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The delays, the lost bags, the long lines for coffee—any day at the airport can mean a frustration or two. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a friendly face during a trudge down the concourse? Make that a friendly furry face, and suddenly a hectic travel day feels a little bit easier.
That’s the idea behind Denver International Airport’s Canine Airport Therapy Squad’s (CATS) program, the largest organization of its kind, among airports in more than 30 U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Charlotte, where similar programs have proven wildly popular.
With 121 therapy pups and, yes, one actual cat, DEN trotted out the CATS effort three years ago as a way to “provide passengers with an elevated experience,” says Lisa Dittberner, who manages the airport’s volunteer programs. “Seeing a dog immediately takes them out of their current state of mind, thinking about seat assignments or whether their bags are going to make it,” Dittberner says. “Seeing an animal that you can actually pet in an airport is something special.”
Related: The Healing Power of Horses: How Equine Therapy Benefits Veterans, Victims of Abuse More
On a recent connection through Denver, frequent flier Callie Langton of Omaha, Nebraska, paused briefly to love on CATS dog Shelby, a golden retriever. It was the perfect pick-me-up as Langton boarded a flight for a business meeting, happily “covered in dog hair” afterward.
“I spend a lot of time in airports for work, and the therapy dogs are such a bright spot in a day where almost everyone you encounter is, at best, grumpy,” she says.
Staffed by volunteers and their certified therapy pets, CATS handlers and their loyal companions work in two-hour shifts, wearing matching vests and circulating at various gates, making new friends and passing out trading cards featuring fun facts about each pet. More than 50 breeds, including Newfoundlands, Jack Russell terriers, dachshunds, German shepherds, poodles and border collies, make up the CATS roster.
There’s Cody, a carrot-loving goldendoodle; Shogun, a Bernese mountain dog who enjoys both hiking and napping; and Violet, a plucky French bulldog who can’t stand squirrels. Each animal delivers a happy little dose of personality while prompting smiles and sniffing out the people who need them most. Whether it’s someone returning home from a funeral, a passenger fearful of flying or a traveler who just said goodbye to a friend, these intuitive pets often know right where to go.
“They just sense it,” says Jim Stimson, 70, who volunteers twice a month at DEN with Martha, his 5-year-old cream golden retriever. He acknowledges that during some visits, the CATS members simply lift spirits among harried travelers, but on certain days, the therapy animals work a remarkable sort of magic.
Related: Mini Therapy Horses Bring Joy Wherever They’re Needed
Stimson recalls Martha meeting a passenger who, he later learned, was flying through Denver for the first time since losing two friends in the 2017 shooting tragedy in Las Vegas.
“She gave us ‘the eye,’” Stimson says of the distinct glance that signals a passenger’s interest in meeting a CATS animal. “We talked to her, and pretty soon she was sitting on the floor, and Martha’s head was in her lap. She said, ‘This dog really senses me.’”
“It’s amazing to me how dogs can detect pain,” Stimson says. “And they’re just naturally good at easing it.”
While the CATS partners do sometimes encounter exceptional situations that call for a little extra care, they’re always good at distracting travelers from the typical hassles of a day at the airport.
Carol O’Saben, a psychologist in Flagstaff, Arizona, says the stressful and unpredictable airport atmosphere benefits significantly from the comfort of CATS and programs like it.
Related: Here’s What it Takes for Your Pet to Be a Therapy Animal
“Therapy animals in an airport setting can be beneficial for travelers with emotional and mental health concerns, as well as the broader population, because travel is anxiety-provoking,” she says. “Having therapy animals available is one way to divert a person’s focus from the chaos of the environment to the interaction with an animal and help the traveler better manage their own anxiety.”
And the simple act of petting an animal, O’Saben says, has proven therapeutic advantages, including lowered heart rate, slowed breathing and reduced blood pressure—all physiological responses that can minimize tension.
Related: Traveling With Fido? Check Out These 10 Pet-Friendly U.S. Airports
“Airports also can be a place of heightened emotions because of the stress created by traveling,” she says. “It is possible that having therapy animals available to interact with travelers can help to lower some of those emotions and create a more friendly and amicable airport environment.”
Dittberner says that’s one reason volunteers are encouraged to study departure information and head to gates where flights are delayed—particularly in areas where families are traveling with children.
“It’s a huge thing—you’ve just found out your flight isn’t leaving when you thought it would, but you look over and see a dog, and maybe you forget about that for a minute,” says Dittberner.
