News: Ash Cloud threatening from Iceland threatening again the European skies!

On the 21st of May the icelandic volcano Grímsvötn erupted breaking the ice covered glacier and sending ash plume up to 65000ft(20km), causing many flights to be canceled mainly in UK region but today also Germany and maybe Berlin later.Last year the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull caused the biggest air disruption in Europe since the WW2 and one of the most costly also,lasting for almost 2 months.Planes typically can fly in almost any condition but volcanic ash can cause damage to almost any part of the plane and mainly the engines.The ash from this volcano is thought to be thick so it must fall faster to the ground reducing the damages from more cancelations later this month.Going back in history we can see 2 examples where an airplane flew through a volcanic ash and had all its engines shut down.

24 june 1982:British Airways Flight 9,a Boeing 747-200 flew into an ash cloud created from the eruption of Mt.Galunggung,southeast of Jakarta,Indonesia.All of the engines had failed and the pilots tried desperately to restart them after losing height fast.In what can only be described as a passengers worst nightmare the pilot made this announcement "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.".After a while of losing altitude and hope together the plane passed the ash cloud and the crew where able to restart all of the engines,except from one which failed again later again and made a safe landing in jakarta.

15 December 1989: KLM Flight 867,identical to the first one again a Boeing 747-400 flew through the ash cloud of Mt.Redoubt,Alaska which had erupted the day before causing again all engines to fail.After falling over 14000ft Captain Karl van der Elst and crew were finally able to restart the engines and safely land the plane. In this case the ash caused more than 80 million dollars in damage to the aircraft (requiring all four engines to be replaced), but no lives were lost and no one was injured.

News: Crash of Sol Líneas Aéreas Flight 5428 at Argentina

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On the 18th of May 2011 a Saab 340A(built in 1985) operated by SOL Líneas Aéreas departed from Neuquén, Argentina, for a domestic flight to Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina but it had crashed on Prahuaniyeu,Argenitna with 22 souls on board (19 passengers,3 crew), all of whom unfortunately died instantly when the aircraft hit violently the ground at high speed.The flight crew declared an emergency at 8:50 PM (GMT-3) and local ocal people located around 2 km away from the crash site saw an airplane flying extremely low. A few moments later they heard explosions and noticed black smoke coming from the ground,they rushed for help but not much of the airplane has been left intact.Firefighters arrived at the scene three hours later, desperately seeking for signs of survivors but none could be found. The Planes black boxes had been found the following day near the crash site.Argentinas national meteorological services have issued warnings about icing conditions near the area the plane was flying and at an altitude between 7000ft and 1800ft with severe turbulence at 1500ft.The crew had requested to the air traffic controllers to descend out of icing conditions seconds before the radar contact was lost.Details are still sketchy but the bad weather may have contributed to the accident.More details to come...

sources:

wikipedia.org

1001crash.com

Airline Safety: Qantas Safety Overview

The name "QANTAS" is the acronym for "Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services". Nicknamed "The Flying Kangaroo", the airline was founded in 1920  and it is based in Sydney,Australia.It is Australia's largest airline, and the second oldest in the world.Qantas was voted the seventh best airline in the world by the research consultancy firm Skytrax. Throughout its history Qantas have had one of the best safety records rarely found in other airlines of the same or even younger age.After 1951 there has been no fatal airplane accident,just some serious but not life threatening incidents.Most of its fatal accidents have happened during the World War II Era were the company was operating on behalf of the allied military forces.

