The fear of flying is a legitimate phobia that can ground someone for life. Despite statistics reminding us how safe airline flying is, countless people still refuse to fly or they reluctantly fly with great stress and anxiety. Although some people do not like to fly because they feel uncomfortable in enclosed spaces or because of their fear of heights, most of those people who fear flying are actually besieged by the prospect of crashing.

Fear of flying can be overcome

    According to an article featured on PBS.org, the chance of an average American being killed in a plane crash is about 1 in 11 million. That’s a pretty small chance, especially when you compare it to the average American’s chance of dying in a car accident: 1 in 5,000. Although this article states that this number can change based on your own personal flying habits (your chances of dying in a plane crash slightly increase the more you fly), the article still concludes by saying that airline flying is very safe.

   And yet there are people who can’t help but fear of dying in a plane crash. What are the reasons behind their fear, and how can they overcome this fear? Listed below are four reasons why people fear plane crashes and why they should toss those reasons into the trash.

1. Hijacking: This phobia became more prevalent after 9/11 and still keeps many people who used to enjoy flying from getting on an airplane ever again. Even if they continue to fly, many people still experience increased stress and even panic when flying due to this fear. Although hijackings can still occur (the chance can never be reduced to zero), airport security across the world has become substantially more stringent since 2001. In addition to airport security checkpoints, undercover agents are also used to constantly look out for and monitor suspicious activity.
2. Turbulence: Many people think that when a plane shakes, suddenly turns or drops a few feet in the air, it is crashing. This is just turbulence, which occurs frequently in unstable air. Indeed, one should keep in mind that the air we breathe and travel through not only moves horizontally, like the wind, but also up and down. Vertical movements of air are typically called updrafts or downdrafts. Sailors from centuries back know how violent downdrafts can be at sea. A sudden downdraft, like the ones associated with a squall, could roll a large square-rigger on its beam in a split second. Just like horizontal gusts of wind, updrafts and downdrafts exhibit irregular and apparently random fluctuations. This is enough to instill fear in anyone of us not used to such weather phenomena. Vertical fluctuations in air flow are what cause an airplane ride to be bumpy and trigger fear, although rarely so for pilots who are trained to slow down and deal with such conditions safely. Such fluctuations should not cause you to crash. Only extreme and very rare cases of turbulence could cause a crash, but then again pilots know how to avoid these pitfalls in the first place. They know how to interpret the weather and are furthermore backed by weather radar in the cockpit as well as by updated weather data sent by countless weather reporting stations on the ground, not to mention local weather reports made over the radio by other pilots flying in their vicinity.Even if your plane flies through powerful turbulence, the chances of the plane being damaged (let alone crashing) are slim to none. Of those airliners that suffered damage in violent turbulence, most landed safely without serious injury to passengers. In other words, passengers simply need to remember that turbulence rarely causes crashes, let alone deaths. Granted, injury can occur (such as bumping your head on the airplane ceiling or falling down in the aisle). For this reason, you should always keep your seatbelt buckled while in the air, in addition to during take-offs and landings, plus while taxiing to and from the airport terminal.
3. Airplane malfunction: Many passengers fear that instruments will fail in flight, wings will rip off or engines will stop. As far as instrument and system failure goes, all modern airliners are equipped with two (sometimes three) backup systems. Most never even experience a failure of the first system because they are maintained to prevent failure. Wings on modern airliners are designed to withstand high levels of stress caused by turbulence and stand little chance of structural failure. In fact, wings are designed to naturally flex before actually bending and then maybe failing. Should an airplane’s engines fail, the plane can in most cases function as a glider all the way down to a safe landing on a suitable surface with non-life threatening damage to the cabin. Pilots are trained to do exactly that if and when they should lose power on all engines, a pretty rare occurrence. Airplanes do not “fall out of the sky”. Instead, they are designed to remain controllable in a host of unlikely hazardous situations. Another thing to remember about airplane design is that airplanes are tested under stringent conditions in order to be certified as airworthy by government expert authorities and thereby allowed to carry passengers.
4. Mid-air collisions: airline flights operate under a flight plan for each flight, whether short or extended. Flight plans help air traffic control know where every aircraft expects to land and at what time. All take-offs and landings are managed by air traffic controllers who tell pilots when it’s OK to take-off and land, to proceed to planned cruise flight or start approach descent. Air traffic controllers use radars to keep track of all flights in their area. Their goal is to keep each take-off and landing well-separated to avoid collision. Pilots also use radar and their very own sharp eyes, weather allowing, to scan for and keep aware of nearby aircraft. All in all, the chances of a mid-air collision are very rare because there are several prevention tools in place, both technological and visual.

