Arthur Wolk Televised Argument before Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Wolk honored with first Pennsylvania Supreme Court Televised Argument
Decision by Court expected in 6 months

Watch Video - Wolk argued the scope of the General Aviation Revitalization Act as it might apply to aircraft maintenance publications.

PENNSLYVANIA - (9.19.2011) - Aviation attorney Arthur Alan Wolk was honored recently by being assigned the very first televised appellate argument before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The argument was doubly significant because it was held in the building that first housed the United States Supreme Court from 1790-1803.

Arthur argued the scope of the General Aviation Revitalization Act as it might apply to aircraft maintenance publications such as a maintenance manual or service bulletin. Arthur argued that either the Service Bulletins were not parts and thus the statute of repose should not apply or if the maintenance instructions or Service Bulletin were parts or components the 18 year statute of repose applied and thus plaintiffs’ lawsuit was filed within the required 18 years.

The issue is critically important to aviation crash litigators because courts are not uniformly holding that manufacturers can be liable for defective maintenance instructions including Service Bulletins if the airplane component that failed is more than 18 years old to which the instructions applied no matter how recently they were issued.

TSA Has Its Hands In Too Many Pies

The recent change in TSA rules subjects airplane passengers to greater humiliation than the terrorists who started the whole thing get if they are captured. At least a terrorist gets searched in the privacy of custody because he’s done something wrong. We get sexually assaulted in public for doing something right.

Rather than keep the terrorists out of our country and away from the airport, we have dropped to a new low level of incompetence and that is to subject ourselves to treatment that should be reserved for criminals.

What is the pretext for all of this? Some terrorist who never should have been allowed on an aircraft in the first place had explosives in his underwear. No pun intended but the last time I went through security I wasn’t sure whether I should be happy or sad as the guy in blue groped my private parts. Now I hope some new guy doesn’t put explosives in his orifice or the future of searches could be very uncomfortable indeed.

We now have scanners that purportedly show anything, including what may be where the sun doesn’t shine. We have to accept this technology and not allow TSA to have the option to grope us like some organized perversion. The scanners show more and protect us better anyway because groping doesn’t really disclose what’s hidden in all the nooks and crannies so it is ineffective anyway.

Decades ago, I offered that there is no way to prevent aviation terrorism unless the terrorists are prevented from getting to the airport.

We continue to disregard that caveat by reacting absurdly to one terrorist gig after another as if the belated reaction would have prevented the terrorist act in the first place or even dumber that terrorists are going to try the same thing a second time.

It has now become so arduous and humiliating to board an aircraft that a parent must decide whether to expose a child to groping that he has warned them never to allow and an adult has to decide whether to suffer the humiliation of being touched inappropriately or denied access to his flight and be searched anyway.

We need preapproved passenger identification, cornea scanners to confirm identities and an outright refusal to allow anyone in our country who isn’t totally vetted by the country that issues his passport.

TSA should keep its hands out of our pies and try something else.

Arthur Alan Wolk

November 2010

Arthur Wolk Comments on the Close Call at Philly Airport

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — At Philadelphia International Airport on Friday morning (10/22/10), the jumbo jet was two and a half miles out on final approach. Another flight, American Airlines flight 1209 was on the ground, ready for takeoff, when air traffic controllers cleared the flight for departure.

“American 1209, the guy on final looks awfully close,” said the pilot.

And when the plane taxied onto the runway, the chartered 747 for the Phillies had to abort the landing.

“91 heavy, go around, climb and maintain 3,000, fly runway heading,” said the tower controller to the Phillies flight.

“That’s when these airplanes typically have an accident. That pilot wanted no parts of switching runways that close in, two miles in, so he declined that,” said aviation attorney Arthur Wolk. “Every airplane that time of the day at this airport was using the very same runway. That creates a problem; it’s a traffic jam.” Wolk says it appears the air traffic controller tried to do too much with too little time.

Phillies General Manager Ruben Amaro says he noticed the aborted landing onboard the plane. “Oh yeah, we had to circle, circle back around,” he told Eyewitness News when asked about the incident.

A spokesman for the FAA says general guidelines call for planes to be kept three miles apart. But when the American airliner was told to move onto the runway, the Phillies’ 747 was only two and a half miles out. When told of that, the spokesman said it’s a judgment call on the part of the air traffic controller.

“I think the tower controller was enthusiastic to get two departures out before the Phillies airplane – the 747 – landed,” Wolk said. “Unfortunately, things kind of backed up in a hurry and he wasn’t able to do that.” Wolk says that’s what causes risk. “That’s to me where the series of potential errors that could lead to an incident or an accident began,” he said.

Just how safe are the skies above Philadelphia? An exclusive CBS 3 I-Team investigation has uncovered FAA reports never before made public that provide some answers. Twenty one times this year, planes in flight and on the runway at Philadelphia International Airport have come too close, prompting FAA investigations.

Aviation expert and attorney Arthur Wolk said, “So you had the potential for a three-plane mid-air for a brief moment here, and that’s really scary.” Wolk says while alarms in the planes helped prevent a crash, he’s concerned what might have happened. “That was a bad day that could have been a really bad day, a disastrous day,” said Wolk. “But fortunately, the safeguards that were built into the systems worked.”

Don Chapman, president of the air traffic controllers union in Philadelphia, said, “The controller was given additional training to resolve the issues that might have led to that.”

Cockpit Video Recorders Can Prevent Accidents and Assist in Analyses

Cockpit video recorders, especially in commercial airliners and aircraft flown for hire, are a vital next step in accident prevention and analyses.

Pilots have been against them because they fear that they will be used to evaluate their performance in the cockpit as well as for disciplinary action, rather than for accident investigation.

The reality is that cockpit voice recorders alone are frequently insufficient, even when aided by flight data recorders, to evaluate the human factors in aircraft accidents. Cockpit video recorders are an essential technology that has come of age.

There should be no reluctance to use the videos for training purposes and for disciplinary action as well, if dangerous behavior is observed, since flight safety is the goal.

Today's technology allows for data stream recovery in flight and is already used for trend monitoring of aircraft systems. Soon, it will be possible to have all of the necessary information for accident and crew performance analyses to be downloaded in real time as the aircraft makes its way to the destination. This will allow computers to do mechanical troubleshooting while airborne so mechanical related delay, diversion or worse can be avoided by taking preemptive action at the next stop, or even in flight.

