Flight Safety Information June 17, 2013 - No. 120 In This Issue Time to Look at Pilot Reliance on Portable Devices? Jet carrying President George W. Bush diverted over report of smoke in cockpit Emergency landing by Saudi aircraft Should Pilots Be Allowed to Sleep During Flights? How safe is your airline? Annual SMS Audit Results Released NTSB Chief Has Her Own Opinions about the 787 Dreamliner and Airline Safety Helios tapped for Singapore safety case Time to Look at Pilot Reliance on Portable Devices? By ANDY PASZTOR Amid the proliferation of Web connectivity for airline passengers, air-safety experts are examining growing pilot reliance on portable electronic devices in cockpits. Most public and regulatory attention remains focused on whether controls should be loosened on computer use, tablets, cellphones and other Wi-Fi-enabled technology in the cabin, especially during taxi, takeoffs and landings. But some industry and government officials wonder if under extreme circumstances, there may be a different safety downside: Can pilots tapping away on similar devices as part of their jobs potentially interfere with aircraft systems? U.S. avionics supplier Honeywell International Inc. HON -0.17%already has faced the challenges of such applications on the other side of the cockpit door. The Morris Township, N.J. company is in the later stages of helping airlines retrofit certain of its instrument displays installed on Boeing BA -0.32%737 jets to make the equipment more resistant to electromagnetic interference. The modifications were phased into new production of the same type of Honeywell displays last year, affecting thousands of aircraft. There haven't been any accidents or airborne incidents, and Federal Aviation Administration reviews haven't prompted any mandatory fixes. At the same time, airlines around the world continue to dramatically expand Wi-Fi use by pilots, including everything from planning routes to accessing emergency checklists. But during a ground test of some Wi-Fi technology more than two years ago, a number of Honeywell-built displays on a Boeing 737 flickered and blanked out briefly from a nearby power source simulating especially powerful Wi-Fi signals. Lasting only seconds, the outages nevertheless raised red flags among air-safety officials and spurred coverage by various industry publications. The initial answer was to post warning signs temporarily prohibiting pilots from turning on wireless devices in cockpits of planes equipped with the problematic displays. Honeywell says that after discussi ons with experts at the FAA and plane maker Boeing Co., it responded further by developing enhanced shielding, upgraded software and other modifications to specific models of 737 displays. Company spokesman Steve Brecken recently reiterated that the "isolated incident occurred more than two years ago," involved test frequencies that went "way beyond" typical Wi-Fi signals, and "has never been reported since." Last year, Honeywell urged airlines to voluntarily implement fixes. In the past, Boeing acknowledged that some Honeywell displays temporarily malfunctioned during the ground tests. The FAA now says "the problem has been traced to a design issue" with internal circuitry on the 737 displays, adding that agency officials are still reviewing various versions of Wi-Fi systems "to determine if a safety issue exists." Electrical experts tend to support expanded Wi-Fi use in the cockpit, despite the fact that such devices are physically closer to critical instruments than those in the cabin. One reason, they say, is that the latest portable technology emits dramatically less-powerful signals than earlier versions. Moreover, Wi-Fi devices distributed by airlines are less likely to be damaged or tampered with than passenger versions, reducing the likelihood of unpredictable or excessively strong signals, according to Philip Levis, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University. The Honeywell case "demonstrates that testing can detect potential problems, and therefore establish that something is safe," he said. An FAA-advisory group in August is expected to recommend increased public education efforts focused on explaining safeguards for pilots using electronic devices, according to people familiar with the deliberations. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578531001814262398.html Back to Top Jet carrying President George W. Bush diverted over report of smoke in cockpit A private jet carrying former President George W. Bush to Texas was diverted to Louisville, Kentucky late Saturday after the pilot reported possible smoke in the cockpit, according to his spokesman and Federal Aviation Administration officials. The aircraft was traveling from Philadelphia International to Dallas Love Field airport when it made an unscheduled landing. President Bush later continued to Texas. "President Bush's flight was briefly diverted to Louisville late this evening, but he is already safely home in Dallas," spokesman Freddy Ford told NBCDFW.com in a statement. A spokeswoman for the FAA confirmed that the flight was diverted because the captain reported possible smoke in the cockpit. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/16/18983963-jet-carrying-president-george-w-bush-diverted- over-report-of-smoke-in-cockpit?lite Back to Top Emergency landing by Saudi aircraft MUMBAI: Even as inclement weather led to diversions and delays of several flights on Sunday, a Saudi Airlines plane made an emergency landing at the city airport after its pilots received a fire warning. Around 4.27pm, a full emergency was declared for flight SV 748 coming from Riyadh, said an MIAL spokesperson. A fire indication in the rear cargo hold led to the emergency call. The aircraft landed safely at 4.35pm, following which it was parked in an isolation bay. But as no fire was detected, the emergency was withdrawn an hour later. Earlier in the day, other flights, too, faced problems. Around noon, a SpiceJet flight from Bangalore was forced to do a go-around because of poor visibility and was allowed to land about 20 minutes later. A Malaysian Airlines flight, which was also supposed to land at the same time, opted for a diversion to Hyderabad. The return flight to Kuala Lumpur has been delayed by over 24 hours as the delay wrecked the duty hours of the pilots. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Emergency-landing-by-Saudi- aircraft/articleshow/20623701.cms Back to Top Should Pilots Be Allowed to Sleep During Flights? Pilots protest proposed new regulations outside the European Aviation Safety Agency in May 14, 2012 in Germany there are a lot of obstacles for airlines to navigate in India as they attempt to expand operations and turn profits. Sleeping pilots is one of the more unexpected ones. India - revealed by the UN this year as among the 13 worst countries for air safety - had to deal with an embarrassing case of sleeping pilots this year, adding to previous shock stories of pilots with fake licenses and drunkenness in the cockpit. In May, four employees of Air India were suspended by the aviation regulator after newspaper reports that two pilots had left the controls of a flight from Bangkok to Delhi in the hands of two air attendants while they allegedly went to sleep in business class. Air India denied the allegations, although the company did admit the pilots had been "distracted" and the auto- pilot was disconnected. However, unintentional naps could be a thing of the past now that India's aviation regulator, the Directorate General Civil Aviation (DGCA), drafted rules to allow a pilot to take a nap on the flight deck while another pilot took control of the aircraft during long-haul flights. DGCA's draft rules would allow controlled rest periods for no longer than 40 minutes, followed by another 20- minute reorientation period before they can resume control of the plane. This would only be permitted on flights of over three hours and under certain conditions. Such plans would delight pilots and their unions in India, who have long sought an alleviation to flight fatigue. The Times of India reported that some pilots had already organized non-approved rest periods during flights. What Is Controlled Rest? Many passengers may not know this, but controlled rests are used by pilots in different countries to combat fatigue on long-haul sectors. And what exactly does "controlled rest" mean? "It's sleeping," says Rob Hunter, head of flight safety for the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) and a former commercial airline pilot himself. "Sleeping always tends to be talked about in terms of a euphemism, like controlled rest, because people feel much more comfortable with that language." Indeed, in the Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS) guidelines agreed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations (IFALPA), controlled rest is recommended on the flight deck for a commercial aircraft, but it's not really defined. It does state "it is not a substitute for pre-flight sleep or for normal crew augmentation, but intended as a response to unexpected fatigue experienced during operations." It is clear, however, that it entails sleep, hence rule number 19 of the controlled rest guidelines reads: "Hand- over of duties and wake-up arrangements should be reviewed." The guidelines state that pilots may rest for no longer than 45 minutes so as to avoid the risks of sleep inertia. For Hunter, the vagueness of what controlled rest entails is a dangerous one. "When you look at the reality, the repercussions are not fully worked through," he says. "For example, if you were resting you might be awake, but if you're sleeping you're not awake, and that has a whole set of implications if there's an emergency." Hunter says that in an ideal world, pilots would not be tired: "The issue about sleeping on the flight deck is that pilots shouldn't be so tired that they have to do it, but if you do have to do it, then it is sensible to do it." Hunter said pilots would not declare themselves unfit before a flight as it would look bad on their record with the company. That is difficult for many pilots who work on, for example, the trans-Atlantic routes and arrive for duty in the early hours of the morning. Matters are not made easier by the proposed new European Flight Time Limitations currently being debated by the European Commission which, according to Hunter, would cause pilots to have seven early starts in a row and result in pilots landing aircraft having been awake for 22 hours. With the guidelines from the FRMS and the proposed rules from India, one question still remains unanswered for Hunter: does anyone monitor the co-pilot who takes charge of the resting pilot? "We need to understand what the risks are of the other pilot falling asleep," he says, "and that pilot needs to be more closely monitored." http://www.cnbc.com/id/100806498 Back to Top How safe is your airline? Lion Air Boeing 737 submerged in the water. A Lion Air Boeing 737 crash landed earlier this year, but the passengers escaped safely. Photo: AFP When a Qantas A380 suffered what could have been catastrophic damage over Indonesia three years ago, travellers despaired. How could the safest airline in the world, by their estimation, have threatened so many lives? They were no less bamboozled when Air France, one of the most prestigious full-service carriers, killed 228 over the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 in what appears to have been an entirely preventable miscalculation. The Persian Gulf's three boom carriers Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad, are the height of travel fashion and carry tens of thousands of Australians every week, but they operate from very different government jurisdictions. So how do we know whether we should trust them with our lives? 