   Those of us who have a fear of flying should know that there are several resources out there to help understand how commercial airlines operate and why it is safe to fly. Many airlines and aircraft manufacturing companies have created short films on why flying is safe. There are also many books and programs available to help people understand and overcome their fear of flying. These resources can be easily found through a quick Internet search. You may also want to check these:
1) Fear of Flying Help
2) How Stuff Works
 

About our guest contributor:  Courtney is writer and editor for Airport Management Degrees. In her spare time, she likes to write guest articles for various websites on various topics of interest.

PS: Our guest author, Courtney Henderson, and people running CivAv.com make no representations as to the effectiveness of the fear of flying programs linked above. Would-be and actual airline passengers are invited to shop around and find the program that suits them best.

   Male and female civilian pilots became part of the solution to provide the RAF and Allied Forces with badly needed aircraft of various types and roles to face and repel the German onslaught from European skies. Because of the shortage of trained military pilots for aerial combat and other flying missions, civilian pilots played a key role in ferrying newly-built military aircraft.

   Their contribution to the War Effort is well documented by JunoBeach.org as well as, in the case of female civilian pilots, by the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS). A smaller group of female civilian pilots was also known as “Spitfire Women“. In general, female civilian pilots ferried quite a variety of military aircraft with little time to become acquainted with new aircraft types before undertaking their journey across the North Atlantic.

   For many civilian pilots involved in ferrying military aircraft, flying the Spitfire was considered as the ultimate assignment because the Spitfire was viewed as one of the most advanced military aircraft at the time, and still is nowadays for non-military purposes, in terms of single piston-engine aircraft.

   Today, November 11, 2011, this blogger salutes civilian pilots who took the gamble again and again of ferrying military aircraft during World War II, mainly over the North Atlantic to their assigned destination in England, in all sorts of weather conditions. Not all returned alive, needless to say.

   Rumour has it now that the BEA might make a finding of ‘excessive workload’ on the flight crew as a result of the Airbus 330’s computers defaulting to ‘Alternate’ mode when the airspeed sensors became ice-clogged. There was a lot of confusion in the cockpit. That much we know from the beginning when the CVR and FDR were finally recovered from a depth of 4 km (nearly 6,000 feet).

   The BEA (France’s equivalent to the American NTSB) might go as far as stating that the workload was excessive on the crew to the point of creating ‘unsafe conditions’, as a contributing factor in the AF447 crash. This finding, if confirmed by public authorities, would throw the ball back in Airbus’ court, as well as Air France and the Pitot tube manufacturer, all of whom were aware of the defective design of the Pitot tube and attendant consequences years before the fatal crash.

 Despite outward appearances (as publicized in the damaging book on the AF447 flight crew performance released last week), the flight crew might not likely have to shoulder significant blame for the crash.

  The point is the AF 447 flight crew was facing excessive workload from the aut0-pilot disconnect onward during the fatal crash of flight AF447.

  Airbus Industries (now EADS) and Air France should have alledgedly been aware, long before the AF447 crash, of such foreseable consequences of ice-clogged Pitot tubes then in use on this model of Airbus aircraft.

   This is a tough question few aviation experts are willing to face head-on.  Yet, given the spate of mishaps involving highly automated airliners and resulting in in-flight incidents and, much less frequently, in aviation accidents with significant loss of life, hardly anyone involved with designing the hardware and software behind the automation of modern airliners can escape the question.

   At present, there are no clear-cut answers. Some aviation safety investigation experts are still suggesting that on-board fly-by-wire hardware and software be improved in order for airline pilots to actually remain in charge of the airplane at any flight stage and be able to respond to unexpected in-flight challenges as they would with a conventional aircraft. Yet, nobody is tackling the basic underlying question:  Why are competent airline pilots sometimes unable to deal, in tight circumstances, with both the benefits and limitations of highly automated fly-by-wire controlled airliners?

Vagaries of flight automation

   Why, for instance, should high-tech airliner operating manuals state that pilots are not to interfere with the auto-land mode (q.v. by flying the aircraft manually) once auto-land is selected? Is the underlying message that, once committed to auto-land, pilots must stick with it no matter what - for instance, during a Category III landing - except for a pilot ordered go-around?

   This leads to another question: could it be that the more technologically advanced airliners are, the more pilots are inclined to remain hands-off during cruise-climb, cruise, descent, approach or landing stages of flight, despite pilot statements to the contrary?

   Well, there is the crux of the case.

   At present, airlines and public air transport authorities need to make a clear distinction  between electronically assisted flight control and full flight management and control automation. Moreover, the initial and proficiency training of airline pilots needs further fine tuning in either case. 

   The tragic but sadly avoidable crash of AF447 on June 1, 2009, is but one major and recent accident involving advanced aircraft automation, awaiting technical recommendations from civil aviation authorities, that may provide some reassurance and solace to relatives and friends of victims of the crash that the industry can learn from its mistakes.

