Once again documenting the ups and downs of aviation has me on the run. Was it April 2011, when I wrote, "I am living in fear. I am terrified of my inbox. The ringing of my telephone sounds like the dun-dun dun-dun soundtrack of Jaws."  Here we are 11 months later and the crescendo of  events is even more bizarre than last year.

Eclipsing the news in 2011 that nameless air traffic controllers were sleeping at their stations is Tuesday's story of a JetBlue airline captain who was locked out of the cockpit by his own first officer. On a flight from New York to Las Vegas the pilot identified by news accounts as Clayton Osborn began a rant that included all the words one is not supposed to say on an airplane, "bomb...Al Qaeda...say your prayers." Fast thinking on the part of the first officer, kept the captain from returning to the flight deck and passengers subdued Osborn who was clearly experiencing some serious mental impairment. 

This story strikes me as terribly tragic and eerily reminiscent of what happened to a friend of mine - an experienced airline pilot. One night driving home from the airport on a route he had taken for 20 years, he found he did not know where he was. Later that week doctors found a tumor on his brain and shortly after that he was dead. 

Who can say how much danger passengers were actually in on JetBlue Flight 191 but I fear for Capt. Osborn. 

The JetBlue story, following so closely the case of the American Airlines flight attendant who started a terrifying rant on a flight out of Dallas earlier this month (and the case of a JetBlue flight attendant flying off the handle in 2010) surely means this latest episode will wend its way around the world faster than a speeding jumbo jet. 

Which of course transports me to yet another big news story; Tuesday's emergency landing of a Singapore A380 running, you guessed it; Rolls Royce engines. (Honey if you feel you can't keep up with these incidents, take a number.) Flight 26 with 400+ passengers was 3 hours out of Changi when the crew initiated a precautionary shut down of the number 3 engine and turned back to the airport.

For the airlines operating the troublesome combination of A380 airframe and Trent 900 motors, the much-touted airliner has been like a difficult teenager, one problem after another. 

That the flight headed for Frankfurt did not actually arrive there may have been the silver lining in this cloud. You mean you don't know? Well this is the same day that 445 flights were canceled at Frankfurt as unionized workers staged a warning strike intended to "warn" Fraport, the airport operator to cough up more than a 2% pay increase. 

Labor may have the right idea here; When things get tough, initiate a "precautionary shutdown." Let me remind you this is just the news from today. I'm just askin' please, can we power down to idle for a day or two?

The contrast is like day and night. In the span of 24-hours I have written about two countries with vastly different views of the importance of aviation to their national future; Turkey and India.

In my story in today's International Herald Tribune, I interview folks who are agog over the rapid growth and ambitious plans of the formerly overlooked Turkish Airlines. Of Turkish, Ralph Anker of anna.aero writes Istanbul is "the most diverse hub in Europe."

While Turkey keeps sending its Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to soothe trouble spots around the world maybe he ought to plan a stop in New Delhi and explain that when a nation's aviation system becomes a global laughing stock, you got problems baby!

IATA boss Tony Tyler, photo courtesy IATA

Oh, never mind, Tony Tyler already did.

Okay, so the incredibly handsome and dapper Tyler didn't put it exactly that way. He's a gentleman after all. But in a speech to India Aviation 2012 conference in Hyderabad he got thisclose calling the situation in India "critical" and saying, "I am not here to point fingers or apportion blame. The state of today’s Indian aviation industry is the result of a number of factors."

A number of factors, indeed. Let's just recap.

• Over the past year pilots flying for Air India, Spice Jet and IndiGo were charged with falsifying their flight hours
•  Air India battled additional charges that its pilots had broken "bottle to throttle" regulations. 
• Kingfisher canceled flights by the hundreds as regulators examine whether the airline is safe. 
• Practically every Indian airline is losing money
• A government audit showed inadequate training and flight monitoring are endemic to all Indian airlines 
• The Indian carriers are so unreliable as business partners, the Star Alliance boss, Jaan Albrecht told me in December, the global airline network would not be looking to add an Indian member in the near future.

All of this suggests the booming demand for air travel has outpaced Indian airlines' abilities to safety operate. That's the airlines' problem. What the government does about it becomes the problem of the Indian travelers who - like the rest of the world - are developing an appetite for mobility. It's also a problem for the growing number of visitors intrigued by or doing business in Incredible India.