For Stimson, watching those interactions, large and small, between his Martha and airport travelers is always rewarding.
“It’s like when your kid comes home with straight A’s or hits the winning homerun,” he says. “You just feel so proud and amazed to see them do the things they can do.”
Copyright 2019 CNN
(CNN) – It’s a Saturday in the outskirts of Los Angeles, and about 50 people are ready to board an airplane for a colorful and memorable journey back to the 1970s.
Compared to most international flights, this one is short — only four hours. And though the flight will transport everyone on the passenger list to another place and time, it logs a whopping total of zero air miles, as it never actually leaves the ground.
Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of the Pan Am Experience. One-part re-enactment, one-part dinner theater and one-part memorabilia overload, the attraction mixes top-quality food with elaborate detail to recreate what it was like to fly a Boeing 747 with one of the world’s most beloved airlines long before its bankruptcy and dissolution in 1991.
“People always talk about how it’s not the destination but the journey that’s important,” says Talaat Captan, who co-founded the experience with Anthony Toth back in 2014.
“We believe that. People come to us to travel somewhere and not go anywhere. To them, the value is in the experience.”
This summer marks the five-year anniversary of the attraction, and it has gotten more elaborate every year. Props have become more authentic. Actors have developed characters. There’s also now a fashion show, and the uniforms represent one of the largest collections of vintage flight attendant uniforms anywhere in the world.
The Pan Am Experience is as close as you can get to experiencing Pan Am without engaging in actual time travel, which is why people are so keen to climb aboard they book their seats months in advance.
The experience begins outside a row of warehouse buildings in Pacoima, an L.A. suburb near Burbank. Guests enter from the parking lot on a red carpet and find a studio decked out like a 1960s airplane terminal. In one corner: A series of airline ticket counters, including an exact replica (computer and all) of a Pan Am desk from the era. On the other side: A lounge that comprises circular bars surrounded by stools and furniture made from old airplane parts.
The back of the room is lined with a screen depicting the exterior of a Pan Am 747, circa 1971.
Guests check in at the Pan Am desk with Captan, who gives them paper boarding passes exactly like the originals from back in the day. A gate agent ushers them to the lounge, where drinks are complimentary.
About an hour in, a voice blares over the crackling loudspeaker: “Would the flight crew please report to the ticket counter?”
Without missing a beat, “Captain” Toth and 14 “flight attendants” dressed in vintage garb enter and head to the ticket counter for their “assignments.” Crew members then proceed up a jet bridge toward the plane screen in the back of the studio, open a cabin door and invite guests to join them. Their message is clear: All aboard!
Flight attendants seat guests in one of three sections of the plane: Clipper Class, which was the original business class; First Class; and the Upper Deck Lounge, which historically was part of First.
Once everyone is comfortable, the “purser” gives a series of announcements, and flight attendants go through safety demonstrations. The script is a mix of throwback warnings and modern wit: “Unless we have an earthquake tonight, there won’t be much movement, so your seat belt isn’t really necessary.”
After a welcome video from Toth, flight attendants wheel out magazine carts, distribute magazines, take drink orders and bring hot towels in buckets of dry ice, creating an almost magical smoke.
Finally, the meal begins. A white-jacketed maître-d brings out menus. Flight attendants pull out retractable tables and set them with Pan Am-branded tablecloths, dishes and silverware. Upper Deck Lounge guests get a caviar course first. Then everyone chooses between appetizers of shrimp cocktail and caprese salad.
Following a fashion show of Pan Am uniforms from the late 1960s and early ’70s, a throwback dinner is served: Chateaubriand sliced tableside or roast chicken, both served with carrots, green beans and potatoes. (There’s a pasta option for vegetarians, too.) As guests eat, disco plays on the cabin speaker system.
Trivia and another fashion show of uniforms from the 1980s follow dinner, leading into a wine-and-cheese course, Cognac, coffee and chocolate mousse cake or fruit tart for dessert.
A third and final fashion show of airline uniforms from all over the world closes the night.
Throughout the experience, it’s clear that Toth and Captan have spared no expense to make the flight authentic.
That means the seatbelt buckles are original, complete with the Pan Am globe logo etched into the top. It also means each of the table floral arrangements has sprigs of baby’s breath, just like the arrangements of the 1970s.
Even the cigarettes — props that puff smoke when you blow them — are eerily lifelike.
