Posts about stuff relating to airports
Serious Incident Review: Aerodrome Closed Due Works
Not all aviation incidents are accidents, but they are all learning opportunities. This serious incident involving a larger private aircraft at a relatively quiet regional aerodrome builds on some of the lessons from yesterday’s post and helps me build towards tomorrow’s discussion on Australian aerodrome works safety standards. So, let’s discuss the day a Merlin took off from a closed runway at Gunnedah.
Accident Review: Aerodrome Works Safety & Singapore Airlines Flight 006
An aerodrome is a hazardous environment: lots of moving parts, competing objectives, humans being human, weather, etc. When we need to conduct airside works, we introduce even more hazards and more risk. And this requires a specific set of management activities. One of the worst aviation accidents involving aerodrome works was the 2000 crash involving Singapore Airlines Flight 006 (SQ006) at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
The story behind this accident and its aftermath is complex but let’s look at it from an aerodrome works safety management point of view.
Hitting the Limits of ChatGPT: Blogging & Background Research
Monday’s post, on SWA1248, was the only where I had started writing before I started this silly blogathon thing. It wasn’t completely written but I had kicked it off early in December with the strong idea that ChatGPT was going to help me write it. It didn’t work out that well.
Today, I want to do a quick review of that experience to keep the levels of excitement around the AI revolution in check.
Please don’t get me wrong, AI is coming and it’s coming fast. I saw a tweet the other day that said (in effect), “AI isn’t going take your job but someone better at using AI will.”
Accident Review: Southwest Airlines 1248 Runway Surface Condition Reporting
In my day job, I've been working on Australian standards for implementing the Global Reporting Format (GRF). Unfortunately, as with many advances in aviation, this was a change brought about by an accident. While it was likely that there were many influential accidents and incidents, I want to analyse the critical inciting event in this post.
Southwest Airlines Flight (SWA) 1248 was miraculous in that everyone on the aircraft survived. But it was also tragic with the death of a child not even at the airport. And it triggered a lot of action by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the International Civil Aviation Organisation, and many other civil aviation authorities.
Runway Strip Excursion: Bad Luck or Unintended Consequence?
A little over a week ago, there was another spectacular runway excursion event caught on film and shared across social and traditional media. On the 7th April, 2021, a DHL 757-200 veered off the runway at Juan Santamaria airport in Costa Rica. The aircraft was returning to the airport after declaring an emergency due to a hydraulic issue. The aircraft appeared to have landed safely but towards the end of its roll-out, it veered to the right and came to rest in a low area with its nose high and tail broken. Luckily, this was a freighter flight and the crew evacuated safely.
Header image: Grabbed off Google
ASW #3: Accident Review: FOD Brings Down the Concorde
The third day of Airport Safety Week sees one of the annual event’s most enduring activities - the FOD walk. As I am not currently working on an airport or in Australia, I am going to miss taking part this year. Instead, I thought I would offer an analysis of the 2000 Concorde disaster as it would have to be the most significant FOD-related accident in history.
The following analysis is very limited. I just want to focus on the presence of the FOD on the runway, its immediate impact on the aircraft and factors associated with FOD detection and prevention.
Header Image : (cc) Daniel Mennerich (via Flickr)
Accident Review: Asiana Flight 214 Emergency Response
I recently wrote about emergency exercises and their role in improving your airport’s emergency plan. Exercises are not the only way to learn and to identify opportunities for improvement. Unfortunately, from time to time, the aviation industry suffers an accident and emergency response agencies kick into action. Even though these emergencies might occur at an airport far, far away, they can still provide worthwhile lessons.
In some cases you might learn about plan deficiencies, equipment malfunctions and human errors through informal channels and industry connections. And in a few cases, there might be a formal investigation covering the emergency response to a major accident. The NSTB report into the Asiana Flight 214 crash is one such investigation.
Image credit: NTSB
HBO's Chernobyl is a Must for Safety Nerds and Newbies
After Game of Thrones ended, many people wondered how HBO would survive without its flagship show. A couple of entertainment podcasts I listen to started talking about the new series called Chernobyl. As a safety nerd I was curious but didn’t have any way of seeing it where I currently live. Luckily, last month I found myself in an Airbnb in Sweden with access to an HBO account and I talked my wife into watching it with me.
I was already somewhat familiar with the disaster through university and other studies and I relished rounding out my knowledge in such an engaging way. But what really got my safety-nerd-receptors tingling was the underlying narrative and analysis of complex safety concepts such as latent failures, culture and accident investigation philosophy. In the first scene, in the first 30 seconds, I was hooked.
image credit: (c) HBO
Accident Review: Aeroflot Flight 3352 Collides with Vehicles on Runway
Aviation accident are always devastating. They precipitate great suffering on those involved and those connected to the event. They are also learning opportunities and, as a discipline, accident investigation has been for a long time focussed on maximising this learning. With this in mind, I’m going to start a new category of posts looking at significant aircraft accidents and incidents that may have some lessons for airport operators. The first is a look at what happened to Aeroflot Flight 3352 inbound to Omsk Airport in the very early hours of October 11, 1984.
Image credit: (cc) Eduard Marmet
Is this Acceptable? When a runway strip isn't wide enough
This week, on Sunday, 14th January 2018, a Pegasus 737-800 veered off the runway at Trabzon, Turkey and came to rest on a steep slope quite close to the Black Sea. Obviously, it is way too early to speculate on the causes of the accident but as airport safety nerds, I think its okay for us to have a look at the role the runway strip played in this event. a few internet comments have questioned the compliance of the runway strip and it does look narrow. However, if Google Earth is to be believed, these comments and first thoughts might not be correct.