   Modern airline flight operations appear to industry observers, including this humble blogger, who are unfamiliar with the latest on-board automation features, as a radical change in flying philosophy. Pilots of technologically advanced airliners no longer have direct three-axis and engine power inputs on such aircraft. Instead, they have to deal with a third party in the cockpit: the on-board flight management and control system run by one or more computers. This is a major mind-shift that pilots of so-called conventional aircraft and the airline industry at large have to contend with and catch up to, by relying more than ever on continuing and close support from aircraft manufacturers.  And so do civil aviation regulatory authorities.

   There isn’t much room at all for aviation safety stakeholders to play any sort of cat and mouse game with each other, while air transport flight automation is making quantum leaps. The investigation into Air France flight AF447 disaster that occurred on June 1, 2009, is a case in point.

   CivAv.com considers it equally important to pass on the NTSB’s major safety tips as a matter of public interest, with no commercial purpose.

   The NTSB is widely known for its concern in matters of transportation safety and it’s thoroughness in the study of transportation safety deficiencies.

   The list of major tips numbers 10. It is significant that many apply to civil aviation operations and to motor vehicle driving, while some tips are common to more than one mode of transportation, if not all.

   Furthermore, it should not be all that difficult to memorize the tips that apply specifically to the transportation modes that you, dear readers, can act upon as a matter of individual reflex or corporate policy:

1. Promote pilot and air traffic controller professionalism

2. Address human fatigue

3. Promote teen driving safety

4. Improve general aviation safety

5. Improve motorcycle safety

6. Require safety management systems

7. Improve runway safety

8. Address alcohol-impaired driving

9. Improve bus occupant safety

10.Require image and onboard data recorders

ALL CREDIT DUE TO THE NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD (U.S.A.)

Below is a partial list of useful links pertaining to civil aviation safety:

- NTSB

- Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB)

- European Aviation Safety Agency  (EASA)   Please note that not all E.U. member states have relinquished full civil aviation safety authority to EASA.

   The alleged fact, for example, that the pilot-in command (P-I-C) was not in the cockpit at the time the AF447′s Airbus 330 fell out of the sky in the equatorial zone on its way across the Atlantic ocean to Paris, made immediate headlines. It’s the kind of sensational information that news headlines are made of, until superseded by corrective updates.

   Airline pilots associations and unions have every right to be concerned about the knee-jerk attitude found in early press releases by aviation representatives.

   Even though the root cause of major aviation accidents is nearly impossible to isolate, airline executives and the media are prompt to call for “pilot error”.  Yet these same individuals know very well that aviation safety culture is at the centre of countless major aviation accidents. Aviation safety culture is not a person, real or corporate, on whom courts can lay liability for air disaster. Witness the French lower court’s ruling, last December, over the July 2000 supersonic Concorde crash at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. The court unwisely laid the blame squarely on an aircraft maintenance engineer and his supervisor, naturally, employed by Delta Airlines.  See the Concorde saga earlier in this blog.

   With the advent of jumbo jets in the 70s and after, a theoretical question was raised a few times, one showing the temporary disconnect between safety regulations and pilot-in-commands’ responsibilities: can the P-I-C of a departing Boeing 747, for example, be held accountable for all safety matters related to the planned flight or not?  Who provides the load sheet to the P-I-C after the jumbo jet is fully loaded with fuel and payload, including number and distribution of passengers on board? Is the P-I-C expected to visually check that the list of contents of the jumbo jet shown on the load sheet is accurate?

   The common sense answer is that the P-I-C of a large aircraft is entitled to rely on the work performed by well trained company ground crew prior to push-back from the gate. Check, for instance, the number of times provisions of the Canadian Aviation Regulations start by stating: “The pilot-in-command of an aircraft shall ensure that...?”  To “ensure” is just about the best these pilots can do. In that verb resides the duty of  “due diligence”  pilots are held to, as in many regulated professions . Pilots of large aircraft cannot personally guarantee success at all stages of flight and need to rely on other aviation professionals to fly aircraft from A to B safely.

   As we have seen with the Gimli Glider’ case back in early 80s, the P-I-C of an Air Canada Boeing 767, had to make a quick mental calculation about the fuel uplift provided to him in liters in order to convert liters to pounds of fuel. The captain erred, simple as that. But the litre to pound conversion, as simple as it may appear from the comfort of our home or offices is something different when the pilot is busy enough with pre-departure checks and signing documents submitted by ground crew. As luck would have it in the ‘Gimli Glider’ case, an important fuel gauge in the cockpit was tagged as unserviceable. As a result, the Boeing 767 ran out of fuel about mid-way through the flight.  However, it was later agreed, after the heroic engine-out landing at Gimli aerodrome near Winnipeg with no casualties and relatively little damage to the airliner (compared to what it could have been), that the relevant operating manual needed to be reworded to better account for the co-existence of both measuring systems in civil aviation: the imperial one and the metric one.  Do such improvements to flight operating manuals support the theory of  pilot error as the central cause of an aviation accident? Let’s be real.

