Formålet med bloggen er å bidra til informasjon om luftfart av alle slag. Også litt om ubåter og forsvarsspørsmål. Nyheter vil du finne her også, en del på engelsk som er det mest brukte luftfartsspråket. Har du selv noe som bør komme ut, så send meg en mail til per.gram@hesbynett.no - Politikk på alle nivåer over hele verden er i kaos. Voldsomme endringer kan finne sted på kort tid, som også kan få innvirkning på forsvarsdisposisjoner. Det må kommenteres.
Prince William—who is second in line to the British throne behind his father, Prince Charles—began his civil helicopter flying career in the UK on Tuesday. “The Duke of Cambridge has started work as an employee of Bond Air Services,” Kensington Palace said in a statement. His annual salary, reported to be $59,000, will be donated to charity, it added.
After simulator and in-aircraft training at Bond, the 1,300-hour-TT former Royal Air Force search-and-rescue helicopter pilot will start flying missions this summer for the East Anglian Air Ambulance (EAAA). “He will join our highly skilled team of pilots and clinicians who ensure that we provide the highest standard of pre-hospital emergency medicine to the scene of accidents and medical emergencies across the region,” the EAAA said when it announced in August that Prince William would be joining its team.
Prince William will be based at Cambridge Airport, some 50 miles northeast of London, where the EAAA flies an Airbus Helicopters H145 (née EC145 T2). The charity air ambulance operator, which conducted nearly 1,800 missions last year, also operates an Airbus H135 out of the UK’s Norwich International Airport.
Lightning Strikes 2 Airplanes Near Seattle Airport Passengers aboard two jets arriving at Seattle-Tacoma
International Airport on Wednesday evening received an unusual and somewhat
frightening welcome when both aircraft were struck by lightning in a scene that
was caught on video.
While it may look a little scary, experts say the
planes were perfectly safe.
The footage, above, was captured by
University of Washington graphic design student Owen Craft, who was outside
trying to film lightning strikes.
"I was stunned for a second because I
couldn't believe what I just saw," Craft told KOMO News. "After the second
(plane) got hit, I knew I was on to something spectacular!"
A passenger
on one of the jets said she saw a bright flash out her window on the right side
of the aircraft.
"I think it hit the wing because there was an immediate
loud crack and the cabin was bright for that brief second," Kim Dodge told the
station. "There was this loud gasp in the cabin after it happened. The people
behind me were starting to worry if it was going to affect the landing. It
didn't."
Jets are struck by lightning somewhat regularly and are built to
withstand it.
"Airplanes themselves are prepared for this kind of stuff
and have the mechanics to manage lightning strikes," Sea-Tac spokesman Perry
Cooper told ABC News. "We did not receive any reports of precautionary landing
alerts from any pilots Wednesday night either."
The Washington Post has
more on what happens when lightning strikes airplanes.
Germanwings 'black box' shows co-pilot Andreas Lubitz sped up
descent Story highlights French investigators: Flight data
recorder reveals Andreas Lubitz acted deliberately to crash plane He used
autopilot to set altitude at 100 feet and then used the controls to speed up the
descent Marseille, France (CNN)Initial tests on the flight data recorder
recovered from downed Germanwings Flight 9525 show that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz
purposely used the controls to speed up the plane's descent, according to the
French air accident investigation agency, the BEA.
The flight data
recorder, or "black box," was found Thursday by recovery teams that have spent
days since the March 24 crash scouring the mountainside in the French Alps where
the plane went down.
A statement from the BEA on Friday said its teams
had immediately begun to investigate its contents.
"The initial readout
shows that the pilot present in the cockpit used the autopilot to put the
(airplane) into a descent towards an altitude of 100 (feet) then, on several
occasions during the descent, the pilot modified the autopilot setting to
increase the speed of the (airplane) in descent," it said.
"Work is
continuing to establish the precise history of the flight."
Evidence from
the plane's cockpit voice recorder, recovered swiftly after the crash, had
already led investigators to believe that Lubitz acted deliberately to bring
down the plane, killing all 150 people on board.
And prosecutors in
Germany said Thursday that an analysis of a tablet device retrieved from the
27-year-old's apartment in Dusseldorf revealed that he had researched suicide
methods and cockpit door security on the Internet.
The correspondence and
search history on the device demonstrated that the co-pilot used it from March
16 to March 23, Dusseldorf prosecutor Christoph Kumpa said.
The search
history was not deleted and also revealed searches concerning medical treatment,
the prosecutor said.
