Flight Safety Information June 26, 2012 - No. 130 In This Issue Airline Crash Deaths Too Few to Make New Safety Rules Pay FAA Sets 37-Month Deadline to Retrofit Lavatory Oxygen Systems Union claims United Airlines removing cockpit barriers from 787s, creating security risk ARGUS PROS Aviation Auditing Supersonic jet to fly from London to Sydney in four hours FAA chief's confirmation hearing not yet cleared for another take off Airlines face pilot-availability shortfall Airline Crash Deaths Too Few to Make New Safety Rules Pay Workers and investigators clear debris from the scene of the plane crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 on Feb. 16, 2009 in Clarence, New York. More than a decade has passed since the last major-airline accident on U.S. soil. That's great news for aviation companies and their passengers -- and a complication for rule makers trying to improve flight safety. The benefits of aviation rules are calculated primarily on how many deaths they may prevent, so the safest decade in modern airline history is making it harder to justify the cost of new requirements. "If anyone wants to advance safety through regulation, it can't be done without further loss of life," said William Voss, chief executive officer of the Alexandria, Virginia-based Flight Safety Foundation. The last U.S. accident involving a large jetliner was in November 2001, and only 140 airline passengers have been killed since 2002. Most recently, 45 of those died in February 2009 when a commuter plane operated by Pinnacle Airlines Corp. (PNCLQ)'s Colgan Air crashed near Buffalo, New York. That accident raised pilot-fatigue concerns and prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to overhaul decades-old work rules. A cost-benefit analysis is at the heart of a dispute between the FAA and unions representing pilots of cargo carriers such as FedEx Corp. (FDX) and United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) over the scope of the new regulations, which take effect in January 2014. The rules will limit the hours pilots fly, taking into account the time of day they work as well as the number of takeoffs and landings. First proposed by the FAA for both passenger and cargo pilots, the rules were trimmed to exempt freight carriers following review by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Outweigh Costs The Obama administration, criticized by Republicans for over-regulating business, has emphasized the need for benefits of new rules to outweigh the costs. Regulators concluded that the benefit of improving pilot safety at freight airlines wasn't worth the expense. Because costs of crashes are based primarily on the value of lost lives and freight airlines don't carry passengers, losses are inherently smaller in cargo accidents under the formula. UPS pilots have sued to overturn the exemption and bills to do the same thing have been introduced in the House and Senate. "This marks a retreat from one level of safety," said Peter Goelz, an industry consultant and lobbyist who represents the Independent Pilots Association, the UPS pilots' union. Policy 'Trumped' "I can't remember another time when cost trumped a policy decision," said Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board. The FAA last month said it discovered errors in calculations that underestimated costs to the cargo industry. Laura Brown, a FAA spokeswoman, declined to comment for this story. Freight carriers object to the new fatigue rules because the costs are at least 10 times the benefits based on FAA data, according to Stephen Alterman, president of the Washington-based Cargo Airline Association. Cargo-airline pilots fly an average of 30 hours a month, compared with 50 hours a month for passenger-airline pilots, he said. "What the hours-of-service rule would do is make us fly less," Alterman said in an interview. "The fact flying is safe makes the benefit side of the equation more difficult," he said. Airlines for America, a Washington-based commercial aviation trade group, puts the cost of compliance for passenger airlines at $8 billion over a decade and hasn't offered a figure for likely benefits. Valuing Lives The FAA estimates the new rules will cost passenger airlines $297 million over 10 years, while saving $247 million to $470 million in fewer accidents and lower pilot health-care expenses. The FAA places a value of $6.2 million on each life a rule is projected to save. value-of-a-life calculation varies among government agencies. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, for example, use a value of $7.9 million. FAA number is based on studies of wage premiums people receive for performing risky jobs, said Kip Viscusi, a professor of law, economics and management at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. If a rule is expected to avert two deaths, it would be worthwhile to impose if it cost less than $12.4 million, according to Viscusi, who has consulted with the FAA and other agencies on life and health valuations. Fuel Tanks Balancing risk and benefit also figured in crafting rules to reduce the risk of fuel-tank explosions, like the one that destroyed TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996. The accident, off Long Island, killed 230. Final rules to improve fuel-tank safety weren't issued until 2008. They were delayed by opposition from some airlines that argued they were unnecessary and too expensive. At the time, the FAA estimated the cost of compliance at $165 million. The rules were released after pushes from the NTSB and the FAA over the misgivings of regulators including Susan Dudley, who headed OIRA at the time. "I remember asking, 'if you had this much money, would this be the best way to protect passenger safety?'" Dudley said in an interview. "It clearly was not." Risk Decreases The risk of a fatal accident in commercial