   And this case is one among so many other aviation mishaps where pilot error was excusively and initially on many persons’ mind.

   Remember the more recent Swissair 111 horrific crash off Canada’s East Coast, near Peggy’s Cove? Why did it take the crew nearly 20 minutes to go through the checklist regarding smoke in the cockpit at a point in flight where every minute mattered to get the doomed jumbo jet down safely on the ground at Halifax Int’l (as it was then called)? Was the pilot expected to breach company policy and chuck the emergency checklist away?

   It goes both ways, doesn’t it? In the Swissair 111 case, airline safety culture was so tight it probably gave pilots less personal initiative in emergency situations. Who knows for sure, though? However, the common theme and repeated lesson are that airlines and pilots need to work closer together at all practical times on safety culture, in a way that both management and pilots are ad idem on safety issues. Any airline at odds with the pilots’ union, for instance, over the expiry of the collective agreement and that consequently allows mutual communications over safety matters to fall by the way side, is not operating at peak safety level. Airline pilots are not mercenaries. A friendly employment environment is naturally conducive to pilots staying more focused during flight duty time. This is trite observation and yet in the real world, things do not always support it.

    So, whatever happened, in a general way, to AF447 on its way to Paris between Brazil and Senegal, might soon be known as the contents of the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are likely to be made public sooner than originally stated, as a result of pressure from stakeholders in the deadly crash, and from the public at large who has the right to know what went wrong.  What purposes would prolonged secrecy really serve by withholding the contents of the black boxes?  Surely not certainty of accident cause, because there is no such thing as a single cause in any major aviation accident (repetition intended.)

   To all concerned: please hold your fire after obtaining raw information from the black boxes. Think of AF447 and its doomed passengers and crew as part of a large system managed and operated by many skilled players, most of them safely on the ground when tragedy strikes on rare occasions. In truth, any rare occasion is  still too much. Work is continuously underway to reach 100% safety in civil aviation.

   For those who don’t already know: there is nothing basically wrong with the pilot-in-command of a large airliner taking a nap during the cruise stage of a long flight, while a back-up pilot fills in alongside the first officer during the captain’s needed break.

   Now, to hear from experts on the civil aviation safety record, here is a link worth checking: Flightglobal Safety Review. Their take, as can be expected, is that there is plenty of room to improve aviation safety even though aviation remains statistically one of the safest modes of public transport. Flightglobal looks at civil aviation safety from a broad historical perspective. That alone puts their report on aviation safety a couple of notches above similar reports.

Aircraft black boxes are orange

   The Cockpit Voice Recorder and the Flight Data recorder, a.k.a: “the black boxes” (so called despite their orange colour) have been recovered nearly two years after Air France flight AF447 from Rio to Paris went down for unknown reasons in the Equatorial Zone, an area of the globe known for extreme weather.  However, the downed airliner, an Airbus A330 has a good reputation and, together with its well trained crew, it should have flown routinely through that zone on the way to Paris, at normal cruising altitude.

   It didn’t. What went wrong? Where are we now in terms of filling in the blanks thanks to the data contained in the black boxes?

  Days have gone by while the black boxes are being examined in the laboratory setting of the ‘Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses’ (BEA), a French accident investigation body, well equipped for the job.

   What has transpired since the box were opened in the BEA’s labs a week ago?  Zilch, except for the good news that the recorded pre-crash cockpit conversation and flight data are totally readable, despite a two-year stay under water at a depth of about 13,000 feet. An excellent outcome for the investigation of an aviation tragedy that seemed at times unexplainable. What is going on now at the BEA with the black boxes is a secret only a very small elite knows about.

   What visible action has been taken since the black boxes underwent decoding and serious technical scrutiny by the BEA?  Here is what we now know for now: French news sources report that reassuring telex messages have been sent to operators of Airbus 330 to the effect that no immediate action is required, based on preliminary data obtained from the doomed Airbus 330′s black boxes.  Such a reassuring and hasty statement can mean two things: 1) whatever corrective action might be required can wait, and 2) the preceding statement is based on preliminary data. Confusing statement if anything. The world can turn upside down in the meanwhile and the reassuring statement from Airbus Industries would still remain suitably vague and appropriate.

   Behind the scenes, though, criminal proceedings against potential culprits in the AF447 have started. Some sources report that, while judicial proceedings are underway, the contents of the perfectly readable black boxes’ recording cannot yet be released. What’s this new legal impediment to public disclosure of the black boxes?