DNA profiles Investigators have focused on
Lubitz's health as they try to establish his motivation.
But the missing
"black box" was expected to yield important evidence about the plane's final
minutes.
A female police officer digging by hand for clothes in a ravine
that been searched previously found the flight data recorder Thursday afternoon
about 8 inches (20 centimeters) below the surface, Marseille prosecutor Brice
Robin told reporters.
Usually white with florescent orange, this
discovered recorder lived up to its name as a black box because fire had
darkened it with ashes.
In addition, out of more than 2,000 DNA samples
collected from the crash site, lab workers have isolated 150 DNA profiles, Robin
told reporters.
"That does not mean we've identified" the crash's 150
victims, Robin said -- noting the recovered DNA still must be compared with DNA
submitted by the families of those who died in the crash.
Authorities
have also found 470 personal effects at the site, according to Robin. That
number includes 40 cell phones, though all those were badly damaged. Robin cast
doubt that any useful information could be retrieved from those phones, given
their condition.
That view is consistent with French officials' claims
Wednesday insisting that two publications, German daily Bild and French Paris
Match, were wrong to report that cell phone video showed the harrowing final
seconds from on board the flight.
'Premeditated murder' claim Noting
he's made a criminal request to German authorities but is for now conducting his
own investigation, the French prosecutor said he is tasked with an involuntary
homicide investigation.
But Robin noted that Lubitz made voluntary
actions -- such as guiding the plane toward the mountain and reducing its speed
to prevent alarms from going off -- and was "alive and conscious" to the very
end.
A European official government official with detailed knowledge of
the investigation said that Lubitz's actions amount to "premeditated
murder."
While cautioning that there are still many holes in
understanding Lubitz's motivation, the disclosures about his Internet searches
show that he planned to do what he was going to do, according to this
official.
Germanwings Jet Was Accelerated on Descent, Second Black Box
Data Show Flight recorder found Thursday backs up prosecutor's
suspicions about plane crash
The second black box recorder from the crash site
of the Germanwings jetliner revealed that the person flying the plane at the
time of the crash changed the altitude settings for the automatic pilot to 100
feet and then sped up the plane multiple times, investigators said
Friday.
PARIS-Data freshly drawn from the second black box aboard
Germanwings Flight 9525 show the plane was repeatedly accelerated as it
descended into a mountainside, French aviation investigators said Friday,
bolstering prosecutors' suspicions that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally
crashed the jetliner.
French investigation agency BEA said in a statement
that the flight data recorder, which was found and recovered on Thursday,
revealed that the person flying the plane at the time of the crash changed the
altitude settings for the automatic pilot to 100 feet and then sped up the plane
multiple times as it headed toward the ground, eventually hitting a slope in the
French Alps at 400 miles an hour.
The BEA didn't declare that the person
responsible for the crash was Mr. Lubitz, though French and German prosecutors
have already assigned blame on the 27-year-old who suffered from
depression.
The flight data recorder can store 25 hours of technical data
from a flight and is regarded as the most reliable indicator of any system
malfunction. The first black box recovered from the crash site included a voice
recording from the cockpit and French prosecutors who heard it said that it
suggested Mr. Lubitz locked out his captain and deliberately flew the plane into
the mountain.
Investigators will likely be searching the flight data
recorder for confirmation that Mr. Lubitz actively denied the captain access to
the cockpit by flicking a switch to lock him out. The special doors, which were
integrated onto planes after the 9/11 attacks to prevent terrorist from gaining
control of a commercial airliner, are equipped with technology so that those in
the cockpit can shut out anybody trying to enter the flight deck.
German
prosecutors said on Thursday that Mr. Lubitz researched cockpit security,
medical treatments and suicide methods on his tablet computer in days leading to
the crash.
The BEA revealed on Friday three photos of the flight data
recorder, which showed a mangled metal case, though the main recorder appeared
to be intact. The investigation is ongoing, the BEA added.
German
pilot did computer searches on suicide in days before crash
German police officers carry a computer out of a
house believed to belong to the parents of crashed Germanwings flight 4U 9524
co-pilot Andreas Lubitz in Montabaur, on March 26, 2015.
(Reuters)
- German prosecutors said on Thursday they believed the co-pilot who crashed a
Germanwings plane in the French Alps last week had searched on a computer for
ways to commit suicide shortly before the crash, which killed 150
people.
In
a statement, prosecutors in his home town of Dusseldorf, Germany, said the
computer, found in his home, also showed searches on cockpit doors and safety
precautions related to them.