Accidents summary(1927-1951):

Date	Location	Aircraft type	Registration	Description	Aboard	Fatalities
24 March 1927	Tambo,Australia	de Havilland DH.9C	G-AUED	Stalled at low altitude on approach to land.	3	3
4 September 1928	Adelaide Hills,Australia	de Havilland.50J	G-AUHI	Following a tour carrying Sir John Salmond, aircraft departed Adelaide piloted by C.W.A. Scott  with engineer as passenger; lost control in cloud during attempt to cross the Adelaide Hills and aircraft crashed and caught fire killing the engineer.	2	1
3 October 1934	Near Winton,Australia	de Havilland.50A	VH-UHE	Crashed after in-flight loss of control, possibly stalled at low altitude in dusty low-visibility conditions.	3	3
15 November 1934	Near Longbeach,Australia	de Havilland.DH86	VH-USG	Crashed on its delivery flight from England to Brisbane after in-flight loss of control, probably due to the type's design deficiencies.	4	4
30 January 1942	Timor Sea off Kupang	Shorts S.23 Empire Flying Boat	G-AEUH	Shot down by Japanese aircraft; ex-Qantas VH-ABD, owned by Imperial Airways and operated by Qantas.	18	13
20 February 1942	Brisbane,Australia	de Havilland.DH86	VH-USE	Lost control after take-off in stormy weather, possibly broke-up in flight (tail fin found a mile from the crash site).	9	9
28 February 1942	Tjilatjah, Netherlands East Indies	Shorts S.23 Empire Flying Boat	G-AETZ	Shot down by Japanese aircraft; ex-Qantas owned by Imperial Airways and operated by Qantas.	20	20
22 April 1943	Gulf of Papua off Port Moresby,Papua	Shorts S.23 Empire Flying Boat	VH-ADU	Broke up in heavy seas after emergency landing in open water in poor weather.	31	13
26 November 1943	Port Moresby,Papua	lockheed C-56B lodestar	42-68348	Struck hill after take-off; USAAF aircraft operated by Qantas for Allied Directorate of Air Transport.	15	15
11 October 1944	Rose Bay,Sydney Australia	Shorts S.23 Empire Flying Boat	VH-ABB	On final approach with one engine shut-down, stalled 3 metres (10 ft) above the water and hull ruptured on impact.	30	1
23 March 1946	Indian Ocean	Avro Lancastrian	G-AGLX	Aircraft disappeared between Colombo and the Cocos (keeling) islands,cause unknown; aircraft owned by BOAC and operated by both airlines on Sydney-London services (BOAC crews operated London-Karachi and Qantas crews Karachi-Sydney).	10	10
16 July 1951	Huon Gulf near Lae,Papua New Guinea	de Havilland Australia DHA-3 Drover	VH-EBQ	Crashed in sea after centre propeller failure.	7	7

Incident Summary (1960-2010):

• On 24 August 1960,plane:Lockheed L1049 Super Constellation.During takeoff from runway 13, engine number 3 lost power just before reaching the V1 speed of 115 knots. The captain pulled off the power, braked hard, and pulled selected reverse thrust. The aircraft however, did not decelerate as expected. The flight engineer feathered the number 3 engine and pulled its emergency shut-off valve. The Super Constellation, named "Southern Wave", could not be brought to a stop on the remaining runway and overran the runway at a speed of 40 knots. The airplane bounced over a low embankment, crashed into a gulley and caught fire.
• On 23 September 1999, Qantas Flight 1:a Boeing 747–400 VH-OJH, overran the runway while landing at Bangkok,Thailand during a heavy thunderstorm. The aircraft ended up on a golf course, but without fatalities. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau criticised numerous inadequacies in Qantas' operational and training processes.

• On 25 July 2008, Qantas Flight 30 a Boeing 747–400 VH-OJK, on the leg from Hong kong to Melbourne, suffered a rapid decompression and made an emergency landing in Manila after an explosion. There were no injuries. The ATSB officially stated that the incident was caused by the failure of an oxygen tank.