Preventing accidents by utilizing all available tools is critical to the maintenance of the outstanding safety record of U.S. airlines and the safety improvement that can be achieved by foreign air carriers. Enhancing crew performance by evaluating it while in service can be a windfall of opportunity and help make good, safe pilots even better.

Once introduced, no pilot will think about the existence of cameras in the cockpit. They will soon become as innocuous as flight data and cockpit voice recorders became shortly after their introduction, an event that pilots also objected to for the very same reasons as are being articulated now.

Aviation safety is no accident and no step that will improve safety should be spared.

Arthur Alan Wolk

Wolk Repeatedly Warned Cessna, FAA and NTSB of Icing Problems

New Airworthiness Directive on Cessna Caravan Vindicates The Wolk Law Firm's Warnings on Known Icing

In a stunning reversal the Federal Aviation Administration has issued AD 2007-10-15 on the Cessna Caravan.

Icing wind tunnel research commissioned by The Wolk Law Firm in connection with the case of Randolph vs. Cessna revealed serious flaws in the design and operation of the deicing system of that aircraft. Experts hired by Arthur Alan Wolk confirmed that the problems ranged from the choice of wing airfoil, design of the deicing boots, flaws in the design of the inflation hardware, inadequate stall warning, underpowered engine, and complete inadequacy of the pilot's operating handbook for safe flight into known icing conditions.

After a spate of icing accidents Cessna Aircraft Company, encouraged by the FAA and the NTSB revised the Pilot's Operating Handbook to prohibit the use of flaps when airspeed reductions occurred due to unshed ice accumulations.

One of the experts working for the Wolk Law Firm, Harry Riblet, a noted designer of general aviation airfoils openly criticized the Cessna, FAA, and NTSB action and wrote to them repeatedly warning that use of the flaps could help but not cure the controllability problems with the airplane when flying in icing conditions. Riblet was ridiculed by the Government and Cessna even though his airfoils adopted for use by homebuilders around the world had proven themselves stall spin proof.

This Airworthiness Directive, with the full force and effect of law, now removes any restriction for the use of flaps in icing conditions and instead requires their use when the aircraft airspeed is reduced to 110 knots or less. It also prohibits the flight of the aircraft in moderate icing conditions for which the aircraft was originally certificated and removes the words "certified for flight into known icing conditions" from the handbook without revoking the certification entirely.

The AD requires installation of a low speed warning in all Cessna Caravans and cautions pilots that the stall warning may be completely unreliable in icing conditions.

What is remarkable about the Airworthiness Directive is what it doesn't do.

1. It does not revoke the "known icing certification" of the Caravan which means it may still be dispatched into conditions where ice is reported or forecast.
2. It ignores the fact that moderate icing is unpredictable so it may still not be possible for pilots to safely exit those conditions.
3. It ignores the bad design of the deicing boots and does not require the introduction of a water separator into the system to prevent ice boot inflation line icing.
4. It does not require that all Caravan pilots be taught how to recognize and recover from a tail stall.
5. It does not require the installation of vortex generators on the boots of the wing and the horizontal stabilizer to delay the onset of ice induced stall.
6. It does not require Cessna to install a stall warning indicator that is impervious to ice induced errors.
7. It defines moderate icing encounters as a reduction in airspeed to 120 knots in cruise flight which is already in most instances a state beyond which the aircraft will be recoverable once control is lost.
8. It further defines moderate icing as an accumulation of 1/4 inch on the wing strut which is the amount of ice accumulation Cessna requires before operation of the deicing boots in the first place even in light icing conditions.

What this AD demonstrates once again is the FAA does not understand yet the aerodynamics of the Cessna Caravan but had to do something to stem the constant series of ice related accidents with these aircraft. Instead of doing what's right and what's needed, it granted Cessna yet another reprieve at the expense of safety. More will die or be maimed next winter but hopefully this is a start to the end of this battle.

Pilatus PC-12 Crash Stinks

Fourteen people killed in an aircraft that can only carry 10 has the stench of carelessness all over it. Most PC-12s can safely hold only six to nine passengers and one or two pilots. Why were there so many aboard and where were they seated? These youngsters and adults were going skiing. Where was the baggage and where was it stowed? How much did it weigh? Why did the aircraft divert? What were the qualifications and experience of the pilot? Was there a second pilot aboard?

These preliminary answers are needed to explain why this aircraft fell out of the sky nose down before several eyewitnesses. Did it aerodynamically stall because it got too slow on final approach? Did it accumulate ice when flying at altitude and suffer a tail stall when the final flaps were selected? The weather at the accident site looked good but there was an area of significant icing en route. Did the engine quit as it has a number of other times in PC-12s, dooming the aircraft to a crash short of the airport?

My calculations show that to stay within the gross weight limits, the pilot could only have put about 160 gallons of fuel aboard, less than what is required for a two and one-half hour flight plus reserves. The payload of a PC-12 is about 3,900 pounds. Seven adults weigh a minimum of 1,300 pounds. Seven children weigh about 500 pounds minimum. Baggage is figured at about 1,000 pounds total which includes skis, boots, poles, clothes, etc. Together, that comes to 2,800 pounds, leaving about 1,100 pounds available for fuel or about 160 gallons.

The flight plan was for two and one-half hours en route which, together with required reserves, would have left very little useable fuel at the time of arrival and would have explained the diversion to a closer airport. Essentially the National Transportation Safety Board needs to look at whether the fuel was managed properly, or whether the engine quit on a short final approach with the fire coming from unusable fuel that misted or perhaps there was more unusable fuel than certified.

Other questions must also be answered. Some of the equipment on board may have had a nonvolatile memory chip that could be helpful but the fire and impact may have destroyed that forever.

The PC-12 like so many other turboprops has deicing boots that inflate to remove accumulated ice. These boots have proved inadequate in many other turboprops and if runback ice accumulated on the tail or on the wings at altitude and could not be shed, the extension of flaps might have shifted the center of lift aft and caused a tail stall which would have pitched the nose down sharply as described by witnesses. Coming on the heels of Continental flight 3407 at Buffalo for similar reasons, it is long overdue that turboprops be prohibited from flying in icing conditions until they all are retrofitted with anti-ice instead of deice equipment. That way ice is not permitted to accumulate at all on aircraft that have proved time and time again their inability to fly in icing conditions safely.

This crash like most will be found to have been preventable and unnecessary. How horrible for these parents and their families!