“Back in the 1970s, everybody on board airplanes smoked,” says Toth. “There was no way we were going to recreate this experience without trying to recreate that.”
Drink offerings include 1970s-approved Harvey Wallbangers and Tab soda. Hot towels smell the way they used to: Flight attendants soak them in some of the same scents as Pan Am used historically. The seat fabrics reflect the fading sun and moon designs of the day.
Another mind-boggling detail from the original Pan Am planes: The “nose wall,” a needlepoint artwork at the front of the First-Class cabin that depicts a sailboat on the water on a sunny afternoon.
For guests who have a history with the airline — former flight attendants or family members of former Pan Am employees — these tiny touches are more than an appreciated detail; they’re a link to the past.
“As soon as I saw the First-Class cabin, I started crying,” says Michelle Fedder, who started her career as a flight attendant with Pan Am and recently met three former colleagues here. “It was like they took my memories out of my brain and brought them back to life.”
Brice Cooper, creative director at Pan American World Airways, the New Hampshire company that licenses Pan Am trademarks worldwide, agrees.
“What they’ve done here in recreating the vibe and feel of flying on Pan Am is nothing short of remarkable,” he says.
The Pan Am Experience is really Toth’s brainchild.
The 52-year-old has been obsessed with planes since his childhood, and fell in love with Pan Am while flying to Europe one summer to visit his grandparents in Italy. He acquired his first pair of airplane seats when he was 16, and started making trips to the airplane graveyard in the Mojave Desert to buy airplane parts in his 20s.
Eventually, he had enough parts to build the ground floor of the 22-foot-long Pan Am set in his garage. He moved the set to a storage facility so he could break out his prized spiral staircase and create a second floor.
That first set forms the bones of the Pan Am Experience today.
Sometime around 2014, after the ill-fated television show, “Pan Am,” mutual friends connected Toth and Captan, who had heard about the set and wanted to see it up close. He was blown away.
Captan, a long-time movie producer who immigrated to the US from Lebanon when he was 17, had the idea to use the set to host an event, and a trial dinner sold out at an aviation memorabilia collectors’ show in a matter of minutes. Demand was so high, the duo ended up hosting more events. Later that year, Captan moved Toth’s set into Air Hollywood, his aviation-themed film studio here. The Pan Am Experience has been flying high ever since.
Nowadays, the Pan Am Experience takes off every Saturday at 6 p.m. sharp, and about half are open to the public. Tickets for the dinners are sold in pairs and range in price from $475 to $875, depending on seating class.
The next two public dinners scheduled for March 9 and March 23 are sold out, and there’s a waiting list for dinners later in the year.
Captan and Toth hope to open an outpost in Las Vegas.
Details of the expansion are still under development, but Captan says the new experience likely would include turbulence and white noise. More seats on the set and a separate bar and gift shop open to the public throughout the week also are likely.
“My hope is that people who never got a chance to fly Pan Am get an opportunity to see how fantastic air travel was back in the era, while those who might have been able to experience it bring back memories that remind them of the good old days,” says Toth. “This is a part of our history worth celebrating.”
American Airlines and its regional subsidiary Envoy Air had the worst record for damaging passengers’ wheelchairs and power scooters in December, while SkyWest and Delta had the best, mishandling less than 1 percent of those transported, according to information now available in a federal consumer air travel report.
Data on mishandled wheelchairs and scooters first appeared in the Air Travel Consumer Report issued in February, the same monthly Department of Transportation report that relays information on flight delays, passenger complaints and animal deaths involving U.S. airlines.
Advocacy groups, including the Paralyzed Veterans of America, have pressed for years that the information be included in the report. The February summary covers the period from Dec. 4-31, 2018. In all, 701 chairs, or roughly 2 percent of the 32,209 transported, were reported damaged.
Shaun Castle, a retired Army sergeant who serves as PVA deputy executive director, said the information is crucial for persons with disabilities in deciding which airlines “will take care of them.”
“This is important, not only to the 20,000 members of our organization, but to all people who use a wheelchair or mobility device,” Castle said. “When you are trying to decide which airline to fly as a consumer, you want to know if it’s friendly to those with disabilities.”
Those who require a wheelchair or scooter usually are allowed to travel to their gate in their own chairs but then must be transferred to a special chair to transfer to the aircraft. Their personal devices may be stored in the cabin, if they are collapsible. More often, however, they are stowed with the baggage.