Tyler's speech, which you can read here, presented a four-pronged plan of action and a call for a unified national aviation policy. It is all well couched in niceties of course. 

But if you ask undiplomatic me, it is terrible that a country with so much to offer can be languishing so far behind the pack in aviation. 
In fact, it's incredible.

It is easy to imagine the terror of the 130 people on board Air France Flight 2240 on Wednesday when flying at 28,000 feet, some passengers reported hearing a constant beeping noise in the cabin. Unable to determine what was causing the sound and fearing for the worst, flight attendants told the pilots there was an unidentified item on the plane that could be a bomb. The pilots declared a Mayday and the plane landed at Basel/Mulhouse Airport on the France-Switzerland border according to Flight Radar 24 which tracks the flight here. But for twenty uncertain minutes these travelers did not know what was going to happen. 

Even after landing, the drama continued as the A320-200 with registration F-GKXF was brought to an isolated area of the small airport where passengers were evacuated and the airplane searched. Then, and only then, did police discover what was causing the panic, the alarm was ringing on a Blackberry device a passenger had failed to turn off on departure. 

Air France officials were unavailable for comment but they'll be paying a significant amount of money for the diversion. There's not only fuel that was wasted on that flight and on ferrying an empty replacement aircraft from Paris to Basel, but passengers had to be accommodated overnight and were 18 hours delayed on their trip. For their assumed panic, some might file a legal claim against the airline. (Don't laugh, its been done successfully in the past.) 

Whether the airline will try to recover some of those costs from the passenger is obviously unknown. But if row 5 is in premium class, executives may prefer to let the infraction slide.
This question of whether portable electronic devices present a threat to the safety of air operations has been extremely squishy. I'm among the few who keeps hammering the point that  this is an issue that will sooner or later end in tears. But I'm not alone in that belief. Just ask Boeing.

For the most part, however, the message from airlines and regulators has been ambiguous - leading passengers to treat the subject rather like religion. Their belief or non belief defines their behavior. 

We don't know what prompted the Blackberry owner on Air France Flight 2240 to keep the device powered up, could be simple forgetfulness. But I could bore you with stories of how many times I've seen passengers openly defy the flight attendants and then you'd bore me right back with your own experiences. Let's just let it rest with these words, Alec Baldwin.

Readers, you know an accident is never the result of one thing. Air disasters lie at the end of an unbroken chain of events. Each individual occurrence may appear trivial - like tossing a powered Blackberry into the overhead bin. Sometimes though, otherwise benign happenings spiral into chaos. The best example to date is Wednesday's event on Air France. Mark my words, though, it is not the last.

Thanks to Jan Paul Peters for help on this post.

At first glance it might not seem that President Obama and kid-rocker Justin Bieber have much in common. But both men had just a tad too much altitude going through the doorway of aircraft and - boom! the celebrity noggins got a good crack while the paparazzi snapped photos.

Yep, it is fun to put America's president and its most adorable heart-throb together in the same sentence and call them klutzes, but there's more to the story.

Ask the flight attendants who work on the smaller regional airplanes how often their passengers get an owie! for failing to mind their noodles on entering the airplane and you'll hear an astonishing number. Ninety seven percent said they've seen passengers crack their heads, three-quarters of them said the injury involved bleeding, bruising or a bump and more than half of the flight attendants surveyed said they've seen it happen dozens of times.

In the comments section of the survey, conducted by JDA Aviation Technology Solutions - one flight attendant wrote, "Passengers hitting their heads has been discussed with our Director of Safety and the flight attendant management before, but it is another "Que Sera, Sera Whatever Will Be, Will Be".

Photo courtesy Ron Whipple

Ron Whipple, an air transport specialist, who has 9,000 hours flying the Saab 340 told me he lost count of how many times he banged his head on the door frame during his 18 years of flying for American Eagle. "Luckily, I had my hat on most of the time," he said with a laugh, "so I didn't get really hurt." 

So there is a problem knocking around out there, but getting any attention paid to it is undermined by the fact that no one takes this kind of injury seriously - up to and including sometimes, the person injured.