They
said Andreas Lubitz had also "looked for information on ways to commit suicide"
in computer searches that took place between March 16 and March 23, one day
before the crash.
"On
at least one day, the person had for several minutes undertaken searches related
to cockpit doors and their safety precautions," it added.
The
disclosure feeds into an acceleration of the multiple investigations into the
crash of the German airliner as police in the French Alps said they had found
the plane's second "black box" cockpit recorder.
"The
second black box has been recovered. The prosecutor is going to make an
announcement", a Gendarmerie officer said.
The
Marseille, France, prosecutor in charge of the case, Brice Robin, confirmed he
was planning a news conference for later on Thursday.
Mr.
Robin said last Friday that preliminary evidence from the cockpit voice
recorder, which was quickly recovered from the scene, suggested 27-year-old Mr.
Lubitz crashed the jet on purpose after barricading himself at the
controls.
The
second "black box", or flight data recorder, contains hundreds of parameters
taken from the Airbus A320.
The
first box, which records pilot conversations, cockpit sounds and radio messages,
was found hours after the crash.
There
was no immediate word on the condition of the device, designed to withstand the
force of a significant impact.
If
intact, the data is expected to provide further detailed evidence including any
commands from the co-pilot seat.
France's
BEA air crash investigation authority, which is expected to decode the
information as part of a parallel safety investigation, was not immediately
available for comment.
Investigators
are still trying to work out the motive for which Mr. Lubitz would take the
controls of the A320, lock the door that was specially reinforced after 9/11 and
apparently deliberately steer the aircraft into a mountainside.
German
daily Bild reported on Thursday that Mr. Lubitz had allegedly lied to doctors,
telling them he was on sick leave rather than flying commercial
planes.
Germanwings
parent Lufthansa has come under pressure to explain what it knew about his
condition.
It
said this week that when Mr. Lubitz resumed pilot training in 2009 he provided
the flight school with medical documents showing he had gone through a "previous
episode of severe depression."
How to Screen Pilots
and Protect Passengers By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The crash of a
Germanwings plane last week and the news that its co-pilot had been treated for
depression and suicidal tendencies raise questions about how to keep pilots with
mental health problems from possibly putting passengers at risk. One step is
broadly adopting recommendations an aerospace medical group made in 2012, after
a JetBlue pilot suffered an apparent mental breakdown during a
flight.
The Aerospace Medical Association released a report recommending
that depression and substance abuse screening be added to health examinations
for pilots. The report also said that employee assistance programs in which
pilots could discuss mental health issues without fear of reprisal made them
more likely to come forward.
Pilot health screenings in the United States
and in Europe still typically focus on physical ailments, according to a report
in The Times. Pilots are expected to tell their employers if they think they
have a health problem that could hamper their ability to fly. But those
suffering from mental illness are often reluctant to talk about their conditions
because they worry about being fired.
For a different model, airlines
might look to the medical profession. Physician health programs, which exist in
47 states, perform assessments and offer screening for doctors dealing with
conditions like mental illness and addiction. Doctors can contact these programs
themselves, but colleagues may also refer a doctor if they are concerned about
his or her performance. The programs assess whether a doctor's condition poses
an on-the-job threat and what treatment, if any, is needed.
Some doctors
are monitored for months or even years after their initial referral. Some are
judged unfit to continue practicing. But making clear that treatment options are
available, and that entering treatment need not necessarily end a career,
encourages doctors to get help before their illnesses become so severe they can
no longer work.
The Allied Pilots Association, the pilots' union for
American Airlines, instituted a program in 2011 that allows pilots to seek help.
At a 2014 conference, the president of the Aerospace Medical Association noted
that this program had led to a significant increase in the number of pilots
reporting their mental health issues and receiving assistance. A systematic
process within the whole airline industry to provide mental health assessments
and help pilots get treatment is not too much to ask.
Calls for crash avoidance technology
Source: Lubitz saw
multiple doctors It is becoming increasingly clear to investigators that
Lubitz was "very afraid" he would lose his license to fly because of his medical
issues, a law enforcement source with detailed knowledge of the investigation
told CNN on Thursday.
It's already emerged that Lubitz had battled
depression years before he took the controls of Flight 9525 and that he had
concealed from his employer recent medical leave notes saying he was unfit for
work.
But the law enforcement source said that after a severe depressive
episode in 2009, Lubitz relapsed with severe depression and stress in late
2014.
