Again Passengers Injured as Jet Hits Severe Turbulence

In general, turbulence is harmless. In 99.9 percent of all cases, nothing happens and nobody is injured. Turbulence to an airplane is pretty much what waves are to a boat - harmless. However, sometimes severe turbulence occurs unexpectedly and then it can cause severe injuries; like today when a United 777 en route from London to LA encountered severe and unexpected turbulence over the Atlantic.

As a matter of fact, only those people who do not have their seat belts fastened suffer injuries whenever planes hit turbulence. When a plane drops (sometimes incorrectly called "air pockets"), they get pulled out of their seats, hit the ceiling and are sometimes even thrown against other passengers. Every year, dozens of people are injured because they don't wear their seat belts while on a plane. So it is extremely important to wear seat belts whenever seated and throughout the entire flight. Even pilots can sometimes not tell if they are about to hit rough air. In contrast to clouds or thunderstorms, wind in clear air (so-called clear-air turbulence) cannot be detected, not even by state-of-the art instruments. You just never know. And exactly that happened on the United flight today. Ten people on board were injured and the Boeing 777-200 had to make an emergency landing in Montreal.

CNN reported that the plane is also being checked for possible damage. This is highly unlikely. Airlines usually do those checks, just to be on the safe side, but turbulence is generally not strong enough to cause real damage to a plane. Planes are built to withstand the worst of all possible circumstances. It is impossible for wind, or even storms, that occur in reality to cause damage to a plane. Damage is, however, caused by people falling around the cabin and hitting the cabin ceiling. For a plane to be allowed to take off again with passengers, this damage needs to be corrected.

To read the CNN story, please click here.

Air India Express Crash Kills 158

One really wonders if the recent series of plane crashes will ever end. This morning at 6.10 am local time, an Air India Express Boeing 737-800 overshot the runway at Mangalore airport in the south of India, killing all but eight of the passengers on board.

The two-year old plane was on the way back from Dubai, carrying mostly Indian guest workers from the Emirate, when it crashed into a valley at the end of the runway. The weather at Mangalore airport was decent: good visibility, calm winds and no rain. The pilot, a British citizen, did not report any technical difficulties with the fairly new 737 on approach. The surviving passengers report they heard the tires of the plane burst, then the plane hit something and it caught fire. A survivor told Reuters: "[The plane] caught fire and we fell out. We looked up and saw some opening and came out through that route."

The cause of the accident has not been determined yet, but there can only be a couple of realistic reasons: The 737 might have had technical difficulties, so that the pilots could not brake (but then the tires would not have burst). Another possibility is that the plane touched down too late on the runway and the cockpit crew could not bring the 737 to a halt before hitting trees (this theory is supported by the bursting tires) - which would be a pilot error. Another reason is that the 737 hit the runway too hard, causing the tires to burst and then the brakes were, consequently, not fully functional. Whatever the reason, we will know it soon. There were, luckily, survivors and the black boxes have been found. The Aviation Insider will keep you posted!

To read the Reuters story, please click here. Click here for the The Hindu article.

Investigators: Polish Plane Carrying President Crashed Due to Pilot Error

I was not surprised at all to read what the cause of the April 10 crash that killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski was. Apparently, the cockpit crew of the Tu-154 was inexperienced, did not have up-to-date information on the weather in Smolensk, Russia - where the plane crashed - and there were people in the cockpit who were not crew members and who might have urged the pilots to land in dense fog.

CNN reports that air traffic controllers at Smolensk airport warned the crew on two occasions that there was fog at the airport, visibility was just 400 meters, and the conditions did not allow the airport to receive the plane. However, the crew still tried to land four times and crashed on the fourth attempt. Smolensk airport is not equipped with Western-style ILS, making it almost impossible to land there without sufficient visibility.

The reason for flying too low was an axial depression a few hundred meters ahead of the runway. So the plane's altimeter indicated the plane was flying too high for landing at Smolensk and the cockpit crew decided to go lower. When the depression ended, the plane was only a few meters above ground, hitting trees, which eventually caused the crash. It also looks like Andrzej Blasik, commander of the Polish Air Force, was in the cockpit and urged the pilots to land at Smolensk airport despite current fog conditions.

All in all, extremely dumb decisions and an inexperienced cockpit crew caused this crash; not so much the sometimes obsolete Russian aircraft technology.

To read the entire CNN story, please click here.

Lufthansa Receives First A380

Thursday was a very exciting day for Europe's second largest airline Lufthansa: It finally received its first A380, nicknamed "Lady Bee" (I still hate that name) and officially titled "Frankfurt am Main." Lufthansa is only the second European airline to receive the A380, after Air France, which is using the super jumbo on its route from Paris to JFK.

Lufthansa has announced it will be flying the first three A380s being delivered this year on routes to Tokyo, Beijing and Johannesburg. The first flight with passengers will bring Germany's national soccer team to South Africa in early June for the World Cup. Regular A380 flights can already be booked through Lufthansa's Web site. Unfortunately for me, LH does not plan to use the A380 on routes to North America until mid of 2011 earliest.

