On a dark night over the Soviet Union, many years ago, a B747 on its way – in the middle of the road – from Europe to Bankok, ended up on a westbound altitude. That was a huge error. The reason was, as always, not one single mistake. Bad hearing, bad english, bad radio quality and a belief that Russian ATC controllers had the capacity to copy US counterparts, issuing clearances to altitudes assigned for opposite traffic for short periods of time. What would have been the worst aviation catastrophe thus far war averted by the healthy suspicion, from the – at the time off-duty – co-pilot of the 747, that Soviet controllers could do no such thing. After urging his colleagues to confirm the clearance, things were deemed in order. After urging them a second time, it was established that the clearance to maintain that particular level was indeed just a traffic information about another aircraft – in opposite direction – on that level, by a nice Soviet controller, having nothing to do in the middle of a very dark night. That prompted all landing lights on and climb power back to the original eastbound altitude. 4 minutes later the anti-collision lights from a THAI westbound DC-10 was spotted by the by now very alert 747 crew. The DC-10 passed underneath the 747 at the correct vertical clearance of 500 meters. It also passed underneath it, exactly enough to trigger the radio altimeter of the 747, laterally displaced less than 10 feet.

That was close. From that we can learn many things. For one thing, a mistrust for just about everything, bordering on a mental disorder, might at times prove very healthy. We can also find two of the many flaws in the aviation industry this blog is somewhat dedicated to. One is a lack of perfect communication which has in recent years been addressed and consequently can be filed among things rectified, although it took to several decades to long.

The other one is the ruling to stay on the centerline of the airway. The airway is 10 nautical miles wide, allowing for early aviators lack of precision in navigation. Todays equipment have a precision of a few feet. This implies that an aircraft on incorrect altitudes will hit another head on. Happened outside New Delhi many years ago when a Russian cargo plane hit a Saudi Arabia 747 nose to nose, killing close to 400 people. Happened recently over South America when a business jet collided with a B737, killing close to 200 people. (Fortunately some Captains break rules)

In the New Delhi case, most blame were put on the Russian crew, who ended up at the wrong altitude, having fumbled converting their more or less private meter scale to the Western World cherished feet. Here we have another flaw. Russia has since changed to feet, but one of the coming dominante aviation communities, China, still use meters to measure altitude. One would think UN could have unified the world by now, at least when it comes to altitudes for civil aviation.

The South America case presented strange findings. Air traffic controllers were blamed, pilots were blamed, faulty transponders were blamed (if they were indeed faulty, why blame the air traffic controllers). Nowhere was mentioned that close to 200 people would have come home to dinner, if right hand traffic had been introduced at the beginning of civil aviation. Anyone, be it a powerful employee in ICAO or a dynamic lobbyist, who manage once and for all to rule that all aircraft shall fly 1 mile (at least) to the right of the centerline of a 10 miles wide airway, in a similar way that ocean crossing traffic operates, just in case someone comes at the ‘wrong’ altitude, will instantly be a hero, and remembered in history. The fact that, when he does that, the only sad thing is that, had he done it thirty years ago, some 500 live would have been saved. But still, no more innocent passengers will perish by one lane traffic.

One reason for railway systems around the world to switch from one track to double tracks was eliminate one major headache – head on collisions.

Cost-cutting, more revenue, increased productivity are all members of the same family, called a better bottom line for a company. An airline can cut costs by decreasing service, smaller meals, cheaper seats without affecting flight safety. When it comes to less overhaul, less fuel reserves and less pilot training it’s a different ball game. Increased profit can, without affecting flight safety, be achieved by selling lottery tickets, pay toilettes, cramping more seats in to an already overfull fuselage, and of course charging extra for just about everything.

Increased productivity can be many things also not affecting the airlines ability to provide safe passage for its customers. One productivity booster has however lately been increasingly popular. If you get pilots, and cabin crew for that matter, to work more hours for the same salary, you have a winner. Does it affect flight safety. Yes, if fatigue is introduced. Fatigue is not just being a little bit tired. Fatigue can be described at length by the medical profession and is in simple terms a state of exhaustion where the body, and more importantly the brain, does not function well. Judgement is affected and quick and rational decision are hard, if not impossible, to make.

A fatigued cabin crew member can make fatal mistakes when his or her main reason for being on board in the first place, – to lead, assist – and save – passengers during an emergency, is being challenged. A fatigued pilot can kill people, period.

