It’s been more than a year since serial entrepreneur Captain GR Gopinath sold his budget carrier Air Deccan to billionaire Vijay Mallya but any conversation with the pioneer of low-cost aviation in India still steers to it.
The visionary admits to missing being part of the aviation action but he is not ready yet to start another no-frills airline. In an interview with DNA Money, Gopinath gives the countdown to Air Deccan’s crash and its rival IndiGo’s role in it. Read rest of the Article here .
It hits aircraft out of the blue, bouncing, trouncing and jolting them midair as if they were made of straw, an experience so unnerving that it causes tens of millions of dollars in injury claims every year.
When a plane flies through them, the sensation is like being in a small boat on a stormy sea. But where a boat’s skipper can see rough sea, gravity waves in the air are usually invisible, and pilots often don’t know they are present until they are flying right into them.
A new forecasting method developed by a University of Georgia (UG) researcher could help pilots chart new courses around these patches of rough but clear air — called clear air turbulence (CAT) — that can turn an otherwise unremarkable flight into frightening ones.
“Our new method allows superior forecasts for CAT beyond the tools that have been in use,” said John Knox, a professor at UG. The method predicts energy associated with gravity waves-phenomena in the atmosphere that look like ocean waves but which can occur in clear air. They can be created by air flow over mountains or frontal boundaries. “Commercial aircraft encounter severe-or-greater turbulence about 5,000 times each year, and the majority of these occur 10,000 feet above the earth’s surface,” he said.
After a technical glitch scrapped two takeoff attempts of an Air Berlin flight from Nuremberg to the Portuguese city of Faro, jittery passengers successfully demanded that the carrier get them a new plane, the Associated Press reported Monday. Here’s the bulk of the story:
The plane — a new Boeing 737-800 — was scheduled to take off from Nuremberg for Faro in the early hours of Sunday, but the pilot saw as it prepared to depart that there was a problem with a gauge in the cockpit related to the aircraft’s landing flaps.
He asked the 172 passengers to disembark. Two decided not to take the flight; airline spokeswoman Alexandra Mueller said the other 170 boarded again, but the same technical problem arose as the plane prepared to depart a second time.
Rest of the thread in here.
A day after a passenger plane crashed on takeoff here, killing at least 153 people in one of Europe’s worst air disasters, a team of experts examined the charred wreckage on Thursday, seeking to explain why the flight to the Canary Islands had veered off a runway and burst into flames. Magdalena Álvarez, the minister in charge of civil aviation in Spain, told The A.P. that the airliner had barely become airborne when it veered right, crashed and broke apart. She said that foul play was not suspected.
The tail of the Spanair jet that crashed on takeoff in Madrid.
The plane was left barely recognizable. “If you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t think it was a plane,” said Ervigio Corral, of the Madrid emergency service agency, “There was nothing left of the fuselage.”
For further photo images click here and Whole back end of plane was burnt.
Near the airport, a convention center was converted into a makeshift morgue. Of the 172 passengers and crew members aboard the MD-82, only 19 survived, and all were injured.
Many bodies were scorched beyond recognition, and officials struggled to identify them using marks like tattoos. About 150 psychologists were at the scene to help the bereaved, according to one of the counselors, Miriam Gonzales Pablo.
Representatives of the airline, the discount carrier Spanair, refused Thursday to speculate on the cause of the accident, insisting that investigators should be allowed to conduct their inquiry. An official said that a problem had delayed takeoff, but that technicians had cleared the flight for departure.
The Spanair official, Javier Mendoza, said Thursday that an air intake valve on the plane had been reported to be overheating under the cockpit before takeoff, The Associated Press reported. Technicians fixed the problem by turning it off, he said, adding that this was an accepted procedure. The device was not on a list of equipment that must be working for a plane to take off, he said.
Mr. Mendoza also said that the plane’s two flight-data recorders had been recovered, although one was damaged, The A.P. said.
It was unclear how long the investigation would take. An official at the Infrastructure Ministry, which is handling the inquiry, said the process could take months. The investigation team includes several experts sent from the United States.
The Spanish newspaper El País reported that a fire in one of the engines may have been a cause. After the crash, thick columns of smoke billowed above the runway at Madrid Barajas International Airport, one of Europe’s busiest.
The flight, Spanair JK5022, was cross-listed as Lufthansa LH 2554. The plane had been headed to Gran Canaria, in Spain’s Canary Islands, a popular vacation destination off the West African coast.
Alan Gemell, a passenger on a flight that landed just after the accident, gave the BBC an account that differed in some details. He said that the Spanair plane had lifted off briefly, but that its left wing had then hit the ground, collapsing the left side of the aircraft and making many exits unusable.
The damaged plane set fire to a hayfield where it came to rest, he said, preventing rescuers from reaching it immediately.
The Spanair plane, an MD-82, was built by McDonnell Douglas, which was acquired by Boeing in 1997. The plane, which is no longer in production, is long and narrow, with engines mounted to the rear of the fuselage and the tail high in the air. Accident data show that aircraft in the MD-80 series are among the safest planes flying; a majority of Spanair’s fleet is from the MD-80 family.