Arthur Alan Wolk
March 23, 2009

Arthur Wolk's Perspective: As Close As It Gets - It’s Time For Us, The Passengers, To Take Control Of Aviation Security

The Northwest Airlines near terrorist disaster on December 25th of 2009 brings back into focus just why we are in this horrible security predicament in aviation.

Before 9/11, we as a people were let down by our Government. The Bush 41, Bush 43 and Clinton administrations did not take terrorism seriously and did nothing to curb the growth of organized hatred for the United States, in spite of explicit warnings. Nothing was done after the World Trade Center bombings of 1994 to seriously address the threatened destruction of these structures. The FAA permitted knives of up to a four-inch blade to be carried by passengers on aircraft. The Immigration and Naturalization service did not have a list to prevent known terrorists from flying or from entering our country. The FBI ignored explicit warnings from at least two of its field offices that persons of Middle Eastern descent were learning to fly but not land airliners. The State Department was just too busy throwing cocktail parties to do anything useful. On 9/11 the terrorists were stopped for further interrogation because they all carried box cutters and then allowed to board because it wasn’t illegal in spite of the implications that anyone with a brain could have figured out.
 
So 3,000 people lost their lives and everyone remonstrated, while in Middle Eastern capitals they celebrated.
Fast forward, some guy is denied boarding on an American Airlines flight from France to the United States because he appears unstable and a day later he is allowed on. He tries to blow the airliner up unsuccessfully with a shoe bomb and now we all must take off our shoes before going through security.
 
Fast forward, a man is identified to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria by his father as radicalized and likely to cause harm to the U.S. and he is placed on the terrorist watch list but allowed to board an airliner in Nigeria for a flight ultimately to the U.S. The State Department does nothing. ICE, the new improved name for the old ineffective agency that is supposed to keep the bad guys out of this country does nothing. The TSA does nothing, and he is allowed to board a U.S. bound airliner with a bomb.
 
Now Lagos, Nigeria has been repeatedly on the U.S. State Department list of airports with questionable security anyway, yet this man who is a known risk is allowed to board, fly to the Netherlands and then board a U.S. bound aircraft with no one stopping him as a known terrorist.
 
Fortunately, his bomb doesn’t go off and we are spared another disaster of incompetence.
 
Now what is TSA doing about all of this born of the Government’s failure to do anything to protect us once again? It is going to impose more stringent security measures on whom…us. How stupid is this? What will it accomplish to keep us in our seats for the last hour of the flight because this man was said to have entered the bathroom for 20 minutes before he tried to detonate his bomb. Nothing we have done since 9/11 and nothing since each of these events have protected us from anything.
 
The only way to prevent terrorism on aircraft is to keep the terrorists away from the airport. Anything less will not work since our Government has proved itself again and again to be incompetent.
 
Here’s a further suggestion. Fire the people at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria responsible for this neglect. Fire the people at ICE who didn’t make their terrorist list a no fly list. Fire the people at the FAA who have proven once again to be ineffective. Fire the people at Homeland Security and TSA who still do not do their jobs to protect us.
 
We passengers are the last hope to prevent a terrorist from causing the deaths of all aboard. The Northwest passengers were lucky because had the detonator worked, they would all be dead. We are all self deputized as air marshals since the Government has failed us. We have the duty and responsibility to do the profiling that our Government refuses to do and report anyone who fits our view of a suspicious or dangerous person. If the Government won’t do it, we must help ourselves.
 
Lastly, we must require a background check of everyone who boards or wishes to board an International Flight. All done by and at the expense of the country who issues the passport, which then should be held fully responsible for the consequences of failing to their jobs effectively. In short, if you want to come here, you should prove that you will do us no harm.
 
We are at war and we still treat aviation as if it is not part of the front line in this war. We will have a disaster if we don’t start taking this risk seriously.

REPEAT LESSON-LANDING IN THUNDERSTORMS IS DANGEROUS

American Airlines learned yet again that attempting a landing in a thunderstorm can be very tricky. This is the second such accident suffered by the carrier in 10 years when its crew landed in very heavy rain from a thunderstorm over the airport.

Here’s the problem. Thunderstorms generate very sharp changes in air current direction and velocity called wind shear. They also drop lots of rain in a short time making visibility poor and just coating the runway with sheets of water making tire traction and braking marginal. Even with the best auto braking and anti-skid, stopping distances are greatly increased. Pilots reacting to the bumps and windshear on approach add extra speed which further increases the landing distance and stopping distance as well. Put this all together and an overshoot is predictable, as occurred recently in Jamaica.

Fortunately, the aircraft left the runway at very slow speed so even though it broke into three pieces, the velocity was slow enough so injuries were not life threatening.

Interestingly, this airport had no safety areas beyond the runway ends to prevent damage to the aircraft, opting instead to use all the available real estate for the runway. Had the required 1,000 foot safety areas been in place beyond the 8,900 foot paved surface, or had EMAS (porous concrete that slows aircraft about to leave the runway) been installed, this airplane likely would have been towed out intact and no one would have received injury. One day, all airports that receive commercial service will install such safety features but until then, these accidents will continue. At this airport not only was there no safety area, there was an abrupt drop-off from the runway edge to the adjacent road and beach below, which broke the airplane that otherwise would have likely remained intact. The airport approach light system was incomplete due to a month long outage which, had it been working, would have assisted the crew in making a stabilized approach under the adverse weather conditions.

Bottom line, every pilot should once again be reminded that landing in a thunderstorm is a chancy proposition, especially on an island runway at night in very heavy rain and windshear. Holding for 20 minutes until the rain subsided would have been a better choice. There simply is no substitute for a stabilized approach and without it, landings become an unpredictable event.

American Airlines should lobby very hard for safety areas or EMAS at all airports it serves. It should also remind its flight crews that landing long and fast in the rain at night leaves very little margin left if the airplane can’t stop. All aboard this flight were very lucky.

Arthur Alan Wolk
December 24, 2009

Watch Arthur discuss the crash on MSNBC

THREE ASLEEP IN THE COCKPIT

THREE ASLEEP IN THE COCKPIT, THE CAPTAIN, THE FIRST OFFICER, AND THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Recently, two events captured the news media’s attention. One was a Delta Airlines Boeing 767 that landed on the taxiway instead of the runway at the Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. The other was a Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 whose crew failed to communicate with air traffic control or the company dispatch for more than an hour and a half, and missed its destination by 150 miles until the flight attendant knocked on the cockpit door to ask why there was no descent for landing.

