Forty-five years of airline safety analysis

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For more than 50 years Flight International/FlightGlobal has been publishing a review of world airline safety performance annually, but for the last 45 of them I have been the compiler and author. The most recent review – containing analysis and a list of all the fatal and many of the significant non-fatal airline accidents in 2025 – can be found here on FlightGlobal’s website.

My first safety review for Flight International magazine covered the year 1980. A few years later, in 1985, I reported on the worst year in aviation history in terms of the number of passengers and crew killed: 2,230 deaths in 41 fatal accidents. Last year the figures were respectively 420 and 11, despite the fact that the number of airline passengers carried is now about four times what it was in 1980, and the number of flights has increased about three-fold.

So where are we today in terms of airline safety performance? Obviously massively better than it was in the 1980s, but by comparison with the annual figures in the most recent decade, 2025’s numbers were slightly lower than the average for fatal accidents, and rather higher than the average (276) for the number of annual fatalities.

FlightGlobal/Flight International explains: “The principal reason for the relatively high casualty numbers – a total of 420 for the year – was that more than half of them died in a single, catastrophic crash involving an Air India Boeing 787-8 after departing Ahmedabad International airport on 12 June.”

Flight concedes, however, that “2025 was an unremarkable year – statistically – for fatal accidents.” And those most recent ten-year figures have been remaining fairly constant around a historic best-ever level, so any useful safety review needs to ask what the industry is getting right, as well as studying the mistakes.

The article debates in detail whether the action by one of the Air India pilots of closing both the engines’ fuel control switches seconds after take-off from Ahmedabad was an extraordinary mistake or a deliberate act. The Indian Air Accident Investigation Bureau confirms the pilot’s act of shutting off the fuel, and within about a year its report should be able to provide a verdict on why he did it.

Summing up safety in 2025, FlightGlobal said: “Apart from the Air India loss, almost all the ­accidents can be considered to have been “traditional” in nature. That is, they were caused by exposure to ordinary threats such as bad weather, pilots taking avoidable risks, or errors of omission or commission, bird-strikes, turbulence encounters and maintenance shortcomings.”

One of the primary reasons air travel is so much safer than it used to be is that the aircraft and engines are better engineered than they were forty years ago, and smart avionics give the crews more information presented more intuitively. There is a parallel between engineering advances in the avation and automotive industries. Anyone who owns a new car today recognises that its reliability and its technology is much better than cars built in the 1980s.

The theoretical downside of “smarter” aircraft is that they are highly computerised and thus more complex, but in practice that concern is not borne out because the systems are so reliable they rarely go wrong, and they are self-monitoring so the pilots are kept informed of systems health.

The human factors worry is that the sheer reliability means pilots may be lulled into a comfortable, non-critical mindset, so when something does go wrong they are startled and may react inappropriately. Again – theoretically – there is more that can go wrong because aircraft may still be traditional mechanical machines, but they are overlaid with software-driven sensors and computerised flight management systems. On the rare occasions when these go wrong, however, the crew may be confronted with a problem that has never presented before, so there is no checklist to deal with it.

For that reason, today’s crews in their basic training are still confronted with traditional problems like engine failure, but their advanced and continuation training is designed to inculcate a resilient mindset, based on flight priorities, paticularly when something unidentified has gone wrong: 1. Aviate, 2. Navigate, 3. Communicate.

Aviate: is the aircraft flying at the appropriate speed, height and attitude? Navigate: what is the aircraft’s position, is it heading in the direction it should be, and what is the fuel state? Communicate: report your situation to ATC, then work with other crew to deternine the best course of action to deal with the problem, and tell the cabin crew chief what is going on. Finally, while dealing with the problem, revisit your priorities over and over again: are you aviating right, are you navigating right, are you communicating what people need to know?

On this theme of training pilots to interface with the aircraft’s systems, the air transport industry – like all others – has to prepare to make good use of the next level of information technology: artificial intelligence (AI). In a thoughtful paper entitled Artificial Intelligence in Aviation, IFALPA (International Federation of Airline Pilot Associations) warns the industry to be ready to use AI with care to support the piloting task. It advises: “The role of AI in the operation of a flight should always be to support the humans in the system”, adding: “For this to be effective, whatever the intended capability of an AI system, it should only present options to a pilot, never a fixed outcome. There should also be transparency to the pilot as to how these options have been selected, and the level of confidence associated with them.”

