There is an interesting article in Slate Magazine this month:

How to land a plane on a highway. – By Tom Vanderbilt – Slate Magazine

There are no hard numbers on annual occurrences of airplane landings on highways or streets, but a troll through the Federal Aviation Administration’s incident database shows that there tend to be more than a dozen such events in any given year (that the FAA knows about, at least). The events range in nature and geography. Mechanical difficulty ranks prominently in the causative universe. But pilots running out of fuel (“fuel starvation,” as investigators put it), whether owing to unforeseen flight complications or actual negligence, is common, too. One FAA report dryly refers to a plane that “landed on a public street to discharge a passenger.” And emergency landings can take place on deserted country roads, residential neighborhoods, or bustling thoroughfares. As the FAA’s Les Dorr, after looking through the database himself, put it to me in an e-mail: “Highway landings are rather more frequent than I would have thought.”

It certainly does seem to be a not infrequent occurrence in the US. I guess it’s easier to find a wide bit of road than it is to find a flat field. I have to admit I’d be tempted by a nice stretch of asphalt if it were free of traffic.

There’s a number of good landings (by which I mean that the pilots walked away!) that have been captured on camera through lucky circumstance. These are my favourites clips from YouTube.

I have watched this cockpit footage of an emergency landing in Florida over and over and it still makes me hold my breath:

This one is footage from a police car, the camera on the dashboard catches a vintage T-6 landing on a Wisconsin highway:

This news clip shows the Cessna taking off from the road after a successful emergency landing on Interstate 95.

And this very clever CG movie still makes me shout “hit the brakes you idiot” when the driver first looks into the rear-view mirror and sees the jet:

What other (successful!) road landings do you know of?

In my post about Swissair Flight 111, I referred to Northwest Flight 188:

NTSB Synopsis DCA10IA001

On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at 1756 mountain daylight time, an Airbus A320, N374NW, operating as Northwest Airlines (NWA) flight 188, became a NORDO (no radio communications) flight at 37,000 feet. The flight was operating as a 14 Code of Federal Air Regulation Part 121 flight from San Diego, California (SAN) to the Minneapolis-St Paul International/Wold-Chamberlain Airport (MSP) with 5 crew members and 147 passengers.

At 1958 central daylight time, the aircraft flew over the destination airport and continued northeast for approximately 150 miles. The MSP center controller reestablished communications at 2014 CDT and the pilot stated “we got distracted and we’ve overflown MSP. We are overhead Eau Clare, WI (EAU) and would like to make a 180 [degree turn] and do an arrival from over EAU.” At 2019, the controller asked the pilot to explain the cause of the situation to which the pilot replied, “just cockpit distraction, that’s all I can tell you.”

I wrote about the Swissair flight in the context of why a full investigation is important. The investigation showed that the pilots acted as they were trained to, with a set of checklists that presumed no emergency, in a plane filled with flammable material, with a fire blazing that they had no chance to react against. There was nothing the crew could have done to save that plane other than refuse to take off in the first place – but that was far from clear when the news broke that they had crashed into the water. The initial reaction was simple: the flight crew had not recognised the emergency and was responsible for the flight crash. As a result of a thorough investigation, we now know better.

Austin left a thoughtful comment regarding Northwest Flight 188:

I see your point about waiting – but given that these pilots would have had more flights – wouldn’t the airlines have been liable for any further incidents should the NTSB have found it as it was – pilots looking things up on the internet?

I’m all for being fair but when it comes to passengers – I think their concerns are primary.

Now, it’s actually not uncommon for an airline to suspend pilots from duty pending the outcome of the investigating. The FAA revoking the licences is a step beyond that. To my mind, it was a vote of no-confidence against the airline and against the accident investigation.

In the Swissair piece, I showed how easy it might be to blame the crew for incompetence as a simple solution (which would have saved millions spent on that investigation) rather than find the chain of events which caused the issue. The airline industry can deal with it quickly (“We fired the pilot. There is no longer a problem”) and move on. Sometimes, of course, it is pilot error. Even then, it’s worth looking at human factors and how to avoid these scenarios – for example, training First Officers that it is OK to argue with the Captain if he seems to be making a mistake. The problem, I think, is that the airlines have no real benefit in investing money to absolve pilots or find problems within their systems that will cost even MORE money to solve.

Example: Pilot falls asleep in the cockpit, airline sacks him, problem fixed. Except that all the pilots are exhausted, the shift patterns they are doing are unsustainable and, on top of that, now every pilot is flying in a culture of fear that he will be next. But the actual problem has been safely ignored – this is why a zero-tolerance response to pilot error is bad and why an investigation needs to take place.