All airlines have a natural desire to get as much out of their resources as possible. The competition from low-cost airlines have brought the economy in the airline industry into troubled waters. Passengers have been led to believe, that by not being asked to pay for what it really cost to fly with maximum safety, maximum safety is not affected. Maximum safety does among other things not include a pilot with micro sleep on short final during approach after 12 hour flight.

This will be discussed in more detail in coming articles. The ambition by managements to increase the number of duty hours is in some airlines fought in hard negotiations with pilot unions. In airlines with non-union pilots, most often found – no wonder – in the low-cost competition, things are different. A recent setback for the strife for this type of increased productivity was imposed by a FAA rule for a lowered maximum of working hours, but not until an accident happened. That did not come cheap. Some 50 lives were lost due to fatigue in the cockpit (incl. some pilot training issues). This will most likely – or should be – looked into some more, since the latest averted catastrophe, where an airliner almost landed on top of four other fully packe planes, was in part also blamed on fatigue.

One might wonder why pilots fly with fatigue in the first place. For starters, there is a law against it. At the beginning of a long flight, you don’t know that you might become affected. And if you become affected, your degraded judgement makes you believe you are not. And the trickiest on: being a law-abiding citizen might affect your employment status. (Figure that one out.)

NOTAM – NOtice To AirMen – is ment to present important news to pilots during preflight planning. In paper-form it is a multipage document stating all changes in navigational aids, things out of order, military exercises and whatever might be interesting when it comes to planning the flight. One night, the NOTAMS presented to a, possibly tired, AirCanada crew stated that Runway 28L, (the left one of two parallell runways) was closed at San Francisco airport. That fact went unnoticed by the crew, and arriving at SFO they were cleared to land on 28R. What they saw from a distance was 28R and a parallell taxiway to the right of that runway. Since they did not know 28L was closed (and not illuminated), they figured they saw two runways, were cleared to land on the one to the right, and consequently lined themselves up for a landing on the taxiway, where four aircraft were waiting to take-off.

What could easily have become by far the worst catastrophe in the history of airline aviation, was averted by by a late go-around (an interrupted approach and a clim-out), prompted by the Air Traffic Controller, prompted in turn by a pilot in one of the waiting aircraft, not happy seeing a big jetliner aiming straight at him. The AirCanada aircraft passed over the four fully packed aircraft with 27 feet to spare.

If there HAD been an accident, there would have been a crash investigation. Let’s do one anyway. There are always more than one reason for an accident to happen. The reason for that is in turn thanks to the many safeguards in the industry as a whole. (Two pilots is one such safeguard that is under attack by failing economy. Will be discussed later, and did not influence the goings-on described above.) Two major reasons for this incident was the closed runway and the fact that the crew did not grasp that information during pre-flight planning. Another factor was possible fatigue.

To really describe the NOTAM document you need visual aids. It is written in the same way telex came out years ago in uppercase letters only, filling page after page with a maze of text, where every little detail, like a little unserviceable beacon 200 miles away from planned route, maximum wingspan on a taxiway at an airport you are not going to, birds in the vicinity of another airport you are not going to, is included to make it legal, i.e. untouchable by any legal action, and making it more or less unreadable in the process. The fact that one runway was closed at the destination, easily the most interesting news to any pilot, was presented on page 8 of a 27 page document.

Pilots have for decades ruled out NOTAMS in the current form as not useful in any major way. You would need 15-30 minutes extra, not available it todays strained economy, to fully digest all information. NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt called the Notam system in the U.S. ”messed up” during a hearing on the July 7, 2017.  ”That’s what Notams are: they’re a bunch of garbage that no one pays any attention to,” adding that they’re often written in a language that only computer programmers would understand.

Suddenly someone agreed.

Blood money (investment made to avoid another crash after it happened – but not before) didn’t have to be involved this time. The incident was serious enough to warrant a directive to make flight operation information more effectively presented to pilots. The fact that the crew in question might have been fatigued, is just one more indication that strained economy, affecting most airlines by low-cost airlines ‘race to the bottom’, is forcing regular airlines as well to increase productivity by increasing duty hours.

Other flaws in the industry will be discussed in more detail in coming articles.

 

There are plenty of flaws in the airline industry. Here is a major one. At one time, many years ago, 80% of all fatal accidents were CFIT = Controlled Flight Into Terrain. Perfectly healthy aircraft crashed, most often blamed on pilot error. 80% of those 80% hit the ground during approach between 2 and 20 nautical miles from a runway on an airport without adequate landing systems. A rather drastic 64% of all fatal accident was thus caused by a lack of investment in the area of 100.000 USD for a precision landing system called ILS. The unfortunate aircraft had no vertical guidance, hence the premature ground contact, in an area before reaching the runway not suitable for airplanes with their extremely limited off-road capabilities.