   Another alleged reason supporting the non-disclosure of the contents of the black boxes to everyone concerned with the AF447 disaster is that the BEA must first ascertain having interpreted and analyzed the recordings in a way that will lead to accurate findings, findings that will actually identify the causes and culprits directly and indirectly involved in the AF447 crash. Culprits, or causes in a long chain of contributing factors, no doubt.

   “Identify culprits”, “Lay blame”… These are just media lines. Useless jargon, except for legal beagles.  First and foremost, relatives of victims, operators of the same type of aircraft, manufacturers of the aircraft and of its components should not have to wait, in order to take necessary safety action, for any blame to be technically ascribed to any entities, individual or corporate. They need to know NOW how to act, on the side of caution, of course, more than two years after the agonizing event.

   France’s major airline pilots’ union is incensed at the recent turn of events in which the aircraft manufacturer was prompt to issue the vague statement referred to above, one that was sent a number of times to all operators of the Airbus 330 type of aircraft. The union feels that the pilots of the doomed Airbus A330 are being unjustly finger-pointed in the absence of any serious signs of aircraft malfunction detected so far.

   This is happening against a backdrop of concerned parties patiently waiting for 1) the in-depth and almost irrefutable findings by the BEA,  2) the findings that might not be made public until the technical report in its entirety is filed with the judicial authorities involved in uncovering possible human criminal error or neglect leading up to the crash. Let us pause here, for a moment, to remember how it took the Concorde case 10 years to reach the criminal liability hearings stage in Pontoise, north of Paris. Closure after an aviation accident cannot wait that long anymore. Justice delayed is Justice denied. In the case of AF447, the contents of the black boxes’ recordings might not be disclosed before July or so. A few more weeks to go! Suspense is running high and so are tensions among major stakeholders in the crash.

   Let us keep in mind however that the recovery of the black boxes, two years after the crash, at a depth of around 4,000 metres below sea level (about 13,000 feet deep) is in itself a feat and a gesture of due diligence and best efforts on the part of Air France and Airbus Industries (EADS). The upcoming days hold a few surprises, including – why not? – the full public release of the decoded contents of the black boxes against all technical, legal and judicial odds. For the record, let it be known that France’s administrative and judicial processes tend to be burdensome and lengthy, ‘rigueur intellectuelle oblige’, although major systemic reforms are reportedly under way. This is not new nor limited to France. “La sécurité aérienne, c’est moi” Louis XIV would have said, had he been alive today.

   So far, it would seem that the parties mostly concerned, such as relatives of the AF447 victims, might require a little more patience.

   Why?  Why in a French jurisdiction? Why is the American NTSB more proactive in getting concerned parties in on the action as opposed to the French way of putting on the breaks before the public release of any significant info?

   Why does the BEA have to be so concerned about impeccable and time-consuming analysis of the back boxes in order to pinpoint blame on some entities for the sad fate of flight AF447, subject to judicial consideration by the French judicial system?

   In the best of worlds, it seems that the sooner the European Union manages to implement uniform standards across member countries for the purpose of investigating public transportation accidents, the better. In that respect, France might in fact be lagging behind the NTSB, its Canadian counter-part and other proactive civil aviation authorities, in revealing promptly the hard facts as to what happened in any transportation accident of the magnitude of AF447′s deadly splash down from cruise flight. Cruising flight it was indeed, not taking off nor landing, but in that very stage of flight where accident statistics are lowest.

   What happened to flight AF447 up there, dodging documented weather disturbances? We are still clueless after months and years of beating up the A-330′s Pitot tubes with a thousand accusatory sticks, until the last few days after the perfectly readable black boxes were finally been recovered from the abyss of the Atlantic ocean. Pitot Tubes may have been a causal factor; however, Airbus maintains that no immediate corrective action is required, assuming perhaps that A-330 operators already updated Pitot tubes that were prone to icing and subsequent unreliability of input to on-board automated flight control and monitoring systems. 

   At the time of the crash, there were nasty cells moving about in the vicinity of AF447′s flight track in the Equatorial Zone. Mind you, other airliners made it safely through the same zone at about the same time along different tracks and in the same messy weather. Some of them altered course to avoid the worst of active cells, a manoeuvre that underscores the severity of the weather disturbances in the area where AF447 went down. That much we know.  Part of airline safety is predicated on modern jetliners’ ability to fly above the weather. The equation is not that simple near the Equator where the atmosphere is notoriously unstable up to altitudes of 50,000 feet, way above jetliners’ normal cruising altitudes. At the opposite end, i.e.: way down below, even offshore sailboats crossing the Equatorial Zone feel the wrath of dynamic and unstable air in the form of squalls upon squalls from all directions. Whatever mode of transportation one is using, to allow crossing the equator, Neptune exacts a toll. However, airliners should be impervious to Neptune’s mood swings because of their ability to detect and dodge any significant weather beyond safe and comfortable flight.

