Training aircraft goes missing, crashes.

24 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by theflyingengineer in Flight Safety

Tags

Accident, aircraft, country, Crash, Cross, Diamond, FGE, Gondia, IGRUA, Missing, Navigation, Panchmarhi, Training, VT

UPDATE02: Nullifies Update01. Director of IGRUA, Air Marshal (retd) VK Verma confirms that the aircraft / wreckage is not found, and that Search and Rescue are still underway. Although the situation hints at an undesirable outcome, we apologize for bringing out the previous update.

UPDATE01: Reportedly VT-FGE’s has crashed, taking the life of the student pilot.

A 4 year old Diamond DA 40 CS (similar to above photo) bearing registration VT-FGE went missing on a training flight today (24^th December 2013). The aircraft departed Gondia at 07:09UTC (12:29 IST) for a navigation cross country to Panchmarhi and back. The aircraft was expected to return to Gondia at 09:16UTC (14:46 IST).

The last known position was 63NM on Radial 359 from Nagpur Radar, at 0745UTC (1315IST). This places the last known position of the aircraft on the route from Gondia to Panchmarhi, with no apparent deviation. This last know position is overhead the village of Raja Khoh, Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh, and 80NM from Gondia.

The distance between Gondia and Panchmarhi is 120NM, and was the first long navigation cross country flown by the IGRUA cadet (name withheld upon request). The cadet has about 90 hours total time. The cadet was the only occupant, on board.

Terrain around Panchmarhi

Panchmari, a hill station, which is at an elevation of 3,600ft, is known to be notorious for its terrain, turbulence and poor visibility. Panchmari has a mud, unmarked runway oriented 04-22.

Search and rescue operations have been commenced, but the aircraft hasn’t been located. No ELT signal has been received, pointing either to a soft and safe landing of the aircraft in an open field, or the malfunction of an ELT in a crash. We sincerely hope the former is true. No call has been received from the cadet’s mobile phone, which was with him. No distress calls were heard.

The endurance of the aircraft is 04:00hrs, and at the time of writing this piece, the aircraft departed 10:15hrs ago.

Improper Modification Proves Costly

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by theflyingengineer in General Aviation Interest

≈ 1 Comment

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Air, Airbus, costly, Cross, error, Lufthansa, Maintenance, Southwest, Tran, Wire

Improper aircraft modifications have proven to be fatal, in the past, taking the lives, innocent or not, of the men and women on board. Aircraft modifications are the responsibility of maintenance personnel, who ensure that the modification is done right, and checked before releasing the aircraft.

On December 3rd, 2013, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a $325,000 penalty against Dallas-based Southwest Airlines for allegedly operating an aircraft that had been improperly modified, violating Federal Aviation Regulations. The aircraft is a Boeing 717, operating for US based low cost carrier AirTran Airways, which is in the process of merging with Southwest.

On Aug. 29, 2011, maintenance personnel improperly installed a switch that enables flight crews to test the windshield heating system on a Boeing 717. The Boeing 717, unlike most other Western airplanes in operation, has 7 cockpit glass panels (excluding the eyebrows). Of these, three (left, center and right) are the front facing windshields, and the rest windows.

Proper installation of the switch would have allowed personnel to isolate the windshield anti-ice system that was causing a warning that the windshield heater was failing. Instead, the center and left windshield warning systems were reversed. The right windshield warning system continued to operate properly. The aircraft was operated on 1,140 passenger flights before the problem was corrected.

Southwest spokeswoman Brandy King said that the installation error didn’t compromise safety as it was an extra system. The primary system for alerting crews to a potential window-heater malfunction was still working.

On the 20th of March, 2001, a Lufthansa Airbus A320 almost crashed when the captain’s sidestick was cross-wired in error by maintenance personnel. Although the captain commanded a right roll input, the airplane rolled left. Following the brief confusion, when the left wing-tip was around 2ft from the ground, the first officer, whose controls operated normally, took over by overriding the captain’s side stick input.

ATR 72-500 and -600 Cross Fleet Utilization approved by DGCA

15 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by theflyingengineer in Manufacturer, Operations, Technical

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500, 600, 72, Airways, ATR, Crew, Cross, Fleet, Jet, Singapore, Utilization

With respect to type rating designation for the ATR 42/72 series, DGCA finally recognizes the same type rating (single license endorsement) for the existing ATR 42/72 variants and ATR-600 variants as “ATR42/72”. This means that the flight crew on Jet Airways’ ATR 72-500 can now fly either the -600 variant or the -500 variant on a single day, but not both the types on the same day.

This allows Jet Airways to better utilise its turboprop flight crew, which until recently was affected by DGCA’s then non recognition of the common type rating for the two types.

With only 2 ATR 72-600 in its fleet, and more expected to be inducted, this recognition is welcomed as Jet Airways slowly phases out the -500 in favour of the -600. Further, Jet Airways will realise training cost savings from the newly opened ATR Training Centre at Singapore, which houses one ATR 72-600 FFS (Full Flight Simulator).

The common rating is allowed with a differences training. EASA recommends a differences training of 5 days, which includes and covers 28 hours of classroom instruction, web based training, and practice on the Virtual Hardware Platform Trainer (VHPT), and 4 hours per crew on a Full Flight Training device (FFT), such as a FFS.

The differences training between the two aircraft focus on:

Engine malfunctions during take-off;
Use of avionics in normal and abnormal / emergency operations, including FMA annunciations, caution and warning messages on the Engine & Warning Display (EWD), and associated human factors issues;
Use of Flight Management System (FMS);
Use of Electronic Checklist (ECL);
Ice detection and management systems and displays (including APM); and
Crew Resource Management (CRM) with regard to the new functionalities.