An airport without ILS can only offer an approach, for which the industry has a scary name; non-precision approach. At least it would probably scare passengers to hear ”Ladies and gentlemen, today we are going to make an approach without precision, but don’t worry. It most often works ok”. The fact that most aircraft makes it all the way to the runway makes it all the more natural to blame the unfortunates ones on pilot error.

An ILS system, not surprisingly called a precision approach system, is a simple construction on ground, emitting 2 signals, possible for the aircraft instrument to pick up. One is for lateral guidance along the runway centerline and the other is for vertical guidance along a glidepath, i.e. a descent profile normally 3 degrees, bringing anyone who follows that guidance in over the beginning of the runway at 50 feet. In the cockpit you can follow this guidance by the indications in the instruments and also hook up the autopilot to the same guidance, enabling modern aircraft to also perform a fully automatic, perfect, landing.

The latest pilot error occurred now on the 28:th of september where a 737-800 touched down in the water short of the runway in Micronesia, while performing a – you guessed it – non precision approach. Fortunately everybody survived. One cannot stop wondering why ICAO has not prohibited non-presicion-approahes 40 years ago. It cannot be because ot money, since this latest hull loss alone would have paid for an estimated 500 – 600 ILS installations. The reason is something else, and since we can’t afford to be sued, we won’t speculate.

On an optimistic note, the industry is trying to address this problem on their own, and the latest generation of airplanes are able to generate a glideslope in their onboard navigation system, thus being self-contained guidance wise. There are however thousands of older planes still out there, and hundreds of airports happily providing the same guidance the Flying Fortresses had coming back to England during WW2. Consequently there will be more accidents that could have been avoided by some clever decision making, and when the next happens we’ll discuss this some more.

The US Congress is on the verge of ordering the FAA to rule against airlines desire to reduce the size and pitch (pitch is the distance from a point on one seat to the same point of the seat in the next row) of airline seats. That desire is governed by greed and standing room has actually been mentioned. The FAA has so far refrained from such ruling. Hopefully airline passengers will have some more space – or at least not less space – where to suffer long flights, which are not very comfortable in tourist class in the first place. Pitch used to be around 35 inches and are now sometimes 30 inches or less.

In the US the question of space is more of an issue than almost anywhere else in the world, since the size of the passengers has an opposite trend. Obese passengers are a problem airlines have to deal with, and they do in in different ways, constantly wary of possible discrimination law suits. Passengers might be offended from being forced to pay for an extra seat to not being allowed seats at over-wing exits (where there is more legroom) where they would effectively plug the window exit and rendering it out of action.

There is a slight, or actually rather acute, unfairness in the area of weight. Since you sometimes have to pay for overweight baggage you might look with mixed feelings att . your fellow passenger twice your size at the next counter, paying exactly the same amount per kilo – for the baggage. The only really fair fare would be per total amount of kilos, since airlines are in the freight business. It will probably not ever happen, but  putting everyone on a scale and charge a kilo price might in America give airlines resources to even install a few really large seats. Utopia comes in many shapes.

Since nothing ever happens, i.e. the threat of being involved in an airline accident is almost nonexistent, rating the worlds safest airlines, like in the latest article, is basically for show. Qantas has topped that list for years which prompted Rainman to comment ”Qantas never crashed”.

However, the same company, AirlineRatings.com, provides us with another list of airlines that might be of slightly greater importance when planning future flights. The worlds least safe airlines are all from outside Europe, Australia and North America. As no surprise to anyone (?) North Korea has its flag carrier on the list, together with four Nepalese, one Indonesian, one from Surinam and a few others. There are more than 100 airlines not meeting European safety standards, and consequently not permitted in EU airspace. All airlines from the following countries are banned from flying to the EU. Enjoy the list below:

Afghanistan
Angola (except TAAG Angola Airlines)
Democratic Republic of Congo
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Gabon (except Afrijet and SN2AG)
Kyrgyzstan
Liberia                                                                                                                                  Mozambique
Libya                                                                                                                                                Nepal
Republic of Congo
São Tomé and Príncipe
Sierra Leone
Sudan

Six more are also banned: Blue Wing Airlines, Suriname / Iran Aseman Airlines, Iran / Iraqui Airways, Iraq / Med-View Airline, Nigeria / Air Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe / Avior Airlines, Venezuela.