aviation has been reduced to 1 out of 49 million flights over the past five years, from 1 in 1.7 million flights from 1975 to 1989, according to NTSB records. That's a 96 percent decrease in risk. In the last U.S. accident involving a large jetliner, 265 people died when American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300-600, crashed shortly after takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 12, 2001. Safety has improved since the late 1990s as the airline industry and regulators learned to analyze massive quantities of data for anomalies and voluntarily made changes to head off potential problems, according to Thomas Hendricks, Airlines for America's senior vice president for operations and safety. "We go out and proactively address an issue prior to waiting for an incident to occur," Hendricks said in an interview. "The information technology revolution has made this possible." Regulation is needed, if only to ensure fairness within the airline industry and promote the highest levels of safety, the Flight Safety Foundation's Voss said. Many U.S. carriers adhere to an international standard for collecting and analyzing in- flight data. Because data monitoring isn't required by rule, a carrier can operate legally without it, Voss said. "You start building a gap between what's safe and what's legal," Voss said. "Why not make that a requirement for entry into the marketplace?" http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-25/airline-crash-deaths-too-few-to-make- new-safety-rules-pay.html Back to Top FAA Sets 37-Month Deadline to Retrofit Lavatory Oxygen Systems The agency had ordered airlines to remove all chemical oxygen generators in March 2011. Airlines and aircraft manufacturers sought up to five years to retrofit, saying there are no actual designs yet for new systems. Jun 26, 2012 Airlines and aircraft manufacturers now have a firm deadline from the Federal Aviation Administration telling them they have about 38 months to complete installing supplement oxygen systems in the lavatories of transport planes. The compliance deadline is 37 months from the Aug. 10 effective date of the new airworthiness directive. FAA in March 2011 ordered the systems to be removed for security reasons. The new directive affects 5,500 airplanes of U.S. registry at an estimated cost of $44,220,000 for the new installation (plus up to $935,000 for the earlier removal of the chemical systems), FAA stated. Several airlines and manufacturers, including Airbus, Boeing, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and All Nippon Airways, asked FAA to extend its proposed 24-month deadline, saying no actual designs for replacement systems exist. However, the Association of Flight Attendants and the Air Line Pilots Association International asked that no extension be granted, saying even with the proposed 24 months, aircraft lavatories will be without oxygen systems for about 3.5 years in all. FAA said in the new AD final rule that based on the number of affected airplanes and the lack of an approved design solution, 24 months is not feasible. Thirty-seven months provides an adequate level of safety, FAA states in the rule. It also says all affected airframe manufacturers have discussed their intended approaches with FAA "and appear to have viable solutions." The agency did not accept the Association of Flight Attendants' suggestion that FAA add new training requirements for crew members on proper procedures for rapid decompression situations before the new oxygen systems are installed. "We disagree with the request. As previously determined, the risks are very low for the time periods involved," FAA said. "The resources needed to implement AFA's recommended interim steps could be better used in rapidly incorporating a final design solution." http://ohsonline.com/articles/2012/06/26/faa-sets-deadline-to-retrofit-lavatory-oxygen- systems.aspx?admgarea=news Back to Top Union claims United Airlines removing cockpit barriers from 787s, creating security risk (AP) United Airlines is paying to remove a gate from some of its newest planes that's meant to protect the cockpit from intruders, according to the union for its pilots. United is getting Boeing Co.'s newest plane, the 787, later this year. Those planes were to come with a folding metal gate that blocks the cockpit when the door is open, according to the Air Line Pilots Association. But United is paying extra to have those gates removed, according to a letter from the union to the airline obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday. Federal rules do not require the gates, although United has them on its 777s. Most planes flown by U.S. airlines do not have the gates. Cockpit security became a huge issue because of the hijackings of Sept. 11, 2001, prompting airlines to strengthen all of their cockpit doors. However, the doors still need to be opened during flights, especially on longer flights when pilots need to use the lavatory or go to bunks while other pilots fly the plane. The secondary barrier blocks access from the passenger cabin to the cockpit even when the door is open. "It makes no logical sense for a safety and security conscious airline with the history of United to pay for the removal of this device that further protects the flight deck from those with hostile intent," the letter dated Monday said. United spokeswoman Christen David said secondary barriers are just one component of flight security, and the combination of security measures can vary from one type of plane to the next. She declined to discuss the barriers in detail, but said "we are thorough in carrying out our security responsibilities for every flight. The safety and security of our employees and customers are our top priorities." United expects to get at least five 787s this year. The airline is part of Chicago-based United