In the weeks leading up to the crash, Lubitz was shopping doctors,
seeing at least five, perhaps as many as six, the source said, as he kept going
from one doctor to the next seeking help, including from a sleep specialist. He
was prescribed powerful medication, though it's not clear he was taking it.
AI pilots warn management of exodus New Delhi: The
pilots of Air India have several pending issues with the airline like continuing
pay cut and flying some very old planes. They have now warned of an exodus of
pilots from AI unless these issues are resolved at the earliest.
An
official of the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA, union of erstwhile
Indian Airlines now AI Domestic) said large number of pilots have already quit
in the past two years and that many more are serving their notice periods. "The
biggest issue is of pay cut that refuses to go away and the fact that AI still
operates 26-year-old Airbus A320s," said an ICPA office-bearer.
ICPA
general secretary Praveen Keerthi has told DGCA M Sathiyavathy that the
increasing frustration among AI pilots could affect safety. He wrote, "We wonder
how you have ignored the working conditions and plight of our pilots, cabin
crew, engineers and all other employees due to non-payment of salary and
allowances for the almost 32 months, when you were prompt in this aspect in
regard of Kingfisher & SpiceJet employees. How is it that not receiving
salary is a matter of flight safety for Kingfisher and SpiceJet staff but not
for AI?"
Her i Istanbul er det snart valg til parlamentet. Det er en del knuffing mellom justismyndigheten og venstrekrefter her etter at en gutt døde som følge av at han ble truffet av en gassgranat (canister). Han ble anklaget for å ha dekket over fakta i saken og så ble han drept, I dag var de motkrefter som slo til mot en politistasjon og også her ble en drept. Om bombetruslene kan settes i sammenheng med valget vet jeg lite om. Vi har blitt anbefalt å holde oss unna spesielle områder i byen, bl.a. den mye besøkte Taksim plassen. I går var det også et landsomfattende strømbrudd. Her i byen var strømmen borte fra tidlig formiddag til sen ettermiddag. Det sies at det gjaldt hele landet. Ingen tror på de offfsisielle forklaringne om hva som skjedde. Vi reiser hjem fredag, tror vi. Bomb scare on Turkish Airlines flight to Lisbon
A bomb scare has been reported on a Turkish Airlines
flight from Istanbul to Lisbon. The plane has returned to Istanbul's Atatürk
Airport and is currently surrounded by security personnel.
Bomb scare on
Turkish Airlines flight to Lisbon
This is the third such bomb scare on a
Turkish Airlines flight in less than a week, with a flight to Tokyo having to
make an emergency return landing to Istanbul on Sunday and a flight to Sao Paulo
having to make an emergency landing to Casablanca on Monday.
Pilots Need Mental Health
Screening -- And Doctors Do, Too
By Arthur Caplan
The
entirely predictable media obsession with the tragedy of the Germanwings
jetliner that crashed into the French Alps on March 25 is moving forward full
force. The media, especially cable television, love airline disasters. Once
German prosecutors revealed that Andreas Lubitz, the pilot at the controls of
the Germanwings jetliner when it crashed, had a mental illness but had kept the
diagnosis hidden from his employer, all media hell broke loose.
One of
the key questions raised by the spectre of mental illness was whether the
pilot's doctors tried to establish Lubitz's mental fitness to fly and if they
were concerned should they have revealed their worries to his employer. Despite
a whole lot of talking heads jawing on these points few had anything useful to
say since almost none of the experts consulted seemed familiar with the accuracy
of mental health screening, or with the nature of German requirements for health
screenings for crews or mechanics, or with German privacy law. When the
discussion shifted to what about America, things still stayed fuzzy.
Christoph Kumpa, spokesman of Duesseldorf's public
prosecution addresses journalists in front of the prosecution's building in
Duesseldorf, western Germany on March 30, 2015. The co-pilot believed to have
deliberately crashed a Germanwings plane was treated for suicidal tendencies
'several years ago', before he received his pilot's licence, German prosecutors
said. AFP PHOTO / SASCHA SCHUERMANN (Photo credit should read SASCHA
SCHUERMANN/AFP/Getty Images)
Pilots being interviewed noted that the
Federal Aviation Administration requires they receive a physical exam from a
flight surgeon annually or every six months as they get older. What mechanics or
flight attendants undergo was never mentioned. Mental health is supposed to be a
part of the exam for pilots but it almost never is. Pilots and the doctors
examining them know that any indication of mental illness including addiction or
suicidal thinking would get reported right to the FAA and that would be the end
of that pilot's job so little probing gets done. Plus those doing the screening
rarely have any training in mental health.