Personally, I think it’s critical that accident investigations are held by someone on the outside of the commercial industry, in this case the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). (Some people claim that the NTSB is similarly biased and will blame the pilot if at all possible. That’s not been my experience in terms of accident reports but I do accept that it is easier simply to say “pilot error” than to track down the underlying problem.)

So, in the case of Northwest Flight 188, I was disappointed in the reaction from the FAA of snatching the licences. Finger-pointing at the pilots – who are the people with the least clout in the process – is easy and tempting. That’s why I think that it’s vital that we allow for due process, in order to ensure that we continue to focus on the real issues rather than a quick resolution.

I was interested in the opinion piece Eating our Young: The Final Flap About NWA 188 on Jetwhine, where Robert Mark explains his initial condemnation of the pilots:

To me, those two NWA guys took a couple of great jobs and tossed them in the toilet because they were completely out to lunch for some reason. It honestly doesn’t even matter to me why they zoned out. As one of our readers said too, “I don’t know exactly what those two pilots were doing, but I only know they weren’t doing what they should have been.” Pretty smart lady.

But he goes on to say that his response at the time may have been rash:

Let’s say this is more of an explanation that confirms what my wife/shrink told me … that perhaps I was projecting a bit on these two pilots because I couldn’t imagine anyone throwing away this job. I still can’t imagine how they zoned out for so long, but as one of you pointed out, I’d still want my day in court. And it’s not right that we don’t stand together in a crisis. That happens way too much these days in too many industries.

I’ve learned quite a bit about this industry and myself over the past few months. Hopefully I’ve drawn the correct line in the sand this time. What exactly DID happen to those two NWA pilots by the way?

Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll ever know. But this honest analysis of the initial finger-pointing response restored my faith in Jetwhine.

In my opinion, revoking the pilots’ licences ahead of the investigation shows not just a lack of faith in the procedures but sends a very negative message. Maybe the guys were smoking joints up there in the cockpit and having a good old time and should have been shown the door years before. But – again – due process: it is customary to wait until the evidence has been collected and collated before deciding on a response. The FAA should have waited for the facts (such as they are).

Contrast to this the air traffic controller who was on duty when the helicopter and plane crashed in the Hudson. He was on the phone to his girlfriend and not paying attention. As far as I know, the investigation showed that his phone call had an effect (i.e. he might have been able to spot the problem and fix it) but was not the cause (he didn’t tell them where to go).

However, personal phone calls are not allowed while on the job – so he was dealt with for this clear firing offence. There is no result of the investigation that will change this, there is nothing they might find which would shed a new light on making a personal call while on duty. So although the investigation is clearly critical, firing the controller isn’t jumping the gun on the investigation. If nothing had gone wrong and he’d been caught, he still would have risked losing his job. Unfortunately, something did go wrong and his phone call attracted national attention. I can’t see there was any choice but to follow standard personnel procedure.

On Northwest Flight 188, I don’t see any single damning action. Everything they did (playing with laptops in the cockpit, missing an ATC call, changing to wrong frequency) happens regularly. Pilots are not normally disciplined for any of these offences, let alone at risk of having their licences revoked.

Meanwhile, the FAA have settled with the pilots:

Pilots who overflew airport drop attempt to keep licenses – CNN.com

Under a settlement with the FAA, the pilots will not contest their license revocation but can reapply for their licenses in 10 months instead of 12, the agency said.

The FAA declined to say why it settled, but the settlement pre-empts the need for an appeals hearing next month before the National Transportation Safety Board that could have resulted in protracted litigation.

The FAA said it reached the settlement Monday.

If the pilots reapply for their licenses, they would need to take tests required of new pilots and would need simulator training to get certificates allowing them to pilot commercial planes, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said.

Meanwhile, to be honest, these pilots are going to have a hard time finding an airline willing to take the PR hit of letting them command passenger aircraft. We probably aren’t going to find out any more about what at this point. Personally, I’m still leaning towards alien abduction as the most sensible explanation.

Edit: The final report has just been released. Maybe they read my blog?

NTSB Says Northwest Pilots’ Distraction Led To Overflight Of Minneapolis, Notes ATC Shortcomings; Issues Recommendations On ATC Procedures

Unfortunately I am somewhat under the weather so no post today. And although I’ve got a great YouTube clip for you, I strongly suspect that I am the last person left on earth who hasn’t already seen this video.

But gorgeous views like these are worth watching more than once, aren’t they?

This is apparently a clip from Sky Dance, a 1980′s IMAX documentary film about aerobatic flying.

Amazon.com: Sky Dance Product Review

Ultimate G’s puts the viewer in the front seat of the Extra 300 aerobatic monoplane. You’ll feel the thrill of flying in a world-class aerobatic competition aircraft through the Grand Canyon! Pilots from the Air Combat Canada show team and world aerobatics champions engage in solo flights, dogfights, formations and aerobatic flying. Originally released in IMAX theaters, this movie is hightly recommended not only for it’s visual effects, but also its delightfully entertaining story about a young boy who dreams of becoming a pilot despite all odds.