   At this point, hinting at the fact that pilot error may have been a contributing factor in the AF447 ocean crash, is premature and also insulting to the highly qualified pilots at the controls of AF447 and to their peers presently flying for reputable airlines around the world.

   Hey, folks!  In the meantime, let us look at the positives as we impatiently await actual info on AF447′s pre-crash moments. This calls for a round of applause for those hard working and determined professionals from various walks of life who finally located and retrieved AF447′s precious black boxes from the Deep Blue. After all, they did find the two sought-after needles in the proverbial haystack, an accomplishment nobody took for granted prior to the fact.

   There is no way to verify the veracity of this account other than by relying on the author’s plain good will, as the flight crew exercised top airmanship in a tight ‘need-to-land’ situation.

   The context? Having to land a ‘heavy’ in Japan after a North Pacific crossing originating from the U.S., staying aloft on reserve fuel soon after the major heart quake hit the North-East area of the country, with repercussions across the country.

   This is a testimonial to the integrity of the civil aviation system in a worst-case scenario, one that does not show up on MS FlightSim.  Suffice it to say that the narrative below has been checked for reported locations, distances, aircraft type and flight time, using Google Earth among other resources.

START NARRATIVE:

“I’m currently still in one piece, writing from my room in the Narita crew hotel. It’s 8am. This is my inaugural trans-pacific trip as a brand new, recently checked out, international 767 Captain and it has been interesting, to say the least, so far. I’ve crossed the Atlantic three times so far so the ocean crossing procedures were familiar.

By the way, stunning scenery flying over the Aleutian Islands. Everything was going fine until 100 miles out from Tokyo and in the descent for arrival. The first indication of any trouble was that Japan air traffic control started putting everyone into holding patterns. At first we thought it was usual congestion on arrival. Then we got a company data link message advising about the earthquake, followed by another stating Narita airport was temporarily closed for inspection and expected to open shortly (the company is always so positive).

From our perspective things were obviously looking a little different. The Japanese controller’s anxiety level seemed quite high and he said expect “indefinite” holding time. No one would commit to a time frame on that so I got my copilot and relief pilot busy looking at divert stations and our fuel situation, which, after an ocean crossing is typically low.

It wasn’t long, maybe ten minutes, before the first pilots started requesting diversions to other airports. Air Canada, American, United, etc. all reporting minimal fuel situations. I still had enough fuel for 1.5 to 2.0 hours of holding. Needless to say, the diverts started complicating the situation.

Japan air traffic control then announced Narita was closed indefinitely due to damage. Planes immediately started requesting arrivals into Haneada, near Tokyo, a half dozen JAL and western planes got clearance in that direction but then ATC announced Haenada had just closed. Uh oh! Now instead of just holding, we all had to start looking at more distant alternatives like Osaka, or Nagoya.

One bad thing about a large airliner is that you can’t just be-pop into any little airport. We generally need lots of runway. With more planes piling in from both east and west, all needing a place to land and several now fuel critical ATC was getting over-whelmed. In the scramble, and without waiting for my fuel to get critical, I got my flight a clearance to head for Nagoya, fuel situation still okay. So far so good. A few minutes into heading that way, I was”ordered” by ATC to reverse course. Nagoya was saturated with traffic and unable to handle more planes (read- airport full). Ditto for Osaka.

With that statement, my situation went instantly from fuel okay, to fuel minimal considering we might have to divert a much farther distance. Multiply my situation by a dozen other aircraft all in the same boat, all making demands requests and threats to ATC for clearances somewhere. Air Canada and then someone else went to “emergency” fuel situation. Planes started to heading for air force bases. The nearest to Tokyo was Yokoda AFB. I threw my hat in the ring for that initially. The answer – Yokoda closed! no more space.

By now it was a three ring circus in the cockpit, my copilot on the radios, me flying and making decisions and the relief copilot buried in the air charts trying to figure out where to go that was within range while data link messages were flying back and forth between us and company dispatch in Atlanta. I picked Misawa AFB at the north end of Honshu island. We could get there with minimal fuel remaining. ATC was happy to get rid of us so we cleared out of the maelstrom of the Tokyo region. We heard ATC try to send planes toward Sendai, a small regional airport on the coast which was later the one I think that got flooded by a tsunami.

Atlanta dispatch then sent us a message asking if we could continue to Chitose airport on the Island of Hokkaido, north of Honshu. Other Delta planes were heading that way. More scrambling in the cockpit – check weather, check charts, check fuel, okay. We could still make it and not be going into a fuel critical situation … if we had no other fuel delays. As we approached Misawa we got clearance to continue to Chitose. Critical decision thought process. Let’s see – trying to help company – plane overflies perfectly good divert airport for one farther away…wonder how that will look in the safety report, if anything goes wrong.

