c0t0d0s0.org - Aviation

Dream on fire

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 13:07:36 +0100

According to the Flightblogger, one of the 787 aircraft had to land due to a fire in the electronics bay. It was able to land safely, however a fire and smoke onboard of an aircraft is a very serious incident.

A strange thing is the deployment of the RAT. This is the Ram Air Turbine. An aircraft need a lot of electrical power. This power is generated by the engines, however when all engines have failed, a small propeller is deployed outside the aircraft that is driven by the head wind to provide electical power to the absolute minimally necessary equipment). This generator is called RAT. It's deployed as a last-resort-measure ... so it will be interesting to read in the official incident report about the situation.

News business

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 07:51:40 +0100

An exploded Trent 900 with 0 fatalities gets massive press attention with massive speculation. A crashed ATR-72 in Cuba with 68 fatalities and a crashed Beech 1900 in Karachi with 22 fatalities are just footnotes. Mad world.

Uncontained - revisited

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 06:34:36 +0100

Interestingly such uncontained engine failures are as seldom as i thought before searching avherald.com.

Uncontained

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:00:30 +0100

Ouch .... this is something you call "uncontained engine failure". This happened to an Qantas A380. TheAustralian has a series of pictures from this incident.

Jet turbines are designed to to keep the debris of the engine in the engine casing. From there the debris stays in the engine or leaves it at the rear end. The engine casing is not the sheet of metal or composites you see from the aircraft window .... this is just the engine fairing for optical and aerodynamic purposes. Anyway: Engine parts punching holes in the wing is a really serious thing.

This looks like an engine problem ... not a problem of the A380 itself. However i expect the media to write, this is a A380 problem. That said it gets interestings here. One of the recent reasons for the delays of the 787 was a uncontained engine failure of the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000. And the Trent 1000 is a derivate of the Trent 900. The Qantas A380 used this kind of engine (you can get two types of engines for the A380: The Trent and the GP7200, an engine made by the Engine Alliance)

It's much to early to speculate about the reasons. This will take a while to find out.

Hull loss of a Lufthansa MD11 at Riyadh

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:44:25 +0200

According to avherald.com there was an accident in Riyadh involving a Lufthansa Cargo MD11. Look like an hull loss ... especially when you look at the photos at the end of the article:

Captain and first officer received injuries and were taken to local hospitals. Fire fighters were able to extinguish the fire, that broke out in the center area of the aircraft, front and rear portion were visibly not consumed by the fire.

David Warren dies at 85

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:06:12 +0200

David Warren died on July 19, 2010 that the age of 85. Why should you care? Well ... this guy created the flight data recoder, better known as "black box". This invention made aviation saver as post-crash analysis is easier with some additional data about the aircraft in the minutes before the crash, thus enabling the investigators to make better suggestions for the future.

787 possibly delayed again ....

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:34:29 +0200

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is already 2,5 years late and the next negative message came in last week ....

Boeing has issued a caution that delays in its flight test program may push its first delivery of the 787 into 2011.

I don't think, that this aircraft will lose the moniker "Delayliner" soon.

Frequent Traveller at Lufthansa

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 13:17:57 +0200

It's a small change at the Lufthansa Frequent Traveller program and perhaps most people are aware of this change as it was made on 1.1.2010, but Lufthansa changed it back to a "Frequent Traveller" instead of "Most paying" program - at least for 2010. You can get the FTL status with 30 flight legs.

Fighting for the best place in the apron bus

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:42:24 +0200

A few weeks ago i wrote about this strange behaviour of airline passenger to storm the aircraft as there would be no reserved seats in it or no kind request to start boarding with the rows in the back of the aircraft.

There is another interesting behaviour: As i'm traveling to the smaller airports with smaller aircrafts quite frequently (Canadair, Embraer or Dash-8 ... not capable to use a gangway), apron-parking is something quite normal for me.

You aren't allowed to walk over the apron, so they use busses to shuttle you to the aircraft. And here the strange behavior starts: No matter how many seats in the bus are still free, everyone tries to stand near the doors. Even when those spaces are overcrowded nobody starts to move into the aisles of the bus except the room is that overcrowded that people are forced to move into the aisle.

I assume airline passengers would still fight to be first in the row or at near as possible to the exists of the bus when 10 passengers are booked for a A380 flight.

A320

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:19:00 +0200

A few days ago the A320 celebrated it's 50.000.000 take-off and the five billionth passenger since the introduction of this model in 1988. On the other side there were 9 hull losses with fatalities. So every 5.555.555 take offs there is one crash. If cars would have a crash for every 5 555 555 turns of the key, streets would be a much safer place.

