Posts about stuff relating to airports
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
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