And that’s where the damage can occur, according to Castle.
“I’ve had to deal with my wheelchair rims being bent or hubs missing parts, side guards damaged,” he said. In one instance, he added, his titanium wheelchair’s crossbar was broken, requiring a $2,000 repair.
Damage to power chairs, the type used by many quadriplegics, can run upward of $10,000.
“Knowing which airline is going to take care of me, take care of my equipment, is very very important. … My wheelchair is my legs. If you break my wheelchair, I can’t go anywhere,” Castle said.
Disabled passengers are protected by the Air Carrier Access Act, which prohibits airlines from refusing to transport a passenger based on a disability. But under the ACAA, disabled passengers also cannot take legal action against an airline they believe has violated their rights — they can only file a complaint with the airline or the Transportation Department.
In 2016, more than 26,000 complaints were filed against U.S. airlines by passengers with disabilities. The majority of the complaints involved failures by the airlines to provide assistance or inadequate seating. But nearly 1,200 complaints involved the airlines’ handling of an assistance device, including wheelchairs, according to the Department of Transportation.
In his blog on WheelchairTravel.org, John Morris noted that the data published for December doesn’t provide a full picture of damage caused to wheelchairs during the month, as the information submitted by Southwest Airlines and American Airlines was incomplete.
“As more data is received and the sample size grows, we should gain a clearer picture of which airlines are treating wheelchairs and scooters with the greatest care and respect and which would be best to avoid,” said Morris, who uses a power chair for mobility.
A spokeswoman for Delta Airlines said the company’s advisory board on disability has been actively engaged in developing and refining policies affecting customers with disabilities.
“Delta is committed to providing the highest level of care and service to all our customers,” Olivia Mayes said. “We are acutely focused on continuous improvement in our assistive device-handling processes, as we know they are critically important to many of our customers.”
According to the data, Delta transported the highest volume of wheelchairs and scooters of any of the 12 airlines in the December report: 11,838. It recorded 105 mishaps, the second-to-lowest damage rate reported at .89 percent.
Castle says he looks forward to future reports, which will contribute significantly to protecting consumers with disabilities.
“We hope this accountability will inspire airlines to improve procedures to accommodate the more than 20 million Americans who have mobility disabilities,” Castle said.
— Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Military.com. Follow her on Twitter @patricia.kime.
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The boom in air travel over the past 30 years has resulted in a critical shift in the way commercial aircraft are built and the way airlines are managed. This is particularly true for Asia, with the rise in demand in China, India, Indochina and the Middle East, compounded further by the low-cost mentality of budget airlines.
The two recent crashes of Boeing 737 Max 8 airliners operated by Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines had many similarities, such as how both aircraft encountered exceptionally high engine power and speed while ascending. As more investigations and new voice data come to light, concern should be shifted to a more pressing issue. The current business model of many of these profit-centered airlines and their manufacturers is not sustainable in terms of air safety.
The Boeing 737 is definitely a time-tested model, having been in service for more than 51 years. The Max 8 has two critical design changes that if taken in fresh perspective, would render the fourth version of the Boeing 737 a radically new aircraft type. That means that pilots and engineers ought to be subject to a more significant training and certification program before being approved for this type of plane.
The Max 8 is powered by much more powerful engines than earlier versions and the old airframe structure of the Boeing 737 could not cater to the new stress load and the air turbulence created. Therefore, the engines had to be shifted forward, thus changing the angle of attack (AOA) and also the overall aerodynamics of the 737.
The second major change is the anti-stalling feature of its Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) to prevent the nose of the plane from rising up too steeply beyond its critical AOA. When this protection system kicks in, the automated control system pushes the nose of the plane down. Aircraft cannot afford to stall in midair as gravity would ensure that they would drop down to the ground like a tin can.
One of the reasons many airlines acquire the 737 Max 8 is the need to streamline and manage their operating costs. It is much easier to acquire, manage and operate a fleet of Boeing 737s than to have a wide range of aircraft from different manufacturers or a different product range. In itself, this is a very sound business proposition.
Aircraft cannot afford to stall in midair as gravity would ensure that they would drop down to the ground like a tin can
As such, many of the type-certified pilots that are currently flying the 737 Max 8 are not comprehensively trained to manage the peculiar scenarios created by these critical changes. When the aircraft encounter such a scenario immediately after takeoff, the pilots have to deal with these two critical challenges while trying to differentiate from what they had always been trained to do with the older 737 models. Simulator training, however comprehensive, cannot adequately simulate the real-life situation faced by pilots.
