appear), that some nugget of aphoristic truth can be gleaned from the turnaround, like so much dropping pitch. So it is with this one, in which Hiddink reverses the team's entire trajectory via an elemental ceremony that just so happens to represent the insertion of Western values into a team ruled by Eastern culture.

What instead turns out often to be the case is that this turnaround was actually managed through an intensive process of redesigning the team's (or department, or business, or what have you) strategy and tactical objectives, followed by an even-more intensive process of working with the team to relearn this new method of approaching competitors and the world at large. I'm sure one of the things you realize in these situations is that they rarely make for good cinema until they're condensed into the crystalline pitch-wisdom that we see in your anecdote.

Apologies for the soccer pun.

While I am loathe to claim that a practice of giving up shots on goal didn't doom the Korean squad pre-Hiddink (as a player myself once upon a time, I know how precious SOG are), I regrettably cannot bring myself to believe that a) this practice was the only problem the squad had, or that b) the problem was solved in a single ceremonial display of Hiddink's authority.
6) The 'Asoh Defense.' Back in 1968, a Japan Airlines plane bound for landing at SFO had a problem somewhat like Asiana 214's. The crew guided it through a properly stabilized approach --  but "landed" two miles short of the runway,right in San Francisco Bay. The circumstances were worse than in the Asiana case -- bad weather, and a ceiling of only 300 feet (versus clear skies three weeks ago). The outcome was better, in that no one was killed. The episode is famous in aviation lore for the "Asoh defense," the explanation offered by captain Kohei Asoh: "As you Americans say, I fucked up."

7) It's a "cockpit management" problem, not a national-culture problem. Another reader writes: 
On whether the crew's failure was a product of Korean "culture" or simply poor crew culture: Take a look at the NTSB report from the United Airlines DC-8 crash in Portland [Oregon] in 1978.  One of the safety recommendations stemming from that accident was to direct all air carriers to indoctrinate flight crews in principles of flight deck resource management.  It's my understanding that United took this recommendation to heart, and pilot Al Haynes credits that change with saving so many lives in the United DC-10 crash at Sioux City.

As Haynes later said:
"As for the crew, there was no training procedure for hydraulic failure. Complete hydraulic failure. We've all been through one failure or double failures, but never a complete hydraulic failure. 

"But the preparation that paid off for the crew was something that United started in 1980 called Cockpit Resource Management, or Command Leadership Resource Training ...All the other airlines are now using it. 

"Up until 1980, we kind of worked on the concept that the captain was THE authority on the aircraft. What he said, goes. And we lost a few airplanes because of that. Sometimes the captain isn't as smart as we thought he was. And we would listen to him, and do what he said, and we wouldn't know what he's talking about. And we had 103 years of flying experience there in the cockpit, trying to get that airplane on the ground, not one minute of which we had actually practiced, any one of us. So why would I know more about getting that airplane on the ground under those conditions than the other three. So if I hadn't used CLR, if we had not let everybody put their input in, it's a cinch we wouldn't have made it. 

"I don't know if any of you remember the old movie Marty, I kind of refer to that, it was Ernest Borgnine, and a group of his cronies, trying to find something to do on a Saturday night, and they said, what do you want to do Marty, and he said, i don't know, what do you want to do Joe, and that's kind of the way we flew the airplane now."
8) A final thought from Nevil Shute. A reader who is an active pilot says the episode reminds him of this line from Nevil Shute's autobiography, Slide Rule:
"Aircraft do not crash of themselves. They come to grief because men are foolish, or vain, or lazy, or irresolute or reckless. One crash in a thousand may be unavoidable because God wills it so - not more than that."