I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

So, is it true? Did all of you already know about this film and neglect to tell me?

I was talking to someone about the Northwest Flight 188 – the one where both pilots somehow managed to get so distracted that they missed their destination and did not respond for over an hour. I expressed some indignation that the FAA had revoked the licences of both pilots without waiting for the NTSB report. She wondered what difference that might make – which I found somewhat difficult to explain.

The strength of accident investigations is that it is not simply a blame-allocation exercise. 2008 NTSB statistics for scheduled flights show one accident per million flight hours, no fatalities. One of the reasons that aviation is relatively safe is because every accident is treated seriously, rather than dismissed the moment someone is found who could be held accountable.

The focus over the last few decades has been on how to avoid the same scenario or sequence of events in the future, which is critical.

A very good example of how this works is Canada’s Transportation Safety Board of the Swissair Flight 111 in 1998.

BBC News | 8 September 1998 | Flight 111′s black hole

The first that air traffic controllers heard of the problem was 16 minutes before the crash.

The pilot announced: “Swissair 111 is declaring pan pan pan – we have smoke in the cockpit.”

“Pan pan pan” is the expression used when an emergency is less acute than a mayday signal, which indicates imminent disaster. But the situation rapidly deteriorated.

The pilot suggested landing at Boston, but was told Halifax was closer, so he began heading in that direction.

However, the plane was at an altitude of around 10,000 metres and needed to lose height.

Air traffic controllers also gave the pilot permission to dump at least 30 tons of fuel to land safely to help it land safely.

The pilot’s next words on the radio were that he was declaring an emergency.

“We have to land immediately,” the pilot said, the last words the controller heard from the plane.

Radar signals showed that the airliner began flying off course in a rapidly descending loop over the sea.

Six minutes later, it hit the water.

The easy assumption was that the flight crew were remiss in not declaring an emergency immediately, wasting valuable time.

The flight crew realised there was smoke in the cockpit. They presumed it was a problem with the air conditioning. They looked up the nearest airport with appropriate mechanics and asked for a diversion. The captain went through his checklists of how to respond to smoke in the cockpit. Long story short, by the time they declared an emergency, the captain was out of his seat trying to put out a raging fire, the First Officer was desperately trying to regain control of the aircraft with all the displays failed / failing and the plane crashed into the ocean.

Again, it would be easy to blame the Captain and his first officer: why didn’t they immediately declare an emergency? Why didn’t they immediately focus on getting the plane on the ground and *then* work out where the smoke was coming from?

The investigation cost millions and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada final report wasn’t released until five years later but it identified eleven “causes and contributing factors” which basically showed that the plane itself was unsafe – the initial problem (an unsafe in-flight entertainment system) didn’t trip circuit breakers and the insulation of the plane was flammable. The immediate effects of the investigation included removing flammable insulation material from aircraft.

The investigation concluded that, even if the crew had been immediately aware of the extent of the problem, they never had enough time to save the flight. A small electrical fire lit the insulation and the fire was out of control before the plane could have ever made it to the ground, even if the crew had diverted immediately.

Many changes were made, including better electrical systems and also usage of inflammable materials in planes. However, the report also isolated a specific issue with cockpit training, specifically challenging a presumption that pilots should operate from a best-case scenario.

Pilots live by their checklists which are meant to ensure that best procedures are followed both on the ground and in the air. The flight crew are trained to carry out checks and operations in a specific order, which should be both the safest and most efficient response to the situation. The concept of a checklist has been proven effective but there were some questionable assumptions made in some checklists, especially the standard checklists for Unidentified Smoke on Board.

Most instances of smoke in the plane are benign and it is rare to have an in-flight fire. The training was focused on finding the source and eliminating the problem, rather than treating the situation as a potential serious fire threat until you’ve identified the issue. In most instances, the situation is quickly dealt with in the air but it is incredibly dangerous to presume that will be the case.

Since this accident, the discovery of smoke is treated as a potential in-flight fire (that is, an emergency) until the source is found and the problem eliminated.

The knee-jerk response was “there was an electrical fault and the pilots failed to handle the emergency” whereas the drawn-out and expensive investigation effectively proved that there was a lot more to it than that.

As a result, specific changes were recommended (and taken up) which have helped us to avoid this sequence of events in the future. These changes in themselves would not have saved Swissair Flight 111 but their impact on aviation safety for the future is inestimable.

For more information, read the full accident report: Transportation Safety Board of Canada – AVIATION REPORTS – 1998 – A98H0003

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