Flight Safety Information - April 30, 2024 No. 086 In This Issue : Incident: RAM B738 at Tunis on Apr 26th 2024, bird strike : Incident: Finnair A333 over Canada on Apr 28th 2024, engine shut down in flight : American Airlines Airbus A321 damaged in ground incident at Charlotte Airport : REPORT Two Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 tail strike incidents were caused by a software glitch : Indonesia's Mount Ruang erupts again, closes international airport : 'Unruly and physically combative' passenger to pay $20K to United Airlines : In deploying AI, the Federal Aviation Administration faces unique challenges : GAO calls on FAA to better examine drone flights near airports : Aircraft seat shortages hamper airlines’ efforts to upgrade planes : NASA Shows a Jet Engine Small Enough to Fit on a Kitchen Table : CALENDAR OF EVENTS Incident: RAM B738 at Tunis on Apr 26th 2024, bird strike A RAM Royal Air Maroc Boeing 737-800, registration CN-RGG performing flight AT-573 from Tunis (Tunisia) to Casablanca (Morocco), was climbing out of Tunis' runway 11 when the crew stopped the climb at 4000 feet and entered a hold following a bird strike into an engine (CFM56). The aircraft returned to Tunis for a safe landing on runway 19 about 25 minutes after departure. According to information The Aviation Herald received the aircraft sustained a number of damaged fan blades. The aircraft is still on the ground in Tunis about 73 hours after landing back. https://avherald.com/h?article=51803926&opt=0 Incident: Finnair A333 over Canada on Apr 28th 2024, engine shut down in flight A Finnair Airbus A330-300, registration OH-LTM performing flight AY-10 (dep Apr 27th) from Chicago O'Hare,IL (USA) to Helsinki (Finland) with 194 passengers and 12 crew, was enroute at FL350 about 450nm north of Montreal,QC (Canada) when the crew reported they had needed to shut the #2 engine (CF6, right hand) down. The aircraft drifted down to FL220 and turned southbound to divert to New York JFK,NY (USA), where the aircraft landed safely on runway 22L about 2:20 hours after leaving FL350. A listener on frequency reported the crew declared PAN PAN due to the failure of an engine. The airline reported the crew needed to shut the #2 engine (right hand) down following an engine failure. https://avherald.com/h?article=5180338b&opt=0 American Airlines Airbus A321 damaged in ground incident at Charlotte Airport An American Airlines Airbus A321 sustained significant damage during a ground incident at Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) in North Carolina. The Airbus A321-200 with registration N136AN had arrived from Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) as flight AA901 and was parked at position 315. However, while being towed when the mishap occurred. According to reports, the tug towing the airplane collided with the underside of the fuselage behind the nose landing gear, causing substantial damage. Thankfully, there were no injuries reported as a result of the incident. The extent of the damage to the Airbus A321 and the cause of the collision are still under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The aircraft has been taken out of service and awaiting maintenance and repairs before it returns to service. https://airlive.net/news/2024/04/29/american-airlines-airbus-a321-damaged-in-ground-incident-at-charlotte-airport/ REPORT Two Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 tail strike incidents were caused by a software glitch A software glitch caused a temporary shutdown of Alaska’s flight activity nationwide. On the morning of Jan. 26, as two Alaska Airlines flights from Seattle to Hawaii departing six minutes apart experienced a tail strike. The pilots of each flight felt a slight bump and the flight attendants at the back of the cabin heard a scraping noise. As the noses of both Boeing 737s lifted skyward on takeoff, their tails had scraped the runway. Both planes circled back immediately and landed again at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The incident grounded both flights and forced a temporary shutdown of Alaska’s flight activity nationwide. Horrifyingly, investigators have now discovered that a software glitch was responsible for the incident. According to the Seattle Times, the tailstrikes occurred largely as the result of a bug in a program sold by a Swedish firm called DynamicSource. The program is supposed to deliver “crucial weight and balance data” that pilots enter into their flight computers to help determine stuff like “how much thrust the engines will provide and at what speed the jet will be ready to lift off.” The data [delivered] was on the order of 20,000 to 30,000 pounds light. With the total weight of those jets at 150,000 to 170,000 pounds, the error was enough to skew the engine thrust and speed settings. Both planes headed down the runway with less power and at lower speed than they should have. And with the jets judged lighter than they actually