The first incident occurred when the Delta crew flew a lengthy international trip. When the Boeing 767 arrived at the airport, the runway end identifier lights were out of service (they’re the little white flashing lights that tell pilots where the runway starts) and the localizer was also shut down (the electronic pathway that guides pilots to the runway end). So, with an air traffic controller obviously asleep at the switch, the big B-767 landed on the taxiway right next to the runway. Under different circumstances, like another airplane on the taxiway, this could have been a disaster. You might ask how that could happen, but here are all the things that add up to this event.

With all of the runways at the Hartsfield, giving landing clearance to an airliner on a runway with much of its safety equipment inoperative is inexcusable. The crew should have refused the landing clearance. But the FAA has for years contributed to the problem by using confusing lighting at the airport. I have argued with the guy in charge of airport signage for 30 years but since the idea wasn’t invented in his head, nothing gets changed for the better. The runway lights are orange, both sides and the centerline. The taxiway lights are green down the centerline and blue on each side. Since the centerline of some taxiway’s are green, and some are yellow like the runway and yes some are green and yellow at the end where the runway intersects, it’s no wonder that a pilot looking at them from afar can mistake a taxiway, especially a large one, for a runway. So the flight deck crew, tired after a long flight, looks at the myriad of lights and thinks the taxiway is to the left instead of the right because there is nothing to identify it clearly and lands on the taxiway. Nothing really unsafe here as long as the taxiway is unoccupied because the taxiways at the Hartsfield are as wide as runways at other airports. If the taxiway had totally blue lights it would have been unmistakable but, no, the FAA has a better idea, keep it confusing so one disaster or near disaster after another can happen. The controller too must have been glassy eyed because he didn’t warn the Delta flight and at that hour he had nothing else to do.

All accidents and incidents have more than one cause. In this case it was the combination of no warning, no runway identifier lights, no localizer, confusing taxiway lighting, tired crew.

The Northwest flight is another near disaster. The flight departed San Diego, CA for Minneapolis. Shortly after passing Denver, air traffic controllers were unable to raise the flight by radio. Company dispatch likewise couldn’t get the flight deck crew’s attention. The aircraft flew 600 miles, passed Minneapolis and then only after a flight attendant pounded on the cockpit door, the crew turned the airplane around and landed. The cockpit voice recorder was recorded over so the cockpit conversation that preceded the turnaround was unavailable. The flight deck crew first reported they were having a heated discussion and just lost situational awareness. Then they said they were working on their laptops, a prohibited flight deck activity. The FAA’s punishment was swift and not unexpected, emergency revocation of the flight deck crew’s pilots’ licenses, a vocational death knell to this very experienced and otherwise incident free crew. It is painful to see this unfold because the crew was obviously sleeping. Had they come clean right away and blamed it on scheduling, or interruption in their circadian rhythm from sleep deprivation, perhaps a little mercy would have been shown them at least on appeal.

But never touched by the press was the fact that the Department of Homeland Security was more sound asleep than the crew. That aircraft was airborne far longer than any flight on 9/11 yet no fighters were scrambled to check on it, no steps were taken to protect cities, sensitive military or civilian installations from an aircraft that, for all the Department knew, was hijacked. Falling asleep and endangering the passengers by possibly running out of fuel is one thing but risking them being shot down is quite another. In short, everyone on that aircraft could have been dead either from a crash or a worst nightmare, being shot down for no good reason.

What we need to ask ourselves is how did the Department of Homeland Security fail us again? It demonstrates to me that we have learned nothing from 9/11 and worse, after hundreds of billions spent, we are no better off eight years later.

Now Congress, if it can interrupt its current investigation of the two concussions suffered annually in NFL play, should instead focus on why Homeland Security failed us and whether a Bugs Bunny alarm clock is needed in aircraft cockpits. More realistic however, should be the introduction of real time video of the cockpit crew steaming back to the dispatcher. This would obviate the need for a cockpit voice recorder and be a useful tool to address a growing problem of cockpit fatigue due to the boredom of automated aircraft. It would also vastly simplify accident investigation.

This week was prophetic and lucky. The fatigue suffered from having nothing to do is risky, the absence of hundreds of deaths because of it is really lucky, and the incompetence of the Department of Homeland Security may sadly portend bad things to come.

Arthur Alan Wolk

October 29, 2009

Watch Wolk discuss the issue on MSNBC

HUDSON RIVER TRAGEDY, SAME OLD, SAME OLD

Nine people dead and everyone is wondering how this could happen. The nut cases are out in force, shrieking that small aircraft are a menace and should be banned from New York airspace. The NTSB sent a go-team along with representatives of each of the aircraft makers and their engine builders to investigate the mid-air crash. If it had happened to anyone else, they would have sent a new hire with two weeks training.

This cause of the accident is simple and anyone who has ever flown into New York’s airspace could have predicted something like it would happen. Even though Visual Flight Rules (VFR) aircraft regularly use this airspace, if a careful pilot wants to get radar flight-following he might as well try calling the President because no one answers.

Altman didn’t have the chance to call Newark Approach Control before his aircraft was struck by the climbing helicopter

At the same time, a Liberty Helicopters tour was about to embark on a sight-seeing flight from the

30th Street Heliport and enter the same densely populated airspace, flying Southbound over the Hudson while climbing.

The helicopter pilot was climbing South in a blue helicopter that blended perfectly with the Hudson below while Steve, flying the Saratoga, was headed South.

As the aircraft converged, the helicopter gaining altitude and the fixed wing no longer in a position to see the helicopter climbing, they either collided or the downwash from the helicopter literally sucked the air out from under the airplane’s right wing. The right wing of the aircraft contacted one of the rotor blades and was immediately sliced off. The helicopter rotor, now hopelessly unbalanced, tore off, shaft and all, and the two doomed aircraft fell to the river below.

Here's a video of the crash shows that the Altman Piper was struck from the left and below by the helicopter. The video clearly establishes that Altman had the right of way as aircraft to the right have the right of way. The helicopter just crossed right in front of the Piper and it appears that unsuccessful evasive action by Altman may have preceded the collision by an instant.

Anyone who has ever flown a low wing Piper knows the visibility limitations forward and down. Why did this happen? The answer is simple. First New York must make its radar separation services readily available to VFR traffic because the concept of “see and avoid” just doesn’t work. Second, the question must be answered whether the helicopter company pilots communicate their intentions on any frequency to warn other aircraft to look for them before they climb up into the stream of traffic. There is a frequency 123.05 for this purpose that is published on the Aeronautical Charts but it is a very crowded and often garbled frequency rendering it useless for traffic avoidance. Last, the choice of blue for the color of Liberty’s helicopters makes no sense given the crowded environment in which they operate.