Continental Holdings Inc. Back to Top Back to Top Supersonic jet to fly from London to Sydney in four hours The designs for the 'Son of Concorde' will be sketched out at next month's Farnborough air show in London. (NASA/Lockheed Martin) Fancy flying from London to Sydney in four hours? The trip, which usually takes upwards of 23 hours, is one step closer to becoming reality. A prototype of the "Son of Concorde," a supersonic jet being designed in a collaborative effort between Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Gulfstream and NASA is set to be revealed next month at the Farnborough International Airshow in England, reports News.com.au. The new jet could usher in the days of the original Concorde that flew transatlantic flights for Air France and British Airways until its retirement in 2003. The plane would fly more than 2,485 mile per hour, according to the U.K.'s Daily Mail. Currently, the fastest subsonic executive jet, Gulfstream's new G650 can fly 646 miles per hour and has a top speed of just 704 miles per hour. The biggest obstacle designers are working to overcome is the sonic boom that was produced by the Concorde. A Gulfstream engineer described the sound the new jet will make as "closer to a puff or plop," reports the Mail. The jet, codenamed X-54, wouldn't be available as a full-sized jet until 2030, assuming the new technology is reliable and successful. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2012/06/25/on-concorde-london-to- sydney/#ixzz1yu4h2VRb Back to Top FAA chief's confirmation hearing not yet cleared for another take off The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee has not yet rescheduled a confirmation hearing for Federal Aviation Administration chief Michael Huerta. Huerta was testifying before the panel last week, but the hearing had to be to be paused because senators needed to cast ballots in a series of votes on a farm bill. Aides to the committee told The Hill on Monday that the meeting would be rescheduled, but said that a date has not yet been set as Congress focuses on a looming deadline to pass a new highway bill. The Senate is vetting Huerta, who has been leading the FAA since last December, for a five-year term at the helm of the national aviation agency. Huerta became interim FAA Administrator when President Obama's first aviation chief, Randy Babbitt, resigned after he was arrested for drunk driving. The charges against Babbitt were later dropped, but Huerta was nominated to to lead the FAA full time in March. http://thehill.com/blogs/transportation-report/aviation/234631-faa-chiefs-confirmation- hearing-not-yet-cleared-for-another-take-off Back to Top Airlines face pilot-availability shortfall Worry about future pilot and engineer supply for airlines has been around since the 1990s, but something has always happened to postpone the predicted shortage. Industry experts today, however, look at the number of forward orders for new aircraft, predictions of world fleet expansion, and sustained growth in the Asia-Pacific region and cannot see a further postponement unless the world economy moves from sluggish growth into depression - and that is not, at present, being predicted. The number of new pilots required to be trained in the next 20 years is 450,000 worldwide, according to the Professional Aviation Board of Certification (PABC). Simulation and training giant CAE estimates the requirement at 20,000 new pilots a year, which is roughly the same as PABC's prediction. Meanwhile, Martin Eran-Tasker, technical director of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, presenting at the Flightglobal Safety in Aviation - Asia conference in Singapore in May, pointed out that the Asia-Pacific region alone had a need to train 184,000 fully trained pilots and 250,000 aircraft technicians in the next 20 years, with China's specific needs being, respectively, 72,000 and 110,000. Cathay Pacific's director of flight operations has stressed the importance of performance- based navigation Eran-Tasker says government figures show that the number of would-be pilots presenting themselves for training, and the number of licences being issued, are both going down because the appeal of piloting as a career is plummeting. He ascribes this to industry instability, the high entry cost, unsocial working patterns, and the fact that piloting is now less well paid than some other professions. PABC's Asia manager, Capt John Bent, is trying hard to spread the message that training is not only a numbers game. Bent, also among the speakers at the Flightglobal Safety in Aviation - Asia conference, insists that quality is also vital, but that this fact is not, at present, being taken seriously. He says airlines are implementing safety management systems (SMS) - which represent a reactive system of risk management - but training - the proactive way of lowering risk and ensuring reliable operations - continues to be budgeted based on regulatory minimum standards. Many airlines have moved "beyond compliance" in other fields, but not in training. Bent says he struggles with the absence of logic in this approach to risk management. Meanwhile, most airlines are not making practical plans for the provision of sufficient numbers of expert staff in the future, let alone for assuring the necessary quality, and of concern is that the third-party training industry does not have the capacity to produce the pilot and engineer numbers required. On the other hand, the accelerating worldwide consolidation in this highly fragmented industry might create a more resilient training sector, one with greater capacity for investment in future expansion. The recent takeover by simulation and training giant CAE of the Oxford Aviation Academy (OAA) group of flight training organisations and type rating training organisations - itself a product of progressive