When pilots are operating in such an extremely stressful environment, their blood pressures are elevated. Their thinking processes are also adversely affected. To make matters worse, how are they expected to understand the complex algorithms of the MCAS system and the various compensations that are at play? Every correction by the pilots to pull up the nose will be countered and corrected by the MCAS almost instantly. At some point, the MCAS will have to over-compensate, and that may be where the pilots completely lose control.
The current worldwide grounding of the 737 Max 8 has put many of the aviation-safety organizations such as the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) under public scrutiny. Why did they, the airlines and Boeing have to wait for two deadly crashes to take place before they took the initiative to ground all 350 Max 8s that were in operation?
Between the two crashes, Boeing carried out one software upgrade to try to resolve this peculiar design defect, but did not retrain pilots to deal adequately with how the MCAS actually compensates. Many more questions will be asked of Boeing, the IATA, global regulators and pilot unions across the world.
Growing consumer demand for cheaper and faster air travel has also contributed greatly to the overall decline in aviation safety as the rush to train pilots and engineers to meet the demand may have been compromised by over-reliance on simulator training. Even national carriers that took pride in safety are being hard-pressed to cut prices and operating costs to match the challenges of the low-cost carriers. In such a hostile price war, something will give, and they may have just traded away aviation safety without anticipating the cost of such a safety trade-off – the loss of 346 lives.
The IATA and global regulators will have to start exerting their authority and help forge a fairer and safer practice framework for the industry, and restore the trust of the public in air travel. Airports too ought to curb their exorbitant airport charges and play their part, as their ground-handling costs have a major impact on the overall profitability of airlines. A collective failure requires collective action to correct the underlying problems, and the pursuit of profit cannot be placed ahead of safety.
There is a need for the key stakeholders to re-examine the decline in aviation safety. The need to curb the unrestrained profit-over-safety mentality in the aviation industry will be a pressing challenge that needs to be addressed seriously. Collectively, these stakeholders have to act collectively and ethically in forging a fairer and safer business environment for the industry. Public safety matters and cannot be taken for granted.
It’s not long now before airlines start up-charging for oxygen and bathroom use. Some are already charging carry-on passengers to use the overhead bin space. Year after year, the airlines are bringing in billions in checked bag fees. So, it’s no wonder that passengers — and some clever companies — are fighting back. It turns out the best solution might be to travel bag-free, to instead ship your bags so they arrive ahead of you.
There are a handful of players in the luggage shipping game. All offer to ship standard carry-on and checked luggage, plus oversized items like skis, snowboards, musical instruments, and golf clubs. Most offer similar services like tracking, customer support, insurance, and home pick-up. In most cases, pricing is equal to or less than what you might expect to pay by traveling with your bags aboard an airline. Often, the most significant savings are for travelers shipping multiple bags. Of course, the undeniable advantage is being able to travel luggage-free — no more waiting at baggage claim and no cramming into taxis or subway cars with an armada of suitcases in tow. Here are three names to know if you’d rather ship your luggage on your next trip.
One of the first into the luggage shipping game, LugLess streamlines the entire process better than anyone. Booking your shipment is a bit like booking a flight. From the website, travelers enter their city pair (origin and destination), dates of travel, whether the trip is one-way or roundtrip, and the size of the bag. This includes Carry-on (25 pounds or less), Checked (25-50 pounds), or Pversize (50-75 pounds).
Coverage and upsell options are available for every bag. Minimal coverage is free but offers no guarantee and passengers must take their luggage to a UPS office. Basic ($7 additional each way) and Plus (plus $15 each way) provide additional conveniences, while their flagship Premium (an extra $46 each way) coverage is refundable and includes door-to-door service, phone support, better tracking, and guaranteed delivery with up to $700 insurance.
As an example, we found pricing to ship a Checked (50 pounds max) bag from Los Angeles to New York City in mid-March starting at $43 each way with Minimal coverage. Actual prices will vary depending on your the length of your journey, the size of your bags, and how convenient you want the whole process to be.
Luggage Forward is substantially more expensive than LugLess. We found the same sample pricing for a similar sized Checked bag to be nearly twice as much. Unlike LugLess, however, they ship internationally to more than 170 countries and even to cruise ships. For for the right price, they ship everything up to and including double skis and bicycle cases. All of their shipments include guaranteed on-time delivery, 24-hour customer support, and $500 coverage.