Nine people dead for nothing but the FAA’s failure, once again, to do its job. The FAA failed to regulate the Helicopter tour operators so they would announce their intentions or be in contact with air traffic control. The FAA failed to assure clear procedures for aircraft entering the stream of VFR traffic South and Northbound in this narrow corridor. In short the FAA created a free for all and this time instead of the helicopters crashing into themselves, which the usually do, they took another airplane along.

The media’s talking heads are frightening in their complete ignorance of both the problem and the solution. Sometimes it’s more frightening to hear them talk than it is to know the facts because they have exposure that is far greater than their uninformed views deserve. I have flown this route many, many times. It is safe when pilots fly in a straight path at a single altitude until they transit the area. It is unsafe when others climb into the flow of traffic unannounced and with no air traffic control whatsoever.

Rules of flight must exist in this corridor. Aircraft and helicopters travelling North must hug the Manhattan shore at an altitude of 600 feet or below. Aircraft and helicopters travelling South should hug the New Jersey shore and be no lower than 700 feet and below 1100 feet. All aircraft transiting the area should be talking to someone who is an air traffic controller. All aircraft climbing or descending should be required to be in positive air traffic control.

Hopefully changes for the better will come out of this. I doubt it will happen because the FAA never does anything when a few innocent people die, it waits until an airliner dies before public pressure forces it to make changes.

This accident and the unspeakable misery it has caused nine families is unforgiveable.

Arthur Alan Wolk

August 11, 2009

Additional Details Emerge on Air France 447 Crash

As additional details about the crash of Air France 447 are released, we now know that more information than was previously reported was being transmitted in real time including speed and altitude excursions, g-forces and all system read-outs, including computer faults.

Prior to the crash, Airbus had issued a bulletin instructing all crews to be certain, by comparing to global positioning systems that their airspeeds were being properly read by the computers from the Pitot-static Tubes on the nose of the aircraft. The suggestion is that these tubes can ice up in severe weather in spite of being heated. Here’s the reality – the reason for the odd airspeed differences is that in situations of severe turbulence the airspeed variations can be large because the wind direction and velocity are rapidly changing as is the flight altitude of the aircraft. In short, severe wind shear causes rapid changes in wind direction and velocity.

The bulletin makes sense but as the information trickles in, it begins to appear that severe turbulence and a breakup is more likely the culprit – a very bad ride indeed. The aircraft must be found in order to determine just what broke first – the tail, parts of the tail or the main wing box, the wing or parts of the wing. Only then will we know if the testing to ultimate load required for transport category airplanes is both realistic and stringent enough.

This never should have happened.

Lastly, there are serious limitations on weather radar on-board, as well as on those people who must interpret it. With all of the computing power on the A-330, much weather data was available to be downloaded, not only from the on-board radar but also from ground and space-based facilities as well because the computers can make a better decision on whether and how to proceed in the face of severe weather. We need to go there.

Arthur Alan Wolk
June 5, 2009

ONE LEVEL OF SAFETY-AN ELUSIVE GOAL FOR COMMUTER AIRLINES

There is only one level of air safety. The problem is the experience level of the people who carry out that mission and the airplanes they must carry it out in.

There is no substitute for years in the cockpit and hours in make and model to ensure safety. A pilot can’t be worried that he doesn’t make enough to eat, put gas in his car, get his uniform cleaned or pay the rent if you want him to be clear headed enough to perform optimally. The salaries are too low, the benefits non-existent, the airplanes less than fully capable for the mission and still these kids do a great job. They make more takeoffs and landings in the worst weather and work the worst hours for the worst pay. They are motivated, enthusiastic and do their best to be safe. They are however for the most part youngsters and far less experienced than their big airline brothers.

Their airplanes still have outdated deicing systems but they are expected to fly in the worst icing. They commute to work because they can’t afford to live near their base and they are expected to perform at their highest level. Their dispatch is not to big airline standards and they are expected to deliver their passengers safely no matter what the delays, no matter what the weather and no matter how many legs they have flown in the soup.

Why is there surprise when one of them crashes?

What needs to happen is closer FAA oversight…heard that one before. They need a living wage and benefits. They need airplanes that are modern and safe in every respect i.e. no turboprops. They need the authority to cancel a flight without fear of retribution, read that getting fired, for doing so.

Continental Flight 3407 is an example of what’s wrong not with just commuters but with commercial aviation. They flew an airplane with boots that everyone knows do not work safely in many icing conditions and certainly those in existence that night. They were tired. They were not fully trained to understand the limitations of their aircraft, the limitations of its certification to fly in ice and what cues they would receive that the airplane was failing them and what to do about it. Maybe they should also have been told that if anything happens their company, the manufacturer, other pilots and the Government will turn on them and blame them for something for which they were blameless.

The problem with commuters isn’t their pilots, it’s the people who regulate them, run them and build the airplanes flown by them.

Arthur Alan Wolk

June 9, 2009

Uncompleted Pitot Tube Modification is Only Part of Air France 447 Crash Story

At 35,000 feet, the Airbus A330, the Air France 447 plane that crashed, is only about 25 knots between cruise speed and aerodynamic stall. Thus, if wind shear and turbulence are sufficiently violent, the aircraft can stall and the air data computers will take the autopilot offline because the equipment senses an anomaly. The airplane will be thrown around like a feather and composite structures will fail because they have never been tested to ultimate load. That stall can also result in the aircraft becoming unrecoverable while it breaks up on its way to lower altitudes.

With all the computing power in an A330, sources outside of the aircraft should be used to supplement radar so that the computer can determine when it’s time to turn back.

It’s also time for certifying authorities to rethink how to test composite aircraft structures. It is no surprise that that the big thing found floating in the Atlantic Ocean was the composite vertical stabilizer separated from the rest of the airplane. Speculation is that the Pitot Tubes, which were unmodified as recommended for better ice resistance, permitted erroneous speed readings. I believe this is possible but unlikely. However, if the risk was so high, the modification should have been required before further flight was permissible.

Why isn’t anyone talking about the tail fuel tank modification that was designed to prevent explosions caused by lightning? Did the airline comply with that directive? There are a lot of questions…too few answers.