were, the pilots rotated too early. https://airlive.net/reports/2024/04/28/report-two-alaska-airlines-boeing-737-tail-strike-incidents-were-caused-by-a-software-glitch/ Indonesia's Mount Ruang erupts again, closes international airport Manado (Indonesia) (AFP) – Indonesia's remote Mount Ruang volcano erupted several times again on Tuesday, the country's volcanology agency said, forcing evacuations, the closure of a nearby international airport and the raising of the alert level to its highest. Authorities had warned the threat from the volcano was not over after it erupted more than half a dozen times this month, sparking the evacuation of more than 6,000 people. Ruang, located in Indonesia's outermost region of North Sulawesi province, erupted at around 01:15 am local time (1715 GMT Monday) and twice more Tuesday morning, the volcanology agency said in a statement. The volcano sent a tower of ash more than five kilometres (3.1 miles) into the sky, it said. The agency also re-instated a six-kilometre (3.7-mile) exclusion zone and said locals should be aware of "the potential for ejections of incandescent rocks, hot clouds and tsunamis due to eruption material entering the sea". Images released by the agency showed a molten red column bursting into the sky, a large ash cloud spilling from the crater and burning embers near local houses. More than 800 people live on Ruang, all of whom were evacuated this month. Some had returned to their homes after the emergency response status ended on Monday, an AFP journalist said. It was unclear how many residents had gone back and how many were forced to evacuate one more. Ruang's latest eruption also prompted authorities to again close Sam Ratulangi international airport in the provincial capital of Manado, more than 100 kilometres away, according to a notice from state-run air traffic control provider AirNav Indonesia. The notice said the airport was shutting down due to "Ruang volcanic ash". Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific "Ring of Fire". https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240430-indonesia-s-mount-ruang-erupts-again-closes-international-airport 'Unruly and physically combative' passenger to pay $20K to United Airlines An Englishman owes United Airlines $20,638 in restitution fees for threatening to “mess up the plane” and “arguing loudly” with his girlfriend, which caused the plane to be diverted, according to an affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court of Maine. United Airlines flight 883 departed from London at around 8 a.m. on March 1 and was heading to Newark, New Jersey, when a flight attendant informed the captain of an “unruly and physically combative” passenger identified as Alexander Michael Dominic MacDonald, 30. The incident began when MacDonald started “arguing loudly” with his girlfriend. The lead flight attendant “kindly asked him to lower his voice as to not disturb the other passengers.” At first, MacDonald complied, but a few minutes later, the crew heard “loud yelling” from the back galley. The flight crew “tried to calm down” MacDonald, who became “verbally and physically aggressive and threatened to “mess up the plane.” MacDonald reportedly also put his hands on the lead flight attendant’s shoulders and backed the crew member into the corner, the affidavit said. The crew and two fellow passengers restrained MacDonald in flex cuffs, and the lead flight attendant determined the flight “needed to be landed for the safety of the crew.” United Airlines told USA TODAY that MacDonald and his girlfriend "appeared to be intoxicated." The flight landed safely at Bangor International Airport in Maine at around 10 a.m. on March 1 where MacDonald was arrested. The flight continued to Newark. The FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Bangor Police Department investigated the case, according to a press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Maine. The release said MacDonald had been held in custody since his arrest and pleaded guilty on March 22. On Thursday, the U.S. District Court of Maine remanded MacDonald to the custody of the U.S. Marshal to be deported back to England and ordered him to pay $20,638 in restitution fees to United Airlines. MacDonald and his girlfriend are also banned from future United flights, the carrier said. So far this year, there have been 649 reported incidents of unruly passengers, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. In March alone, there were 171 reported cases. https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2024/04/29/unruly-passenger-fine-united-airlines/73505562007/ In deploying AI, the Federal Aviation Administration faces unique challenges As federal agencies ramp up their AI work, observers say the FAA is taking a “cautious” approach as it wrestles with safety questions. The Biden administration has made the deployment of artificial intelligence a priority, directing federal agencies to look for ways to integrate