2025 may have played out with a relatively small number of low-tech airline accidents, but we have to be ready for something different, and hopefully even better.

MH370 search back on early in new year

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Marine survey company Ocean Infinity has just had confirmation of a contract from the Malaysian government to resume the search for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that went missing in March 2014. The resumption was first proposed in December 2024, but now the 31 December 2025 search start date has been agreed.

The flight took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing on 8 March 2014, and detail of the story can be found here.

The Malaysian government says it is committed to finding flight MH370 for the sake of the relatives and friends of the 239 people on board who hope for some kind of closure. The official inquiry into the loss did not reach a causal conclusion.

Solar radiation and aircraft electronics: is this a big issue?

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Much of the world’s fleet of about 11,000 Airbus A320 series aircraft – the most popular airliner in the world according to sales – are affected by a current emergency airworthiness directive from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the US Federal Aviation Administration requiring that operators modify their aircraft control software to make it more resistant to the effects of solar radiation.

This followed a sudden loss of height in the cruise involving a JetBlue A320 en route from Cancun, Mexico to Newark, USA on 30 October. Solar radiation is believed to have been responsible for corrupting the data in one of the aircraft’s flight control computers causing the sudden height loss – which injured several passengers. Recovery action by the pilots ensured the aircraft diverted safely to Tampa, Florida.

Most younger A320s need only a quick software patch to harden the microchip resistance in their flight control computers against particularly vigorous bursts of solar radiation, but nearly a thousand of the oldest aircraft may need to change the units.

Solar radiation is known to be able to interfere with GPS signals, radio communication, inertial navigation systems, autopilot, and full-authority digital engine controls (FADEC), although incidents are rare. A mysterious sudden pitch-down by a Qantas A330 in the cruise over Western Australia in October 2008 is now reckoned to have been caused by corrupted data from an air data inertial reference unit (ADIRU) that may have been subject to solar radiation damage.

All aircraft are more vulnerable than suface vehicles to solar radiation effects because, at high altitude, there is less atmospheric attenuation of the sun’s electromagnetic energy. Polar flights are particularly vulnerable because the earth’s magnetic field provides less shielding and the troposphere is at a lower altitude there.

A320 series aircraft have three three flight control primary computers (FCPC), two flight control secondary computers (FCSC), and a flight augmentation computer, all of which provide considerable systems redundancy, plus a cross-checking capability to detect and correct anomalous data.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority said today that there had been virtually no disruption to flight schedules because airlines were so quick to apply software fixes.

1 December 2025: a statement from Airbus on this date claimed that only about 100 A320 series aircraft remained to receive the softwear hardening required by EASA an the FAA.

Cockpit automation increases planned for clean sheet narrowbodies

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Airbus and Boeing are both planning to hit the marketplace with completely new narrobodied aircraft in the mid to late 2030s, but what will they look like? Will they have pilots?

Nothing is set in stone, but it appears most likely that airframes will still be variants of the wing-and-tube format. And, at present, power unit technology is still predicted to be hydrocarbon-fuelled, but using 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at service entry, driving higher-bypass rotors, whether ducted or unducted, with a promised 20%-30% increase in fuel efficiency. Both manufacturers still promise net-zero emissions by 2050.

Airbus’ NGSA (Next Generation Single Aisle) aircraft is expected to feature long, slender wings with folding wingtips (above), whereas Boeing, working with NASA, is trialling the “transonic truss-braced wing” (see below), also with a very high aspect ratio and folding wingtips

Surprisingly, no-one is talking specifically about artificial intelligence (AI). That may be because, by then, it will be impossible to tell, in integrated aircraft management systems, where AI ends and passive software begins. Meanwhile Airbus and Boeing both say they plan to keep pilots “in the loop”, and in an executive role. At this point a two-pilot crew is the model they are working with, but how long that will remain the status quo is not clear.

France-based Thales, which supplies the integrated modular avionics on the Airbus A320NEO, sees the NGSA offering the flightcrew a high degree of integral assistance.

