A two hour log overwrite standard in 2024 is shameful for modern planes.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy said on Sunday no data was available on the cockpit voice recorder because it was not retrieved within two hours – when recording restarts, erasing previous data.
The U.S. requires cockpit voice recorders to log two hours of data versus 25 hours in Europe for planes made after 2021.
Notably the requirement for Boeing is that it maintain at least two hours, which means it could design for the more logical 25 hours instead. A bare minimum doesn’t seem appropriate when we’re talking about a world of long-haul flights reaching upwards of 18 hours. Obviously a day of data is the right move for product engineers who care about passenger survival, as proven in just the latest two Boeing safety incidents.
New Zealand’s Transport Accident Investigation Commission said on Tuesday it was seizing the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder of a LATAM Airlines 787 after an incident that left more than 50 people injured.
A woman is dead after a crash in Aspen Hill, Maryland Monday afternoon, according to Montgomery County Fire and Rescue officials.
Crews said they responded to the intersection of Layhill Road and Bell Pre Road around 2:34 p.m. for the report of a two-car collision.
Given side impact on the driver’s side, it appears like with the recent Hong Kong case the Tesla ran a traffic signal (or… the other car did, which seems far less likely).
Police stated she was driving a Subaru Outback, making a left turn from northbound Layhill Road onto westbound Bel Pre Road when she collided with a driver in a Tesla Model Y who was going southbound on Layhill Road.
Barnett’s attorney, Brian Knowles, called the passing of his client “tragic” … and went on to express explicit doubt about the circumstances of his death, making sure to call the self-inflicted gunshot wound cops are citing as “alleged.”
What’s more startling is Barnett was literally in the midst of a whistleblower lawsuit against Boeing — his former employer of 32 years — as he was alleging retaliation for sounding the alarm on what he characterized as cutting corners on assembly lines for their planes.
It’s still too early to speculate, yet circumstances (notably opposite to Philip Haney, who was depressed and left a suicide note) suggest Barnett wasn’t planning to die. He left his hotel room and went into the parking garage to head to deposition, when perhaps he was intercepted as he got into his truck.
Last week, he gave a formal deposition in which he was questioned by Boeing’s lawyers, before being cross-examined by his own counsel.
He had been due to undergo further questioning on Saturday. When he did not appear, enquiries were made at his hotel.
He was subsequently found dead in his truck in the hotel car park.
Suicide with a gun on the way to do what he wanted to do? It doesn’t make sense, especially when you see the impact he was having, when you consider the moment he was in.
“They started pressuring us to not document defects, to work outside the procedures, to allow defective material to be installed without being corrected. They started bypassing procedures and not maintaining configurement control of airplanes, not maintaining control of non conforming parts – they just wanted to get the planes pushed out the door and make the cash register ring.”
Last month, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Dr. Christopher Kirkpatrick Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 to provide more safety for whistleblowers…
The investigators closed the case after receiving a ballistics report that mentioned that the bullet had been “fired by the firearm located in the victim’s hand.”
Most people know the tragic story of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, a unmistakable flying disaster. In its early years it killed many hundreds of people.
However, I suspect very few know the flip side of that story, where military rigor and strict maintenance rotated the DC-10 disasters into the KC-10 with decades of reliable success.
The KC-10 Extender has been a stalwart workhorse in the United States Air Force’s fleet for decades. […] “In the 1 1/2 years that the KC-10 has been at [Prince Sultan Air Base], they’ve accomplished over 1,300 missions with over 9,000 flying hours, and delivered nearly 73 million pounds of fuel to over 11,000 receivers,” said [Saudi Arabia, Brig. Gen. Akshai Gandhi, 378th Air Expeditionary Wing commander]
The USAF makes it fairly clear how their KC-10 program differed in approach (pun not intended) from for-profit commercial airlines and ruthless manufacturers trying to squeeze quality.
At the forefront of keeping the aging KC-10 in the air, are the hardworking maintainers who have ensured maximum operability of the aircraft. Despite the hot and sandy conditions the AFCENT AOR is known for, and the limited availability of parts for the aging aircraft, Airmen of the 378th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron (AMXS) have ensured the KC-10’s last deployment was just as effective as its first.
“To prepare a KC-10 for flight, we typically invest about 3 hours,” said Tech. Sgt. Nikolie Ambriz, 378th AMXS maintainer. “This time is primarily allocated to performing avionics operation checks and conducting thorough visual inspections enabling us to identify potential issues before aircrew arrive at the aircraft.”
Taxpayer dollars at work. It’s almost like a government run version of the DC-10 dramatically increased its survivability versus the market-driven one.
[Despite shareholder profits expected from] its quick design process, the DC-10 is more known for the variety of incidents it was involved in, with 32 hull loss incidents and over 1,200 passenger fatalities.
Even more to the point, and with a nod to Boeing’s recent 737 MAX disasters…
…seeking greater efficiency, American Airlines, Continental Airlines and United Airlines had developed alternate procedures that saved approximately 200 man-hours per aircraft. […] This repositioning caused unseen structural damage to be done to the wing’s pylon attachment points. Then, like a ticking time bomb, tail number N110AA continued to fly an additional eight weeks, with the damage increasing with every takeoff and landing.
The USAF quietly says their KC-10 variant has become a legend, as they sunset it, and they are right in more ways than one.