the technology into their operations. But the Federal Aviation Administration faces unique challenges with that goal. Through partners, its own internal research staff, and work with NASA, the country’s aviation safety regulator is looking at a range of AI applications. The FAA has a chief scientific and technical advisor for artificial intelligence — machine learning, who is charged with expanding the country’s role in understanding how AI might be deployed in aviation contexts. And the agency is working on a plan, along with NASA, for certifying AI technologies for use in the national airspace system. “We are harnessing predictive analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to develop streams of data,” Polly Trottenberg, the FAA’s acting administrator, said in a note within one of the agency’s recent four-year research plans. “These capabilities allow us to create new tools and techniques and adopt new technologies.” But hurdles remain for actually deploying AI. While the FAA has implemented risk management standards for the safety of national airspace, the agency told FedScoop it still needs to “adapt AI risk management methodologies and best practices from the National Institute of Science and Technology,” along with other institutions. The FAA has released several use cases in its AI inventory, but many of them are still somewhat modest, experts told FedScoop. Other uses are still in the research phase. There are further constraints, too. While the FAA is investing in research and development related to artificial intelligence, the aviation industry is more broadly facing ongoing safety issues with Boeing aircraft and an overworked population of air traffic controllers. And then there’s the matter of ensuring that flying stays safe, despite excitement about using artificial intelligence. “It’s still very early days,” noted Anand Rao, a Carnegie Mellon data science and AI professor. “They’re taking a conservative, cautious approach.” The FAA declined to make Dr. Trung T. Pham, the agency’s chief AI leader, available for comment, nor did it answer FedScoop’s questions about staff within the agency focused specifically on artificial intelligence. The FAA, along with the Department of Transportation, have also declined to provide further detail about a mention of ChatGPT for software coding that agency staff removed from its AI inventory last year. Still, documents about several AI use cases from the agency, along with interviews with experts, provide insight into the FAA’s approach to the technology. FAA pursues no-frills approach to AI When asked about the most promising use cases for AI, a spokesperson for the FAA pointed to several, including predictive analytics that could help mitigate safety risks, assistance with decision support, automating certain processes, and improving engagement through virtual assistants. Some of those use cases have already been disclosed in the Department of Transportation’s executive order-required AI inventory while others are discussed in the agency’s four-year research plan. The DOT recently edited its inventory and some of the use cases appear to have been redacted, though the agency did not respond to a request for comment. Some of these AI applications are related to the weather, including a convective weather avoidance model meant to analyze how pilots navigate thunderstorms. The agency is also looking at an effort to use AI to support air traffic controllers, per the four-year research plan, as well as using artificial intelligence to address aviation cybersecurity. And the FAA is studying the use of AI and voice recognition technology to improve flight simulations used in pilot training. Still, many of the AI use cases identified by FedScoop are rudimentary or still relatively early in their deployment, while others remain in the research phase. Several that are in use are relatively modest — and reflect the agency’s circumspect approach. The FAA’s Office of Safety and Technical Training, which conducts data analysis and investigations, has already deployed a model for use by the runway safety team. The internal tool assists the team with automatically classifying runway incursions as part of their analysis. FedScoop obtained documents describing how this system works — but the technology discussed in those documents, Rao said, represent well-tested algorithms that have been around since the 1990s and early 2000s, and not the newer technology used for systems like ChatGPT. Another is the “regulatory compliance mapping tool,” which is essentially an internal search engine-esque system for regulatory concepts. The tool is built off a database of documents provided by organizations like the FAA, federal agencies, and the International Civil Aviation Organization, a branch of the United Nations that focuses on aviation. The idea for the tool, which leverages natural language processing, is to reduce “research time from days or weeks to hours,” according to a