“That aircraft will incorporate a lot more help for the pilots through automation, or recommendation, so they are assisted at any moment of the flight – whether it is a normal phase or if there are issues,” according to Yannick Assouad, executive VP of the avionics division. Flight management systems will assist pilot decision-making, going further than today’s Airbus Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor (ECAM) system or Boeing’s Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS), by proposing solutions with supporting information, but leaving the decision to the pilots.

If there is a difference between the two manufacturers’ approaches to future flight deck systems human/machine interface, it is subtle. Boeing emphasises pilot-assist technologies designed to keep the pilot central while improving training, and “human-machine teaming”, whereas Airbus focuses on automation and autonomy to reduce workload and improve safety through use of assistance systems. Airbus talks of “making the aircraft the pilot’s smart assistant”, one that can anticipate and act.

Technology advances include more efficient, higher bypass engines, including open fan designs; long, high aspect-ratio foldable wings enabling significant aerodynamic efficiency gains while maintaining manoeuvrability during taxiing and docking at high density airports; also, next-generation batteries to enable hybrid architectures where electricity is increasingly used to support propulsive and non-propulsive functions aboard the aircraft, and increased use of advanced lightweight materials and integrated systems.

DC-10 crash nightmare runs again

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On 25 May 1979 the worst airline crash in America’s history occurred during take-off at Chicago O’Hare airport, killing all 271 people on board. Now, on 4 November at Louisville, Kentucky, an unnervingly similar disaster has occurred, also immediately after take-off.

But because the Louisville crash involved a freighter, far fewer people died, and for that reason the event has not received the same international wall-to-wall coverage in the media as the 1979 catastrophe.

Some 46 years may have passed since the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 at Chicago O’Hare, but it remains the worst aviation accident ever to take place on US soil. It also happens to be the first major accident upon which I had to report as a rookie aviation journalist with Flight International magazine, so my memories of it remain vivid.

The similarities between the two accidents were these: both aircraft were McDonnell Douglas (MDC) DC-10 trijet variants; both, late in the take-off run when the aircraft were already committed to take off, suffered complete detachment from the left wing of the No 1 engine.

Flight 191 involved an MDC DC-10-10 passenger aircraft, whereas the Louisville accident involved the most recent variant of the DC-10 series, known as the MD-11, and it was a freighter version operated by UPS with only three crew on board.

The UPS MD-11F engines were Pratt & Whitney PW4460s and Flight 191’s power units were General Electric CF6-6Ds, but the common factor in both cases was that they ripped themselves off their wing mountings, damaging the wings disastrously in the process and making the aircraft completely unflyable. Nobody on board either aeroplane had a chance of survival. At O’Hare two people on the ground were killed, and at Louisville the death toll of third parties is estimated at nine, with at least 11 injured.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation of the 1979 accident found that improper maintenance practices by American Airlines when they re-mounted the left engine on the wing following overhaul had resulted in damage to the wing mountings where the engine pylon attached to the wing itself. The report says that, when the engine detached, it pivoted upward and passed over the top of the wing as it departed, the separation causing physical damage to the wing leading edge and to hydraulic systems, resulting in the retraction of the left wing leading edge slats which dramatically reduced the lift that wing was able to produce at low speed. The wing dropped uncontrollably, and the aircraft hit the ground inverted.

At this stage all we know about the UPS accident is that the NTSB have recovered the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, and that witness from the ground and wreckage disposion at the site makes it certain that the left engine separated, causing damage to the wing, which then dropped and hit the roof of an industrial unit beyond the runway end. So far there is no evidence to suggest that the separation took place in exactly the same manner that it occurred on Flight 191, nor for the same reason. Additional video information showing the No 2 (tail) engine emitting flame suggests debris from the No 1 engine separation damaged it, making it impossible to maintain level flight.

Additions to detail since the NTSB released a preliminary factual report: the Lousville departure was Flight 2976 for Honolulu, and it took off from runway 17R reaching a maximum height of 100ft (the original statement said 475ft, but the NTSB has now reviewed the ADS-B data from which that was derived) and airspeed of 183Kt. Also, most of the No 1 engine’s pylon was still attached to the engine when the NTSB found it, but probably received additional damage when hitting the ground after detaching from the wing. The separation process began with a fatigue failure of the left engine pylon’s aft attachment lugs, so the engine and pylon detached as a unit from the wing underside. The engine twisted upward and passed over the top of the aircraft, gyroscopic precession causing it to fall to the right of the aircraft’s path. At this point, it was originally surmised, some debris might have entered the tail engine causing a reduction in power which could explain why the aircraft was unable to climb. But further NTSB information released in mid-January has confided that the N1 and N2 (high and low pressure turbine revolutions per minute) readings were hardly affected, so the failure to gain height on the remaining two working engines remains a puzzle. The investigation continues.

