Select WP-13 July ‘99
Aiming for New Safety Thresholds

Published by
The FAA’s Honolulu
Flight Standards
District Office
135 Nakolo Place
Honolulu, HI 96819

Safety Program Managers

Operations
Scott Allen
808/837-8307
or e-mail
scott.e.allen@faa.gov

Airworthiness
Jim Hein
808/837-8335
or e-mail
jim.r.hein@faa.gov
IN THIS ISSUE:

 

Plus;

 

 

FSDO Website:

www.awp.faa.gov/flightstandards

Annual FAA Wings Weekend!

 

Saturday and Sunday, July 17 & 18, 1999
8:00AM - 4:30 PM (Registration 07:30)
Honolulu International Airport
InterIsland Terminal, 7th Floor Conference Rooms

If you fly in Hawaii, or would like to learn more about flying, the Honolulu Flight Standards District Office Wings Weekend at the HNL InterIsland Terminal is the place to be on July 17 and 18, 1999. Here’s your chance to learn something new and/or catch up on aviation doings, begin or complete earning your next (or first!) Pilot Proficiency (Wings) Award and spend a great time with other pilots. FREE ADMISSION, with partial parking validations.

Scheduled Highlights:

The AOPA will travel some 5,000 miles to present two different seminars, one per day. It takes significant effort and expense to get them from Washington DC to Hawaii, so when they come all this way it’s nice if we turn out in force to support them. Reason: We’ve been trying to get them out here for years and it will be great to have a big crowd and support their efforts. Better reason: it’s some of the finest training in the country. Best Reason? You can learn something from these folks that could keep you out of a mishap or maybe even save your life.

  • "Never Again," Experience-based (i.e., some folks survived their white-knuckle rides and fessed up so that we could learn and be better pilots.) This seminar focuses on developing pilot judgment skills.
  • "Collision Avoidance," A great topic for our island airspace, especially with transitional traffic flows resultant from the Ford Island closure and the opening of Kalaeloa (nee’ Barber’s Point).

Mr. George Peterson of the NTSB, who will do an investigator-perspective slide presentation on the results and causes of aircraft crashes. There is something horribly fascinating about aircraft wreckage (and a lot to be learned from other’s mistakes).  Subtitled, Why It’s a Real Good Thing to Attend AOPA Seminars.

Mrs. Judy Adams, former inter-island 135 pilot and Honolulu FSDO Safety Program Alumna Extraordinary, now serving in Washington DC as Director of Flight Safety for FAA-crewed Aircraft will give two presentations:

  • "You Bet Your Life."
    Single Pilot Cockpit Resource Management.
  • "Flying the Fast Track."
    An up-close and personal review of major FAA safety initiatives.

For those of you who’ve had the pleasure of working with Judy in the past, ‘nuff said. For those who’ve not yet had the opportunity, in a nutshell, we don’t ask folks to come 5,000 miles unless they’re really, really good.

ABOUT THE UPCOMING WINGS WEEKEND

TEST QUESTION: If you fly in Hawaii, what can you do to prevent corrosion and check for airworthiness of aircraft operated in this challenging environment? We will brief the ins and outs of corrosion prevention strategies and techniques.

Mr. Hank Bruckner, CFI-ASC, editor of the GACH Air Scoop, and Owner of Kaimana Aviation, will do a presentation on the happenings at Oshkosh and collision avoidance and traffic issues.

TEST QUESTION: How bad can that tire be before the aircraft is considered un-airworthy? Goodyear Aircraft Tires will do a presentation on the care, feeding, (and retirement!) of aircraft tires. They have a thought-provoking presentation guaranteed to make you understand and appreciate what goes into your tires. No doubt, after this presentation, you’ll have a new mind set during your next preflight when you look at your tires. Seriously, a great show, and it could easily become one of the most useful hours you’ll spend all year.

Mr. Allen Agor, FAA Security Division, will give "the rest of the story" a recent in-flight bombing of the (non-U. S. Carrier) 747. I’m not wanting to spill the beans, but without Allen’s pictures and story, you’d be hard-pressed to believe how close it can come. This is a heroic, chilling and ultimately, amazing presentation. For what it may be worth, I really try not to use the adjective "amazing" very much. You don’t want to miss this one.

There will also be discounted aircraft and volunteer Certified Flight Instructors to provide the flight portion of the Wings Award training. Call Scott Allen at at (808) 837-8307 to schedule a flight with an instructor in advance so that you can complete that WINGS Award! Remember …. “Safety is no accident.” Be there, Aloha.