If you have to go, you have to go, and statistics says you’ll be just fine, even in one of the airlines above. The ban is good though, since it forces unsafe airlines to re-thing their approach to flight safety in general. Several airlines have, through the years, had their ban lifted after necessary re-organization.

Rating airlines is tricky business. Many travel magazines fall i a convenience trap where they rate everything they notice when they take a trip with a particular airline, such as service and punctuality, possibly a ridiculously low fare, and not much more. Service in this context is twofold, how people treat you and how they stuff you. An airline employee, on ground (if they are employed by the airline and not by the airport) or in the air holds enormous power over the average passenger and a travel magazine reporter alike. Competent, courteous, kind – and smiling – grants returning customers and good ratings. Good food and drink does too. One airline, that has achieved worldwide fame because of dedicated focus on excellent catering, is Turkish Airlines, previously (hardly) known as Turk Hava Yollari. On the crew issue some (clever) airliner managers try to keep them happy = smiling. Some don’t. All in all, what you see (the reporter) is what you get (the rating) and the magazines publish what they consider is all the public need to know: The worlds top 20 best airlines.

‘Nice to know’ and ‘need to know’ are not necessarily the same thing. All of the above falls under the category ‘nice to know’. What passengers ‘need to know’ is what a totally different rating system reveals. IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA), IATA Safety Audit for Ground Operations (ISAGO) and Safety Assessment for Foreign Aircraft (SAFA) has together with Australia-based AirlineRatings.com developed a rating of the worlds top 20 safest airlines, i.e. what you really need to know.  The selection is out of o pool of over 400 airlines worldwide. The rating is based on compliance with international regulators, the age of the aircraft fleet, fatality record over the last 10 years, results from IATA’s safety audits, whether country of origin conforms with IATA’s safety parameters and level of renovation of fleet and and upgrade of staff/pilot training.

There you go. Need to know to vote with your feet and not your wallet. Enjoy the list below. In alphabetic order!

Air New Zealand, Alaska Airlines, All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Emirates Airlines, Etihad Airways, Eva Air, Finnair, Hawaiian Airlines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Lufthansa, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, Scandinavian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Swiss Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Australia.

What we see is a number of regular European airlines – not low-cost airlines, some ‘down unders’, some large Asian airlines, a few stylish Middle East ones and two US airlines.  Needless to say, an airline not being among the top twenty does not mean that airline is  unsafe. A longer list might have included it. Scandinavian travelers might enjoy the fact that, out of the two largest airlines, the flag carrier, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), is on this list.

 

 

According to US ALPA (Air Line Pilot Association) low-cost foreign airlines are threatening US airlines by establishing convenience flag operations, skirting tax, labour and safety regulations, thus gaining unfair advantages. ALPA sees similarities with the shipping industry, which has seen this development over decades and has cost the US shipping 23% volume and 87% jobs since convenience flag became predominant. The fear is real that this will hit the airline industry in much the similar way.

Norwegian with its various company constructions is one of the airlines competing on an un-level playing field with offsprings like Norwegian Air International and Norwegian Air UK now applying for US licenses. The US Department of Transportation (DOT) are using sixteen different criteria, such as air safety, fair competition, fair wages and working conditions and customer concerns when evaluation airline applications. Unless regulations are changed, it is unlikely that Norwegian will succeed since they failed tests initially, all according to ALPA.

Unfortunately US airlines are not the only ones affected by the low-cost airlines. General flight safety is affected when cost-cutting is the dominant trend. That trend has now gone really off the rails, including suggestions to eliminate one of the pilots and possibly eliminate pilots all together. That will be for future generations to ponder, since polls show not many passengers today will even consider boarding a plane with a missing cockpit. The joke has been around for years; ”Ladies and gentlemen, welcome on board this fully automatic aircraft. You don’t have to worry since nothing can go wr..nothing can go wr..nothing can go wr..

The sad part is that cost-cutting affect flight safety across the board with four major problem areas; excessive working hours causing fatigue, pilot competence and training, overhaul and fuel reserves. These issues has caused several fatal accidents lately and will most likely cause more if reins are not pulled in. Unfortunately the trend is negative. In an airline without a labour force employed in the traditional fashion – including a pilot- and cabin crew union – there is virtually no possibility to have full control over crew skills. Further more a non-union pilot will fly planes with technical malfunctions, with marginal fuel reserves and sometimes dead tired, since not doing so might affect his or her employment status.