Luggage Free is similar to Luggage Forward but takes a more concierge-minded, “white glove” approach to pamper your bags every step of the way. Travelers simply pack their luggage as though they were readying them to bring to the airport. Luggage Free will pick them up from your home or hotel, ship them with daily tracking updates and $1,000 minimum insurance, and guarantee on-time delivery to anywhere in the world.
Keep in mind that FedEx and UPS do not offer Sunday delivery, so you’ll need to factor that into your luggage delivery plans. Also, no matter which provider you choose, note that some hotels charge a “receiving fee” to accept packages on a guest’s behalf. Depending on how fancy the hotel is, this is anywhere between $10-30. It looks like the airlines are not the only ones looking to make a quick buck on your “stuff.”
In the span of five months, nearly 350 passengers and flight crew members lost their lives in two separate plane crashes involving the Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane, the first in Indonesia in October and the most recent in Ethiopia on Sunday.
These crashes are first and foremost human tragedies. The loss of so many human lives, including generations of family members according to some reports, merits mourning and reflection.
This must also be a moment to extensively review the mechanical integrity and proper functioning of the type of aircraft involved, as well as pilot and crew training and other safety measures worldwide.
To that end, President Trump was right Wednesday to call for the Federal Aviation Administration to ground all 737 Max planes until further analysis can be completed.
Aviation agencies in several other countries had already taken similar action following the Ethiopia crash.
And some passengers in the United States didn’t feel safe flying on the 737 Max 8 until a more thorough investigation into the circumstances of the Ethiopia and Indonesia crashes is completed.
Thus, it is entirely sensible for the FAA, out of an abundance of caution, to take additional safety measures. Doing so is the most straightforward way to reassure the flying public that air travel remains exceedingly safe in the United States.
And that is, of course, still the case.
The FAA, which rightly is considered the global authority on airplane safety, handles more than 43,000 flights per day, on average, carrying millions of passengers. But there hasn’t been a commercial aircraft accident resulting in mass casualties in the United States in a decade.
In fact, of the more than 37 million flights worldwide in 2018, only 15 ended in accidents causing fatalities, according to the Aviation Safety Network as reported by The Washington Post.
By contrast, there were more than 34,000 fatal car crashes in the United States alone in 2017, and about 3,200 people die each day in car crashes worldwide on average, according to the Association for Safe International Travel.
In other words, getting on a commercial plane is a lot safer than far more routine activities that many of us take for granted. And that record — particularly in the United States — is thanks in no small part to leadership from the FAA and other safety-related agencies and organizations.
None of this lessens the tragedy of the loss of lives in Ethiopia or in Indonesia. And it remains of vital importance to find the causes of those crashes and work to prevent future disasters.
In the meantime, grounding planes and conducting a detailed investigation are the surest way to confirm and reinforce the safety of air travel generally and of the 737 Max 8 specifically.
Flight 302 — a two-hour shuttle between two of the busiest capitals in East Africa — was carrying passengers from at least four continents. The dead included 32 Kenyans, 18 Canadians, nine Ethiopians, eight each from the United States, China and Italy, and seven from Britain, the airline said. The French Foreign Ministry said nine of its citizens were aboard.
The passengers also reportedly included delegates traveling to Nairobi for a weeklong United Nations Environment Assembly that was scheduled to start on Monday.
[Read more about who the victims were and where they were from.]
While the cause of the crash was unclear, the disaster is certain to raise more doubts about the safety of the 737 Max 8, one of Boeing’s fastest-selling airplanes.
The plane, delivered to Ethiopian Airlines in November, was new, just like the Lion Air airplane that plunged nose down into the Java Sea last October, minutes after taking off from Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.
Flight 302 took off in good weather, but its vertical speed became unstable right after takeoff, fluctuating wildly, according to data published by FlightRadar24 on Twitter. In the first three minutes of flight, the vertical speed varied from zero feet per minute per hour to 1,472 to minus 1,920 — unusual during ascent.
“During takeoff, one would expect sustained positive vertical speed indications,” Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for FlightRadar24, said in an email on Sunday.
Public service administration minister Ayanda Dlodlo this week outlined details of revisions to the ministerial perks handbook aimed at ending wasteful expenditure at the highest levels.