 

Runway Incursions

“Are never going to involve me, so the next article might be a little more… BREAK-BREAK: WRONG THINKING, WRONG ANSWER. The runway incursion hazard has been on the increase the past few years and it happens to major air carriers as well as General Aviation pilots. Which is to say, this is not a dull topic, because we’re all, everyone who flies or operates on an airport, at risk. Not a week goes by without reading about incursions (plural) at major Airports. Sometimes irritating. Sometimes scary. Sometimes tragic. Does Tenerife sound familiar? NASA, which runs the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS), advises that distractions tend to precipitate incursions. The distractions fall into four broad categories,

  1. Communications Problems: Use standard phraseology (!) and if you have a question, do ask the controller. Consider the alternatives: no matter how busy they seem to be, they’ll like your question a whole lot better than they’ll like your busting a taxi clearance.
  2. Head-Down Work: When you’re taxiing, don’t be playing with the GPS, focused on setting instruments, or distracted by other activities that should have been done before you began your taxi.
  3. Searching for VFR Traffic: Generally, this is a Good Thing. But too much of a good thing can lead to a runway incursion.
  4. Responding to Abnormal Situations: Notice, they don’t say “emergency,” just abnormal. Abnormal is a consideration, a nuisance, and sometimes an absolute killer. Remember Eastern Flight 401? A Wide-Body down in the Everglades because the highly experienced flight crew got so focused on a burned-out landing gear light, that they inadvertently disconnected the altitude hold and flew it into the mud. Which is to say, if your attention is diverted, consider stopping until it’s resolved. They’re all dangerous, but this one in particular can really bite you.

Nobody’s immune. Students to ATPs, runway incursions are everybody’s problem. Especially, if you find yourself in one of the above four categories, have the discipline to realize you’re at risk.

 

GET-THERE-ITIS

Although some of this deals with icing, a lot of it is relevant to us here in Hawaii, so we’re reprinting this NASA letter. For what it’s worth, I tend to call the author’s “beckoning patches of blue sky” “sucker-holes.” Suggestion: On the ground, we’ll agree that a rose is a rose is a rose if you remember that in the air a sucker hole is a sucker-hole, is a sucker-hole.

'After considering the options, I decided that flying VFR would allow me the freedom to find a hole in the clouds and get on top in clear air. As we climbed toward the blue patches, it seemed harder and harder to find a hole large enough to climb through. Since it looked like we only needed to climb about another 100 feet to clear the tops, I decided that I would plow on through. Things got worse.

At first the sun poked through occasionally, beckoning us on.

Then it started getting darker, and we picked up a trace of rime ice. Just as I was deciding that we would have to turn back, the engine started surging. I thought carb ice, but carb heat didn’t help. As I was trouble-shooting the engine, another aviation demon was sneaking up on us. It turned out that the pitot heat was inoperative and the pitot tube had frozen over. As we were climbing, the airspeed indicator was falsely reading a higher and higher airspeed, and I was gradually compensating (unaware) to stay at Vx indicated airspeed. The plane then began to porpoise, indicating an imminent stall. Just as the stall broke hard, the scenario came together in my mind. We banked at least 90 degrees and I pushed they yoke forward…I pulled the throttle back to idle, and recovered from the stall in solid IMC. We broke out in a few minutes and landed VFR.'

The writer points out several lessons: Check pitot heat before potential IMC; carefully monitor weight/balance to preserve stall recovery and avoid the “beckoning blue patches between clouds.” But remember, in the air it’s only a sucker hole.

 

SAFETY ALERT - SAFETY ALERT

HONOLULU FSDO SAFETY BULLETIN 99-4

Suspected Unapproved Parts (SUPS) may be in your airplane or be in an airplane you fly or maintain. During an ongoing investigation of Life Support Systems, Inc. (Air Agency Number GP4R214M), it has been found that many life vests, rafts, slides, and slide rafts may not have been properly inspected and could fail. The broad scope of the defects found in the inspection, repair, and modification procedures used by this repair station makes all of the work they have performed suspect and questionable. Therefore, all work performed by Life Support Systems’ Repair Station should be considered as SUPS and be removed from service until verified that it is serviceable. Please take a moment to check yellow tags, work orders, and your maintenance log books to determine if any survival equipment you have (or use) was inspected or repaired by Life Support Systems, Inc. These life vests, slides, and rafts are not considered safe and must be checked before your life depends upon them. If you have questions, or need further information, you may contact FAA Airworthiness Safety Inspector, Darcy Reed at (808) 837-8312.

 

 

SPECIAL THANKS
A special thank you goes out to everyone who helped make the April Honolulu Wings meeting a super success. Capt. Al Haynes was our guest speaker and he spoke about the crash of United Airlines flight 232. We had been trying to get Capt. Haynes to speak at our Wings Weekend in July and it was looking like he wouldn’t be able to come. However, we learned about his availability for the April Wings meeting on extremely short notice. Because of the super efforts of the Hawaii State Department of Airports who provided us a conference room (and validated parking), our Aviation Safety Counselors who helped get the word out, and GACH (in particular Hank Brucker) for putting a blurb in their newsletter, there were about 130 people who turned out to hear Capt. Haynes. What a tremendous showing of team spirit. Thanks again.