'Like a boom' ... Qantas captain Richard de Crespigny reveals the story behind the A380 that suffered an engine explosion in a new book. The Qantas A380 engine explosion should lift the airline's safety rating, not diminish it, because the pilots on board handled it so well, says Geoff Thomas. It's one of the most urgent problems for Australia's world travellers when around a third of the population travels overseas every year. It's a question that has caused Western Australian aviation writer and editor Geoff Thomas plenty of reflection over a lifetime of writing about aviation and airlines. Finally he has decided to do something about it with the launch last week of airlineratings.com. Unlike other aviation industry raters of airline safety, it is very much consumer-focused and, apart from its safety assessments, includes overall reviews of airline service by users and even plans an airline food review section. But the "killer app" for Thomas and 13 other specialists working on the project is to answer fundamental questions about safety. "How do you know, how does the travelling public know whether an airline is safe or not? People kept asking me over and over and over again. And that's the genesis of the idea," he says. "It was commentators, interviewers, whether radio or television, asking me how do we possibly know what's a safe airline, what is not a safe airline. "At the moment, the punters have no idea. They have no concept or whether an airline is safe or whether it is not." Already, the website has provoked major discussion within the industry. Blogger and air safety campaigner Ben Sandilands has questioned how, for example, Air France, is rated six out of seven for safety by airlineratings.com so soon after a major disaster. "It is inconceivable for Air France to be rated safer than Lion Air of Indonesia, on 2 out of 7, when it made its far less violent and totally survived water landing just short of the runway at Denspasar earlier this year," Sandilands writes. "There has surely to be an explanation as to why Jetstar would be given a 7/7 rating. There have been a series of serious incidents involving Jetstar..." Thomas acknowledges all such ratings are discretionary, but his site uses only data from recognised industry processes and organisations, like IOSA, the operational safety audit being undertaken in developing countries by the International Air Transport Association. "We've stayed away from anything that's subjective," he says. "You simply can't get a fair assessment of incidents rights across the globe (from official data)." As he explains, that's because some countries simply don't require airlines to report some types of incidents to protect their reputations, which is the "bizarre" weakness with existing industry safety raters. I discussed this issue in January this year. "One of their disclaimers is that some countries don't report incidents, so they're judging Qantas against airlines that don't report incidents," Thomas says of Qantas's downgrading by some safety raters after the A380 incident, when an engine disintegrated because of a defective factory part. "It's very difficult to assess what's a major incident and what's a minor incident. That's very subjective. "Qantas should have been upgraded, not downgraded after the A380 incident because the pilots saved the day." I'd imagined that airlineratings.com simply bought a database from an organisation like Skytrax (which operates airlinequality.com and hosts the annual Skytrax awards) to launch its consumer review pages. But Thomas reveals all the website's data is original. "We built the entire database on all the airlines over two years," Thomas says. "We sent out a questionnaire to dozens of friends and they reviewed airlines for us. That's how we're able to start with reviews from day one." Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/blogs/travellers-check/how-safe-is-your-airline-20130617- 2oda3.html#ixzz2WTXzOswh Back to Top Back to Top what should they have known? NTSB Chief Has Her Own Opinions about the 787 Dreamliner and Airline Safety Deborah Hersman While Boeing and the FAA were defending the safety record of the 787 Dreamliner before a House panel Wednesday, National Transportation Safety Board chief Deborah Hersman-whose agency was oddly absent from the witness list-offered us a different perspective. Hersman gained nationwide attention for her toughness and candor during the months-long grounding of the 787 Dreamliner after a series of lithium ion batteries caught fire in January, raising questions about the efficacy of the FAA's process for certifying new aircraft. (To be clear, the NTSB investigates aviation and other transportation accidents and issues recommendations for action; it's the FAA that actually adopts and enforces the resulting regulations.) She sat down with us shortly before addressing an aviation audience hosted by New York's Wings Club. What actions do you plan to take as a result of the serious flaws in the certification process revealed in the hearings your agency held on the Dreamliner problems in April? Deborah Hersman: We are still in the process of completing our investigation, but there were a lot of questions raised during the hearing about certification issues and those will likely be covered in our final report. Some the FAA might address in advance, so that's a good thing-we want people to take action. But if they don't, we can make recommendations for changes that would improve safety. It's a bigger issue than just the batteries, isn't it? There is enormous pressure on the industry to adopt new technologies because they offer so many advantages in terms of efficiency and cost. There's a sense this pressure is making things move faster than they actually