Arthur Alan Wolk
June 8, 2009

Watch Wolk discuss the issue on MSNBC

AIR FRANCE 447-A VERY SCARY AIRPLANE CRASH

Air France Flight 447 is down. Sadly, it is expected that all 228 aboard are lost. The earmarks are all too familiar. Severe weather and a loss of radar contact usually mean in-flight break-up and rapid descent. This would, of course, explain the lack of a distress call and automatic reporting of electrical failure and significant turbulence by the onboard real time condition reporting system.

The aircraft went down in an area called the Intertropical Convergence Zone (see picture above). This is an area where the Northern and Southern hemisphere winds and weather collide to make a perfect condition for severe convective weather. That means severe thunderstorms frequently exceeding 50,000 feet with damaging turbulence, hail, intense rainfall and lightning. On the night of the crash, this area was especially hot with thousands of miles of severe weather making circumnavigation impractical.

Therefore, the only way to get from Rio to Paris was to penetrate this band of severe weather, a daunting task for even the best aircrews flying the most sophisticated airliner. There is no coincidence that shortly after entering this area of severe weather the aircraft was lost. Whether it was due to an encounter with severe turbulence or a lightning strike that exploded a fuel tank can best be determined when the wreckage is found, and surely it will be one day.

The cockpit voice and flight data recorders will also be very helpful but the automatically transmitted data already portends the turbulence, electrical anomalies and tragic end. This is why cockpit voice and flight data recorder information should be transmitted real time to home base.

Coincidentally, an Airworthiness Directive had been issued in 2005 by the French authorities requiring float valve changes in the trim fuel tanks of this aircraft model’s horizontal stabilizers. The purpose was to avoid lightning or static electricity setting off an explosion in those tanks. The compliance time was quite lengthy and, while this aircraft was built in 2005, it is not clear whether it had the benefit of the improved floats. If it didn’t, or the fix was ineffective, a lightning strike on the trim tanks could have been a catastrophe that even the best crew would have been unable to avoid.

It is, therefore, quite possible that the old problem of airliner exploding fuel tanks has reared its ugly head again. While better fuel tank standards have been published and bantered about the industry and governments since TWA 800 exploded in 1996, none of the legacy airplanes have benefited from the new standards and this Airworthiness Directive, which aimed to chip away at the problem.

Aircraft radars have come a long way, providing flight crews with far better weather avoidance information than ever before. Unfortunately, weather avoidance is not weather penetration, but the demands of airline flying and schedules often blur the difference.

Avoidance means not going there, penetration means getting into it and avoiding the damaging weather by skillful use of the radar. The letter works most of the time but not always. Aircraft and human graveyards are full of the results of severe weather penetrations because there are limits on even the best radars. Intense rainfall absorbs signal strength and confuses returns, intense cells hide others just behind and give a false sense of security that safety is just a few miles away, when the worst may be yet to come.

Last year a computer failure pitched an identical aircraft so violently, the crew thought there was a clear air turbulence encounter. The manufacturer said it was impossible and could not have occurred. Later it appeared that indeed the impossible could happen. One out of many computers could cause a dangerous and sudden pitch excursion that might have led to structural failure. That must be ruled out in this case. While turbulence may have been the initiator, computer failure may have increased its lethality.

No one wants an accident. No one deliberately tempts an accident with a planeload of families in the back and pilots who likewise want to get home alive up front. Indeed, they are the first to go. But whether this accident is the result of mechanical failure, the failure to simply remain on the ground in the face of impassable weather or the unlikely act of a saboteur, it is nonetheless the worst of nightmares come true.

Weather. Mechnical failure. Equipment malfunction. It looks like any one of these may have played a role. Whatever the ultimate cause, with today’s technology there is no reason for an airliner accident. With the prospect that this single field of human endeavor may one day be accident free, these deaths must not be in vain.

Arthur Alan Wolk
June 3, 2009

Watch Wolk discuss the crash on MSNBC

Stop Faulting the Flight Crew for the Crash of Colgan 3407!

The flight crew was blameless for this crash and everyone investigating the crash knows it. It’s just easier to blame the dead crew than to blame the manufacturer who failed to equip this airliner with modern anti-ice equipment. The airplane suffered a tail stall as soon as the flaps 15 setting was selected and the crew did what they were taught – they reversed the procedure and retracted the flaps.

The captain, in spite of the hideous criticism for having nonessential conversations below 10,000 feet, was otherwise professional and all required briefings were carried out.

The aircraft pitch up and airspeed loss has occurred dozens of times in Cessna Caravans just before control is lost in ice. It is a pitch up when the tail loses its ability to provide required down force due to ice contamination. The airspeed bleeds off rapidly and the stick shaker and pusher react. The crew knows that the standard recovery of lowering the nose won’t work so they pull back like they were taught. Lateral control is then lost, followed by pitch control as well.

This aircraft was never certified to fly in freezing drizzle or rain and the crew, like every other airline crew, was misled into believing it was. No one is told that if the conditions are anything other than moderate – clear or rime – the airplane cannot fly. The use of outdated rubber boots, which allow the ice to accumulate before activation, aggravates the situation and just leads to trouble.

It is true that the captain was not the world’s best pilot and the first officer was a kid. Their training stunk and their non-pertinent discussions below 10,000 feet demonstrated poor judgment. However, the transcript from the cockpit voice recorder, read in context, reveals that nothing in their past or their conduct on that flight caused this accident.

No one should confuse legal liability for a crash with blame placed by investigating authorities. Legal responsibility belongs to Continental, Colgan, Pinnacle, and Bombardier and they will pay for all the losses. Blaming this crew is a hideous attempt to hide the truth. Airplanes with deicing boots no longer have a place in commercial aviation.

Arthur Alan Wolk

May 12, 2009

HAWKER 800 Crash in Minnesota – Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript Released

The NTSB just released a transcript of the cockpit conversations of the captain and first officer of a crash that took their lives and six others in Minnesota last summer. There were no surprises here. The flight crew flew into an area of very severe weather with the airport literally surrounded by thunderstorms that reached as high as fifty thousand feet and had spawned at least one tornado. They experienced turbulence and heavy rain as they approached the airport, which had a wet runway from a recent very heavy shower.

The crew violated the sterile cockpit rule – no non-pertinent conversation below ten thousand feet, distracted themselves by fooling with the radar tilt when they had the runway in sight, and failed to properly conduct both the approach checklist and the pre-landing checklist. Worse yet, they failed to extend full flaps, dooming their flight. Without full flaps deployed they could not activate the lift dump feature in the Hawker jet, an absolutely mandatory condition if they ever hoped to luck out and stop on a runway that was too short for this aircraft under those conditions.