Asking the Regional Airline Association for the number of skulls cracked while boarding got me nowhere.  Kelly Murphy, the industry's media representative said, it "does not keep reports of this nature."

So to quantify the problem, JDA had to ask the folks most likely to know, pilots and flight attendants who work for the regional carriers that are moving 430,000 passengers around America each and every day. Based on these interviews and a lot of what seems to be common sense, it has come up with a low-tech solution that borrows heavily from the baby's crib in the nursery. JDA has created a upholstered bumper that wraps around the upper edge of the hard metal airplane door frame - and here's the brilliant new take - they want to sell ad space on the thing as demonstrated in the company photo below.

Note the head guard being demonstrated on this airplane. Photo courtesy JDA

Now, one would think that given the airline industry's rush to find newer, better, wilder sources of revenue, which I reported in today's New York Times, selling ad space at  passengers' eye-level while simultaneously delivering the message that the airline values the cranium above your seat as much as the posterior that's in it, would be an easy sell. But one would be wrong.

Bill Norwood, the executive in charge of the head guard project says the regional airlines loved the idea when it was presented at their annual meeting in Nashville last year but the orders aren't exactly rolling in, even though JDA is offering to give the head guards away. What the company wants is a cut of what advertisers pay to have their message embroidered above the lowered heads of a half million travelers.

The whole project makes me think of that old cartoon in which someone gets knocked out cold and awakens with a light bulb going on symbolizing a brilliant idea. If that someone was a high ranking airline executive, well, maybe then....

Photo courtesy Greenfield District Court

This afternoon, 57-year old Steven Fay will appear in court in Massachusetts to face criminal charges for being supremely stupid, recklessly stupid, deadly stupid. In what some aviation attorneys say is extremely unusual, a private pilot has been indicted for involuntary manslaughter for unintentionally crashing his airplane and killing his daughter.

Charging a grief-stricken man who has lost his child seems on the surface to be a step-too-far.  Further, criminalization of error - including suspicion of bad decision making - is highly controversial and rarely practiced here in the United States though it is a different story in other countries. In Brazil the most well-known recent case was the arrest of two American business jet pilots on a ferry flight over the Amazon jungle, whose wing clipped a Gol Airlines 737 causing it to crash and killing everyone on board. But pilots, mechanics and air traffic controllers have faced jail time in Croatia, France and other countries.

Fay's airplane the night of the crash Photo by Massachusetts State Police

Fay's indictment is notable because it is uncommon for the law to swoop in on general aviation accidents when no intent to cause injury is apparent. In that case it is usually left up to the regulators to act.  


The Federal Aviation Administration did indeed revoke Fay's private pilot's license two months after the accident charging him with "a blatant disregard for the regulations airmen operate under" because he was flying an airplane for which he was not qualified. Fay had only a license to fly single engine aircraft. The FAA also called him "an immediate threat to aviation safety." (On the second charge, I'd quibble with the wording, the immediacy of the threat having already passed.) 

But the actions of Steve Fay seem so out there in terms of imprudence, if someone is going to make a test case of criminalizing stupidity, this seems the guy to go after.

Here's what happened. On New Year's Day one year ago, the New Hampshire native flew his 51-year old, twin-engine Cessna 310 from Keene to Orange Municipal Airport in Massachusetts. With only 50 hours experience in the airplane and with his adult daughter on board, Fay decided to practice touch and go landings at night. The NTSB report says approaching the airport, the plane hit trees before crashing inverted into a creek.  Fay was not seriously injured, but his daughter who did not have her seat belt on because she was looking for a map during the approach, was ejected from the airplane and killed. 


According to the Associated Press, Fay's flight instructor reportedly told authorities he'd repeatedly warned Fay that he was not ready to solo in the 310, which Fay had purchased the previous year. Flight instructor Michael Truman said he felt Fay's "airplane was still too much for him." That Fay ignored not just the FAA regulations but the advice of the person who knew his flying best, was part of what led the district attorney Steve Gagne to seek criminal charges.


"His conduct unfortunately resulted in the tragic death of his own daughter, but it also endangered anyone who happened to be in his flight path," he told me in an email. "Particularly those who live in the residential neighborhoods adjacent to the Orange Airport," Gagne said.