 

OLD NEWS - FOOD FOR NEW THOUGHT

One maintenance worker was found guilty of negligent homicide, but four others were acquitted in the 1996 crash of an Aeroperu Boeing 757. This aviation maintenance professional will spend two years in jail for his part in failing to remove adhesive tape covering sensor ports that resulted in inoperative altitude and airspeed indicators. The crew became disoriented and flew the aircraft into the Pacific Ocean 50 miles Northwest of Lima shortly after takeoff. All 70 people aboard were killed and the airline was ordered to pay $29 million to the victims’ families. The guilty worker claimed the plane crashed because it was sabotaged, even though the tape installed by the maintenance crew prior to cleaning the aircraft was discovered on the ports after the crash.

ALSO:
A Federal court in Florida sentenced a 32 year man to 12 years in prison and imposed a $1.3 million fine for robbing repair stations of jet engines, Allison Turbine engine blades and other engine components, and then re-selling the stolen goods. A second man to an 18 month term for his role in the scheme. The jury concluded that the robbed engine and parts had been "laundered" through an FAA-certificated repair station. Some of the stolen components wound up at major parts distributors and airlines, including TWA and Delta, according to the Transportation Department. The penalties given in this case are "some of the stiffest" ever handed out in a Suspected Unapproved Parts (SUPS) case.

 

YEARLY AWARDS NOMINATIONS

The Aviation Safety Program is once again seeking out people who qualify to be recognized as the General Aviation Flight Instructor and Maintenance Technician of the Year. That’s two separate awards. This is a national competition that has been held every year since 1963.

Nominees must be active civilian certificated flight instructors, certificated maintenance technicians, or FCC licensed technicians who maintain aviation aircraft or accessories.

Nomination application forms are available from the Safety Program Manager(s). The nominations should list as many achievements and specific contributions to aviation as possible ….. in 500 words or less. Noteworthy achievement of professional standards will weigh heavy in the selection process.

If you know of an airman who is exemplary, please give the SPM’s a call to nominate him or her. Once the district selection has been made, the names and applications will be forwarded to the Regional SPM’s for further competition at that level. The regional winners will be considered for National recognition with an awards ceremony held in Washington D.C. Travel to the ceremony and all expenses will be provided for each National winner and one guest. Winners and their guests will visit FAA headquarters, attend a luncheon after the ceremony, and enjoy sightseeing opportunities in Washington D.C.

Let’s kokua this year to gain local, Regional and National recognition for some well deserved aviators and technicians in Hawaii.

 

HUMAN FACTORS

It should not come as a surprise that the predominant factor associated with aircraft accidents today is the human factor. The human element has always overshadowed all other elements; but we are just now beginning to focus our energy in this direction. As a result, we are seeing some changes, although not to the extent where we can show significance. There are many things that make the business of understanding human behavior difficult at best.

In general people are unwilling to admit that they have any deficiencies. If they did, it might encourage the risk of criticism and cause outsiders to wonder why they are allowed to continue being airmen. This results in little or no information about why someone did what they did, or failed to do what they should have done. This is a great dilemma for all aviation. Here are a few suggestions that may help us all to improve:

First, we must feel free to discuss our weaknesses without fear of punishment or retribution.

Second, we must improve our understanding of human behavior through human factor training programs.

Third, we need better human factor information to improve airman performance.

We should seriously consider utilizing human performance data that is available from all available sources. The more we know about past airman performance, the better we will be able to anticipate future airman performance.

Of course, these ideas are oversimplified. However, they are actually quite easy to accomplish. Naturally, getting them done involves change and change is often an uphill battle. But, wouldn’t improving the level of safety be well worth that battle?

We all can improve our understanding of human factors by sharing our experiences with one another. A good place to do that is at the FAA WINGS-AMT meetings. Find out when the next one is near you …. then attend it and share some of your personal airman knowledge. While you’re there, don’t forget to pick up a new idea in return.

ALOHA
See you at the next WINGS-AMT meeting.

 

Pacific Island Flyer July ’99
Note for all Seminars - No reservations are required unless otherwise noted. - Never a fee.  For more information contact the Safety Program Managers listed on the front page. All FAA Safety Seminars satisfy the requirements of AC-61.91H; the Pilot Proficiency Awards Program (Wings) and /or the Aviation Maintenance Technician Awards Program; AC-65-25A.

No seminars scheduled
for July

Don't miss it:
Annual FSDO
Wings Weekend
July 17 & 18

(see details above)

 

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