Imagery (Week Ending 11 Jul 03)

(Week Ending 28 Jul 03)

   

 

   

 

Investigation Reports of Interest

  

Adobe Acrobat Files (suggest right-click & Save to disk before opening)
The A320 accident at IBIZA on 21 May 98

(G-UKLL)

(2.5 mbs largely due to a lot of high quality colour pix in the final 9 pages)
A 747-300 Crew Bounces around the tarmac destroying installations
   

Photos below
A small business jet crashed on August 4, 2003 near Groton, Connecticut, killing the pilot and a passenger as it struck some houses and then landed in a river, U.S. aviation authorities said. The Learjet 35 plane crashed at about 6:50 a.m. near the Groton-New London Airport as it was preparing to land, said Arlene Salac, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

National Transportation Safety Board inspectors Bob Hancock, left, and Juan Vargas, right, look at part of the tail of a small jet that crashed in Groton, Conn., Monday, Aug. 4, 2003. The plane hit three houses before crashing into a nearby river. Both pilots were kiled in the crash. The tail assembly was in the yard of the third house the plane hit. (AP Photo/Bob Child).

Police in a small boat check the wreckage of a Learjet that crashed into the Poquonock River in Groton Conn. Monday morning Aug. 4, 2003. The jet was coming in for a landing at Groton-New London Airport in Groton, Conn. when it hit three houses and crashed into the river. Both people aboard the jet were confirmed dead.
   
   

   
FAA crashes plane for safety test
Video
  
32-seat passenger craft dropped from 14 feet to simulate survivable crash
July 30 -- The FAA on Wednesday simulated a commuter plane crash by dropping a quarter-million-dollar ATR midsized commuter plane with instrumented dummies inside. NBC’s Robert Hager reports.

MSNBC
July 30 —  The Federal Aviation Administration dropped a 32-seat passenger airplane from a height of 14 feet Wednesday afternoon to test how the plane behaves in a survivable crash.
THE ATR-42-300 aircraft, with a wingspan of 81 feet and a weight of more than 35,000 pounds, was the largest ever dropped at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center in Egg Harbor, N.J., the agency said in a news release.

The test was designed to assess how the fuselage behaves in a severe crash. The information is to be used to help design passenger seats, the FAA said.
       Twenty-three dummies were seated in the aircraft, with seven instrumented to test how the human body responds to the forces in a crash. The final velocity of the plane at impact was 30 feet per second. The vertical drop was designed to simulate the sort of crash that can occur on takeoffs or landings.
       As the plane hit the ground, the middle of the fuselage buckled, and a fluid used as a stand-in for aviation fuel began to pour from the wing tanks.
from this link
 
   

AMSTERDAM — An investigation has been launched after an El Al cargo jet landed at Schiphol Airport at 6pm on Sunday with a burst tyre and missing two pieces of its fuselage that fell off during its flight from New York.

The Israeli plane was en route from New York to Frankfurt, but landed safely in Amsterdam, where El Al's European headquarters is located. No one was injured in the incident.

Residents near Schiphol reported on Sunday that they saw two pieces of the plane fall to the ground, and an inspection upon the plane's arrival at the airport revealed part of its outer body had broken off.

An 80cm by 80cm piece was later found in Langeraar, near Leiden on the North and South Holland provincial border, while a smaller L-shaped piece has not yet been recovered.

Aviation police also said one of the plane's tyres had burst upon take-off from New York,
but the plane landed safely despite the problem, Dutch associated press ANP reported on Monday.

The Council for Transport Safety has launched an investigation into the incident
and a spokesman said the cause of the damage to the plane has not yet been determined.
Standard procedure requires the plane temporarily remain on the ground.
   

   

August 3, 2003 - BA Jet Evacuated After Smoke Scare

BELFAST, UK - An investigation is under way after more than 50 passengers were forced to evacuate a British Airways plane in Belfast Friday when the cabin filled with smoke just before take off.

Aircraft being towed back

Airline engineers were carrying out a full examination of the aircraft to discover what had gone wrong.

One woman was slightly injured when the 54 passengers - including a man in a wheelchair and a mother and young baby - escaped the BAe 147 down emergency chutes at Belfast City Airport.

A full scale emergency was declared when the smoke appeared as the aircraft was reversing from in front of the terminal building before take off for the flight to Manchester just before 9am.

A British Airways spokeswoman said: "All the passengers were on board and, as it was pushing back from the stand, they noticed a slight haze of blue smoke in the cabin. The captain decided as a precautionary measure to have a full evacuation and emergency slides were deployed and all the passengers were safely evacuated down the slides."One passenger of the flight said: "As the plane was moving towards the runway, the engine just died and then we heard the pilot shouting to evacuate."

Divisional officer Gordon Latimer said extra fire crews weren't needed

The injured woman, who is understood to have suffered a minor back injury while sliding down the emergency shoot, was treated at the scene by an ambulance crew. She then joined other passengers in the BA lounge while alternative arrangements were made to fly them to England.

BA said later that within around three hours all passengers had either been given a replacement flight to Manchester or flights to other airports in England which suited them.

A spokesman for Belfast City Airport said: "The airport's emergency procedures were successfully implemented in full. The airport is operating normally and flights are leaving and arriving on schedule."The aircraft was towed to a service area well away from the terminal building where BA engineers began their investigation.
   
   

One concorde (BA001) went AOG at JFK.  Departed Heathrow  5 Aug and landed JFK having shut down #3 engine at some point. On the ground it was initially thought that the firewall between #3 and #4 had burnt through (requires both engines to be taken off to fix). Then found to be a pneumatic duct clamp failure (fire-warning was actually a hot air leak).

A/c type goes out of service in October

AOG = Aircraft Operationally Grounded