I confess, when I first heard of this case, the fact that the pilot was related to his passenger seemed to argue against a criminal complaint. But Gagne's point, that Fay just as easily could have killed someone else bears consideration. 

Yesterday, as I was riding right seat while my 17-year old son practiced driving stick shift, a SUV in the oncoming lane barreled past and we saw the driver holding her smart phone up at eye level to read as she drove. We did not notice if she had a child in her car, but she could easily have killed mine. 

At what point does law enforcement step in in cases of stupidity?  A court will soon take up that question and it's not a moment to soon.

If you are operating under the impression that air show megastar Sean Tucker confines his fancy maneuvers to his airplane, I'm here to tell you, he does not. Yesterday at the NTSB hearing in Washington, I watched him dazzle a panel of hardened air safety investigators looking into ways to improve air show and air race safety.

"It's not basket weaving 101", he said, all gosh, shucks and boyish charm and the five board members from Mark Rosekind on the left to Earl Weener on the right practically cooed.

But Tucker has a point. In a demonstration of courage and cojones, he was one of only a few of the air show/air race luminaries who testified at the hearing willing to admit that all ain't right in the world of performance aviation.

Well, as Chairman Deborah Hersman said early on, "Danger is part of the attraction." But when 11 people end up dead and dozens more are injured as happened on the final day of the Reno Air Races on September 16, 2011, the usual blandishment that "Safety is our number one priority" no longer seems sincere.

Let's be honest, safety is not the number one priority or all those souped-up planes and hot-shot pilots would be safely on the ground. Thrill seeking is the number one priority for the performers and for the spectators. The question is; can safety be the co-priority in sport aviation?

That's the delicate task for the safety board and the Federal Aviation Administration, recognizing that this kind of aviation is tremendously popular because it taps into our emotions. Air shows recall a pioneering past and demonstrate how innovation is sculpting the future. (And then there are those pilots!)

But the safety folks can't be carried aloft on the winds of good intentions. Real issues, as of yet unaddressed, have been brought to light by the Reno disaster.

Jimmy Leeward, the pilot whose nosediving P-51 turned the box seats at Reno Stead Airport into a scene of carnage, was 74-years old. To fly competitively and undergo the extraordinary physical stresses of air racing, he was required to have just a 3rd class medical certificate, the same sign-off as your basic general aviation pilot.

Then there is the airplane. Leeward's P-51 was as far removed from its original design as the family Ford is from a Formula One race car. And whether airworthiness has been compromised by all that performance-enhancing tinkering can be a difficult question for FAA inspectors to answer authoritatively.

"They can check that things are tightened down and make sure things are properly greased but they can't say that the thing is going to hold together, they don't have the expertise," said Mike Danko, an aviation lawyer from San Mateo, California. Mike spoke with me yesterday while I was working on a story about the hearing for The New York Times.

These omissions speak to the question of pilot hazards and one can argue that the men and women who fly in this environment know what they're getting into.

But it becomes a matter of public concern in the third area into which the NTSB board members tiptoed yesterday; are the setbacks for air show spectators appropriate?

In his testimony, Mike Houghton, chief executive of the Reno Air Race Association was unequivocal, even after Hersman pressed the point, reminding Houghton of a crash on the track at the 2007 Reno air race.

"We looked at debris disbursement and compared it with what had been established," Houghton said, of the set backs established years earlier and how they impacted the safety of race attendees in the 2007 accident. He continued, "and all the calculations were correct. We were 75 feet short of the spectator area. In spite of that we took steps to put Jersey barriers on the other side of the racecourse between taxi and runway to mitigate if something should ever happen again and if debris were to happen it would be stopped by the barriers."

Hersman wasn't the only one raising the figurative eyebrow about the notion that the course of an out-of-control airplane can be predicted. Danko says the premise is fallacious.

"They’ve used geometry and physics to say we’re going to design a course so the aircraft is never pointed at the crowd," he said. "But it's based on a false premise that if it fails in flight it will travel in a straight line. It may not travel in a straight line. It may go out of control. A control surface breaks off it may go in an unpredictable direction."

Predictably, a control surface did appear to come off Leeward's plane which then landed nose down within striking distance of a crowd of spectators. 