Power Cycling

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:04:05 +0200

Do your really think, that power cycling your computer is just something people do at home, when their computer acts weird? Well ... not really. In a Safety Alert for Operators issued by the FAAyou will find the following two paragraph:

To alert all operators of MD-11 aircraft equipped with the Honeywell Pegasus FMC, with Future Air Navigation System (FANS) enabled, of possible erroneous Air Traffic Control (ATC) messages displayed in the CPDLC log.

and

On March 11, 2010, Boeing issued Multi Operator Message (MOM) SR1-1536638744. The MOM provides maintenance with procedures to clear the Honeywell FMC ATC Input Buffer by depowering the aircraft or resetting the appropriate circuit breakers before each FANS/CPDLC flight.

There is an issue with the expiration of incoming messages of the air traffic control in the flight management computer. They do not expire after the flight has completeted. So a pilot could take them for current ones and not the ones of the last flight. The current work-around: Power cycling the aircraft or at least the flight management computer

Astonishing

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 15:14:02 +0200

A good example how resilient aircraft engines are: The Avherald published some photos of an engine of an 777 that had to land at Schipol instead of Heathrow because of low fuel. The engine still delivered thrust. It had just a higher exhaust temperature and higher fuel burn according to other reports. At the moment it's believed this damage happened 5 hours before the landing in Schipol

32 additional A380 for Emirates

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:19:54 +0200

You can call this a fscking large order without exaggeration: Emirates ordered 32 additional A380 today. So far they ordered 58 aircrafts of this type, now their fleet will have 90 in a few years.

Andere Berufe - andere Erlebnisse

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 18:57:12 +0200

Ich mag ja in anderen Blog gerade die Einträge, die Einblick in ein vollständig anderes Berufsleben geben, wenn es sich dann auch noch um die Fliegerei handelt muss ich das einfach lesen. Ich kann da beispielsweise nur sehr den Bericht "Vulkanasche voraus Umleitung!" im Blog von Guy Gächter empfehlen.

Birthday disasters

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 26 May 2010 19:31:58 +0200

It's May 26, it's my birthday and as a birthday is a special day nothing can go wrong. Well ... nope not really ... but at first i want to thank you all for your kind greetings and congratulations.

Nope .... at first i was in Cologne today, giving a tutorial about creating a fileserver with OpenSolaris. But that was by choice. I like to fly as you know . After being grounded for months due to no opportunity to fly this was really welcome. As i wrote before ... if i get a job some day in the future flying around and doing presentations i would be a luck man.

The day started with a nice "" in the aircraft as a was able to spill a cup of airline tea into my lap. Thank god it wasn't my tea at home so it was hot but not hot enough for really significant burnings.

Such a day starting that way can't get a positive ending and it didn't got one. I don't know what happened to my demo installation but stuff i did a day before without problems threw interesting error messages, nothing went the way i want it and and the end i couldn't even remember how to diskpart iscsi devices on windows ... damned ... i will create a written tutorial to give the attendees the information planed for this part.

I hope my Deduplication talk on Friday will be much better ...

However i'm sitting in the Frequent Traveller Lounge now, waiting for my aircraft and i hope there will be no delays ... i wouldn't wonder about that ...

Another design flaw

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:34:53 +0200

The Flightblogger reports about a problem in the 787 programme:

Shear ties, which affix the fuselage frames to the skin of the aircraft, now require replacement or rework, after the initial design failed to take into account thermal fatigue loading of the parts.
[...]
The problem, which was discovered in December, found that repeated cooling and warming of the unpressurized Section 48 and 48 Aft, the shear ties, those of which are made of aluminum, can pull away from the skin of the fuselage, potentially compromising the structural integrity of the aircraft.

Resurgent aviation

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:42:30 +0200

This video shows the resurgence of commercial aviation when the airspace was freed again after the the volcanic ash close-down.

There seems to be no data for France, as the complete country stays black in the video.

The consequences of volcanic dust in jet engines

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 11:39:34 +0200

Michiel points in a comment to interesting photos of an jet engine that ingested volcanic ash : "PICTURES: Finnish F-18 engine check reveals effects of volcanic dust". Perhaps the airline managers should keep this in mind when they are upset about the closed airports.

Abandoned sky

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 20:30:48 +0200

The location is normaly directly below a frequently used aviation route. By the way: What a great weather!