presentation by the Aeronautical Information Standards Branch dated Sept. 20. Still, the tool is “essentially just a database,” said Syed A.M. Shihab, an assistant professor of aeronautics and engineering at Kent State University, and not particularly advanced. While around 175 FAA employees can access the tool, the agency told FedScoop, the platform is used fewer than 20 times a week, according to that same presentation. The FAA, which said the “internal FAA tool” is in the “development phase,” appears to have spent more than $1 million with a company called iCatalyst — which did not respond to a request for comment — to build it, according to a federal government contracts database. “The FAA is continually working to make our processes more efficient. The Regulatory Compliance Mapping Tool (RCMT) is an initiative that can significantly speed up safety research,” the agency said in a statement. In March, the agency said security authorization would kick off later that month and that it had completed a Section 508 self-assessment process. Other systems disclosed in the AI inventory either don’t use the technology yet or haven’t been deployed. These include a tool to help transcribe conversations between pilots and another, called ROMIO, meant to help pilots understand cloud structures, according to FAA documents. FAA’s AI work goes beyond disclosed use cases Other AI work is ongoing, but it’s not clear if or how it’s been deployed. The FAA has worked with researchers at Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland to use AI for measuring collision risk, according to federal contract records. It also appears to have procured the development and implementation of a machine learning model from a company called Deep AI Solutions for its safety information sharing system. The FAA’s work with NASA, meanwhile, includes looking at AI for “runway configuration management, digitization of standard operating practices and letters of agreements, and natural language processing,” per a spokesperson. It also represents NASA’s machine learning airport surface model, which was supposed to help the FAA capture the location of routes, taxiways, and runways using a real-time machine learning system. NASA said this work has helped contribute to a framework it’s working on with the aviation agency. And at the MIT-based Lincoln Laboratory, which is funded by the Defense Department and the FAA, researchers aren’t focusing on AI for safety-critical applications, according to Tom Reynolds, who leads the lab’s air traffic control systems group. For example, the lab is researching a technology called the “the offshore precipitation capability” to assist with weather radar coverage gaps. “Things that are more advisory and not directly in the loop of deciding whereas individual aircraft fly, but rather helping air traffic controllers and air traffic controllers with situational awareness and strategic decision making ,” Reynolds said. Technically, the FAA has been looking at AI for decades — and lots of preliminary work with the technology does seem to be underway. For example, in March, the FAA announced a data challenge meant to help use artificial intelligence to address problems concerning the national airspace, and it’s recently hosted workshops on machine learning, too. Email records show that the FAA is invited to monthly meetings of the Department of Transportation’s AI task force. The FAA is working with industry and international counterparts on an AI roadmap, and developing a certification research framework for artificial intelligence applications with NASA. The plan is focused on developing a way of certifying AI applications that could be deployed in the national airspace in a highly safe way. It’s expected to launch later this year, the space agency said. Still, most of the AI work at the FAA isn’t for direct use in aviation. That reality reflects the broader challenge of using the technology in a safety critical context. In meetings with industry, the agency’s chief adviser for aircraft computer software has highlighted the challenge of approving AI software, while Pham, the agency’s AI chief AI, has detailed concerns about traceability, per a blog post on the website of RCTA, a nonprofit aviation modernization group. Similarly, a roadmap the FAA is working on with other aviation agencies around the world has encountered several challenges, including issues with predictability and explainability, the tracking of datasets that might feed AI models, training humans to work alongside AI, model bias, and safety. “Because aviation is a safety critical industry and domain, in general, stakeholders involved in this industry are slower to adapt AI models and tools for decision-making and prediction tasks,” said Shihab, the Kent State professor. “It’s all good when the AI model is performing well, but all it takes is one missed prediction or one inaccurate classification, concerning the use cases, to compromise safety of flight