News: 12-April-2011 An A380 Air France jet clips a (much) smaller plane at New York's JFK airport

  An Air France jet flight 7 (Airbus 380) clipped a smaller Comair jet flight 293 (Bombardier CRJ-700) while (the comair jet) was taxiing to its gate.NTSB opened an investigation on this incident while Air France said it will co-operate with the investigation.It is the second incident for the newly introduced Airbus A380,the first being a serious engine failure from a Quantas jet back in November 2010 that forced it to make an emergency landing at Singapore Changi airport(for more info on this one check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32).

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13052948

More info and pictures: http://www.ntsb.gov/Pressrel/2011/110412.html

News: Air France Flight 447 wreckage found!

 Flight 447 was a scheduled commercial flight from Rio De Janeiro to Paris that crashed over the Atlantic June 1st, 2009 killing all 228 on board. Since then there have been already 3 major attempts of locating the wreckage on the rugged terrain of the Atlantic bottom,but all of them failed to locate the very valuable to the investigation black boxes.These boxes are equipped with radio beacon locators to help trace them in the event of a crash but their battery life lasts approximately 2 months and combined with the vast depth and the rough bottom of the sea, it was almost impossible to trace them within the time limit. Many conspiracies have been flying around as to what have downed the aircraft . Some say from terrible storm, whereas others attribute the accident to instrument failure, nevertheless, nothing can be proved until the 2 black boxes are found with valuable information from the last minutes of the flight. The one and only certain thing is that a few moments before crashing the plane sent some automated messages through satellites to the maintenance facility at France indicating multiple system failure.The most serious of these messages referred that the plane was losing altitude and speed fast (for more information regarding these messages read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Automated_messages).The fourth and last attempt started on February 2011 using state of the art technology and help from many countries including Brazil,USA and France. On April 2nd the wreckage of the plane was finally located at a depth of around 4000meters with around 50 bodies still inside. The debris was found to be lying in a relatively flat and silty area of the ocean floor as opposed to the extremely mountainous topography that was originally believed to be AF447's final resting place. The team is determined to bring up the wreckage and the bodies within a week from now for further investigation and final relief for the families of the victims. Investigators are confident that also the black boxes will be soon found as well  .Air France and Airbus have been charged with manslaughter charges in March 2011 even though the investigation is still open and the crash not yet explained.The accident was the deadliest in the history of France and it was the first fatal accident involving an Airbus A330 while in passenger service, and remained the only fatal accident involving the A330 until Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashed in May 2010 in Tripoli,Libya. Authors opinion:Finding the reason of the crash is very important for Airbus because it may reveal problems that exist in other A330's as well, flying around the world, for example there have been some incidents such as Qantas Flight 72 and 68 where the ADIRU unit that supplies air data (airspeed,angle of attack and altitude) and inertial reference (position and attitude) gave false readings causing the aircrafts to do sudden uncommanded manoeuvres resulting in minor to serious injuries to the passengers.Story under development keep in touch!...

News: 1 April 2011 Southwest Airlines Flight 812 blows a hole on the fuselage in mid-air!

    Two days ago a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-300 travelling from Phoenix,AZ to Sacramento,CA had to make an emergency landing in Yuma,Arizona after a loud bang was heard and a hole(reported as being between 3 feet (0.91 m) and 6 feet (1.8 m) long) could be seen just above the luggage compartment in the middle of the aircraft,the masks immediately dropped down with passengers reporting ear pain,dizziness and blacking out feeling but hopefully no other serious injuries occured.The pilot had to make an abrupt dive in order to reach an altitude more rich in oxygen (from 11000m to 8000m in about five minutes) to continue for a safe landing in Yuma.A passenger calling from inside the plane gave this chilling report "The panel's not completely off. It's like ripped down... When you look up through the panel, you can see the sky".This is not the first time that an incident like this happened to the airline, also in July 2009 a football size hole appeared in another Boeing 737 that was also forced to make a safe landing as well.Southwest in the wake of the incident had to ground 80 of its Boeing 737-300s for inspection.An investigation from NTSB has started but it is too early to draw hasty conclusions.Such incidents are regarded as very serious because they can reveal that there is a structural design flaw or a not so good maintenance from the part of the airline which would result in a fine like the 7.5 million dollar Southwest had to pay in 2008 one year before the 2009 incident for lax maintenance and inspection practices of the company,also Greek people will still remember the 2005 Helios Airways Accident where rapid depressurization caused hypoxia to the pilots eventually leading to fuel starvation and crash of the plane,also what can happen to structure of the plane like the Aloha article i first wrote.Keep in touch for further news regarding this incident or others!

Links:
Youtube video from inside the plane
BBC News
Wikipedia Article
2009 incident Wikipedia

Aloha Airlines Flight 243 - "Cabrio Airlines"

  On a warm afternoon on the 28th of April 1988 an aloha airlines Boeing 737-200 lost a big portion of its roof due to explosive decompression at 24.000ft.The accident was attributed to two reasons,mainly that the aircraft was operating at a coastal environment with high humidity and many repressurizations of the cabin during a day (island hopping between Hawaiian islands) caused big pressure to the fuselage and finally corrosion of the metal bindings,secondly the aircraft's age at the time (19 years old) and the 89,090 takeoff-landing cycles it had completed well-beyond the 75,000 trips it was designed to sustain were also a contributing factor combined with infrequent and not very thorough inspection for such an old plane at that time.Judging by the images and the amount of damage it is a miracle that the pilot even managed to land the plane and that there was only one fatality that of the flight attendant C.B. Lansing who was literally sucked out of the airplane when the depressurization occurred.As with any accident,new safety measure have been implemented after to avoid something similar to happen,for example U.S. congress passed the Aviation Safety Research Act of 1988, this provided for stricter research into probable causes of future airplane disasters.The plane was written-off and eventually scraped at a Maui metal recycler.

Links:

Video of the aftermath on youtube

Wikipedia article

Airdisaster.com Page of the accident