The sky looks strange ....

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:22:17 +0200

I'm so used to see at least a few condensation trails in the sky, that it grabs my attention when there isn't a single one in the sky due to to close-down of almost all airports in germany due to the volcanic ash cloud.

Impact of Clouds

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:30:01 +0200

This is the Departure Table of the Airport in Hamburg. Due to the volcanic ash cloud over Europe the airport in hamburg was totally closed down. I think it's safe to assume, that using a plane is a bad idea today.

The size of an Airbus A380

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 15:14:50 +0200

I think most of us travelled in a Boeing 737 at least once. So you have an impression about the size of that bird. Well, when you look at this photo of a 737 in front of an A380, you might get an impression how large the Airbus A380 really is.

Condolences and a facepalm

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 12:23:04 +0200

My condolences goes to the people of Poland for their loss. However, when various reports are correct, the cause for this crash deserves a collective *facepalm*: Thick fog (500m visibility), airport closed, two other airports suggest as alternates, no instrument landing system, already three go-arounds, the fourth attempt to land did lead to the crash. I thought, someone would be more cautious with so many passengers counting to the polish elite. That's outright horrible.

Tracking via Bluetooth

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:02:46 +0100

The german IT news portal Heise linked to an interesting paper: "Anonymous Bluetooth Probes for Measuring Airport Security Screening Passage Time: The Indianapolis Pilot Deployment".

An interesting concept: Anybody who just start the Bluetooth scan on her/his notebook knows that there are several mobile phones on almost any given location with a large audience propagating a unique id to the world by their MAC address. Using this information to derive some useful facts from it (for example: Duration of the average TSA massage) looks like as one of the more worthy targets for tradeoffs on privacy vs. useful services in favor to the second one. Especially as it's really easy to evade from this data collection: Just switch off the bluetooth function of your mobile.

PS: I would like a bluetooth scanner in the aircraft itself ... it's really interesting how many mobile phones are running inflight. Such a scanner could send a vcard containing "Just switch off your fscking mobile phone". Did that once a few minutes before takeoff ... that was very effective

Ultimate load test

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:50:48 +0100

No ... i'm not talking about a new, more effective CPU hog. I'm talking about the so called "ultimate wing load test". This is an important test in the development of an aircraft. A wing will be bend with a load of 150% of the maximum expected load in operational service. The structure has to hold it this load at least 4 seconds. It's an important milestone for a new aircraft. The 787 wing has to go through this on March 28th as some well-informed websites report. Will be an important moment for the program, especially as the fuselage at the centerbox... well side-of-body ... made some problems in the last test.

WTF?

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:01:21 +0100

You can get almost everything on airline bonus miles. But Finnair definitely takes this to a new level: For 3.180.000 points you get a Rintojen suurennus (or on swedish: bröstförstorning).

Bruce Schneier about aviation security

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:46:16 +0100

Bruce Schneier wrote a really thoughtful article for CNN.com about security in aviation: "Is aviation security mostly for show?". A must read!

Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders.

Sardines configuration

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:15:26 +0100

Airbus sold the first A380 in the horror configuration: Air Austral, a carrier from La Réunion firmly ordered two A380 in an economy-only configuration according to this Airbus press release. 840 seats in a single aircraft ... i assume even sardines would ask for a little bit more room They want to use it on their high-density route from La Réunion to Paris.

Problems with the bolts in the 787 programm

nospam@example.com (Joerg Moellenkamp) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:12:03 +0100

To you remember this experiment in school? You use a steel ball and at room temperature you can put it through a hole with a slightly larger diameter. Now use a Bunsen burner, put heat to the steel ball for a moment and now try the same again: The ball doesn't fit anymore.

A similar trick is used in building airplanes. To ensure that the bolts tightly fit in their holes, you freeze so they get a little bit smaller. They easily fit in their holes. When they get to room temperature, they expand and you have a tight fit between the bold and the both plates you want to connect.

Well, so far so good. It looks like, they had an interesting problem in the 787 program as reported by Wall Street Journal. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes:

They found that metal bolts, called freeze plugs, inside the wings of one of the six test airplanes had slightly damaged the surrounding material, causing delamination, or cracking, the Journal said, citing "internal company documents and a person familiar with the matter."

Hmm ... reading about all this problems ... i'm sure i'm waiting a few years before i will put a feet in a 787. I thought, Boeing has already used composites parts in other aircrafts ... thought they wouldn't have such basic problems in the 787.