operations.” https://fedscoop.com/in-deploying-ai-the-federal-aviation-administration-faces-unique-challenges/ GAO calls on FAA to better examine drone flights near airports Washington — The Federal Aviation Administration should make sure its strategy on safely integrating drones into the National Airspace System assesses how counter-drone technologies at airports affect its efforts, the Government Accountability Office says. FAA is developing a drone integration strategy, expected to be completed by June 30. The agency regulates the commercial use of drones – also known as unmanned aircraft systems, or UAS – under 14 CFR Part 107. Provisions prohibit operation in most controlled airspace – such as near airports – without agency authorization. Cases of unauthorized drones flying near airports are increasing and can present a safety risk to aircraft and compromise air traffic control operations, GAO says in a new report. “As the number of drone incidents rises, it is increasingly likely that these drone incidents, whether accidental or intentional, could overwhelm local authorities’ ability to respond and cause major disruptions to operations, damage infrastructure and harm people,” the report states. After analyzing FAA planning documents and federal regulations and interviewing industry stakeholders about the effects of counter-drone technologies, GAO concluded that FAA “does not address how it will assess those effects.” GAO recommends Congress amend statutory authorities related to drone detection and counter-drone operations to “better protect airports against an active drone threat.” https://www.safetyandhealthmagazine.com/articles/25371-gao-calls-on-faa-to-better-examine-drone-flights-near-airports Aircraft seat shortages hamper airlines’ efforts to upgrade planes Continuing supply chain bottlenecks come as carriers race to unveil new cabins to attract customers Aircraft seats, in particular those for first and business class cabins, are among the most important differentiators for airlines in their bid to draw passengers. A shortage of aircraft seats is adding to bottlenecks in the industry’s supply chains, hampering plans by airlines to refurbish cabin interiors and unveil new upgraded planes. Aircraft seats, in particular those for first and business class cabins, are among the most important differentiators for airlines in their bid to draw passengers. A combination of factors, including tighter certification rules and shortages of labour stemming from the pandemic, is continuing to hold up their production. The supply chain wobbles have come as airlines race to unveil new cabins as the industry recovers from the impact of the pandemic. Lufthansa in Germany this month unveiled a new set of long-haul cabins as part of a €2.5bn investment, which was significantly delayed because of supply chain problems. Extensive refurbishment programmes by several airlines, including the biggest ever $2bn retrofit programme from Emirates, have added to the demands on suppliers. French jet engine maker Safran, which is also one of the biggest suppliers of aircraft seats, said on Friday that business-class seat deliveries fell 25 per cent in the first quarter as some shipments slipped into the second quarter. Olivier Andriès, chief executive, said certification rules by regulators had become “much more demanding” and were impacting the “entire interior industry”. Premium seats are “really important to airlines, they are part of the differentiation for passengers but are also really complicated to engineer, to manufacture and to certify”, said Nick Cunningham, analyst at Agency Partners. Executives from Boeing and Airbus said this week that the industry’s supply chain remains constrained, including supplies of cabin equipment. Guillaume Faury, Airbus chief executive, said the company was still struggling with supplies of cabin equipment, not just limited to seats, as well as with supplies of aerostructures. “It reflects the diversity of the difficulties and challenges in the supply chain.” Boeing, which is struggling to contain its latest crisis following the mid-air blowout of a section of one of its 737 Max aircraft in January, identified seats as a specific reason for constrained production of its 787 wide-body plane. “Seat suppliers out there are in shorter capacity. A lot of that is buyer furnished, but nevertheless, it holds up an aeroplane,” Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun told analysts. Mark Hiller, chief executive of Recaro Aircraft Seating, the world’s leading economy class seat maker, said electronics shortages for embedded in-flight entertainment systems were continuing to hamper deliveries of seats. Airlines typically order the electronics and provide them to the seat manufacturers for installation. “The increased demand and the ramp up in production means even if [suppliers] are delivering more than a year ago, the demand has increased significantly more and therefore there are still