Leeward, Tucker and all the other performance pilots are not alone. They share the risks with every thrill-seeker who buys a ticket to an air show. Any industry capable of pushing envelopes like this one does can surely balance mitigating the risks with maintaining the sport. But the first task on the check list is acknowledging the real priorities.

August 2007 photo courtesy Transport Safety Board Canada

The news tonight from New Zealand's north island is terrible. Eleven people, 10 passengers and a pilot killed in a fiery hot air balloon crash.
Apparently the airship flew into a power line and caught fire. Early reports suggest the balloon was 160 feet above the town of Carterton, east of the capital city of Wellington. Even those able to get out of the burning basket could not survive the fall.


The news had a particular impact on me. Last autumn I spent two idyllic days at the Plano Balloon Festival in Texas. High winds made it impossible for me to actually get up in the air, nevertheless I was enchanted by the sight and sound of them.

But the news from New Zealand also reminded me of a tragedy in Canada on August 24, 2007. At a balloon festival in British Columbia that summer there were 12 passengers and the pilot in the basket waiting to lift off but the aircraft was still tied to the ground when fire broke out. All but two of those on board were able to get out of the basket on the pilot's order, but the fire severed the ground tether before the last two, a mother and her daughter, could flee. The balloon rose with the two women still inside and they were killed. It was the second serious balloon accident in a month in Canada and when the Transport Safety Board issued its final report, it included a call for a wide-ranging safety review of  hot air balloon operations.

There is a triad of incompatible elements in hot air ballooning, fire and air being two of them, altitude being the third as the accident in New Zealand seems to show. Reports say this is the most deadly aviation accident in the country since a DC-10 crash that killed 257 in 1979.

But near-record breaking or not, I have every confidence the air safety investigators at the Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand will do their conscientious best to find out what happened. They may discover, as I did while researching the Canada balloon accidents, that over the past two and a half decades there have been more than 500 hot air balloon accidents - about a tenth of them involving fatalities. These deaths come in ones and twos for the most part. Though there have been exceptions. Six people died in 1993 in Woody Creek, Colorado. Four were killed three years earlier in Ohio. Both accidents involved the balloon striking something.

Power line strikes are a factor in one out of three balloon accidents and more significantly, when a power line is involved the event is twice as likely to cause fatalities and serious injuries.  That's because the current being carried on power lines can ignite the balloon. Even when electricity is not a problem, high tension lines can slice through a fast moving airship - instantly deflating the envelope and sending the basket plummeting. 

Fire, air and altitude, are inherent in the sport of hot air ballooning but when you look at the accident statistics too often power lines are a disturbing constant as well.

Oh Alec, I know you don’t remember but back in the day when I was a correspondent for CNN and you, the movie star, were a guest on Larry King Live (I said it was back in the day!) you exited the studio, looked around the nearly-empty Saturday afternoon newsroom, our eyes met and you smiled at me. You smiled that sensational, toothy, dimple-punctuated smile, that I’m sexy-but-still–smart-smile and I, well, I let’s just say, I still remember.
 

You are my handsome fantasy and in respect for all the years that have passed since that day at CNN please don’t ruin it now by going all stupid on me. 

I refer, to your behavior earlier this week on an American Airlines flight in which you decided that an electronic game, albeit a thought-provoking, brain-teaser of a game, was more important than the safety of your fellow airline passengers.

Okay, I know, I’m the geek and you’re the stud muffin, so you are forgiven if you don’t know that the reason those flight attendants ask you to turn off electronic devices is because they emit electromagnetic waves which can, indeed have, interfered with the systems on the flight deck.

This is not a good thing. 

Yes, you have been confused by recent blog posts that suggest the ban on electronic devices is all a plot by the wicked airlines who want to further tick off passengers. But I assure you, oh-man-of-my-dreams, this is not the case. 

You have heard that modern airplanes are equipped with system shielding that prevents any extraneous signals from penetrating the wires that are critical to the pilots’ navigation and operation of the aircraft or communication from the cockpit.  In theory this is correct. But before you go about assuming that the rules are created by a bunch of worry wart-engineers (okay, they are created by worry-wart engineers) who, in an abundance of caution thrill to act as kill joys to the modern traveler, just let me ask a few questions.