• On 7 October 2008, Qantas Flight 72:an Airbus A330-300 VH-QPA "Kununurra" travelling from Singapore to Perth suffered a rapid loss of altitude in two sudden uncommanded pitch down manoeuvres causing serious injuries while 80 nautical miles (150 km) from Learmonth, Australia. The aircraft safely landed in Learmonth, with 14 people requiring transportation by air ambulance to Perth. Another 30 people also required hospital treatment, while an additional 30 people had injuries not requiring hospital treatment.Initial investigations identified an inertial reference system fault in the Number-1 Air Data Inertial Reference Unit as the likely origin of the event. On receiving false indication of a very high angle of attack, the flight control systems commanded a pitch down movement, reaching a maximum of 8.5 degrees pitch down.
• On 4 November 2010 Qantas Flight 32: an Airbus A380, named "Nancy-Bird Walton" and registered VH-OQA, fitted with four Trent 972 engines manufactured by Rolls-Royce suffered an uncontained turbine disc failure of its left inboard engine shortly after taking off from Singapore Changi Airport.The flight returned to Singapore and landed safely, and all 433 passengers and 26 crew on board survived uninjured. Cowling parts of the failed engine fell over Batam island,Indonesia.

  

 

History:Collection of most scary pre-crash photos!

1978 PSA Flight 182 - Cessna 172:

Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Flight 182, was a Boeing 727-200 commercial airliner that collided over San Diego,California with a private Cessna 172 on September 25, 1978. The death toll of 144 makes it the deadliest aircraft disaster in California history to date, and it was the first Pacific Southwest Airlines accident involving fatalities. It was also the deadliest plane crash in the history of the United States until American Airlines Flight 191 went down eight months later.


1979 American Airlines Flight 191:

AA Flight 191:After the accident Investigators have found that as the jet was beginning its takeoff rotation, engine number one on the left (port) wing separated and flipped over the top of the wing. As the engine separated from the aircraft, it severed hydraulic fluid lines and damaged the left wing, resulting in a retraction of the slats. As the jet attempted to climb, the left wing aerodynamically stalled while the right wing, with its slats still deployed, continued to produce lift. The jetliner subsequently rolled to the left and reached a bank angle of 112 degrees (partially inverted), before impacting in an open field near a trailer park located near the end of the runway.The engine separation was attributed to damage to the pylon rigging structure holding the engine to the wing caused by inadequate maintenance procedures at American Airlines. Other contributing factors were the vulnerability of the design of the pylon attach points to damage during maintenance and the fact the FAA failed to identify these faults in maintenance procedures.

1996 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961:

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961,a Boeing 767-260ER,was hijacked on 23 November 1996, en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on a Bombay–Addis Ababa–Nairobi–Brazzaville-Lagos-Abidjan service, by three Ethiopians  seeking political asylum in Australia.The plane crash-landed in the Indian Ocean near Comoros due to fuel starvation, killing 122 of the 172 passengers and crew on board, along with the hijackers. The other 50 survived with injuries. By the time this accident took place, it was the second deadliest one involving a hijacked aircraft.However, it shifted to the third place after the occurrence of the September 11,2001 attacks.

2000 Air France Flight 4590:

Air France Flight 4590, was a Concorde flight operated by Air France which was scheduled to run from Charles de Gaulle International Airport near Paris, to JFK airport in New York City. On 25 July 2000, it crashed in Gonesse, France. All one hundred passengers and nine crew members on board the flight died. On the ground, four people were killed with one left injured.This was the only fatal crash of a Concorde. It was the beginning of the end for the Concorde as an airliner; the type was retired three years later.

2003 Baghdad DHL attempted shootdown incident:

DHL Cargo:On 22 November 2003 shortly after takeoff from Baghdad,Iraq an Airbus A300 cargo plane owned by DHL was struck on the left wing tip by surface-to-air missile.Severe wing damage resulted in a fire and complete loss of hydraulic flight control systems. Because outboard left wing fuel tank 1A was full at takeoff, there was no fuel-air vapour explosion. Liquid jet fuel dropped away as 1A disintegrated. Inboard fuel tank 1 was pierced and leaking.Returning to Baghdad, the 3-man crew made an unprecedented injury-free landing of the crippled aircraft, using differential engine thrust as the only pilot input.