consolidation over the last few years - is an example of this. CAE has been particularly strong in type and recurrent training and OAA in ab initio, so the two are complementary. As an exercise in examining whether the fears of expert staff shortage are real or imaginary, Bent lists the milestones in the industry's pilot supply situation since 1997. He explains why, for the last 15 years, the airline industry has repeatedly been able to scoff at the pilot shortage warnings. In 1997, the Air Transport Association warned of an impending pilot shortage. In 2001, following 9/11, air travel slumped and large number of experienced pilots were furloughed. The SARS epidemic and fuel crisis reversed recovery in 2003 and 2004, and later the pilot retirement age was increased to 65, extending the careers of the baby- boomer generation of pilots who were about to retire. In 2007, US regional airlines started to run out of pilots, and flying training organisations to run out of instructors. In 2008, the global financial crisis led to "negative growth". Now, a few years later, Bent's chronicle has started to show some underlying indicators that point the other way. In 2011, air travel growth resumed and heavy forward orders were placed for all categories of aircrafts. And this year, growth continues and the arrival of non-negotiable age 65 retirements for the post-war baby-boomer generation has begun to make a difference. Moreover, military-trained pilots and engineers continue to reduce in number as the air transport industry grows and the military sector shrinks. At the Flightglobal conference, Bent joked that the airlines now would push for a pilots' retirement age of 70, to delay the day of reckoning - again. Maybe this is not so far from the truth. On the other hand, although it might eventually happen, right now none of the authorities - including the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) - has even begun to consider the possibility of extending further the operating life of commercial aviation pilots. Opening the conference, the director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore, Yap On Heng, talked about aviation's rapid and continuing expansion in the region, explaining the three reasons for this. The first is the emergence of China and India as economic powers, the second is the continuing liberalisation of air services throughout the region, but the third - and underrated - influence is the low-cost-carrier factor, which is still developing rapidly. Dragonair is a recent convert to evidence-based training Heng explains: "Low-cost carriers emerged in Asia in the early 2000s to tap the growing appetite for travel, and opened up a brand new market for regional travel. They have now become a force in the Asian aviation industry. Take Singapore for instance: LCCs were non-existent there a decade ago, but since their emergence they have grown to contribute 46% of the passenger traffic between Singapore and ASEAN cities in 2011. The rapid expansion of Asian low-cost carriers have a domino effect on the aviation system - with their higher demand for aircraft, their additional load on air navigation services, and their need for more flight crews and aircraft maintenance engineers. Throughout Asia, new airports are being built and existing ones expanded to cater to the LCC boom." MONEY TALKS At the other end of the scale, Heng notes, the region is generating large numbers of high net-worth individuals, so business aviation is likely to expand exponentially. Business jets need two pilots and a team of mechanics, just like jumbo jets do. Bent's concern, along with the looming human resources shortage, is training appropriateness and quality. Appropriateness because, as he points out, since 1982 it has been recognised that pilot training needed a radical update because the nature of the piloting job, the aviation environment and the aircraft themselves has changed significantly. In 1982, ICAO set up a Pilot Licensing and Training Panel (PLTP) that sat until 1986, but failed to convince the ICAO Air Navigation Commission and the Council that change was necessary. Since that rejection of change by ICAO in 1986, there has been a far greater revolution. There are significant changes in the flightdeck environment, aircraft technology, and air navigation, but still no training changes have been adopted by national regulators to reflect the new ways of working. AVIONICS ADVANCES The changes in the job are massive: for instance, fly-by-wire and integrated avionics systems arrived with the Airbus A320 series in 1988, and were embraced by Boeing in its 777 series a few years later; avionics advances made flight engineers redundant even in the largest widebody airliners; satellite-based navigation is now the norm even if it still requires conventional back-up; and pilots have been expected to adopt performance-based navigation (PBN) without any basic preparation for it, despite the fact that modern air traffic management will increasingly rely upon precision navigation techniques to process traffic safely in busy airspace. Indeed, Cathay Pacific's director of flight operations Capt Richard Hall has warned that the full and highly skilled use of PBN capability will be essential to enable Asia-Pacific air navigation service providers to cope safely and efficiently with the predicted explosive regional traffic growth. He talks of "narrowing corridors" as airspace becomes busier. Bent refers to "national regulatory requirements lagging behind this fast-changing industry", to "legal lock-in to established practice", and a perception that change is a risk in its own right. There is now much talk about this need for change, but nothing has actually been done. Bent quotes Bill Voss, head of the Flight Safety Foundation, as testifying to a US Senate sub-committee that pilot training "is dangerously