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EZY, 20, woos lovers, 25

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , ,

Having transformed Europe’s flying habits since 1995, EasyJet celebrated its 20th birthday at the airline’s Luton HQ today, using it to launch new plans to woo travellers.

Among these is a loyalty system utterly unlike any on offer at the legacy carriers.

It’s by invitation only. If you are a frequent flier EZY knows who you are, your flying habits and has a pretty good idea of why you travel, so it knows what you want. For example, “long distance lovers”.

If you are in that category, your average age is 25, you fly to your lover’s arms eight times a year, and there are no favourite lovers’ routes. As EZY’s press release puts it, “love is all around”. There are some other fascinating categories, but more of that later.

Founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou (now Sir Stelios) was at the party along with chief executive Carolyn McCall, the captain of the first EZY flight Fred Rivett, and Lisa Burger who checked in the first passengers and is now head of customer services.

Stelios and Carolyn

EZY past and present, including Haji-Ioannou and McCall

Lisa said: “I’ll always remember the energy, excitement and hype surrounding our first flight.” Remember everyone had booked then with a personal phone call to the number printed on the aeroplanes.

She continued: ““From day one we began to educate customers how to interact and travel us and that we could make travel more affordable by cutting out complexity, overheads and costs that didn’t add value or that would compromise service.” Stelios himself said he knew it was a risk, and Lisa knew the customers reckoned they should grab the fares on offer before the upstart airline went bust.

McCall and her crews

McCall and her crews at Hangar 89 today

It’s got a fleet of 250 aircraft now, carries more than 60 million passengers a year and still has ambitious expansion plans within Europe. EZY’s trademark cheerful optimism pervaded Hangar 89, its Luton HQ, today.

Apart from separated lovers, here is just a taste of some of the other frequent flier categories EZY wants to nurture:

  • Independent business travellers, av age 43, fly 20 times a year or so, favourite destinations London, Paris, Milan, Geneva, Amsterdam, Berlin, Edinburgh and Lisbon.
  • Second home owners, av age 45, fly five times a year booking six passengers each time, favourite routes UK to Malaga and Faro, Paris to Nice, Geneva to Porto, Berlin to Barcelona.

Other categories include commuters, and those visiting friends and family including expats visiting home, and students or parents separated by time at university.

So what do they get for their loyalty? McCall says they don’t want air miles or Avios that are impossible to redeem on anything they really want, they want an extension of the travel simplicity they already like. The rewards are cost-free booking changes, free traveller name changes, and ticket price promises. All this launches next year.

Also just upstream in the pipeline is a smart new uniform with a bit more class but still a fair amount of orange, incorporating “wearable technology”.

The technology could be LEDs incorporated in seams or hems to make engineers visible on the pan, cabin crew visible leading an evacuation, and embedded video cameras to enable remote engineering inspections.

Cabin crew will have uniform-embedded microphones for in-aircraft communication. And EZY has already launched the idea of drones for aircraft inspection.

There was a refreshing restlessness in the air at Hangar 89 today.

Latest phase of MH370 search gets interesting

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

On 3 November the Australian Transport Safety Bureau resumed the deep sea search for the lost Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 [but see update at end of story].

Refuelled, replenished and ready to go, the ATSB’s survey ship Fugro Discovery has arrived on station once more in the southern Indian Ocean (see footnote for an update).

For those seeking a reason to be optimistic following a discouraging 20 months of searching the ocean without a result, there is definite cause for renewed hope this time.

Since it began the search the ATSB has been scrupulously methodical, scanning the ocean floor within a long, slender curved rectangle that encompassed what became known as the “7th arc”. This is a long line on the earth’s surface established by vestigial radio responses from the fatal aircraft to Inmarsat satellites just as it was running out of fuel.

Theoretically the Boeing 777 could have come down anywhere close to it, but working with the aircraft’s last radar position the ATSB identified the arc sector where the aircraft could realistically have come down, and has searched almost all of the identified curve and its close vicinity.

Since it has now trawled almost all the 7th arc’s viable sector and not found the wreckage of MH370, there is not much more to search. Logic says they must be getting close.

But not only logic.

For those who doubted MH370 came down in the sea at all, the fact it did so was established in July when one of its flaperons was washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. This fact was forensically confirmed more recently by the French air accident investigation agency BEA.

But there’s another reason for optimism: on 22 December last year Flightglobal published a mathematical/geometric calculation by Boeing 777 captain Simon Hardy, also a mathematician, which indicates precisely where, according to his calculations, MH370 came down.

The search sector that Fugro Discovery has just begun to trawl encompasses Hardy’s predicted position for MH370. His recent refinements to the aircraft’s final descent profile put it at S39 22′ 46″ E087 06′ 20″. He adds, however, that depending on how long the aircraft floated, the main wreck could have drifted some time before sinking, and even during the descent could have travelled laterally. At this location he would expect to see mainly “some moveable aerodynamic surfaces, like the missing part of the flaperon that we already have, and parts of slats and flaps and maybe even the RAT [ram air turbine].”

This could be said to be the last chance for the search under present estimated criteria, because 777 performance dictates that the aircraft could not have flown further than this extreme southern end of the 7th-arc-defined potential ditching area.

Anyone who has published material on the web knows that it may receive praise, but it will certainly receive criticism. The impressive fact about Hardy’s mathematics is that, despite hundreds of thousands of hits on the article containing his calculations, nobody has been able to blow a hole in them.

By 3 December Fugro Discovery expects to have completed the search of the area containing, according to Hardy’s calculations, the wreck of MH370 and the remains of those who went down with it.

Hardy says he says he is excited about the next month’s search, having invested more than a year of mental and emotional energy into working out where MH370 flew, and why. He wants it found.

He’s not alone.

Watch this space for more on MH370.

LATE NEWS: On 5 November Fugro Discovery had to suspend the search and return to Fremantle, Western Australia, according to Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre, because one of the crew developed suspected appendicitis.

UPDATE: Fugro Discovery was due to arrive back in the search area on 3 December.

 

Sinai crash update

David Learmount Uncategorized , , ,

The wreckage field for the Metrojet A321 crash in Sinai is wider than originally reported – about 5km across at present, and in time maybe even more wreckage will be found.

If this report is accurate, it indicates an in-flight break-up of the aircraft, but the cause cannot be determined with certainty at this point.

Causes of in-flight break-up could be related to a missile strike or a bomb on board, but there is no proper evidence for those right now. There has been an “Islamic State”  claim of responsibility, but it has not been backed up with any evidence either.

Speculation in the media has begun about a possible fuselage failure caused by damage to the fuselage that was – allegedly – not properly repaired by the airline, causing an explosive decompression and in-flight structural failure. The kind of damage suggested in this speculation is a tailstrike on the runway during landing or take-off. But this is guesswork. It is not based on evidence.

Modern engineering makes aircraft extremely strong, so total in-flight break-up without extreme stress being applied to the structure is impossible. Thousands of Airbus aircraft in this series have been flying since 1988 and no such event has occurred.

Sinai A320 crash

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , ,

The Russian Metrojet aircraft lost in north-central Sinai today was a leased Airbus A321 that entered service 18 years ago. Its reported passenger load was 224 people, which means its cabin was full or nearly full.

It had left the southern Sinai coastal resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh heading north for its destination, St Petersburg in Russia. Its route took it across Sinai – where the weather was good – and it would have continued northward over Cyprus and Turkey.

According to commercial flight tracking service Flightradar24 the aircraft was seen to suffer a disturbance which caused rapid variations in its speed and height, reducing the speed to 6okt at one point, which would put it into a deep stall condition unless the crew acted rapidly to recover speed again. Then the aircraft developed a high rate of descent – about 5,000ft per minute, and the position, height and speed information from the aircraft’s transponder was lost.

Flightradar24’s information about the Germanwings aircraft lost in the French Alps earlier this year proved to be highly accurate, and ahead of official information from the investigators it became evident that the A320 had  begun what looked like a deliberate descent to impact, and so it subsequently proved.

In this case the information is more complex because of the apparent speed and height variations that preceded the fatal descent.

The Egyptian authorities have been quick to rule out terrorist action in the form of sabotage or a missile strike, but it is too soon to rule anything out. Sharm el-Sheikh is an important Egyptian tourist resort, and any suggestion of security breaches affecting travellers there would be harmful to trade.

The aircraft was cruising at 31,000ft, at which it would be safe from the kind of man-portable missiles that terrorists in the area could obtain fairly easily, but the aircraft was 2,000ft lower than the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that was shot down over eastern Ukraine last year by a more powerful ground-launched missile.

Early information suggests the aircraft came down in one piece and broke up on impact, making the missile strike theory less likely. On-board sabotage, however, does not have to break an aircraft up in order to damage its controllability.

So at this point it is certain that the aircraft suffered a serious upset during the cruise, but there is no indication why that occurred.

Clutha questions

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , ,

Within hours of the police helicopter crashing through the roof of Glasgow’s popular Clutha Vaults Bar at 10:22pm on Friday 29 November 2013, it became clear this was not a straightforward accident.

Why did the helicopter come down on a building although there was plenty of open space near it, including the river Clyde? Pilots directing a distressed aircraft avoid buildings in favour of open space for obvious reasons, not least the reduction in risk of injury to those on board. As it happened, all three crew in the helicopter died, and so did seven people in the bar.

Perhaps the pilot had no control for some reason, but early evidence suggested the Eurocopter EC-135, operated for the police by Bond Air Services, did not break up in the air nor shed critical components.

Now the Air Accident Investigation Branch has published its report. It reveals that the fuel system had been mismanaged and, as the helicopter flew west along the Clyde toward a landing at the Glasgow City Heliport, within 30 seconds of each other the two engines stopped.

The investigation determined that, upon losing power, the pilot’s physical reaction was more or less the opposite of what was required to put the aircraft into a successful autorotative descent to a forced landing. As a result the main rotor rapidly stopped turning and the aircraft dropped like a stone.

Also extensively examined by the AAIB was the fact that, about an hour into the flight, the main tank fuel feeder pumps were switched off. There was no evident reason for this to be done, but it was.  Subsequently the pilot was provided with a succession of low fuel warnings, and acknowledged them by suppressing the alert chimes, but did nothing to correct the situation. All that would have been required was to switch the main tank fuel transfer pumps on, and the two small engine feeder tanks would immediately have been replenished.

The pilot’s regular communications with air traffic control were calm and measured throughout the sortie. The EC-135 had taken off from the Glasgow heliport, and the crew proceeded with a planned sequence of surveillance tasks in the region between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and it was on its return to land that the engine feeder tanks ran dry. There was no emergency call nor indication the crew faced any problems.

The AAIB’s report has a drier than usual style, reflecting its clear puzzlement as to why an experienced helicopter pilot with a good professional record would demonstrate such incompetence. Protocol would allow the AAIB to discuss possible reasons, but it has chosen not to do so.

A post-mortem examination of the crew demonstrated that they had no alcohol or drug traces in their blood. If the pilot was feeling unwell he didn’t say anything about it, but one wonders whether he was suffering some form of subtle incapacitation without realising it. The AAIB, however, has chosen not to pose that question in the report.

If the subtle incapacitation theory were true, a normal flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder would not necessarily prove it. But a video recording of cockpit activity and of the instrument panel might record evidence suggesting it.

 

MH17 and the denial option

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , ,

The Dutch-led international inquiry into the MH17 shootdown has clearly anticipated the organised denial that would follow its publication.

This is evident from the extraordinarily degree of thoroughness in its forensic examination of the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.

The inquiry was far more thorough than would have been required simply to confirm that an unidentified missile brought the aircraft down.

But as far as Russia and the eastern Ukrainian rebels are concerned this careful work is irrelevant. They can claim truthfully – although not with honest intent – that the wreckage was not secured, and that it could have been tampered with.

That makes them untouchable in law unless even more detailed evidence is uncovered that proves precisely where the missile was launched from.

Actually, there is a chance that evidence may be found.

But even if it’s not, the care to which the Dutch-led investigation has gone to identify the precise physical damage to the aircraft and chemical traces on the airframe is such that the report has real credibility: it makes clear that a Russian-built Buk missile did to the Malaysia 777 and its passengers and crew what Buk missiles are supposed to do.

The consequence of this report’s credibility is that the credibility of the deniers will be fatally damaged in the eyes of the global community as a whole.

So what else has the world learned as a result of MH17?

The day that MH17 happened the world’s airlines learned that intelligence about the safety of high level airspace is not guaranteed. Ukraine had closed its airspace below 32,000ft in the belief the rebels only had limited-performance weaponry. They were wrong.

ICAO has since set up a system for improving the communication of intelligence about conflict zones to airlines. But they could be wrong too.

So should airlines, from now on, avoid airspace over a zone in which – it is believed – small arms only are being used?…on the grounds that they might be misinformed about that too.

No easy answers here.

 

 

 

A new approach to airline pilot training

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

Ryanair has found, consistently over the years, that half the licensed pilots who apply for first officer jobs fail its entry tests.

That’s not because the tests are particularly demanding, or because Ryanair springs unexpected things on them in the simulator. Wannabes all get a month’s warning of everything they’re going to face, and all the data they need to prepare for it.

Ryanair’s head of training Andy O’Shea told me his airline had recently considered backing future pilots via the MPL route, because that’s designed to deliver airline-ready pilots complete with a type rating.

But they’ve abandoned that idea because they think the MPL – as it’s organised right now – is too inflexible to cope with the vagaries of market demand. It locks the airline and the student into an 18 month relationship that may not survive market changes.

On the other hand the CPL/IR route prepares pilots to fly a light piston twin all on their own. It’s really only preparation for a good general aviation job, which is fine if that’s what you want to do.

Even if the twin is EFIS-equipped, it’s a million miles away from preparing a pilot for the right hand seat in a Boeing 737. And bolt-on multi-crew and jet-orientation courses are clearly not delivering, or Ryanair wouldn’t have that high failure rate.

O’Shea is looking for a way of plugging the skills and knowledge gap effectively between the CPL/IR and the right hand seat of a jet. If that can be done well – and he has been working on it with EASA and a working party called the Airline Training Policy Group  – the students and the airlines would be able to enjoy the flexibility of the CPL/IR route, but it would produce the flight-deck-ready pilots that the MPL is designed to create.

He summarises what’s missing in those who fail their tests. They lack – to a greater or lesser degree – knowledge and understanding, flight path management skills, crew resource management ability, and what he calls “maturity and attitude”.

Basically, what O’Shea and the ATPG propose is a CPL/IR course extended to embed quality MCC and JOC components, including sessions closer to airline line oriented flight training than is done currently, plus some more advanced knowledge training. The result would be a course known as the Airline Pilot Certificate Course.

One of the possibilities is that the APCC would be available to students as one of the choices, as well as the MPL and CPL/IR as they exist today. That would not demand any more flight crew licensing regulatory work, but EASA could – and seems likely to – endorse the APCC as a valid qualification.

The question is, if the APCC is successful in attracting students and airlines, what would the future of the MPL be?

The CPL/IR could continue to be a stepping stone, via GA, into the airline world, and the MPL incorporating a JOC might be an alternative equivalent to the APCC.

This is still a work in progress, but something along these lines looks likely to win approval in Europe.

 

Shoreham air display accident – interim report

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , ,

According to the UK Air Accident Investigation Branch’s interim factual report on the Shoreham air show crash, nothing detectable was wrong with the Hawker Hunter at any point in the display.

It has been confirmed that the aircraft entered the fatal vertical manoeuvre at a height of 200ft when 500ft would have been the normal minimum – and certainly wiser – thus leaving very little room for misjudgement in a trajectory that is frighteningly easy to get wrong, even for a skillful and experienced pilot.

The intent in a normal vertical manoeuvre like this loop-with-roll would be to complete it at the entry height, but certainly not less when the aircraft began the manoeuvre close to the ground. In fact the aircraft began to pull up from 200ft above ground level and finished by impacting the surface.

There may yet be more to this story than the AAIB has just revealed, but there were cameras and a microphone in the cockpit which should confirm most of what it is possible to know.

Air displays contain risk, like Formula 1 and other sports do. If they didn’t, nobody would go to watch them. But they are not intended to extend the risk to non-participants. That is the part that needs examination.

The risk to air shows

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

Following the 22 August Shoreham air show crash, in which at least 11 people on a public road have been killed by a display aircraft, the Civil Aviation Authority has promised a complete review of air display safety.

Since comprehensive rules and guidelines already exist and – until now – have protected the public (if not the display pilots) successfully for some sixty years, what can the CAA realistically do except ban air shows over land?

You can find a description of the existing discipline imposed on air display organisers on the Flightglobal website.

After the devastation and loss of life caused on the busy A27 dual carriageway road section next to Shoreham airfield when the Hawker Hunter crashed on it, the media has – understandably – been posing questions about the issue of public roads passing very close to airport runways.

In fact Shoreham aerodrome – the UK’s oldest airport, founded in 1910 – was not constructed next to the existing A27. The part of the A27 road that, today, skirts the airfield at its northern boundary was laid nearly half a century after the airfield was constructed, as part of a bypass for the south coast towns.

Further along the same trunk road to the west, the A27 becomes the M27 as it swings around the Portsmouth/Southampton conurbation. When the M27 was built, it was placed right slap bang at the end of Southampton airport’s runway. The airport had been there for 73 years when that section of the motorway was opened in 1983. When, in May 1993, a Cessna Citation 500 business jet overran the Southampton airport runway onto the M27 it hit two cars, but fortunately no-one was hurt.

Journalists reporting such events, however, quite reasonably ask why runways are built near roads. But their question needs reversing. Planners, in positioning roads close to runway ends, by implication do not consider landings and take-offs to be a risk worth worrying about.

Until something happens. Then all of a sudden, according to reporters who don’t know the history, the airport is the bad guy.

As an immediate measure following Shoreham, the CAA has grounded all Hawker Hunters, and required that vintage jets at displays will not conduct “high energy aerobatics”. That is a reasonable precaution until the investigations report into the recent display crashes of the Hunter and the Folland Gnat that came down killing its pilot about three weeks before.

But in considering further restrictions for the long term the CAA must consider how much pleasure public air displays provide, and that one of the functions they perform is to enthuse the country’s youth with the possibilities of high technology. Air displays are not only the biggest spectator sport in the country apart from football, they generate the future’s pilots, engineers, mechanics and aerodynamicists.

So rather than shutting down events like the Shoreham air show, or dumbing down its displays because of a proximate road, the CAA might consider other possibilities.

Like looking at the statistics that demonstrate what a one-off event this was, and not imposing further restrictions.

Or – if the CAA feels that such a tragic event must generate a visible reaction of some kind – like imposing road traffic diversions while the display is active, or putting traffic lights on the road to keep traffic clear of the perceived risk zone when a particular display is being performed.

The statistics prove that air displays may put pilots at risk, but the risk to the public is infinitesimally low. The CAA’s decisions, hopefully, will reflect that.

 

 

 

 

 

The Shoreham Hunter crash unravelled

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

A lot of misleading comment about the 22 August Shoreham air show crash has already been written. Here’s an attempt to put the event into context.

First, these are some topical issues surrounding the short aerobatic flight by the Hawker Hunter T7.

It’s clear that when this Hunter was on its run-in towards Shoreham aerodrome from the north, following the Adur river valley in line with the airfield’s runway 20, it was very low. My estimate is 300ft or even less as it approached its pull-up point close to the airfield boundary, and other experienced aerobatic pilots say it was lower still.

Most pilots would choose – or be ordered to adopt – a minimum of 500ft above airfield level as a base for their pull-up into a looping manoeuvre, because they need that height to give them room for error in judging the exit height at the base of the manoeuvre.

Five hundred feet (150m) is not high – it does not give spectators a crick in their necks to watch the aircraft pass at that height. It only allows a small margin for height error when exiting from vertical manoeuvres. But 300ft or lower at entry provides even less.

A pilot intending to carry out a vertical manoeuvre like aerobatic looping – or simultaneous looping-and-rolling as in a barrel roll – normally aims to complete it at the same height he enters it. As well as being common sense, that makes it look precise and disciplined to spectators.

Coming out of a vertical manoeuvre lower than the entry height – unintentionally – has probably killed more display pilots than any other single category of air display accident. Loops, barrel rolls, stall-turns, wing-overs and chandelles are not difficult to perform safely at a high level where there’s lots of room to correct errors. But to carry them out with precision at low level requires tight discipline, and constant monitoring of the aircraft’s pitch and roll rates in conjunction with the rapidly changing airspeed in the climb and descent phases. It is incredibly easy to let the pitch rate – or the pitch-and-roll rate – decay slightly during the descent phase, and that can be terminal. It was for the T7 at Shoreham, whatever the reason.

Meanwhile there have been actual criticisms from pilots of several other aspects of the conduct of this flight.

The Hunter had drop-tanks beneath its wings. These are fuel tanks that are used when the aircraft needs to extend its range or airborne endurance, and are ideally removed for aerobatic displays because the aircraft is then lighter and has less aerodynamic drag. But the existence of these drop tanks, empty of fuel, would not have been the cause of this accident.

The aircraft also could be seen to have flaps deployed during all – or most – of its short sortie. This low flap-setting is used at take-off, and can be used when airborne to tighten the aircraft’s turning radius in combat, but at the cost of increasing drag considerably and thus reducing speed. A former RAF Hunter pilot I know well told me he would not have used any flap for the manoeuvres we watched, but he agreed that flap deployment would not, alone, have been a cause for this accident. But other Hunter pilots have posted on the Professional Pilots’ Rumour Network that flap was commonly used in aerobatic manoeuvres, including by the Black Arrows, the predecessors to the Red Arrows.

An observation that has come out of a video released today suggests the pilot had trouble getting this aircraft off the runway at take-off. The video shows the ill-fated aircraft carrying out a very long take-off run, lifting off right at the far end of the runway at its North Weald base and then staying low before climbing away. It has been suggested that the aircraft’s engine was under-performing.

If there had been something wrong with the engine, especially in a single-engine aircraft like this, no pilot would continue the flight, especially into an aerobatic sequence.

It’s a common tactic for display pilots to hold the aircraft on the runway for a little longer than necessary during take-off, and then hold it low above the runway for a while after unstick, so the aircraft accelerates more rapidly and can then be manoeuvred more dramatically for crowd-pleasing purposes.

It’s also worth remembering that the Hunter may have been a fast and agile aircraft for its time, but is not a patch on modern jets like the Typhoon and Tornado. It’s a 1950s aeroplane with a single, un-reheated Rolls-Royce Avon jet engine. It does NOT have the afterburner engines that can power a jet vertically into the sky.

Aeroplanes like the Hunter need empathetic pilots to get the best performance out of them, because the brute force of a modern jet engine is not there to get them out of trouble when they need it.

More than any other factor in this accident, the puzzle for me is why the aircraft crash-landed on the busy main road when the pilot – if he was conscious – seemed to have had a choice of veering left from that fatal descent toward the A27 and landing on the west side of the airfield, if not the runway itself (the spectators were on the runway’s east side).

On its final approach toward the road the aircraft was descending steeply out of a looping manoeuvre, so it should have had sufficient speed to bank safely to the left and head for the open grass of the airfield. It would only have required a turn left through about 45deg to have lined up parallel to the runway.

That presupposes the pilot was fully conscious and there was nothing else wrong with the aircraft. In 2011 one of the Red Arrow pilots suffered G-induced loss of consciousness during a high speed, high-G turn close to the ground, and crashed fatally.

Was something wrong with the aircraft? In the video footage, nothing is seen falling off it, no puffs of smoke from the engine, and in some footage of the aircraft’s last moments there is visible heat haze behind the engine jetpipe, and engine noise could clearly be heard, suggesting the engine was at least running even if not generating full power.

But in a video released later there appear to be a couple of visible flashes near the aircraft just before the apex of the looping manoeuvre, when the aircraft was completely inverted. But there were no associated bangs, the engine noise was unchanged, and the flashes did not show on any other videos of the same sector.

The pilot, if he suspected engine trouble, would have had the option of rolling upright and abandoning the display. The fact he didn’t suggests he saw no trouble at that point.

It will take all the forensic magic of the Air Accident Investigation Branch to find the answers, because there are no black boxes on an aircraft like this.