Boeing 737: the beginning of the end.

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It hasn’t surprised anyone in the industry to hear rumours – via the pages of the Wall Street Journal – that Boeing is working on the design of a new narrowbody jet, because it’s what everyone – including Boeing – knows the manufacturer should have done instead of launching the 737 Max.

The confidence in that statement is completely un-influenced by hindsight.

Now the Max has been purged of the ghastly design mistake that was MCAS (manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system), and Boeing has radically overhauled its corporate safety culture under a new leader – former Rockwell Collins engineer CEO Kelly Ortberg – the 737 series can once again trade on the lazy confidence that comes from the fact that – with all its faults and its antique technology – it’s a known quantity.

As a result the 737 is selling well, but nothing like as well as its competitor the Airbus A320 series.

The first 737-100 entered service in 1968, initially to fly the routes that the larger 727 series trijet was too big for. Its basic control technology was – and still is – just-post-war, except that in the latest versions the power-assisted cranks and pulleys are overlaid with electronic flight instrument systems and flight management computers to the extent that the pilots could almost believe the aircraft is fly-by-wire. They know, however, that they themselves are the flight envelope protection.

The industry needs a new-technology narrowbody competitor to the A320, and if Boeing doesn’t supply it, perhaps a development of China’s Comac C919, Russia’s Sukhoi Superjet 100, or a new product from Brazil’s Embraer will fill the gap.

Boeing’s first fly-by-wire airliner was its highly successful 777 widebody, which entered service in 1995 with virtually no birthing pains.

In 2011 it launched the 787 Dreamliner series, also highly commercially successful, but suffering from multiple early problems, some of them still being worked on.

Right now Boeing is struggling to re-launch the 777 as the 777X. The fact that it had a planned 2019 in-service date, but now its launch customer – Lufthansa – will not receive it until 2026, suggests how difficult a task bringing an entirely new narrowbody (the 797?) to service readiness may yet be.

The challenge is always to deliver a safe, trouble-free product, but the staggeringly advanced, fully-integrated electronic technology by which the aircraft and all its systems will be managed and controlled, plus the fact that there must be fallback systems that the pilots can access easily if it all goes wrong, mean its service entry will not be quick.

Look beyond this to the fact that the new systems will inevitably employ artificial intelligence, which makes passengers – and even engineers – nervous when it comes to managing safety-critical systems, and the size of the challenge becomes clear.

So the venerable 737 series will be with us for many years yet.

The Ahmedabad crash: accidental or deliberate?

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The movement of two small switches on the aft end of the flight deck centre console, reachable easily by both pilots, appears to hold the key to what happened to the Air India Boeing 787-8 that crashed fatally just after take-off at Ahmedabad on 12 June.

It seems that one of the pilots selected these switches from “Run” to “Cut Off”, stopping the engines at a critical point just after the aircraft became airborne. The purpose of this article is to examine the arguments for and against deliberate action (compared with unintentional error) on the part of one of the Air India pilots.

On 11 July the Indian Air Accident Investigation Bureau published its preliminary factual report on Air India Flight AI171, a Boeing 787-8 registration VT-ANB. This has revealed the movement of the fuel control switches (FCS) mentioned above, and the resulting consequences of that movement. The data confirming this was derived from the two Enhanced Airborne Flight Recorders (EAFR) in the accident aircraft.

There are two FCSs, one for each engine in a 787. They have two settings: Cut Off and Run. The first act by any crew in starting a 787’s engines on the ground is to set the switches to Run. On the ground or in the air, setting the switches to Cut Off stops the fuel flow to the engines. (See photograph below, showing the switches just behind and below the engine power levers)

According to the AAIB report, just after take-off at Ahmedabad, these switches were moved from Run (up position) to Cut Off (down position). The left switch was moved first then, one second later, the right switch. This action cut off the fuel flow to both engines. There is no automatic function that could move these switches, so they must have been moved manually, or by something physically impacting them. Each switch has a locking mechanism so it cannot be moved accidentally, and there are guard brackets either side of the pair to deflect inadvertent contact by objects. To select the switches from one setting to the other, they must first be pulled out against a spring force to release a locking mechanism, then moved up or down.

Timeline (UTC):

08:07:37 VT-ANB begins take-off roll. 08:08:39 Lift-off at 155kt. 08:08:42 Max airspeed achieved 180kt, also No. 1 FCS switch was moved from Run to Cut Off, followed by the FCS for engine No. 2. 08:08:47 the Ram Air Turbine began supplying hydraulic power. 08:08:52 No 1 engine FCS moved from Cut Off to Run. 08:08:56 No 2 engine FCS moved from Cut Off to Run. 08:09:05 Mayday call transmitted. 08:09:11 EAFR recording stopped.

The report says: “In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff [sic]. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.” Each pilot is recorded on a separate channel, so the AAIB must know which pilot made each statement, but has decided not to release the information at this preliminary stage, The report confirms that the copilot was the pilot flying, the captain the pilot monitoring. So it seems that one of them, apparently, moved both FCS from Run to Cut Off (see Timeline above), and the other noticed him doing it. Then, about 10 seconds later, one of the pilots attempted to restart the engines by restoring both FCSs to Run.

The report explains the effect of restoring the FCSs to Run, first in 787s generally, then specifically what happened in this case: “When fuel control switches are moved from CUTOFF to RUN while the aircraft is inflight, each engines full authority dual engine control (FADEC) automatically manages a relight and thrust recovery sequence of ignition and fuel introduction. The EGT [exhaust gas temperature in VT-ANB] was observed to be rising for both engines indicating relight. Engine 1’s core deceleration stopped, reversed and started to progress to recovery. Engine 2 was able to relight but could not arrest core speed deceleration and re-introduced fuel repeatedly to increase core speed acceleration and recovery. The EAFR recording stopped at 08:09:11 UTC.”

Take-off and early climb is a period of intense concentration by both pilots, the joint task being to ensure the aircraft maintains a steady climb while allowing the airspeed to increase gradually in a controlled way.

Under normal circumstances, after unstick there is only one actionable task for the pilots to carry out quickly: to check that a positive rate of climb is confirmed by the flight instruments, then select the undercarriage up. This task is normally carried out by the pilot monitoring on orders from the pilot flying, and it would entail moving the undercarriage control lever – located on the forward instrument panel – manually upward. In this case, according to the report, no-one called for the gear to be retracted, and no-one selected it up.

Instead, at about the time the gear would normally have been retracted, the FCS were moved downward from Run to Cut Off, the left switch first, the right switch a second later.

It is difficult to imagine that a crew member would have made such a gross error as reaching down and slightly back to move two small switches downward, one after the other, as a substitute action for a well established routine which would have involved reaching forward to move a single lever upward. And there was no cueing request from the pilot flying to pull the gear up anyway.

Pilots have occasionally, however, carried out inadvertent gross errors that almost defy credibility. You can see here the description of how, in January 2023, a Yeti Airlines ATR72 scheduled passenger flight was inadvertently set up for disaster during a visual circling approach to land at Pokhara airport, Nepal. I wrote that linked piece based on the preliminary report, but when the final report was published by the Nepal authorities it gave the following verdict: “The most probable cause of the accident is determined to be the inadvertent movement of both condition levers to the feathered position in flight, which resulted in feathering of both propellers and subsequent loss of thrust, leading to an aerodynamic stall and collision with terrain.” The check pilot had been asked by the pilot flying to increase the flap setting from 15deg to 30deg, but instead of moving the flap lever, he moved the pair of engine condition levers (picture supplied in linked article) to the position that demands the propellers to feather and stop turning.

If one of the pilots of AI171 did know what he was doing when he moved the FCS, he must have known that his action would have more or less guaranteed the result the world has witnessed, because there was insufficient time to restore usable power once it had been cut. VT-ANB was airborne only 3 seconds before the first FCS was switched to Cut Off, followed a second later by the second FCS, then ten seconds after that the FCS were both switched back to Run. The total airborne time was 42 seconds before colliding with the buildings that began break-up of the aircraft.

As for the likelihood that professional pilots would want to cause the destruction of the aeroplane they are flying, history provides evidence that it happens from time to time.

This was the summary of the situation as presented in the FlightGlobal annual safety review for calendar year 2023, which points out that deliberate acts by pilots to bring down airliners have been carried out by aircrew from all regions and cultures: “Pilot suicide on commercial flights in the last three decades has not involved only Europeans and North Americans. A Japanese, a Moroccan, an Egyptian, a Mozambican, a Botswanan, and a Singaporean, among others, have all been involved. The Flight Safety Foundation’s Aviation Safety Network accident database shows that, in its records beginning the 1950s, there has been a marked acceleration in the numbers of flights brought down by pilot suicide since the beginning of the 1990s, and this acceleration has continued in the new century. It is undoubtedly a modern flight safety hazard.” Since that time, although China has not confirmed it, the rest of the world has reason to believe that the March 2022 loss of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 was not an accident.

It is inevitable that deliberate action by flight crew should be considered when a disaster like AI171 occurs. The India Air Accident Investigation Bureau will undoubtely investigate this possibility. But just one part of the trajedy is that, when all the flight crew die, their intentions will never be known for certain.

“Instagrammable cocktails” solution to bad Vueling pax reviews

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Learmount.com’s series on awful airline experiences today looks at a European carrier’s attempt to persuade booked passengers that their trips will not be as bad as the online reviews.

Holidaying passengers flying Vueling are promised that they can start winding down – or up – as soon as they’re airborne. Here’s the just-announced pan-Europe mix of goodies in the Barcelona-based carrier’s bespoke summer cocktail, dubbed “Vueling in the Clouds”: Cava, ratafia (a sweet dessert wine), gin, limoncello, and elderflower liqueur.

This chilled delight is topped, according to Vueling’s press release, with a “cloud of candyfloss” – presumably supplying the promised “instagrammability”. If that doesn’t put the stressed travellers in a good mood, nothing would.

Looking at Tripadvisor reviews for Vueling, nearly half score in the “terrible” category, and if you add the “poor” votes as well the total comes to well over half. Complaints range widely from delay, cancellation and overbooking to awful customer service. On the other hand, adding the “excellent” voters to the “good”, together they make up less than a third of the total. Very few fliers seem to tick “average”.

In “Overview”, Vueling scores 2.5 out of 5. The only categories where scores beat 2.5 are value for money, cleanliness and check-in/boarding. Even those, however, don’t exceed 3 out of 5. However, there are nearly 4,000 (out of about 35,000 reviews) who rated Vueling excellent, so at least some passengers get lucky.

Don’t kid yourself: luck is what gets you a “good” low-cost flight. You’re not expecting much, so if absolutely nothing goes wrong, the trip will feel excellent. On budget airlines margins for everything, commercially and operationally, are so tight that it is rare for everything to go right for every passenger.

Sad though it is to have to admit it, alcohol can indeed do the trick. A trip I took with EasyJet recently was pretty stressful at every stage from check-in to disembarkation, and I found myself shoe-horning my creaking frame into the tightest seat row I have ever experienced. Once seated, I felt awful about the prospect of the 3h flight ahead.

Normally, if I choose to drink on flights, my purpose is pleasure and relaxation. This time I wanted oblivion. One G&T later I was feeling slightly better, and after a second I felt ready to forgive EZY and its crew. It had worked, and EZY’s bar had profited.

That’s what Vueling hopes to achieve, but there are risks. Alcohol doesn’t always pacify passengers, and it’s the cabin crew who are left with the task of managing the results.

Maybe the answer is a general anaesthetic delivered via the cabin air conditioning. Meanwhile, “Vueling in the Clouds” will have to do.

On second thoughts, maybe it was irresponsible of me to make that suggestion, because Michael O’Leary (Ryanair’s boss) might yet sell it to you as an option!

AI 171: the system is beginning to leak under pressure

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Air India flight 171 crashed immediately after take-off from Ahmedabad on 12 June, and today, two weeks later, with no news about causes, the system is beginning to leak.

This is what happens naturally when information which people know is available to the authorities is withheld from the media and the public.

It’s easy for authorities like the Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation to believe they can justify withholding information on the grounds that it’s very complicated, and they intend to release it quite soon anyway. Unfortunately for the DGCA, today’s media environment does not have that kind of patience any longer, especially in a case like this.