The lift dump system extends spoilers both above and below the wing. Without it, the airplane doesn’t place enough weight on the wheels early enough to spin them up and allow the anti-skid equipment to work. In fact, with the engines at idle thrust, an attempted go-around was futile given the normal time it takes for a crew to react and change the aircraft configuration.

As in most aircraft accidents, there is more than one cause. Anxiety over the weather, the rough ride, the short runway, the non-pertinent conversation, and the failure to complete the checklist all combined to doom this flight. The failure to anticipate the heavy weather, the effect of water on the short runway, the inability of the aircraft to safely operate within the available runway contributed to poor decision-making by this crew. Sadly, even a crew that is well trained, skillful and has the best of intentions also becomes the victim of a combination of events that only they could avoid – a chain that must be broken if they and their passengers are to survive. It didn’t happen, and they too paid with their lives.

Every pilot talks about the near accident he has had with the bravado that only a hero (in his own mind) can bring to the discussion. The problem is that if the stars line up and the events build in an inexorable combination of troubles, one day those pilots won’t be able to tell their story. No doubt these pilots were careful, decent, well-intentioned men. Unfortunately this disaster began with faulty pre-flight planning, faulty appreciation of the heavy weather that would be at the destination, faulty cockpit crew coordination that led to the careless skipping of what for this airplane was critical to a successful landing, full flaps.

This accident will mean nothing if it doesn’t serve as a lesson to all pilots that the Federal Aviation Regulations, known as operating rules, are minimum standards. That means that even if they are complied with to the letter, they may not be enough to successfully complete a flight. The failure to meet those minimum requirements, however, is a virtual guarantee of an accident.

Regardless of what position The Wolk Law Firm must take in the litigation for the deaths of the passengers that follows this accident, all of us, including the families of those passengers who have suffered unspeakable losses, lament the unnecessary deaths of everyone aboard.

Arthur Alan Wolk
February 13, 2009

Why Turboprop Aircraft Shouldn’t Fly in Ice – The Continental 3407 Crash Reminds Us of Long-Forgotten Lesson

Continental 3407 is just the most recent example of why turboprop passenger aircraft are unable to safely fly during icing conditions.

The American Eagle ATR 72 in Indiana, the Embraer 120 in Michigan, and some fifty Cessna Caravan crashes, all demonstrate the need to reassess whether turboprop aircraft, all equipped with long outdated and discredited deicing boots for ice protection, should be permitted to be dispatched when the weather looks like ice might be experienced, as in winter clouds.

All of these aircraft have wings that have high aspect ratio, meaning they are long and thin from front to back. All of them have tiny horizontal tails and use deicing technology rather than anti-icing technology to be certified for flight in known icing conditions. In short, the manufacturers of each of these aircraft convinced their certifying authorities to approve the aircraft to fly in weather conditions conducive to the formation of airframe icing because their deicing boots (inflatable rubber boots on the leading edges) could discharge enough ice to allow them to continue flying safely.

The reality is that large airplane manufacturers gave up deicing boots fifty years ago because they knew that they don’t work effectively. By design, deicing boots assume that ice will be allowed to collect on the wings and tail of the airplane and then be shed when the boots are inflated. The flaw in that theory is that most boots do not shed all the ice; in fact, residual ice continues to build, further impeding their performance until they just don’t work well at all. Additionally, deicing boots are usually limited to five percent of chord – the distance from front to back of the wing – so runback icing which collects beyond the boot coverage is unaffected by boot inflation.

Why do turboprops use boots? Simple. Turboprop manufacturers have been slow to utilize state-of-the-art anti-icing technology like heating the leading edges of the wings or extruding glycol from the leading edges (which then runs back and keeps the wings free of ice). To heat the leading edge, one must extract heat from the engines, compromising power and increasing fuel consumption. Also, many turboprop engines just don’t have enough bleed air to use for this purpose. The TKS, or glycol system, requires plumbing, a wire mesh leading edge that needs frequent cleaning as well as glycol, which increases the aircraft’s weight.

This age-old problem is what took Continental 3407 down. The weather from a warm front that had overridden cold air at the surface consisted of rain that was falling into the cold air and becoming SLD, super-cooled large droplets. These drops, still liquid but below freezing, immediately turn to ice when they touch a cold surface like an aircraft wing or tail and then run back past the boot coverage, contaminating the airfoil and destroying its ability to create lift. What pilots are not told is that no aircraft is certified to fly in freezing rain or drizzle so if they are dispatched in such weather, they are test pilots.

In most instances the exposure to SLD is brief but for Continental 3407 it wasn’t brief enough. It encountered freezing rain, and as a result, accumulations of ice on the wings and windshield, a condition which was discussed by the crew. They activated the deicing equipment and fully expected it to take care of the encounter. What they didn’t know was that the aircraft was never certified or equipped to handle freezing rain or drizzle and that ice was collecting on the tail, aft of the boot coverage, which they could not see.
As they descended for their instrument approach, the crew was unaware that another danger awaited, the extension of their wing flaps. With the flaps up, the tail was barely able to exert a down force on the aircraft sufficient to keep the nose where the crew directed it. Once the flaps and landing gear were extended, however, the tail would have to counteract the tendency toward a down nose pitch caused by those extensions. It simply could not do that as a result of the ice contamination. Just as soon as the flaps were extended, the load requirement on the tail increased, it stalled, quit flying, and the nose of the aircraft pitched suddenly down. Ice on the wings aft of the boots rendered the ailerons less effective in controlling roll, and the aircraft rolled violently as well. The crew immediately attempted to retract the landing gear and flaps, just as they were taught to do, but they had insufficient altitude to recover and insufficient elevator authority left in the tail to arrest the steep pitch down. The aircraft struck the ground in a near vertical attitude, perhaps flattened at the last moment due to the flight deck crew’s quick thinking to retract the flaps. However, it was insufficient to arrest the descent and all aboard were killed instantly.

This accident was a duplicate of the ATR-72 and Embraer accidents of years ago and similar to many of the Caravan crashes as well.