• How old was the airplane on which you parked your manly physique?
• When was the last time the integrity of the sheathing that stands between critical wiring and an errant electronic signal from a passenger’s electronic device was examined?
• How old is your handheld gadget?
• When was the last time it was tested to be sure its emissions are within standards?
• What about your fellow passengers? How much do you know about the devices they are using or the batteries providing the juice? Did they purchase said devices from the iPod or Android store, or did those devices fall off a truck and get purchased at the local flea market?

Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live

Alec, dear Alec, of course you don’t know the answers.  But those are just some of the factors that could cause an otherwise benign electronic gadget to start causing havoc with airplane electronics without your ever knowing it. And that is why these rules exist. There are many variables and many unknowns. You're not a pilot, (though you played one on TV) so don’t dismiss the guidance that says during critical phases of flight, electronic devices should be turned off.

You’re not responsible for those good looks of yours or your great brain. God gave you those. But deciding to act stupid is entirely your choice.

I'll be the first to say that all those people who know about circuit boards and microprocessors are pretty darned clever. But don't let them wander too far from their field of expertise or they wind up making statements that make them sound, well...stupid. 


I'm referring to an item that ran in the Bits blog of The New York Times online on Sunday headlined, Flyers Must Turn Off Devices, But its Not Clear Why, in which the author, Nick Bilton, disses the safety hazards associated with the use of personal electronic devices on airplanes and cites as the expert, the association representing wireless device manufacturers. 


What fries me about the hew and cry that accompanies this issue each time it is brought up is that people smart enough to be downright boring at a dinner party explaining digital complexities can lift up their eyes from the screen of their iPad and see something like commercial aviation in such starkly simplistic terms. 


Bilton's story boots up with the argument that people routinely do not turn off their devices on airplanes and no planes have crashed. Therefore, no problem exists. There are two problems with that. The first, is that it is wrong. The history of the study of the effect of EMI on airplanes begins with a spectacular mid-air collision - over New York no less - in 1960. At that time it was thought that radio interference caused the pilots of a United DC-8 to believe their VOR receiver was not working, resulting in the plane being off course and colliding with a TWA Super Constellation. 

Since then there have been other accidents studied by the members of the RTCA committee which has been investigating the potential for gadgets to interfere with airplane systems. When I wrote about this for the Times in January of this year, one of the  members mentioned several accidents (some of them quite well known) in which EMI was considered a likely contributing factor. Electromagnetic interference, unlike bent metal or broken parts, leaves no trace. 


Still, there have been many reports of pilots experiencing problems in the cockpit that did not lead to disaster that were were tracked back to a passenger using an electronic device. You can read more about them here.


But the second and larger problem with the story is that it is another rallying cry for air travelers who don't get that aviation accidents aren't an A-follows-B sort of thing, like plugging a fork into a wall outlet and watching the fireworks begin.  Absent a plane-spiraling-to-earth-event, everyone armed with a Google-equipped iPod (forgive me, Android) now feels that is perfectly appropriate to to make their own decision about whether to heed the flight attendant's plea to kindly power down anything with an ON/OFF switch.  A lack of accidents is not evidence of air safety and its frightening that passengers feel equipped to make safety decisions on their own with this yardstick as measuring device. 


Bilton brings his argument on home by quoting an executive of the International Association for Wireless Communications, a trade group representing the device manufacturers, hardly an unbiased source. The executive reassures Times readers that aircraft wiring is shielded. Well, yeah. We know that. He does not suggest the impact of 200-400 plus passengers, each with 2 to 3 devices all powered up and ready to go may be slightly beyond what any airplane designer may have had in mind a decade or more ago when the PED wasn't SOP for everyone over the age of 3. We're not even talking about the thousands of airplanes in service around the world that were designed prior to the 1990s. 


Anyway, I'm not feeling so good about the integrity of all that communications gear or even the robustness of the shielding of airplane wiring, which will always be one or two digital generations behind the device manufacturers. (I say this having spent five years on an F.A.A. committee on aging aircraft wiring. See me later.)

So when I get on an airplane and I am mildly tempted to keep my Kindle on, or squeeze a few more photos on my digital camera, I resist that temptation. To steel my spine I need only remember the what Boeing had to say about the matter. 