should. DH: There is always going to be that tension about how to move forward fast enough. And in many cases, we've identified situations where we thought the technology was moving too slowly. Take midair collisions-how many investigations of this type of accident did we did do over decades, before they adopted the technology to prevent it? It's always a balancing act-putting new technology out there versus holding it back and doing more testing. Certainly you expect before they put anything out they are doing robust testing. But what we are seeing in the 787 investigation really raises some questions about the certification process and what people should have known at the time versus what we know now. It's a challenge to look back and say "What did you know in 2007?" because we know a lot more now. But what should they have known? Are you happy about the time it takes for NTSB recommendations to become regulatory actions? DH: The short answer is no. The longer answer is that we certainly respect that there are some challenges that others face that we do not. So when we issue recommendations, we do not have to do a cost benefit analysis. We look at something and we say, This is a huge benefit for safety, it needs to be done. Others might say, This is going to cost a lot of money, the technology isn't fully developed. (But) we do see things that are mandated taking a very, very long time to be adopted fleet wide. The most disappointing and most frustrating thing for our investigators is if they go into another accident where they know that if those initial recommendations had been implemented this wouldn't have happened. Take the ValuJet crash [when, in 1996, a plane carrying hazardous cargo plunged into the Everglades, killing all 110 people aboard]. We had made recommendations about the carriage of hazardous materials; we didn't get the reaction or response we would have liked to see from the regulator. After that, then we got the response... Could you talk about the 2009 Colgan Airways crash in Buffalo? What came out at the NTSB hearings about pilots flying on little or no sleep, that was pretty shocking. DH: We had recommendations on pilot fatigue for decades. It was on our "most wanted" list since the 1990s. So I do have to give FAA and DOT credit that they did finally push this one over the finish line. Would we have liked to see it sooner? Yes. Stronger? Yes. Capture more people? Yes. But at the end of the day, we have something that is better than what was there before. [Note: New rules on rest time, raising the minimum break for pilots from eight to ten hours, took effect in December 2011, nearly three years after the accident in which 50 people died. The NTSB was quoted then as saying it was "disappointed" that the rule didn't go far enough, especially in the area of pilots who "commute" long distances to work, like those in the Buffalo crash.] Do you think there is a feeling of complacency because the aviation safety record has become so good compared to what it was even ten years ago, that industry people are thinking somehow the dangers have disappeared? Is the vigilance from the industry and government as good as it needs to be? DH: Actually, the industry does have a lot better data collection now than they did 20 or 30 years ago; the aviation community deserves a lot of credit in this regard. There is better technology, the aircraft are more sophisticated, you can just put a memory stick in and pull it out; [and get] real-time downloads. There are opportunities for people to self-report [safety incidents]. They are actively looking for stuff, they are not waiting for it to happen. http://www.cntraveler.com/daily-traveler/2013/06/ntsb-chief-deborah-hersman-787-dreamliner Back to Top Helios tapped for Singapore safety case Consultancy Helios is working on a new major contract with the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) to deliver a safety case for the launch and operation of its latest ATC system upgrade. The new system will help CAAS maintain its strategic goal of being a leader in the region. The ATC system upgrade includes new consoles and processing equipment, long-range Primary and Secondary Radars and new ground network infrastructure at the Singapore Air Traffic Control Centre, Singapore Changi Airport and Singapore Aviation Academy. Operational and technical safety experts from Helios's risk-based safety practice are working alongside CAAS colleagues. It is implementing a top-down operational risk solution using a total system approach that covers human, procedures and equipment aspects. Working to a challenging timescale for transition into operations, Helios is facilitating workshops and on-site activities, engaging with CAAS ATC operational and technical staff, Thales as main equipment supplier and the regulator to ensure the appropriate interface between operational and technical safety elements. Focusing particularly on changes to the Human Machine Interface (HMI) and operational environment, the Helios team is working with CAAS controllers, engineers and the ANS Safety Office to identify potential safety risk and establish associated cost-effective mitigation through the setting of safety requirements. As part of this project we have applied elements of the ICAO Safety Management Manual (Doc 9859), the latest safety barrier model theory, as well as standardised Safety Assessment Methodologies from EUROCONTROL. Project manager Glen Smith explains: "Whilst interfacing with industry best practice and guidelines is important, it is just as important that the safety assurance methods are relevant to the CAAS operating environment. They must also harmonise with the already established processes and practices within the operational units and company divisions." http://www.airtrafficmanagement.net/2013/06/helios-tapped-for-safety-case-for-singapore/ Curt Lewis