Following the elections, cabinet ministers and their deputies will not be allowed to procure ‘over-the-top’ luxury vehicles. And members of the national executive will no longer be permitted to fly first class.
Read the full story in the Sunday Times.
The history of aircraft development is marked by technological breakthroughs – from more fuel-efficient engines to the use of carbon-fibre materials – that have spurred the creation of better, safer aircraft. However, fatal accidents have also forced design changes that have improved subsequent aircraft and prevented further loss of life. Here are some examples.
10 January 1954
A De Havilland Comet operated by British Overseas Airways Corporation crashed after suffering a catastrophic decompression in mid-flight. The Comet fell into the sea near Elba, off the Italian coast: all 35 people on board died.
It was the second in a series of three Comet accidents in less than a year, all from similar causes. Investigators found that structural cracking had started in the roof of the cabin: a window had become detached and struck control structures at the back of the aircraft, and the rear fuselage had then torn away.
The cause was metal fatigue, arising from the constant pressurisation and depressurisation of the aircraft’s fuselage during everyday use. Also, supports around the windows had been riveted, not glued, in a process which is thought to have caused cracks.
The fuselage was also experiencing considerably higher stresses than had been anticipated, particularly around the sharp corners of the Comet’s square windows. As a result, future jetliners would feature windows with rounded corners.
2 August 1985
The Lockheed TriStar operated by US carrier Delta encountered a thunderstorm while approaching Dallas-Fort Worth to land. The aircraft struck the ground far short of the runway and disintegrated, killing 137 people and injuring 28 others. Investigators found that the crash had resulted from the flight crew’s decision to fly through a thunderstorm; the lack of procedures or training to cope with “microbursts” (small but intense downdraughts that occur in storms); and the lack of advance warning on the sharp changes in wind speed or direction known as wind shear.
After the investigation, an onboard weather radar was developed by Nasa. The resultant airborne detection and alert system was installed on many airliners after the US regulator insisted all commercial aircraft must have onboard means of detecting wind shear.
22 August 1985
A Boeing 737 caught fire before takeoff at Manchester airport, with the loss of 55 lives. It was on its way to Corfu, in Greece. Before takeoff, one of the engines failed, causing the fire, and the captain instructed the crew to evacuate the plane. There were 82 survivors: most of the deaths were caused by smoke inhalation.
The accident brought about industry-wide action on plane design, including changes to the seating layout near exits; fire-resistant seat covers; floor-level emergency lighting; fire-resistant wall and ceiling panels; increased numbers of extinguishers; and clearer rules on evacuation procedures.
31 August 1986
Two planes collided in mid-air over the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos. The tail of Aeroméxico flight 498, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, was hit by a small private plane – a Piper PA-28-181 Archer – while descending towards Los Angeles International Airport. All 67 people on both aircraft were killed, as well as an additional 15 on the ground.
After that, all jets in US airspace were required to carry air avoidance collision systems. Another mid-air crash near New Delhi in 1996 – between a Boeing 747 and a Soviet-designed Ilyushin Il-76 – killed 349 people: that triggered the implementation of crash avoidance systems around the world.
8 September 1994
A Boeing 737 flying from Chicago crashed while approaching Pittsburgh International Airport. Investigators said the probable cause was that the aircraft’s rudder had malfunctioned and turned hard in the direction opposite to that commanded by the pilot, causing a loss of control from which the flight crew could not recover. All 132 people on board were killed.
Boeing subsequently agreed to design and pay for a new rudder control system for the entire worldwide 737 fleet.
1 June 2009
The crash of AF 447 raised concerns about the level of automation in aircraft, and those fears have been exacerbated by the 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The Airbus A330, operated by Air France and on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, stalled and did not recover, crashing into the Atlantic with the loss of all 228 passengers and crew.
The initial investigation concluded that the aircraft crashed after the airspeed sensors iced over, causing the autopilot to disconnect in the middle of stormy weather. This sparked an unexpected handover of control to the pilots, one of whom was not used to hand-flying at altitude and who reacted incorrectly by pulling the nose of the aircraft upwards.
The pilot errors ultimately caused the aircraft to enter an aerodynamic stall – where the plane’s weight is no longer supported by the air flowing under the wings – and drop from the sky catastrophically at 11,000 feet per minute.
Following the disaster, regulators urged airlines to encourage more hand-flying to prevent the erosion of basic piloting skills.