bottlenecks,” Hiller told the Financial Times. The company has introduced extra shifts, also on weekends, to cope with later deliveries. It has also installed seats on aircraft that are still waiting for the full complement of electronics. Recaro is having to work on a “bespoke solution” for every second customer order, he said, while declining to name any one in particular. Cunningham said: “Right now, there is such a recovery going on in long-haul air traffic in particular that it is a collective problem for everybody. What airlines really want is to get their new aircraft.” Sir Tim Clark, the chief executive of Emirates, told the FT in an interview earlier this year that he was frustrated with the state of the aviation supply chain. “I’m getting a little bit tired of hearing, years after Covid finished, that we’ve still got issues today . . . we are currently retrofitting at vast expense over 160 of our older aircraft. So I would have thought that any supply chain into that kind of organisation would be set forever,” he said. https://www.ft.com/content/b07ee882-5058-4098-8ae5-1667ce63a130 NASA Shows a Jet Engine Small Enough to Fit on a Kitchen Table NASA - Have you ever wondered just how big a jet engine used on a commercial aircraft is? In single-aisle airliners, for instance, the jet engines that dangle from their wings are a little under three meters long. That's not as big as these things appear to the untrained eye, but certainly a lot bigger than a jet engine NASA tucked away at one of its facilities to advance research in aviation. Despite its main area of expertise having to do with the space beyond the borders of our planet, the American space agency is deeply involved in aviation research. And one of the avenues it follows is called DART. In this case DART is not the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft that impacted an asteroid a while back, but DGEN380 Aero-Propulsion Research Turbofan. In simpler words it's an acronym that stands for one of the smallest jet engines in existence. The turbofan was created by a French company called Price Induction (you may now know it as Akira, after NASA itself purchased it back in 2017) and it is about half the size of a regular jet engine deployed on commercial planes. At 4.3 feet (1.3 meters) long, it's a perfect fit for the average kitchen table. The small-scale jet engine is fully operational, and it is used by NASA to conduct research into new aviation tech. The powerplant is fired up from time to time to test all sorts of innovative technologies, from engine controls to measurement tools. The engine is installed on a "modestly equipped test stand" located at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The stand is modest on purpose, as its spartan configuration allows engineers to try out as many and as wacky engine components as possible. That also makes it a lot cheaper to use compared to a full-scale rig. The specifications of the engine (including thrust) are not known, but NASA did reveal the powerplant has a high bypass ratio – that's the ratio of how much of the air drawn in by the fan is turned into thrust, and how much of it is used for combustion. Over the years the DART has been used to test a series of potential aviation breakthroughs. NASA looked at new kinds of materials meant to reduce engine noise and make airliners quieter. In the near future, more tests are planned for it. For instance, NASA will look at ways of making aircraft engines more fuel efficient and have the new tech flying as soon as the 2030s. The new means of propulsion being investigated should also lead to the development of a small-core commercial engine. Then, the agency will also look into developing new coatings to protect engine parts, sensors, and other components. Any advancements made with the DART could be taken one step further in the near future and tested in wind tunnels. https://www.autoevolution.com/news/nasa-shows-a-jet-engine-small-enough-to-fit-on-a-kitchen-table-233151.html CALENDAR OF EVENTS • Blazetech - Aircraft Fire Hazards, Protection, and Investigation Course June 4 - 7, 2024 • (APTSC) Asia and Pacific Turboprop Safety Conference - June 26 - 27, 2024 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia • Airborne Public Safety Association, Inc. (APSCON 2024) - July 29 - August 3; Houston TX • Asia Pacific Airline Training Symposium - APATS 2024, 0-11 September, 2024, Singapore • Aircraft Cabin Air International Conference - 17 & 18 September - London • 2024 Ground Handling Safety Symposium (GHSS) - September 17-18, 2024 - Fort Worth, TX • 2024 ISASI - Lisbon, Portugal - September 30 to October 4, 2024 • International Congress of Aerospace Medicine ICAM 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal, 3 - 5 October 2024 • Aviation Health Conference back on Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th October 2024 • 2024 NBAA Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition - Oct. 22-24 (Vegas) Curt Lewis