What do all these aircraft have in common? They all have deicing boots instead of anti-icing equipment. While many of the Caravan crashes have occurred in very benign icing environments, deicing boots have repeatedly shown their inability to safely see an aircraft through winter flying conditions that can be anticipated. The accident rate and its toll on human lives are simply unacceptable. The manufacturer of the Dash 8 Q400 that was Continental 3407 knew better than anyone that boots were wrong for aircraft of this size and use. It doesn’t use boots on any other aircraft it manufactures and for good reason.

Likewise Continental knew, or should have known, that it was dispatching Flight 3407 into freezing rain and drizzle and its aircraft was not certified for that flight condition. More likely than not, Colgan Airways, the Continental contract carrier operating the flight, was likely told the Dash 8 could operate in all winter weather that could be anticipated. In fact, it simply could not.

The NTSB will investigate and the Canadian Transportation Safety Board will participate. The result will be long and expensive studies into icing once again. That’s what governments do – they study, study and re-study but they do not fix the problem. The fix is simple. Restrict the flight conditions under which turboprops can be dispatched. They are already restricted, but obviously the airlines don’t yet get it. Then re-equip all turboprops used for passenger transportation with more effective anti-icing equipment. Lastly, prohibit the extension of flaps for any landing where accumulations of ice are suspected on the aircraft. Turboprops, and especially booted turboprops, have no place any more in the transportation of people. Their time has come and gone. Good riddance!

Arthur Alan Wolk
February 13, 2009

Continental Airlines Crash Update - The Spin Doctors Take Over

The latest from the Continental Airlines B-737 accident at Denver is the claim that a sudden gust of wind caused the aircraft to swerve off the runway. So, a pilot with 11,000 hours of flying time and a very experienced first officer couldn’t do a successful crosswind take-off in one of the simplest of all airliners? Not!!!

These same spin doctors said the B-737 accident at Colorado Springs in 1991 was caused by a sudden, theretofore never heard of, wind shear in the form of a rotor that rolled down the mountainside, followed the aircraft around the traffic pattern and rolled it over, killing 25 people.

The spin doctors were out in full force again when USAir’s B-737 rolled over and dived to the ground, killing 133 more people near Pittsburgh in 1994. Then they said that wake turbulence (a wind gust from a preceding aircraft) miles away rolled the aircraft up into a ball.

Following that, it was a faulty connection to a pilot’s altitude indicator that rolled a B-737 into the ground in Panama, though the broken wire had nothing to do with that instrument’s function, it was later learned.
Oh, and of course, it was a pilot’s suicide that caused another 737, this time in Indonesia, to roll in from altitude, killing all aboard. The co-pilot on that one was either in the lavatory or reading the paper, I guess.
Here’s the deal. The current National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is more incompetent, or politically too sensitive, than the NTSB that existed in 1991 to 1994. The government needs to throw out all the party participants like the airline, pilots’ union and manufacturers and bring back some of the investigators who reluctantly accepted my findings, and those of other experts, and concluded correctly that the rudder is the problem. While the rudder may be blameless on this one, a sudden gust of wind sure in hell wasn’t the reason for this crash either.

Arthur Alan Wolk
January 1, 2009

Continental 737 Crash at Denver–Better Look at the Rudder

Yet another Boeing 737 crashes, but this time no one was killed. The flight crew masterfully rejected a takeoff that went wrong. Loud noises were heard that were reminiscent of the sounds identified just before domestic flights on United 585 and USAir 427 rolled over and dived to the ground, killing a total of 152 people in 1991 and 1994 respectively, and overseas airlines COPA 201 and SilkAir 185 crashed, taking the lives of another 151 people in 1992 and 1997.

If I were the NTSB investigator in charge, I would pull the rudder actuator and take some SEM photographs to see if the actuator bears a resemblance to the three other actuators that showed witness marks of jamming.

In my opinion, the Boeing 737 still does not have a reliably redundant rudder control system, and even after hundreds of deaths, the FAA allowed Boeing to build an entirely new generation of B-737’s with a single rudder actuator when all of its other aircraft have at least two.

Noises heard on earlier cockpit voice recorders were the death sounds of an aircraft about to go out of control. These sounds are generated by the hydraulic system telegraphing its agonizing inability to control the rudder. At speeds below 190 knots, the rudder will cause a rapid roll of the aircraft that cannot be stopped before tragedy occurs.

While redesigned after the accidents of the 1990’s, the rudder control system still has no true redundancy. If the flight crew of this aircraft sensed that they were about to lose directional control, they saved themselves and all their passengers from certain death.

The airplane is trashed and some people were hurt, but everyone will ultimately go home to their families this Christmas. Congratulations to a “heads up” Continental crew.

Arthur Alan Wolk
December 22, 2008

Madrid MD-82 Crash, Déjà Vu

Two decades ago in Detroit Michigan, Northwest Airlines Flight 255, an MD-82, crashed on takeoff, killing all aboard except for a toddler. The crew had failed to extend the wing flaps and the takeoff configuration warning was disabled due to lack of electrical power to the device, so no warning was sounded.

Now it appears that first witness reports about an engine explosion on Spanair MD-82 upon its takeoff in Madrid, Spain on August 20 were in error. Instead, investigators have found that the plane did not have its wing flaps deployed when it stalled and crashed to the runway killing 153 of its 175 passengers and crew. Once again, it appears that the crew failed to extend the wing flaps, thus ignoring that item on the pre-takeoff check list. The cockpit voice recorder should confirm or deny whether the crew announced the need to set flaps for takeoff.

Typically, takeoff configuration warnings do not sound because they have been disabled due to frequent false warnings. A warning system is useless if it frequently malfunctions because flight crews will just ignore the warnings as unreliable. On the other hand, pre-takeoff check lists, which include challenge and response by the flight crew working together, should have resulted in proper flap extension. It has not yet been determined why the takeoff warning on the Spanair aircraft didn’t work and it was never determined why it didn’t work on the Northwest aircraft more than 20 years ago.

The flight path of both the Northwest and Spanair aircraft are eerily similar, with the nose seen coming up to takeoff altitude, followed by an aerodynamic stall resulting in a rapid descent to the ground with a large loss of life.

The fact that Spanish investigators heard no takeoff configuration warning on the cockpit voice recorder is just a “same-old, same-old” repeat of the well-known adage that aircraft always telegraph their intention to fail long before an accident. This problem has been around for at least 20 years and obviously a fix has not been ordered by the FAA, the agency responsible for ensuring aircraft safety.

It is hideous that the manufacturer hasn’t fixed this known fatal flaw that has now taken hundreds of lives.

Arthur Alan Wolk
September 18, 2008