outdated". Voss warned the committee that rules and practices that favour quantity - like the accumulation of flight hours - over quality in terms of measurable piloting performance produced and maintained through comprehensive training, would not have a beneficial effect on airline safety standards. Some - usually large - airlines choose to make recurrent training more relevant to their specific operational needs and experience by adopting an advanced qualification programme, also known as flight operations quality assurance. But these carriers are in the minority and may always be. So the failure of national aviation authorities to update regulatory requirements condemns to an inherently higher risk of serious accidents all those who train according to outdated rules. MODERNISATION Despite its failure with the PLTP in 1984, ICAO has acted recently to draft more modern training standards. It has created the multi-crew pilot licence (MPL), the first pilot licence in history to define all the competencies necessary to meet the performance and knowledge parameters that its holder must be able to demonstrate. ICAO is also working on clearer guidance on flight simulation training devices and how, as their technical fidelity advances, they may be permitted to supplement or replace training in aircraft more widely than at present.And, in collaboration with the International Air Transport Association, ICAO is developing a training and qualification initiative. Captain Dieter Harms owns the title ? if any single pilot should be awarded it ? of "the father of the MPL". At the Flightglobal conference he delivered a definition of pilot core competencies: "A group of related behaviours, based on job requirements, which describe how to operate modern multi-crew transport airplane safely, effectively and efficiently. They describe what proficient performance in all phases of flight operation looks like. They include the name of the competency, a description, and a list of behavioural indicators." And why, according to Harms, should competency-based training succeed where what he calls "inventory-based training" has failed? This is his explanation: "It is based on the insight that inventory-based training and the repetition of past accident scenarios [are] insufficient to prepare pilots and crews to successfully handle the infinite number of unforeseeable situations. And that only the existence and the continuous application of a set of core competencies enable pilots and crews to operate safely, efficiently and effectively and manage the threats of modern civil aviation." The fact that threat and error management is a component of the MPL course from beginning to end also helps. Meanwhile, the PABC is preparing globally standardised examination questions to test the knowledge base required by professional transport pilots in today's environment, and the ICATEE (International Committee for Aviation Training in Extended Envelopes) is working with the UK Royal Aeronautical Society on how to prepare pilots to manage flight at the edges of the normal flight envelope. So all this work is being done, but still nothing is happening at the regulatory end or the airline frontline. Bent explains: "Unharmonised national regulatory requirements are lagging behind this fast-changing industry; there is legal lock-in to established practice, and a perception that change equals risk." If the world, or even individual states, decides to modernise the rules on type and recurrent training requirements, Bent says, the next problem will be instructor supply. There will be a need to retrain existing instructors, train new ones in large numbers, and retain them by making instructing a valid career choice, with adequate rewards. Even now, there is a necessity to retrain instructors who are going to work with MPL students; the manner of teaching pilots through a defined competency-based curriculum toward a competency-based licence is different from the traditional test-based pass/fail system. Emirates has adopted evidence-based recurrent training Bent addresses how modern line pilots should be kept up to speed with their job. He is a fan of cutting-edge thinking among training planners and practitioners at the Royal Aeronautical Society, IATA, ICAO, and airlines like Emirates that have adopted evidence- based recurrent training. This draws on evidence from flight data monitoring and other SMS inputs to identify the training exercises the crews manifestly need. Cathay Pacific, Dragonair, Air France, Qantas, Virgin Australia, Qatar Airways and Air Transat are recent converts to evidence- based training. EXPECTING SURPRISES Bent maintains that the modern recurrent training need, above all else, is "training for the unexpected". Modern flying is routine and uneventful because of the unprecedented reliability of modern airframes, engines, avionics and flight management systems (FMS), even if there is a high workload in some flight phases. Bent's theory is that "the startle factor" of unexpected events is often the initial cause of that modern killer phenomenon ? loss of control. "If the pilot was able to control the startle factor, it is likely that the natural stability of the aircraft would stop a divergence from controlled flight before a pilot could amplify it," he says. But how is it possible to train for the unexpected? In fact, it's an issue of ensuring, through training, that the pilots maintain a confidence in their own judgement so they never losing sight of the primary task, which is to keep the aircraft within its flight envelope, while addressing whatever else has occurred. http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/in-focus-airlines-face-pilot-availability- shortfall-373274/ Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP, FRAeS, FISASI CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC