'Airlines' Archive
French investigators say that Air France’s Flight 447 did not break apart in the air, as was thought early on in the investigation. It slammed full force into the ocean and broke apart on June 1, off Brazil’s northern coast. All 228 passengers on the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris were killed, making the crash the deadliest in Air France’s history.
Investigators came to the conclusion the Airbus A330 aircraft was intact at the point of impact by examining the wreckage gathered from a wide area in the Atlantic Ocean. But they still don’t know what made Flight 447 crash. They need the plane’s black box (its digital flight recorder) to know for sure, and it’s at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
And now it’s too late. That’s because the black box (a misnomer as it is actually bright orange), which contains important information about the speed, altitude, and pilot communication, only emits locator signals for about 30 days after a crash. The 30-day mark was July 1. French investigators are cutting off the search for the black box on July 10 — when everyone agrees the black box’s batteries will have surely died.
Even the mini-submarine used to explore the ill-fated Titanic hasn’t turned up the black box. Weak signals were detected in June and investigators dispatched the Nautile. The mini-sub will continued to comb the ocean floor using sonar detection methods until mid-August — just in case.
Flight 447 vanished off the coast of Brazil on May 31 after flying into violent thunderstorms. A flurry of automatic messages were sent from the plane before its disappearance and show that multiple system failures occurred. Search teams have found the bodies of 51 of Flight 447’s 228 passengers, including the plane’s captain.
It seems obvious it’s time to re-think the black box; not whether it should exist but rather how it should exist. Maybe it should be a “virtual” black box — one that sends the info to a computer on the ground — so that no one has to launch a very costly deep-sea expedition to find it. People say the technology exists.
Now investigators have another perplexing question on their hands: Can they solve the crash without the black box?
British Airways boss Willie Walsh actually asked the airline’s 40,000 employees if they would do one of the following to help keep the carrier from crashing financially: work without pay for up to a month, take unpaid leave, or drop back to part-time work.
Say what? I think I would be taking unpaid leave. Not getting paid to be at work? Not going to be there! Any of those choices are horrible. Shockingly, about 800 BA workers have agreed to work during July for no pay and several thousand have said they will take pay cuts or unpaid leave. Walsh and CFO Keith Williams also will skip their paychecks in July and even BA’s board members are getting in on the act (just don’t expect them to give up free flights).
Clearly desperate times are calling for such a move. British Airways reported a whopping £401 million ($664 million) loss for the fiscal year ending March 31. Walsh warned employees that the airline’s future would be at risk if they didn’t help out — no pressure.
British Airways hopes these measures will trim a cool £10 million ($16 million) off costs. They had better hope so because there are more than a few rivals out there — not the least of which is Virgin Atlantic’s outspoken Chairman Sir Richard Branson — who might love nothing more than to see BA go down.
In case you have been under a rock and didn’t know, airlines have been hammered by the global economic downturn — whipsawed between sky-high jet fuel prices during the first half of 2008 followed by a harrowing plunge in demand. They aren’t out of the woods yet as industry losses are expected to reach $9 billion for 2009.
Industry leaders including Air France-KLM, American Airlines, and Delta have been posting monster losses and scrambling to stem the hemorrhage. Many carriers have made up some financial ground by charging fees for window seats, extra bags, pillows, beverages, and maybe someday, bathroom privileges. Nothing is sacred anymore — if it can generate revenue or slash costs, it’s up for discussion.
Among the more unusual cost-cutting schemes is having passengers load their own luggage into cargo holds. This idea comes from Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s over-the-top CEO who also came up with the pay-per-potty plan. Not surprisingly, airlines industry officials are concerned about the potential security risks of allowing passengers to act as their own baggage handlers.
Some airlines are employing other methods to lighten up. Northwest Airlines is losing the spoons from its cutlery packets for in-flight meals that don’t need one. Soup and ice cream will just have to wait until you land. And Japan Airlines has reduced all its cutlery by one centimeter.
How does taking spoons away and making silverware smaller save money? Simple. One of the biggest expenses for airlines is jet fuel. As jet fuel prices creep back up, some companies are getting out their scales because the more weight on the plane, the more jet fuel it takes to fly it around. Loading fewer utensils and/or shrinking them may sound like small potatoes, but cutlery for 200-400 passengers adds up. Other items being “put on a diet” are the amount of water (bottled and in tanks) loaded on planes and catering carts, aircraft seats, and on-board TVs, all of which are targets for redesign to be lighter.
These days, jet fuel is about $60 per barrel, significantly below the nosebleed price of $134 per barrel when it peaked in October 2008. But prices are on the rise again — jet fuel shot up 22% in the past month. At this rate, forks may be next on the airline hit list.
Hey, we understand — times are tough for airlines. If they aren’t charging you for extra baggage fees, you are getting gouged for a window seat, an extra blanket, or transporting your pet. But charging you to go to the bathroom? Seriously?
This is what Irish airline Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary is proposing. The famously eccentric boss — he once said that swine flu was only a risk for “slumdwellers” — plans to generate additional revenue by removing two of the three toilets on his planes and adding up to six passenger seats with the additional space. He also wants to check with Boeing to ensure they can install credit card readers on toilets for new airplanes. The airline is known for its low-cost structure and maintains an average flight time of around an hour.
When asked if he would charge £5 for a trip to the toilet, O’Leary responded “If someone wanted to pay £5 to go to the toilet I would carry them myself. I would wipe their bums for a fiver.”
Nice. I get that airlines are doing every thing they can to bring in additional revenue, but wouldn’t pay-per-potties violate more than a few health codes?
I tend to think they would.
I worry about a lot of things when I’m flying. Is there enough room for my carry-on baggage? Will a passenger near me smell like cab driver feet? Am I going to get stuck sitting next to that obnoxious talking guy? (OK, that last one is usually me.)
Now I’ll be wondering if my pilot is sleep-deprived. Today the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board determined that pilot fatigue contributed to the tragic February crash of Flight 3407. The doomed Continental Connection flight operated by Colgan Air, crashed near Buffalo, New York. All 49 passengers and crew members aboard the plane and one person on the ground were killed.
It turns out co-pilot Rebecca Shaw had pulled an all-nighter before she got on the flight, taking a red-eye flight to Newark after spending a week skiing. She also complained of a head cold and likely should have called in sick. Captain Marvin Renslow was seen taking a nap in the flight crew lounge before the flight. As the investigation continues, there are even reports that the Captain was flirting with his pretty co-pilot right before the crash. Still, discussions of pilot fatigue have made all the headlines this morning.
In the last 16 years, fatigue has been associated with 250 fatalities in air carrier accidents, Robert Sumwalt, NTSB vice chairman, said at an FAA symposium in July.
Answering the criticism, the airlines have stated that they diligently adhere to FAA guidelines, which dictate that pilots on major and regional airlines can only fly for eight hours over the course of a 24-hour period. (Nevertheless, that 24 hour period might include nights or other nontraditional hours.)
However, as more details of the investigation are made public, it seems evident that it wasn’t just pilot fatigue that caused the crash. During the plane’s descent into Buffalo, the flight crew made several crucial mistakes when attempting to land in icy conditions.
Was fatigue a factor? Definitely — but unfortunately for the people killed, so was improper training and pilot inexperience.