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.

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

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

NASA Deep Sixes Important Aviation Safety Information

NASA spent $8,500,000 of our money to study aviation safety the right way: interview pilots in strict confidence so they could disclose what they see as critical safety failures in our aviation transportation system. Now NASA, instead of releasing the information which shows that the FAA is totally inept at gathering safety information, has ordered the contractor to destroy it because it would be embarrassing to government and the airlines.

This stonewalling of public information obtained in the ordinary course of its duties is unforgivable and a disgrace. The data shows that the FAA is totally in the dark about aviation safety and could benefit from this NASA data because it would demonstrate how and why the FAA doesn't have a clue what's going on in the National Airspace System.

The reason no one talks to the FAA is obvious. The FAA will prosecute anyone from whom it receives information that relates to safety of flight even if the purpose of the disclosure is to improve safety. Moreover the FAA totally discounts information from the field about safety defects in aircraft so mechanics and pilots are loathe to report troubling problems as no action is ever taken. In addition, the FAA rats out the whistleblowers and gives them no protection, hanging them out to dry, to lose their jobs and to go it alone. Therefore, there is no incentive whatsoever to help the FAA.

NASA, on the other hand, gives a "get out of jail free card" with the report of sensitive safety information so there is an incentive to provide timely and helpful information that can be useful in preventing accidents. What is troubling about this revelation, however, is that a serious effort was made by NASA due to a perceived aviation safety need to get up close and personal so it could acquire the most useful data and now it will “deep six” it because it would embarrass another agency of government – the FAA – that agency being solely responsible for the safety of flight. In short, instead of using this information as a tool to improve the FAA, the most ineffective agency of government, NASA sees fit to destroy the information instead. Hide critical information that might be embarrassing to the government? Never!

Arthur Alan Wolk
October 2007

WHEN IT COMES TO AVIATION SAFETY, WHO IS REALLY TO BLAME? The FAA ... The Agency That Is Supposed To Protect Us

Why does it take an air crash to raise the public's concern about aviation? Even though air travel is still the safest means of transportation (based on the percentage of fatalities compared to the number of people who fly), there are hundreds of accidents just waiting to happen ... and US Air 1016 was one of them. The FAA has known, for years, about the dangers of wind shear during hazardous weather conditions, and in fact, has been installing special Doppler radar systems at busier airports. However, the FAA never moves quickly enough. Charlotte-Douglas International Airport doesn't have their Doppler radar yet. The scheduled delivery for 1995 wasn't soon enough to have protected the 37 killed last week. While the FAA is bogged down in bureaucratic red-tape of its own making, pilots, who are the ultimately responsible for the safety of the flight, are denied timely information that can help prevent accidents like the one in Charlotte. Unfortunately, the FAA's ineptitude doesn't stop there. All too often, the FAA knows about manufacturing defects that will clearly affect the safety and/or crashworthiness of airplanes. The FAA doesn't do anything about those either, or it acts too late.

Between December of 1992 and December of 1993, 13 people were killed in two airplane crashes caused by hurricane force turbulence in the wake of Boeing 757 jetliners. The FAA knew, as early as 1989, that the 757 would, sooner or later, cost lives. Again, the FAA did nothing.

Why didn't the FAA react? By mandating safe distances between aircraft, the number of flights leaving from and arriving at airports would be cut down, which would cut into industry profits.

In the early '70s, the FAA was aware that the DC-10 baggage door had a design flaw. It did not act, and 350 people were killed in a Turkish Airlines disaster.

The FAA knew if it allowed Boeing Company to glue certain airliner sections together, they would have to monitor the long term effects. They did not, and the roof blew from an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737, while the side blew out of a Boeing 747. More fatalities resulted in both cases.

The FAA knew there were service problems with the engine attachment bolts on the Boeing 747. It did not act, and two engines came off an El Al 747, killing 45 people in the Netherlands.

The FAA has known for years about flaws in various general aviation aircraft -- everything from pilot seats that slide suddenly rearward, causing loss of aircraft control, to undrainable contamination in fuel tanks which result in engine stoppage, to tails that fluttered off hundreds of times, killing hundreds of people, to engines used in helicopters which are so unreliable that the Justice Department sued the manufacturer for fraud in regard to the engine's unreliability, while the FAA continues to certify the engine safe for flight.

The list goes on and on, but the one thing is clear. It is time to overhaul the FAA from the top down, and bottom up.

The people within the FAA who want to do their jobs and are interested in safety cannot because they are overruled by managers. People with the agency who want to change things to make the FAA more safety conscious are overruled by political considerations imposed on the FAA by influence wielded by the aircraft manufacturers -- the same manufacturers the FAA is supposed to regulate.

There is even a product liability bill that would not permit the imposition of punitive damages against an aircraft manufacturer, if the FAA certified the aircraft before it was marketed. Though everyone in government calls the FAA incompetent, Congress still wants to make the FAA's approval the difference between people being compensated and manufacturers punished, and their not being held liable at all.
The FAA has the responsibility to ensure the safety of flight and to promote aviation. Aviation does not have to be promoted anymore, but safety of flight needs a lot of work. The new FAA needs to have as its sole job the enforcement of existing regulations, the streamlining of regulations to make them more effective, and the enforcement of those regulations (for a change) against those responsible to make flight safe: the aircraft manufacturers who can make the airplanes safe.

While the FAA may not put time and money into forestalling accidents until there is a tragedy, the FAA is itself a tragedy. Somebody needs to do something about its many faults before more lives are tragically and unnecessarily lost.