Monthly Archives: January 2009
Six people were killed Friday when a twin-engine plane crashed in Huntington, West Virginia, near Tri-State Airport shortly after the pilot reportedly radioed that the aircraft was low on fuel. The Piper PA-34 reportedly hit a power line before crashing about 1.5 miles from the airport in Wayne County, West Virginia, Friday afternoon. “The pilot issued a mayday,” Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesman Jim Peters told reporters. The plane is registered to a Wilmington, Delaware-based company called Wesvin Inc. The … Read more…
Two separate planes over the weekend reportedly averted potential disasters when some quick decisions were made. On Saturday, Associated Press reported that a JetBlue plane taking off from Orlando International Airport aborted its takeoff after the crew thought it hit a flock of birds. An investigation reportedly found damage to one engine consistent with a bird strike. The Airbus A320 was accelerating Saturday morning heading for New York when the incident occurred. It returned to the gate. None of the … Read more…
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) records indicate that the US Airways jet that made the dramatic landing last Thursday had suffered a malfunction just two days earlier. The NTSB has revealed that the aircraft that made the emergency landing on the Hudson River last week experienced an engine compressor failure Jan. 13. The maintenance records of the Airbus 320 show “there was an entry in the aircraft’s maintenance log that indicates a compressor stall occurred on Jan. 13,” according to … Read more…
Just days after the emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York of a US Airways jet due to what has been widely thought to be caused by birds clogging the engines, a high school senior in North Carolina presented her science project: “Deflection Over Disaster: Metal Deflection Devices to Prevent Airplane Engine Destruction.” More specifically, Katie Stine of Hilton Head was talking about engine destruction caused by birds. For the past few years, Stine has been working on … Read more…
In light of the US Airways Flight 1549 crash, attention suddenly is being given to an organization that probably few knew about before: the Bird Strike Committee USA (BSC). It is a volunteer group of airline, government and wildlife experts that have been sharing information since 1991 on “understanding and reducing bird and other wildlife hazards to aircraft.” More than 400 people attended its annual meeting last year. On its website, it says that birds and wildlife have caused $600 … Read more…
As eyes immediately turned to a bird strike as the cause of the US Airways Flight 1549′s emergency crash landing, it is interesting to turn to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) specific rules regarding Bird Strike Mitigation and Emergency Procedures. Although much of the language is left for aviation experts to sort out, it is interesting to note that the FAA rules deal with the ability of the aircraft to sustain damage from birds given certain velocity, flight of the … Read more…
No question about it. Any time a plane is up in the air for a few minutes and suddenly has to land in water because of problems, it is a miracle a life is not lost. It’s been reported that US Airways Flight 1549 was flying about 176 miles per hour when it impacted the Hudson River near Manhattan, New York, yesterday afternoon. The exit doors opened, and people were fending for survival in the frigid water. Ferry rescue teams … Read more…
In an unusual move, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released four probable cause reports all at once along with interim factual reports on five other helicopter accidents at its Thursday, Jan. 15 meeting. All nine of these reports involve emergency medical services (EMS) flights or so-called medevac helicopter flights. Together they resulted in 35 deaths. All of the tragic accidents occurred since December, 2007, including a helicopter crash in Aurora, Illinois, where a helicopter was en route to Children’s … Read more…
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a factual report yesterday on the medevac crash that killed four in Aurora last month. The report said that the emergency medical helicopter that struck a radio tower was, in fact, equipped with a navigation device capable of displaying obstacles to the pilot but that the software was never installed. The interim report also said that the 69-year-old pilot was inexplicably flying several hundred feet lower than he should have been during night … Read more…
Robert Clifford was interviewed by Lauren Jiggetts of NBC Channel 5 in Chicago about his thoughts on the US Airways crash yesterday. The story appeared on the 10 o’clock news in Chicago as part of the station’s widespread coverage of the event. It also is available for viewing on the station’s website which is the most highly viewed news website among Chicago area television stations.