This fatal accident, a first for the Boeing 787 of any marque, killed 241 people on board and many on the ground. Whatever the cause was, it was highly unusual – maybe unique. For that reason, the industry and its regulators are desperate to know if there might be an unknown latent failure in the 787, so they can stop it happening again.

This pressure is what causes the system to leak. The Air India 171 flight data recorder has been downloaded by the National Transportation Safety Board for the DGCA at the Air Accident Investigation Bureau in Delhi, so some outstanding data will already be clear, even if not fully analysed yet.

Meanwhile the NTSB is sworn to secrecy according to the International Civil Aviation Organisation protocol which states that the nation in which the accident occured is responsible for the investigation. So in this case, the NTSB provides all its data to the DGCA, but as an agency of the nation in which the accident aircraft was designed, built and certificated, the NTSB has a particular responsibility to ensure that all operators of Boeing 787s throughout the world – there are about 1,000 of the type flying today – learn as fast as possible what, if anything, they should do.

That NTSB responsibility is a heavy one, but at the same time they want, if possible, to stick to the protocols to ensure the investigation proceeds calmly.

The NTSB obviously has to tell Boeing any details that are emerging. Then Boeing has an urgent duty to provide advice to 787 operators, particularly if any system failure detected might possibly repeat. This information will be received at Boeing by many engineers and technicians who must act rapidly to frame a plan for inspections and corrective action, then communicate with the operators, where an even larger group of airline technicians must carry out the Boeing advisories, or any directives that the Federal Aviation Administration may see fit to issue.

The pressure on the DGCA is of a different kind, and arguably less urgent. It is, after all, a regulator, a bureaucracy, with the responsibility to oversee the investigation and ensure it is conducted properly and according to law. It does, however, face the reality that a lot of highly relevant information is being shared right now by hundreds of experts all over the world, and the media knows it. So if the DGCA delays release of established facts, it will face increasing censure, especially if it delays release beyond one calendar month from the date of the accident.

A month is now firmly established as the time it should take for an air accident investigator to establish the basic facts of the case, and release a “preliminary factual report”. The final report can take more than a year.

Meanwhile, what of all those FDR facts whizzing around the world between experts at the manufacturer, the investigator, the world’s civil aviation authorities, and all the airlines that operate 787s? Well, they leak, of course, because they are important and everyone knows it. But most of the time the precise source of emerging information isn’t obvious, because individuals discussing them do not want to be recognised, so responsible journalists have to be careful what we do with what we hear.

What happens, however, is that it gradually becomes clear, among the plethora of opinions and guesswork always out there, which facts are beginning to establish themselves.

Some are simple, almost obvious. For example, the one emergency radio call made by the AI 171 crew said they had lost power, and an observation of the flight path almost immediately after unstick corroborates that puzzling fact.

But double engine failure immediately after take-off is almost unheard of, so what caused it? That is less obvious.

The DGCA has issued a list of checks it required Indian 787 operators to carry out. Unfortunately it lists checks that – mostly – are routine and would be carried out anyway.

The exception to that is the requirement to test the Electronic Engine Control System. These are computers called Full-Authority Digital Engine Controls (FADEC) that monitor the engines’ performance and react to demands by the pilots via the power levers or the flight control panel (autopilot input). These are vital, but have been established since the 1980s as highly dependable devices, and more reliable by far than the old mechanical connections.

So if both FADECs failed that would be extraordinary. In fact it makes more sense that something else failed or malfunctioned and disabled both FADECs. There is a lot of credible information gathering that backs this up, but since its precise source is not certain, I will not run it here.

Suffice to say we will soon learn what the problem was, because the DGCA knows it would look very bad to sit on it beyond 12 July 2025.

Enhanced checks for GEnx-powered Indian 787s

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , ,

India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued orders for “enhanced checks” to be carried out on Boeing 787s powered by GEnx turbofans registered in the country.

Those looking for clues as to the causes the authorities believe might be behind the disastrous Air India 787 crash at Ahmedabad on 12 June are likely to be disappointed, because the checks cover a broad spectrum of systems and components, many of which would be checked before all flights as a matter of routine.

But here is the instruction anyway.