Put aside the question of
whether one crash, as horrible as it was, might have been prevented by tougher
mental health screening of every commercial pilot in the world by trained
medical experts. The fact is asking doctors and nurses about mandatory mental
health screening and the duty to disclose results to third parties is rather
ironic since doctors and nurses who hold lives in their hands every day do not
undergo mandatory, regular mental health or drug testing. Thus they are even
less likely than pilots to get the help they need to prevent suicide, burnout
and depression. Patients are left at risk because their anesthesiologist may be
addicted to pain killers, their nurse may have an alcohol problem, their surgeon
may suffer from cocaine abuse or their radiologist from early memory loss due to
a small stroke or early Alzheimer's.
Asking a parade of medical experts
about how extensive the testing is of pilots and whether they would report any
concerns about mental health misses a bigger issue with more importance then a
single plane crash. Safety is a huge issue in health care in America. Too many
patients die in our hospitals and nursing homes or are harmed due to errors.
What is at the root of those errors is hard to say since we don't require
regular mental health and drug testing, much less mandatory reporting to any
third party of those involved in providing clinical care.
When you hold
the lives of others in your hands safety has to be of primary concern. When a
pilot crashes his own plane into a mountain we wonder whether that could have
been prevented with better medical testing. But, better medical testing and
reporting is something that medicine needs as well.
It is time to take a
long, hard, broad look at which occupations need mandatory testing, for what,
how often and with what consequences.
Lubitz started training with Lufthansa in 2008 before landing a job with Germanwings
The Germanwings co-pilot suspected of deliberately crashing his plane into the Alps had disclosed an earlier bout of depression, Lufthansa has said.
The airline, which owns Germanwings, said last week that Andreas Lubitz had taken a break from flight school training, but refused to say why.
It has now shared emails from 2009 which show Lubitz told instructors he had suffered from "severe depression".
Meanwhile, all human remains from the crash have reportedly been recovered.
French authorities told AFP news agency that the remains of all the victims had been removed from the remote ravine where the plane went down, but mountain troops would return to the scene on Wednesday to search for personal belongings.
The search for the second flight recorder will also continue.
Also on Tuesday, German newspaper Bild and French news magazine Paris Match said they had obtained a video showing the plane's last moments before the crash.
The footage was shot on a mobile phone inside the plane, and recorded the sound of passengers screaming and the sound of a metal object striking the cockpit door, the newspapers said.
'Suicidal tendencies'
A recording from the cockpit of the aircraft suggests Lubitz, 27, deliberately caused the disaster last Tuesday, which killed 150 people.
Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr previously said that the company was not aware of anything that could have driven the co-pilot to crash the Airbus A320.
"He was 100% fit to fly without any restrictions or conditions," he told reporters.
It has now emerged, as part of the airline's internal research, that Lubitz had sent information about his depressive episode to the Lufthansa flight school in Bremen, when he resumed training after an interruption of several months.
He subsequently passed all medical tests and eventually secured his license. He started working with Lufthansa subsidiary Germanwings in 2013.
Candles and flowers were left at Duesseldorf airport in memory of the victims
German prosecutors said on Monday that Lubitz had received treatment for "suicidal tendencies" before completing his training.
But Lufthansa said his medical records were subject to doctor-patient confidentiality and it had no knowledge of their contents.
The company has set aside an additional $300m (€280m; £200m) to cover possible costs arising from the crash.
The money is separate from the $54,250 available to the relatives of each passenger to cover short-term expenses.
Airlines are obliged to compensate relatives for proven damages of up to a limit of about $157,000, regardless of what caused the crash. Higher compensation is possible if an airline is held liable.
None of the victims' bodies were found intact after the plane's 700km/h (430mph) impact, but different strands of DNA have been identified.
Speaking at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Mr Hollande said "exceptional scientific work" had been carried out by the recovery team.
Andreas Lubitz: Germanwings co-pilot
Andreas Lubitz left no letter, investigators say
Started training in 2008, at Bremen and Arizona. Training was interrupted for some months - but he later passed all tests and was deemed fit to fly
Working as co-pilot, or first officer, since 2013. Appeared pleased with his job
Lived in town of Montabaur, near Frankfurt, reportedly with his parents. Kept a flat in Duesseldorf and had many friends
Facebook profile suggests the active lifestyle of a keen runner, with an interest in pop music
