Delta, KLM sued for death of obese woman denied flight

The husband of an obese woman who was turned away from flying because of her weight is suing two airlines for causing her untimely death....tried to board a third flight from Frankfurt to New York, but she was not allowed on the flight when she didn't fit in a three seat gap. "We had 140 passengers on board, and they had connections and needed to travel. The question was never the seat belt. The question was the mobility of the passenger," Lufthansa spokesman Nils Haupt told Radar… (www.cbsnews.com) More...

Lessons Learned From G650 Crash Probe -- NTSB Reccomendations

Lessons learned from the fatal April 2, 2011, crash of a Gulfstream G650 test aircraft in Roswell, N.M., could bolster safety for airframers and flight test departments globally if recommendations handed down yesterday by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are adopted. (www.aviationweek.com) More...

Coast Guard Rescues Two From Beechcraft Baron Ditched in Gulf

Theodore Wright and Raymond Fosdick, of Baytown, Texas, survived the crash to tell what happened. They say the plane suddenly caught fire. "The cockpit was just filling with smoke and immediately reached down, and threw off the AV master and began a descent and about that time the fire, it was just all through the cockpit," said Fosdick. "We hit the water at about 100 knots,"... "It skipped once and we bounced about 30 feet in the area and then there were three our four… (www.wwltv.com) More...

FAA ‘Regulatory Capture’ is the Problem Beneath the Problem

In response to "‘FAA Sends Warning to American Airlines Pilots..." Richard Wyeroski, former FAA Safety Inspector, gives his take on FAA's dropped ball(s) and its consequences. "Regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. Regulatory capture is a form of government failure..." (airnation.net) More...

Coast Guard Rescues Pilot & Son from Plane Ditching in Ocean

A father in his 70s and his adult son are recovering from a nightmare Sunday afternoon when their single-engine Cessna stalled and they were forced to make an emergency crash-landing into the Ocean about 30 miles south of Big Sur. (www.nbcbayarea.com) More...

Qantas becomes the first carrier to introduce Boeing's iPad application on 130 aircraft

Boeing announced last week that pilots will be using the company’s Onboard Performance Tool (OPT) on iPad by the end of 2012...Qantas will be the first airline to incorporate the OPT for iPad, installing the mobile application aboard 130 Boeing aircraft..."All Qantas pilots will carry the iPad with them," said a Qantas representative. "Once on the flight deck, it will be attached to a custom-made mount." (www.cnngo.com) More...

Airport Security Is Making Americans Less Safe

...Since 2000 the chance that the death of a U.S. resident resulted from a terrorist attack was 1 in 3.5 million, according to John Mueller and Mark Stewart of Ohio State and the University of Newcastle... ... terrorism resulted in just 200 to 400 annual deaths worldwide, outside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq—the same number, notes Mueller, that occur in bathtubs in the U.S. each year. (www.businessweek.com) More...

In Cockpit View of 737 Landing in Milan with Low Visibility Fog (Video)

Autoland into freezing fog in Milan. Although the fog was only 500' thick, the temperature was 19º F. All the vegetation in the fog was covered in ice, that's why the trees look so funny. Visibility varied from 0 to 1,200' on the runway. (www.youtube.com) More...

Groups urge aircraft owners to participate in FAA survey

The FAA, working with a private contractor, is again collecting data on general aviation activity that is used to shape policy, regulatory, resource allocation, and safety decisions. The thirty-fourth General Aviation and Part 135 Activity Survey can be completed online, and various aviation groups are urging all aircraft owners to participate. Responses remain anonymous... (www.aopa.org) More...