"Operators of commercial airplanes have reported numerous cases of portable electronic devices affecting airplane systems during flight. These devices, including laptop and palmtop computers, audio players/recorders, electronic games, cell phones, compact-disc players, electronic toys, and laser pointers, have been suspected of causing such anomalous events as autopilot disconnects, erratic flight deck indications, airplanes turning off course, and uncommanded turns. Boeing has recommended that devices suspected of causing these anomalies be turned off during critical stages of flight."

Digital blogger or Boeing guidance? For me, it's not a tough call.

You may have heard the joke about the airline pilot who goes to hell only to find on arrival that rather than an eternity suffering fire and brimstone, his hell will be spent doing endless walk-arounds in blizzard conditions. (That’s not the punch line, but this is a family blog, and I can’t print the rest of it. Ask Jim Hall or see me later.) 

Another version of pilot hell might be something like what happened to the captain of a Chautauqua  Airlines/Delta Connection flight earlier this week en route from Ashville, North Carolina to New York.

The poor pilot just wanted a quick “biological break” about 30 minutes before landing at LaGuardia. He might have been inspired by the air traffic controller telling the crew that they would take their place in  a holding  pattern. Or perhaps he was remembering the recent antics of the actor Gerard Depardieu on a CityJet flight in August.

Whatever, when the captain tried to return to the cockpit, he found the bathroom door would not open. A passenger seated nearby heard the man pounding and tried to help, but no dice. The door was shut tight.

Meanwhile back on the flight deck, the first officer was getting more and more nervous - wondering why his captain went AWOL.  What could be taking so long? The Embraer 145 is 98 feet long even walking slowly he should have returned already. With him in the cockpit, it is reported, was the sole flight attendant, who was required to be in the cockpit in the absence of the second pilot.

So that when they heard a knock on the door, and a heavily accented voice tried to explain the situation, the first officer was unsure what to do.  Sure, it could be the truth, then again, what if it was not? Who in the post-9/11 world wants to err on the trusting side?  So here’s what he told the air traffic controller as transcribed from the website liveatc.net.

“We are 180 knots 10,000 uh, can we leave the frequency for a minute? We are going to try to, uh contact dispatch. The captain disappeared in the back, and, uh, I have someone with a thick foreign accent trying to access the cockpit.

Military jets were notified. The FBI was called and the first officer was advised to declare an emergency and get that airplane on the ground.  It was at this point that the captain finally forced his way out of the bathroom and returned to the flight deck.

"The captain - myself - went back to the lavatory and the door latched," he can be heard explaining what happened to controllers, adding,  "There is no issue, no threat."

In the highly complex world of aviation we have systems on top of systems plans, backup plans and back up to the backup plans. But who could have imagined this? Sometimes stuff just happens.

The world spins on in all its marvelous complexity and we think we are in control. Then we are treated to a tragicomedy that shows us we are just hangin’ on by the straps pretending there is no force greater than our own magnificent minds.  But we.be.wrong. 

Deborah Hersman photo from NTSB

Its apparent that the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board is a beauty. I've heard people describe her as "angelic". Here's her photo. You be the judge.

But don't let that cutie-pie face deceive you. Deborah Hersman is no delicate flower when it comes to fools or manipulators. In a letter to Pinnacle Airlines today, Ms. Hersman (ordinarily I'd call her Deb but I'm still in shock and awe. Give me a minute to recover.) demands that the company, parent of regional carrier Colgan Air, do what it failed to do during a near year-long investigation; surrender all records having to do with the training and qualifications of the crew of Colgan Air flight 3407.



To recap: Flight 3407, under a contract with Continental Airlines, was on a trip from Newark to Buffalo, New York in February 2009, when it crashed on approach to the airport after the captain responded inappropriately to a stick shaker warning. Forty-nine people on the plane and one person on the ground were killed.

It wasn't much of a secret to investigators that the captain, 47-year old Marvin Renslow, was not a pilot in command of his game from the moment the cockpit voice recorder was played and his motor-mouth monologue could be heard. Sterile cockpit? Not for Renslow.

What was not clear until a New York lawyer made it public two weeks ago, is that at the highest levels of the airline, Renslow was tagged as not-ready-for-prime-time.