Spanair is a financially troubled low-cost carrier owned by S.A.S., Scandinavian Airlines System. S.A.S. said it was doing “everything possible to help passengers and next of kin and to assist Spanish authorities at this difficult time.”
Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero cut short his vacation to return to Madrid and went to the makeshift morgue to comfort victims, The A.P. said. Three days of national mourning were announced, starting Thursday.
The crash was the worst air disaster for Spain since 1983, when 183 died in the crash of an Avianca Boeing 747 near the same airport in Madrid. The deadliest disaster in commercial aviation history occurred in Spanish territory in 1977, when 582 were killed in the ground collision of two Boeing 747s operated by Pan American and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines at the Tenerife airport in the Canary Islands.
Founded in 1986, Spanair has hubs in Madrid and Barcelona and flies within Spain and the rest of Europe, as well as West Africa. It lost $81 million in the first half of the year, and S.A.S. has said it plans to cut a quarter of Spanair’s flights and eliminate about 1,000 jobs, about a third of its work force.
On Wednesday, before word of the crash, Spanair pilots had threatened to strike, saying that management had no plan to fix the carrier’s problems.
S.A.S. tried to sell the airline last year, only to abandon the effort in June after it failed to find a buyer.
The airline, which carried 11.2 million passengers last year, is part of the Star Alliance, which also includes United Airlines, Air Canada, S.A.S. and Lufthansa. Code-share partners generally audit each other’s performance in an effort to improve safety.
A Spanish airliner bound for the Canary Islands swerved off the runway and caught fire during takeoff from the Madrid airport on Wednesday, killing at least 45 people, the Interior Ministry said.
Nineteen of the 164 people on board were seriously injured, according to statements from the airline and the ministry.
It is the height of the summer tourist season in Spain and Spanair flight JK5022 was bound for Las Palmas in the canary Islands, a popular resort off West Africa, the company said.
JK is a code share flight with Lufthansa LH 2554.
Thick, white smoke rose above Barajas airport as helicopters and fire trucks dumped water on the plane, which ended up in a wooded area at the end of the runway at Terminal 4.
An official with the Madrid emergency rescue service SAMUR said crews were removing injured people and bodies from the MD-80, calling it a “catastrophe.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give his name.
The plane was an MD-82 carrying 173 people, Spanair in their last official notice mentioned in the website. In their press release, Spanair has provided contact numbers for their aircraft victim’s families and media to contact airline.
knowledgeable sources said that plane was delayed an hour by technical problems. It managed to get slightly off the ground but crashed near the end of the runway.
National air-carrier, Air-India said it has signed a USD 214.118 million loan facility for purchase of eight aircraft.
Air India’s holding company, National Aviation Company of India (NACIL) has signed a pre-delivery finance loan facility for purchase of three 777-200LRs and five 777-300ERs to be delivered in 2009 and 2010, a press release said.
The lead arrangers of the facility are Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank while the co-arrangers are ING Bank and Natixis Transport Finance.
The agreement was signed on July 30 in London. NACIL has ordered 111 aircraft comprising a mix of Airbus and Boeing 737 and 777 aircraft. So far, it has taken delivery of 38 aircraft.
When the Boeing 747 was first introduced commercially in 1970, it revolutionized long-distance airline travel. In fact, the world’s first jumbo jet held the record for passenger capacity for 37 years – only being surpassed in 2006 by the Airbus A-380. Now, the next revolutionary aircraft from Boeing is set for commercial flight by the end of the year: the 787 Dreamliner. Good article here.
New pictures have emerged showing the extent of the damage to the interior of the Qantas plane that was forced to make an emergency landing in Manila last week.
Flight QF30 was forced to divert soon after taking off from Hong Kong after an explosion ripped a hole into the belly of the fuselage. The damage is believed to have been caused by an exploding oxygen bottle.
Fairfax Media has obtained new pictures showing damage to the interior of the door onboard the Melbourne-bound Boeing 747-400. The release of the photos, submitted to Fairfax Media by a source who asked not to be named, comes as the checks on oxygen bottles onboard Qantas’ fleet of 747s are being completed.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has confirmed that part of an oxygen cylinder and valve entered the passenger cabin and damaged the door-frame handle, moving the handle towards the open position. The bureau maintains that the door handle mechanism was sheared – as it is designed to do if an attempt to open the door is made while a plane is airborne – and that the door latches were still engaged. While ATSB says there was never any danger of the door opening, the proximity of the damaged door to the seat of flight crew was of concern.
A Qantas spokesman said early this week, maintenance workers began inspecting the pressurised bottles carried by more than 30 aircraft. “It has been in process for a few days … we do the checks as the aircraft arrive back in Australia,” he said today. “We will complete checks of the cabin emergency oxygen bottles across our Boeing 747 fleet tonight.” An explosion blew a hole in the 747-400 as it was flying from Hong Kong to Melbourne last Friday.
The stricken plane, with 365 people on board, made an emergency landing in Manila, where it is now the subject of an investigation by the ATSB and other authorities. It is believed that a faulty oxygen bottle is the most likely source of the explosion, which caused a loss of pressure in the cabin, causing the plane to plunge 20,000 feet.
An ATSB spokesman today said the investigation was continuing.
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