You get what you pay for. Worth thinking about next time you’re sitting up there at 35.000 feet. But why worry. 100.000 planes get back to earth in good shape every day…

A runway has to meet two basic criteria, bearing capacity and sufficient length. Where the first one rarely is a problem, the second one is. Several times each month an airliner finds itself in desperate need for a few hundred extra feet of paved surface. The lack of that precious margin sometimes cost passenger lives. But not that often. The aircraft involved are on the other hand, more often than not, a total write-off, sometimes by post-crash fire and unfriendly terrain.

Take-off runways and landing runways are obviously the same thing, depending on usage. When the length is not sufficient for the full structural weight of the aircraft, the weight has to be reduced. Take-off weight- and landing weight calculations take care of that. If there was a guarantee that all systems functioned and all engines were always  running, much higher weights would be possible. That can of course not be taken for granted, and since the industry has margins for almost everything, take-off and landings are no exception.

During take-off the basic idea is that one engine shall be allowed to fail at the most critical moment without causing a catastrophe. Based on the actual weight of the aircraft, quite often not the full weight, but the max calculated weight based on criteria such as temperature, wind, barometric pressure, braking action (=how slippery is the runway) ets., but disturbingly often also by the lack of sufficient runway length, a critical speed called V1 was introduced many years ago. If an engine fails at that speed, the idea is that you shall be able to either stop with maximum braking at the runway end (now there is suddenly no margin), or continue the take-off and reach a hight of a few feet (normally 35 ft, not much margin there either) over the runway end. Should the failure occur before or after that V1 speed, you obviously have less problem – and more margin.

Since engines almost never fail, and even more rarely at the exact moment the speed has reached V1, nobody worries very much. Those who have tried to stop at V1 has found out that the calculation was more wishful thinking (not taking into account unused runway behind the aircraft when lining up, worn brakes, reaction time etc.) than based on actual ability to stop. Thus the general recommendation to prefer a continued take-off rather than an abort.

During landing the means to stop the aircraft are wheel-braking and engine reverse. Engine reverse capability gives extra margin in the landing weight calculation. Buckets are deployed behind the engines exhaust, directing the power forward and more important killing the normal thrust. (The efficiency of reverse thrust is not that high, but actually high enough to enable smaller aircraft to back up, should they need to.) The maximum landing weight is then calculated like for take-off, depending on the same criteria, where braking action and – again – runway length are crucial. Then there is a margin regarding percent of runway remaining once the aircraft has come to a complete stop. That margin has a tendency to be reduced at places where no one is interested to pay for a runway extension. Sometimes terrain around the airport prohibit longer runways. Thus the rather cute comment on a pilot landing chart for an airport in Sweden: ”If over-running the runway, turn right to avoid the downslope towards the river”

The question remains why airports have not been extended when higher aircraft weight warrant it. The is normally room for it. Often there is a lack of know-how among those who are in charge of airport developments. Know-how as to things like what a B747 at full landing weight need if the braking action is poor (or nil). The cost is not enormous. Not compared to the cost of lives and totally wrecked aircraft. And taken into account the gigantic loss of revenue around the world where airlines cannot use their big and expensive aircraft to their max capacity, there is an answer right there. The industry has moved forward from the propeller era. Many airports have not.

Mach 2 or Mach 5. In the history of mankind there has never really been a setback bigger than what happened to supersonic flights. Ships has become bigger and faster, trains likewise at least speed-wise, the development of the automobile industry is almost exponential, and generally everything has gone forward. Longer bridges, higher buildings, whatever. Then – in 2003 – high-speed passenger flights came to an abrupt halt.

After a crash in 2000 and a brave effort to pretend everything was ok, the Concord era came to a sad end 2003, mourned by many. The general opinion was that the demise was caused by the fact that it never became an economical – let alone successful – enterprise. Some meant that lack of competition played a role. Tickets were expensive and for the elite. Cheaper prices was however hampered by the enormous operational costs compared to subsonic transport. Others claimed the need for subsonic flight above ground was in part a decisive factor.

Now mankind is again moving forward. Boeing and a few other companies are working on projects ranging from twelve to one hundred passengers, from 1,5 to 5 times the speed of sound, with new sound-boom-reducing design enabling supersonic flight also above ground, and trials and estimated first flights anywhere between 2022 and 2030. Whatever comes out of this is not written in the stars anymore. A 15 years unprecedented lull in technical development is coming to an end and, environmentally friendly or not, things are back to normal. Development.