Aviation

According to avherald.com there was an accident in Riyadh involving a Lufthansa Cargo MD11. Look like an hull loss ... especially when you look at the photos at the end of the article:

Captain and first officer received injuries and were taken to local hospitals. Fire fighters were able to extinguish the fire, that broke out in the center area of the aircraft, front and rear portion were visibly not consumed by the fire.

David Warren died on July 19, 2010 that the age of 85. Why should you care? Well ... this guy created the flight data recoder, better known as "black box". This invention made aviation saver as post-crash analysis is easier with some additional data about the aircraft in the minutes before the crash, thus enabling the investigators to make better suggestions for the future.

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is already 2,5 years late and the next negative message came in last week ....

Boeing has issued a “caution” that delays in its flight test program may push its first delivery of the 787 into 2011.

I don't think, that this aircraft will lose the moniker "Delayliner" soon.

It's a small change at the Lufthansa Frequent Traveller program and perhaps most people are aware of this change as it was made on 1.1.2010, but Lufthansa changed it back to a "Frequent Traveller" instead of "Most paying" program - at least for 2010. You can get the FTL status with 30 flight legs.

A few weeks ago i wrote about this strange behaviour of airline passenger to storm the aircraft as there would be no reserved seats in it or no kind request to start boarding with the rows in the back of the aircraft.

There is another interesting behaviour: As i'm traveling to the smaller airports with smaller aircrafts quite frequently (Canadair, Embraer or Dash-8 ... not capable to use a gangway), apron-parking is something quite normal for me.

You aren't allowed to walk over the apron, so they use busses to shuttle you to the aircraft. And here the strange behavior starts: No matter how many seats in the bus are still free, everyone tries to stand near the doors. Even when those spaces are overcrowded nobody starts to move into the aisles of the bus except the room is that overcrowded that people are forced to move into the aisle.

I assume airline passengers would still fight to be first in the row or at near as possible to the exists of the bus when 10 passengers are booked for a A380 flight.

A few days ago the A320 celebrated it's 50.000.000 take-off and the five billionth passenger since the introduction of this model in 1988. On the other side there were 9 hull losses with fatalities. So every 5.555.555 take offs there is one crash. If cars would have a crash for every 5 555 555 turns of the key, streets would be a much safer place.

Do your really think, that power cycling your computer is just something people do at home, when their computer acts weird? Well ... not really. In a Safety Alert for Operators issued by the FAAyou will find the following two paragraph:

To alert all operators of MD-11 aircraft equipped with the Honeywell Pegasus FMC, with Future Air Navigation System (FANS) enabled, of possible erroneous Air Traffic Control (ATC) messages displayed in the CPDLC log.

and

On March 11, 2010, Boeing issued Multi Operator Message (MOM) SR1-1536638744. The MOM provides maintenance with procedures to clear the Honeywell FMC ATC Input Buffer by depowering the aircraft or resetting the appropriate circuit breakers before each FANS/CPDLC flight.

There is an issue with the expiration of incoming messages of the air traffic control in the flight management computer. They do not expire after the flight has completeted. So a pilot could take them for current ones and not the ones of the last flight. The current work-around: Power cycling the aircraft or at least the flight management computer

A good example how resilient aircraft engines are: The Avherald published some photos of an engine of an 777 that had to land at Schipol instead of Heathrow because of low fuel. The engine still delivered thrust. It had just a higher exhaust temperature and higher fuel burn according to other reports. At the moment it's believed this damage happened 5 hours before the landing in Schipol

You can call this a fscking large order without exaggeration: Emirates ordered 32 additional A380 today. So far they ordered 58 aircrafts of this type, now their fleet will have 90 in a few years.

Ich mag ja in anderen Blog gerade die Einträge, die Einblick in ein vollständig anderes Berufsleben geben, wenn es sich dann auch noch um die Fliegerei handelt muss ich das einfach lesen. Ich kann da beispielsweise nur sehr den Bericht "Vulkanasche voraus – Umleitung!" im Blog von Guy Gächter empfehlen.

It's May 26, it's my birthday and as a birthday is a special day nothing can go wrong. Well ... nope not really ... but at first i want to thank you all for your kind greetings and congratulations.

Nope .... at first i was in Cologne today, giving a tutorial about creating a fileserver with OpenSolaris. But that was by choice. I like to fly as you know . After being grounded for months due to no opportunity to fly this was really welcome. As i wrote before ... if i get a job some day in the future flying around and doing presentations i would be a luck man.

The day started with a nice "<insert a lot of suppressed curses>" in the aircraft as a was able to spill a cup of airline tea into my lap. Thank god it wasn't my tea at home so it was hot but not hot enough for really significant burnings.

Such a day starting that way can't get a positive ending and it didn't got one. I don't know what happened to my demo installation but stuff i did a day before without problems threw interesting error messages, nothing went the way i want it and and the end i couldn't even remember how to diskpart iscsi devices on windows ... damned ... i will create a written tutorial to give the attendees the information planed for this part.

I hope my Deduplication talk on Friday will be much better ...

However i'm sitting in the Frequent Traveller Lounge now, waiting for my aircraft and i hope there will be no delays ... i wouldn't wonder about that ...

The Flightblogger reports about a problem in the 787 programme:

Shear ties, which affix the fuselage frames to the skin of the aircraft, now require replacement or rework, after the initial design failed to take into account thermal fatigue loading of the parts.
[...]
The problem, which was discovered in December, found that repeated cooling and warming of the unpressurized Section 48 and 48 Aft, the shear ties, those of which are made of aluminum, can pull away from the skin of the fuselage, potentially compromising the structural integrity of the aircraft.

This video shows the resurgence of commercial aviation when the airspace was freed again after the the volcanic ash close-down.



There seems to be no data for France, as the complete country stays black in the video.

Michiel points in a comment to interesting photos of an jet engine that ingested volcanic ash : "PICTURES: Finnish F-18 engine check reveals effects of volcanic dust". Perhaps the airline managers should keep this in mind when they are upset about the closed airports.

The location is normaly directly below a frequently used aviation route. By the way: What a great weather!