Air Safety
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A Very Halting Affair to Remember
A320 Braking Failures Implicate Control Unit Braking problems with the Airbus A319/A320 and A321 family are officially on the radar screen. Five incidents in three years in the United Kingdom […]
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Hercules Crash In Baghdad Points To Metal Fatigue In C130’s Wing Center
"Whirl-Mode" Phenomenon May Also Be At Play When a Royal Air Force (RAF) Hercules crashed about 19 miles northwest of Baghdad on Jan. 30, the natural assumption was that it […]
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China Airlines Disputes Official Finding of Pilot Error
Carrier Says Evidence Points to Wind Shear in MD-11 Crash China Airlines (CAL) is refusing to accept the official government conclusion that pilot error caused the crash of an MD-11 […]
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A Tell-Tale for a T-Tail?
Challenger’s Stabilizer Wing Prone to Icing Stall Coming so soon after NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol’s Nov. 28, 2004, crash in snowy conditions in Montrose, Colo., and the Nov. 21, […]
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The Conundrum Of American Airlines Flight 587
Better Pilot Training or Aircraft Design? Editor’s note: Equivocation about Pilot-Induced oscillation (PIO) aside, the ability to inadvertently induce destructive yaw loads upon the Airbus A300 tail fin still exists, […]
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Automatons and Automations: Computers Continue to Perplex Pilots
Crash investigations again highlight prominence of human error and mode confusion Ever since computers and airplanes came together, modal confusion and pilot perplexity have gone hand in hand. Now and […]
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2004: A Nonpareil Year for Safety
"Series of ‘good’ years is largely a product of normal distribution rather than a new trend." – Airclaims The year just completed "was the safest ever for commercial transport," according […]
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Too Many Small Aircraft Lack A Terrain Warning System
Many owners have not yet installed these critical safety devices By Jim Hall, former chairman, National TransportationSafety Board As the community and the entire sport of racing continues to mourn […]
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New Approach Invites Wake Turbulence Encounters
More wake turbulence upsets and higher training costs could result from a new landing procedure proposed for Cleveland-Hopkins International airport in Ohio. Officials with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) […]
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MD-11 Corrective Action Plan: A Case Study in Reactive Safety
There’s nothing like a fatal crash to concentrate attention on the surviving airplanes of the same model. The case at hand involves the MD-11, an airplane whose electrical wiring and […]
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