Suddenly ATC comes up and gives us a vector to a fix well short of Chitose and tells us to standby for holding instructions. Nightmare realized. Situation rapidly deteriorating. After initially holding near Tokyo, starting a divert to Nagoya, reversing course back to Tokyo then to re-diverting north toward Misawa, all that happy fuel reserve that I had was vaporizing fast. My subsequent conversation, paraphrased of course…., went something like this:

“Sapparo Control – Delta XX requesting immediate clearance direct to Chitose, minimum fuel, unable hold.”

“Negative Ghost-Rider, the Pattern is full” <<< top gun quote <<<

“Sapparo Control – make that – Delta XX declaring emergency, low fuel, proceeding direct Chitose”

“Roger Delta XX, understood, you are cleared direct to Chitose, contact Chitose approach….etc….”

Enough was enough, I had decided to preempt actually running critically low on fuel while in another indefinite holding pattern, especially after bypassing Misawa, and played my last ace…declaring an emergency. The problem with that is now I have a bit of company paperwork to do but what the heck.

As it was – landed Chitose, safe, with at least 30 minutes of fuel remaining before reaching a “true” fuel emergency situation. That’s always a good feeling, being safe. They taxied us off to some remote parking area where we shut down and watched a half dozen or more other airplanes come streaming in. In the end, Delta had two 747s, my 767 and another 767 and a 777 all on the ramp at Chitose. We saw to American airlines planes, a United and two Air Canada as well. Not to mention several extra Al Nippon and Japan Air Lines planes.

Post-script – 9 hours later, Japan air lines finally got around to getting a boarding ladder to the plane where we were able to get off and clear customs. – that however, is another interesting story.

By the way – while writing this – I have felt four additional tremors that shook the hotel slightly – all in 45 minutes.

Cheers, J.D.”

END NARRATIVE 

Feel free to comment below

1) The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the U.S. Department of Transport, the European Union and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) have signed an agreement in Montreal today aimed at sharing more aviation safety and security information. The new multilateral initiative has been name the Global Safety Information Exchange.

2) Meanwhile, as expected in recent years, European Union member states are about to apply standard procedures and requirements, under the aegis of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), for the prevention of civil aviation incidents/accidents, and for  aviation incident/accident reporting and investigation.

News items 1) and 2) result from joint streamlining efforts by public authorities and the private industry to make commercial air transport safer yet and able to respond quickly and effectively to future potential security threats to civil aviation.

3) The jury is still out on what exactly caused the failure this month of a Boeing 787 engine being tested on a rig. The damage to the RR Trent engine and its test rig is substantial. One company official even suggested that testing procedures were at fault, not the newly designed engine for Boeing’s Dreamliner. Either way, there is renewed concern that the belated Dreamliner, already years behind in the production and delivery of the first units, might cause another commercial set-back to Boeing and its hopeful first customers. Whether or not Boeing will manage to deliver its first production B-787 to All Nippon Airways, as rescheduled for early 2011, remains to be seen.

4) Back in December 2009, I mentioned the high hopes of achieving suborbital space flight at a… shall we say ‘reasonable’ cost with a push and financial participation by Virgin Galactic and its major partners. Since that post, it has come to our attention that another similar venture is pursued in the U.K. under the Skylon Project name.  This is not to say the two projects are competing head on; in fact, they perhaps supplement each other in their own niches. Virgin Galactic might, in the not too distant future, fill the void left by the demise of Concorde by offering continent-hopping suborbital flights to the travelling public, while the Skylon project, on the other hand, could fill another void now that NASA has retired its fleet of space shuttles from service.

   Let’s start with the Boeing Dreamliner which is already a test pilot’s dream come true, as the first video shows. Needless to say: an airliner’s capability to sustain high crosswinds on landing is a feature airlines look for in their decision to purchase or lease a fleet of new aircraft. In fact, any airliner having to divert to an alternate airport due to excessive crosswind on the destination runway is a major annoyance for both the airline and its passengers.

   Keflavik Airport in Iceland has the dubious distinction of having some of the strongest crosswinds. No wonder Airbus and Boeing, to name but two aircraft manufacturers, call Keflavik Airport a testbed for exploring a new aircraft’s landing and take-off limits in demanding wind conditions.

   YouTube has dozens of genuine videos, other than the ‘Flight-Sim’ kind,  showing the crosswind landing capabilities of new aircraft. The crab angle of sky giants such as the Airbus A-380 on final approach and touch-down seems almost unreal. At times, the Airbus looks as if it were flying sideways. Later on, at the 2009 “EAA AirVenture Oshkosh” event, a visiting A-380 on a public relations tour created a sensation when landing at Oshkosh in a hefty crosswind. There was no shortage of knowledgeable commentators on location to describe the sort of heavy footwork going on in the cockpit and other corrective input by the flying pilot in order to maintain the A-380 lined up with the runway’s centre-line on approach, right after after touch-down and during initial roll-out.

