Hardly anyone in the West even heard about this news: Within 24 hours of the Embraer E190 accident in Yichun, China, another E190 overshot the runway on Wednesday, this time in Nanning, in the southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. The Tianjin Airlines aircraft was en route from Xi'an in the northwestern Shaanxi Province to Nanning and was about to head for Haikou in the southern island province of Hainan.
Though authorities have published no investigation results, Chinese aviation experts have taken the accidents as an alarm for the country's rapidly expanding, yet immature, regional aviation market.
Good news for all fans of the United-Continental merger - the U.S. Department of Justice today cleared one of the last obstacles in the way to an on-time merger in early October of this year. The antitrust probe was closed after Continental and United agreed to transfer take-off and landing rights as well as other assets at Newark Liberty Airport to Southwest Airlines, the Justice Department said in a statement
The combined company, which will fly under the United name and the Continental logo (see picture on above), would be larger than Delta Air Lines, which became the country's largest airline when it merged with Northwest Airlines in 2008. The new United is expected to serve more than 144 million passengers per year and fly to 370 destinations in 59 countries.
Now, only the two airlines' shareholders will need to approve the merger. The vote will take place next month.
Passengers of a JetBlue A320 experienced a pretty hard landing yesterday when the plane blew four tires while landing at Sacramento airport. Four people suffered minor injuries during landing and about a dozen were injured while leaving the plane. JetBlue flight 262 was en route from Long Beach in south California to the state's capital with 86 passengers and five crew members on board when the cockpit crew reported problems with the plane's brakes.
What happened? Apparently, the brakes of the A320 were locked and wouldn't release. This means that the tires did not move/roll when the plane touched down on the runway. In turn, that caused the tires, and the air within, to heat up very quickly (because of friction) and, eventually, lead to the bursting of the tires (since air expands when it gets hot). The friction also caused minor flames on the tires and the brakes, so all passengers left the plane through emergency slides before the fire could spread to other parts of the plane (which would have been unlikely though).
The Aviation Insider will keep you posted on what the mechanical problem here was.
To read the CNN story, please click here. The followings is a video from a local FOX station:
My brother just sent me this amazing (probably very old) video. What a crazy-a** pilot! Look how close the wingtip is to the ground. Either a very stupid pilot or an amazingly good one. Just wow!
For the first time ever, an Embraer E190 crashed at Yichun Lindu Airport in China today. The crash occurred at 10 pm local time. Henan Airlines flight 8387 departed from Harbin in northern China and was en route to Yichun (only approx. 360 km away) when the plane crashed upon approach into Yichun airport.
The plane had 91 passengers and 5 crew members on board. At this point, at least 47 people have been rescued. Why the fairly new plane crashed is not yet clear. CNN reports the Embraer 190 jet overshot the runway and caught fire when it was landing. However, heavy fog may have contributed to the crash. Yichun Lindu Airport is not equipped with ILS, making it even harder for pilots to land in foggy conditions.
The Aviation Insider will keep you posted on further developments.
An AIRES 737-700 broke apart upon hitting the ground in San Andres, Colombia, yesterday night around 1.49 am local time. Flight 8250, which departed Bogotรก's El Dorado International Airport at 0.07 am, did not report any problems during the flight.
The Boeing 737-700 with the tail number HK-4682, was built in 2003 and was originally delivered to European low-cost carrier EasyJet. AIRES took over the plane in March of this year. This is the first time ever a 737-700 needs to be written off because of an accident. Contrary to some reports, the plane did not "crash" into the runway. It made contact with the ground a few dozen meters before the runway started, but it later broke apart on the runway.
The question - as always - now is: What caused the accident? The two most prominent theories at this point are: A severe downdraft "pushed" the plane onto the ground or a lightning strike caused the accident. As usual, reporters and experts are cautious to blame the pilots. However, all signs point to the downdraft theory, together with poor reactions by the two pilots. A lightning strike as the cause of the accident can totally be ruled out in my opinion. And experts agree with that. To read why lightning cannot possible have caused the crash, please read this CNN interviewwith an expert. It is almost ridiculous that reporters over and over again claim that an airplane crashed because of lightning. They said that about the Air France A330 that crashed into the Atlantic last year, they said it about the Ethiopian 737 that crashed off of the coast of Lebanon in January and they are saying it again now. However, no commercial plane has crashed because of a lightning strike since the 1960s. Planes are built to withstand lightning strikes. Period!
In my opinion, this 737 crashed because of a very strong downdraft right in front of the runway and the pilots were not prepared to handle such a situation. The weather was pretty bad during the approach and changing wind directions make it hard to land in situations like these. However, pilots should be well trained to handle these tough approaches. But the pilots of this AIRES 737 apparently weren't. Severe downdrafts are not extremely rare events. They happen quite frequently and I have experienced them myself during landings several times. Whenever pilots need to land in stormy conditions they need to take possible downdrafts into consideration. And it's not like a plane is totally uncontrollable when it flies through downdrafts. The laws of aerodynamics still apply, the pilots just need to react quickly. And when they are only a couple of meters from the ground they need to react even more quickly. Sadly, the AIRES pilots did not do that.
According to a CNN story, at least one of the pilots still does not know what happened. He said: "We were caught in a great sinking as we reached the runway, as our wheels touched down. It threw us out. It threw us out. Nature is very strong. It grabbed us with everything it had. I said, 'Landing' and cut, and when I was cutting, I started to level off, and I felt that the plane was going straight (down). I pulled [on the yolk]. I pulled. I pulled. And the plane kept on going, kept on going. It was when we said, 'Landing.' When there's nothing left to do."
As tragic as this accident is, it shows us that pilots need better training. Planes are built to withstand the forces of nature pretty well. If a 737 can fly through a storm of more than 300 km/h (as several did during hurricane Kyrill in Europe a couple of years ago) without any damage, it can very well endure severe downdraft. However, the pilots need to be trained to handle that. If the pilots don't even know what's going on, how can they react properly?
Hardly anyone in the West even heard about this news: Within 24 hours of the Embraer E190 accident in Yichun, China, another E190 overshot the runway on Wednesday, this time in Nanning, in the southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. The Tianjin Airlines aircraft was en route from Xi'an in the northwestern Shaanxi Province to Nanning and was about to head for Haikou in the southern island province of Hainan.