 Hugh Russ, with Hodgson Russ, obtained the emails during discovery in the civil action against the airline on behalf of people who lost loved ones in the crash. You can read the emails here. In summary, the documents show that six months before the crash, Renslow's promotion to captain was a source of concern to managers at Colgan.

In an investigation that from the start was about piloting and training, this internal discussion should have been made known to the investigators. But it was not. 

Now do you understand why Ms. Hersman is furious?

Her letter, which you can read here, shows a steely determination that, despite the fact that probable cause has already been determined, the fact-finding is not over.

What's with Colgan? Was it out of the country when Hersman removed American Airlines from an investigation of a runway excursion in December 2010? she took that action after American downloaded the flight data recorder prior to sending it on to the NTSB recorder lab.

And where was Colgan when she scotched the participation of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association for speaking on the specifics of a mid-air collision over the Hudson River in August 2009? Looking at the calendar, I'm guessing the safety board would have been in the thick of the flight 3407 investigation right about then.

Don't mess with Deb, that's all I'm saying, because she has little tolerance for folks who don't play by the rules. Government officials are often accused of being too cozy with the industries with which they work. A Congressional investigation and a review by the office of the inspector general of the Department of Transportation into the relationship between the FAA and Southwest Airlines, is just one example.

Deb Hersman is a lovely exception. As a taxpayer, I mean "lovely" figuratively, though really, the word applies however you want to use it.

Photo courtesy Andrew Vos and CBS-4 TV Denver

Passengers on Frontier Airlines Flight 787 were startled when the oxygen masks dropped as the airplane was cruising above the Rocky Mountains at 36,000 feet last month. But just how confused they were by an apparent shortage of oxygen masks is just becoming clear from a story reported by Rick Sallinger of the CBS television station in Denver.


As the pilots began a quick descent and a return to the airport in Denver that day, passenger Kevin McClung noticed that not everyone had oxygen masks. "All of the masks did not deploy,” he told Sallinger. “There are two rows that were ahead of me that did not have masks."    

Photo courtesy CBS - 4 TV Denver

Further, McClung said while his wife’s mask was providing her with a stream of oxygen-dense air, his was not working at all and he thought others were having the same trouble. 

Photos and a video show a man without a mask  struggling with the air vent above his head. These images are being reviewed by the Federal Aviation Administration to determine if Frontier’s oxygen system was defective, Sallinger said.

Peter Kowalchuk, a spokesman for the airline told Sallinger there were no problems with the emergency oxygen system on the Airbus A319 saying, “If all the masks dropped, the only way that there could be unused masks or people without a mask is if there was a mask that was unused, because somebody used the wrong mask and we believe that is what happened.” Well if Frontier can follow that, good for them.  As for me, say what Mr. Kowalchuk?

Several years ago I wrote a lengthy article about issues with hypoxia (If you’ve got an hour to spend, be my guest.) Here's the condensed version: You can quibble all you like about how long it takes to get really sick when an airplane loses pressurization but you can take it to the bank that there's an immediate diminution of cognitive skills; judgment and comprehension. Since we're all presumably breathing at ground level now, here's a quick quiz. How important is it that emergency oxygen masks be easy to find and ready to don? Answer: Pretty darn important.

Whether the McClungs were confused about the number and serviceability of the oxygen masks because they were already feeling the effects of oxygen deprivation, their story is valuable because it reveals potential problems. Is the deployment of the masks confusing? Are the overhead oxygen compartments likely to create disputes among passengers who cannot tell which masks go to which seats?

Don't think decompression events are mere customer service blips, requiring re-booking of passengers and a heartfelt apology for the inconvenience. Alarm bells should start ringing because the danger is real.


One hundred and twenty-one people died in the crash of Helios Flight 522 in 2005. In that accident, a Boeing 737 crashed near Athens after the pilots succumbed to hypoxia on ascent and the plane kept flying on autopilot until it ran out of fuel. The passengers died hours earlier having run through the 12-15 minute oxygen supply at their seats.

Another hypoxia related event worth reviewing is the 1996 decompression aboard American Trans Air Flight 406 which you can find here.

The McClungs and everyone else aboard Flight 787 have put Frontier and the A319 through a real-time test run of the emergency oxygen system. How well did it fare?  If safety professionals are clear-headed they'll follow Sallinger's example and investigate this event further.