   Such sights have onlookers wondering whether the aircraft is on auto-land or hand flown. Which of the two produces the smoothest results? Unfortunately I do not have the answer for now. Suffice it to say that one of the many difficult crosswind landing of Boeings 747 aircraft engaged in actual commercial flight can be viewed on YouTube. One can appreciate the severe lateral stress on the landing gear upon touch-down. In such landing conditions, the aircraft jerks on touch-down with the main landing gear billowing heavy smoke from its tires. Less frequently, aircraft display an unusual wing-low attitude on approach before levelling the wings, and a very noticeable crab angle above the runway, followed at times by an immediate go-around. Go-arounds in stiff cross-winds are presumably more frequent in the case of jetliners having a tall landing gear, such the defunct Concorde.

   Speaking of using a wing-low technique in the final stage of a cross-wind landing, several twin jets, including the Boeing Dreamliner, powered by turbofans engines with a wide diameter and slung below the wings, would be nearly impossible. Not only are the turbofan engines much larger in terms of  cross-section, but their landing gear is also short for the overall size of the aircraft. This is where, IMO, the Airbus A-380 shines with its gull-wing design that helps keep the engines well above the runway upon touch-down, despite the short undercarriage and the impressive wing flexing on touch-down. Notice for example, in the video linked above, showing the Airbus A-380 landing at Oshkosh in 2009, the busy foot-work by the FP (flying pilot), as displayed externally by the rudder movements. These control inputs are naturally necessary, even after touch-down, in order for the heavy aircraft to remain on the runway centreline during initial roll-out, in cross-wind gusts reported to be 23 kts. These are only part of the challenging conditions the A-380 and the Boeing Dreamliner have been designed and tested for prior to production.

   Despite the benefit of allowing large turbofans a higher clearance above the runway on landing, both the Dreamliner and the Airbus A-380 are designed to take severe punishment in a cross-wind landing without the landing gear collapsing due to lateral drift, or any engine and wing tip scraping the runway.  Heavy airliners have their own constraints in stiff cross-wind landings, for touching down safely on a runway, wings level, compared to good old propeller-driven tail-draggers which are capable of touching down, in cross-wind conditions, on their upwind main gear alone until bleeding enough airspeed for a full three-point contact with the runway.

   No lateral drift of the Boeing Dreamliner appears during video-recorded test flights in heavy crosswinds approach and landing at at Keflavik Airport. Is this a reflection of a test pilot’s superior flying skill? I can’t say for sure. The video of the Dreamliner’s crosswind landings linked below indicates that some of the landings in heavy crosswind are carried out in auto-land mode. Presumably, they must be able to do so in order to meet current certification requirements.

   Here is  a video of the Dreamliner’s crosswind testing , complete with a running commentary by a Boeing official and test pilot.

   I thougt it would be useful to include a similar video below, showing the Airbus 380 undergoing the same rigorous testing in strong cross-winds and on a wet runway. If only one could better see the rudder and aileron deflections that keep the large A-380 in line with the runway on approach. No aircraft is a master of the sky, and yet both the Boeing Dreamliner and Airbus A-380 seem very stable and undaunted, from a distance, during strong crosswind approach, touch-down and initial roll-out.

   Our second topic below is an update of the Virgin Galactic project mentioned in a previous post in this blog, concerning the demise of the Concorde supersonic airliner. The main question raised in the earlier post was what sort of supersonic vehicle would likely fill the void left by Concorde in supersonic air transport. It was mentioned at the time that Virgin’s Galactic suborbital flight project was an attractive proposal. The video below indicates that suborbital public transport is years away. For now, suborbital flights to be conducted jointly by Virgin Galactic and its main partners will cater to space tourists only. The space tourism concept implies that any suborbital spacecraft launched from the mother ship will return for landing at the spaceport of departure.

   Sir Richard Branson and his partners plan  1) to make suborbital flights more affordable over time, for the benefit of space tourists without deep pockets, and  2) ultimately, to develop the global infrastructure - a major challenge to take on, as existing airports are not suited for such flights – and to redesign suborbital spacecraft necessary to achieve intercontinental public transport. Whether suborbital flight will in fact meet the need for affordable supersonic transport remains to be seen, of course, despite the enthusiasm displayed presently by its proponents. Yet, more conventional SST technology should not be discounted since improved and safer versions of Concorde might see the light of day before suborbital flight has sufficiently matured to meet the need for affordable intercontinental supersonic public transport.

   The following BBC report highlights Branson’s plans for suborbital flight:

   More information on the alternate application of SST technology, such as an improved variant of Concorde for instance, will follow as relevant material is found.