Compared to other airlines, especially those from the Persian Gulf and Asia (Emirates, Singapore Airlines, etc.), Lufthansa has been reluctant to buy a lot of A380s. Right now, only 15 A380s have been ordered by Germany's biggest airline, compared to 20 Boeing 747-8s. This is contrary to LH's overall strategy to replace fuel-consuming Boeing aircraft with more fuel-efficient Airbuses, especially for short-haul planes. Obviously, Lufthansa does not want to become too dependent on only one manufacturer when it comes to long-haul aircraft and similar approaches can be observed for most other big airlines. Interestingly, Lufthansa has neither placed orders for the 787 nor the A350. But the German airline has always been very picky when it comes to aircraft orders. In contrast to most other airlines, Lufthansa never owned the extremely popular 777. It also refused to order the 757 and the 767, which it only used for its former subsidiary Condor.

To read Lufthansa's press release on the A380 delivery, please click here.

To see more pictures of the new Lufthansa flagship, please click here.

CNN: A330 Crashed Because of Pilot Error

As I predicted, a pilot error likely caused the crash of an A330 in Tripoli, Libya, on Wednesday. Apparently - and contrary to what had been reported before - the visibility at Tripoli airport was not very good, caused by mist and sand. The pilot turned off the autopilot and tried to land the plane himself (as mentioned before, Tripoli airport is not equipped with ILS), but could not align the Airbus with the runway. He tried to switch on the autopilot again when he noticed he was in trouble. But before the A330 could gain enough thrust to pull up again, the plane crashed into the ground.

This is another example of the poor flying skills of African pilots in general. The continent has been hampered by accidents due to pilot error for a while. The crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 409 in January off the coast of Lebanon was also caused by pilot error. I can only recommend it again and again - whenever you book a flight, pick an airline whose pilots you trust. Not even a state-of-the-art Airbus equipped with world-class fly-by-wire can save you when your pilot doesn't know how to handle the plane in difficult circumstances.

To read the full CNN story, please click here.

Another A330-200 Crash within Less than One Year

It hasn't been a good year for Airbus. Within less than one year, two Airbus A330-200 crashed. The first one on July 1, 2009, on the way from Rio to Paris (I have written a lot about that crash; to read more about the Air France crash from June of last year, please click here) and the other one today, on approach to Tripoli airport in Libya. For both accidents, we don't know yet what really caused them. Those are the only two times the A330 ever crashed. And both times it was the 200 version of this wide-body plane.

Afriqiyah Airways flight 771 was en route from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Tripoli, Libya, when it crashed into the runway area of Tripoli's international airport in the early morning of May 12, 2010. During the more than nine hours of the flight, no incidents have been reported and the weather at Tripoli airport was excellent. So what caused the crash and could it be related to AF 447 last year?

I believe there is absolutely no link between the Air France crash last year and today's crash. Yes, it was the same plane, but I really believe this is a coincidence. The circumstances are just too different. AF 447 was in flight mode when it crashed; at an altitude of around 10 km. Afriqiyah Airways flight 771 was approaching the airport in flare mode already and didn't have any issues at its cruising altitude. According to recent reports, flight 8U 771 crashed parallel to the runway, missing it by around 900 meters. The question here is: How could the pilot miss the runway during good weather, no winds and with great visibility? True, the airport is not equipped with state-of-the-art ILS, but under those circumstances, every pilot should have been able to land.

First reports mentioned technical difficulties. This has not been confirmed, but it is possible. Later reports mentioned that the pilots radioed for ambulances to be ready and a passenger allegedly twittered that something was wrong with the plane's wing. None of this has been confirmed. In the end, there are only three possible reasons for the crash: pilot error, technical difficulties or a combination of both. After all, it is very confusing that the pilot made it to the airport (so he must have been in control of the plane), but crashed while missing the runway.

I am really not sure what caused this crash, but let me offer my personal opinion: I think it was a pilot error. The A330 is equipped with a state-of-the-art fly-by-wire system, but if the airport doesn't have ILS, then the A330's autopilot is not able to automatically land the plane. So maybe the pilots were tired? Fell asleep for a few seconds (well, it happens in cars all the time)? I really don't know. It is highly unlikely though that a technical error occurred only during landing and so short of the airport. If flaps don't work or engines are broken, pilots notice that fairly quickly into the flight, not during the last 30 seconds of a flight. It is also unlikely that the fly-by-wire system failed at such a late stage. This has never happened before.

I think we should not draw false parallels here to AF 447. I am convinced the causes of those crashes are very different. With flight 8U 771 I am, however, certain we'll have all answers soon, since the black boxes have already been found. I will keep you posted...

A330 Crash in Libya

An A330-200 crashed this morning while trying to land at Tripoli airport. Read more about the crash and first analysis later today on The Aviation Insider.

Reuters: Breakthrough in Air France Crash Black Box Search

Today is a good day - for those who lost relatives and friend in the crash of Air France flight 447 on June 1, 2009, as well as for everybody else interested in aviation. I am very sick of hearing that AF 447 crashed because of turbulence, bad weather or pitot tube malfunctions. I want to know what really happened to the Air France A330 almost one year ago.

The French defense ministry today announced the search teams have found what could be the first concrete clues to the location of black boxes missing from last year's Atlantic jet disaster, but warned on Thursday there was no guarantee the breakthrough would lead to their recovery. This allows experts to narrow the search to a few square kilometers from several thousand ahead of the anniversary of the airline's worst crash.

To read the full Reuters story, please click here.

And Another Bumpy Landing

Another very nice bumpy landing on an Airbus:

Bumpy Landing of the Week

I was really impressed when I saw this video on YouTube. This is one windy landing. Great job, pilot and A319!