To be sitting in the warm confines of a jet cruising at 35,000 feet, and then to be suddenly blown into the frigid stratosphere and fall, bleeding, dazed and terrified is a horrible way to die. For causing the bodies and wreckage that littered the Tenere Desert in Niger 18 years ago, a U.S. court has recently decreed that the perpetrators should pay some $6 billion in damages, pain and suffering.

Vulnerability of digital engine control can be a common mode failure
The crash of a British Airways B777 on 17 January 2008 ended approximately 13 accident-free years since the high-technology fly-by-wire airplane first entered revenue service in 1995. From what can be surmised at this point, the crash could potentially be a black eye for automation. Details remain sketchy, but the flight BA038 accident occurred in the last moments before landing at London’s Heathrow Airport after a trans-polar flight from Beijing. Up until that point, the flight had been like thousands the B777 has made routinely over intercontinental distances.

One suspects that AOPA’s resistance to restarting NAOMS, a resistance apparently shared by the FAA, may stem from apprehension. If the surveys already conducted reflect great discomfort about safety among airline pilots, a comprehensive approach to compile data from other segments of the aviation system could well point to other problems of which the FAA is presently oblivious.
Indeed, it would seem that NAOMS would complement a little known FAA initiative to delve deeply into their data-mountain in an attempt to identify accident precursors.

A new report highly critical of efforts to curb runway incursions blames much on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) purported lack of leadership. In fact, this dire finding came from FAA officials, who told Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigators that the Office of Runway Safety has not had a permanent director for the past two years, that the staff has been cut from 66 to 37 people, that quarterly meetings have not been held with regional safety program managers, and that funding for the national office has been cut severely.

‘Incident prevention’ regarded as key to ‘accident prevention’

For safety, the year 2007 can be described as the good, the bad and the ugly, according to U.K.-based consultancy Ascend. The group tracks accidents worldwide and produces a year-end review of accidents in the form of a “Special Bulletin.”

A former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) applauded the introduction of the Safe Aviation and Flight Enhancement (SAFE) Act of 2007 on 6 December by Congressman David Price (D – N.C.), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the House Appropriations Committee.

“Federal investigators rely on the information contained in these black boxes in order to piece together the events that lead to a flight disaster,” Price said. “In our post-9/11 world, it is important to have this information as soon as possible so that we can determine whether an incident is a threat to our national security.”