Interview on WGN Radio after the US Airways Ditching (audio - MP3)

On 15 January 2009, a US Airways A320 encountered a flock of birds shortly after takeoff. Both engines lost power, apparently as the result of experiencing multiple bird strikes, and the crew was able to successfully ditch the aircraft in the Hudson River. All five crew members and 150 passengers survived the accident. The following day, Dr. Todd Curtis was a guest of Dean Richards on Chicago's WGN radio. They discussed the US Airways event, how the public's fear of flying is affected by extensive media coverage of airline accidents, and what kind of measures could be taken to deal with the threat of bird strikes.

Listen to the interview

For more information on the accident, including videos and background information on bird strike hazards and airliner ditchings, visit:
hudson.airsafe.org

Comparison of Eight Bird Strike Accidents, Including US Airways Flight 1549

The 15 January 2009 accident involving US Airways Flight 1549 was one of those rare bird strike events that resulted in the loss of an aircraft. A crash due to a bird strike is a rare event, but over the last several decades there have been several of these accidents that were investigated by authorities in the US and elsewhere. In the 2000 book Understanding Aviation Safety Data, Dr. Todd Curtis of AirSafe.com reviewed seven of these accidents and found that there were very clear patterns among them, including the key roles that flight crews had in the accident sequence, both in preventing fatalities as was the case with the US Airways crash, or contributing to an accident that may have been avoided had the crew performed differently.

After last week's accident, that original analysis was updated to include the US Airways accident. The goal was to provide a better model for how bird stike related accidents occur, and more importantly highlight issues that the aviation industry should address in order to reduce bird strike related risks. This method could be applied more broadly, specifically to risks such as runway incursions, which is a problem area that is of great concern to both the FAA and NTSB.

You are invited to not only review this analysis (links below), but also to send comments, suggestions, or even corrections to AirSafe.com at feedback.airsafe.org. Once the review period has ended, AirSafe.com will make this study permanently available on the site.

Download "Comparison of Eight Serious Bird Strike Accidents"
PDF: http://www.airsafe.com/birds/bird-strike-comparisons.pdf
Word: http://www.airsafe.com/birds/bird-strike-comparisons.doc
OpenDocument: http://www.airsafe.com/birds/bird-strike-comparisons.odt

AirSafe.com Clarifies the Definition of Ditching

After the extensive coverage of the 15 January 2008 ditching involving a US Airways A320, there has been an unprecedented public interest in the subject of airliner ditchings. On the day after the accident, USA Today quoted AirSafe.com's data that there had only been three previous ditchings involving passenger jets. Several people sent me feedback pointing out events that they believed had been overlooked by AirSafe.com. I reviewed those events and excluded them, but after reviewing the ditching page at http://www.airsafe.com/events/ditch.htm, I decided that the definition that was provided was not completely clear.

I revised the definitions page at http://www.airsafe.com/events/ditch.htm to include the following definition for ditching:
Ditching
An event where the flight crew intentionally lands an aircraft in some body of water such as a lake, a river, or the open ocean. In addition, the event would have to meet the following conditions or criteria:

• Accidental or unintentional landings or excursions onto water are excluded, such as runway overruns or controlled flight into water.
  
• Uncontrolled impacts with water are excluded.
  
• The body of water must be deep enough that if the aircraft sinks, some or all of the occupants would have to evacuate the aircraft cabin to avoid drowning.

This definition is consistent with how AirSafe.com has always defined ditchings. If you believe that the definition needs further work, by all means leave a comment to this post with your suggestions.

Ditching of a US Airways A320 on the Hudson River in New York

Crash of US Airways Flight 1549
Audio: MP3 | Video: iPod/MP4 | WMV | Google Video | YouTube

For more videos, visit the AirSafe.com YouTube channel.

On 15 January 2009, a US Airways A320 experienced a loss of power to both engines shortly after taking off from New York's LaGuardia Airport. The crew was able to successfully ditch the aircraft in the Hudson River near midtown Manhattan. Reportedly, the aircraft encountered a flock of birds shortly after takeoff. The aircraft reached an maximum altitude of about 3200 feet before it began to descend. After ditching, all five crew members and 150 passengers evacuated the aircraft. One passenger sustained serious injuries.

According to early reports, the aircraft took off normally toward the north, but the flight crew reported striking a flock of birds about two minutes after takeoff. Both engines lost power, and unable to either return to LaGuardia or to land in nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, the crew turned the aircraft toward the south. After flying over the George Washington Bridge, the crew executed a controlled ditching on the Hudson River just west of midtown Manhattan. The passengers and crew escaped with the help of numerous ferries, tour boats, fireboats, and other vessels in the area.

This was the first crash of an Airbus A320 operated by a US airline. The A320 has had eight events involving passenger fatalities. The first was a 1988 crash involving Air France, and the most recent was a May 2008 crash of a TACA airliner in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

While many jet airliners have crashed in the water, prior research by AirSafe.com revealed only three previous events where the crew of a large passenger jet intentionally ditched the aircraft in a controlled manner. Prior to the US Airways event, the most recent ditching involved a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines 767 in 1996. The others included a 1963 ditching of an Aeroflot jet in Leningrad (present day St. Petersburg), and a 1970 ditching of a DC-9 in the Caribbean.

Fatal and serious bird strike related crashes of large jet aircraft are also quite rare. The last fatal US bird strike accident involving a large jet was the crash of a US Air Force E-3 AWACS in Alaska in 1995. The last time bird strikes led to passenger deaths in the US was in 1960 in Boston. Since 1990, five other large jet airliners have crashed due to bird strikes, but only one involved fatalities.

The NTSB is currently investigating this US Airways accident. For updates on this investigation, and for the latest news from AirSafe.com, visit hudson.airsafe.org.

For related information, visit:
Previous US Airways Crashes
Other Significant A320 Events
Bird Strike Hazards to Aircraft
Jet Airliner Ditching Events

New Video for Year in Review 2008 Released

The new video for the podcast "AirSafe.com's Airline Safety Review for 2008" is now available. You can see the video or listen to the audio version, below, or you can find it at one of the podcast links.

Audio: MP3 | Video: iPod/MP4 | WMV | Google Video | YouTube

For details on the events of 2008, visit http://2008.AirSafe.org

For more videos, visit the AirSafe.com YouTube channel.

AirSafe.com's Airline Safety Review for 2008

The year 2008 had the fewest fatal airline crashes in any year since AirSafe.com began it's annual review of airline safety events in 1996. This 13th annual review discusses seven fatal airline events, and fifteen other significant events from 2008.

As AirSafe.com looks back at the fatal and significant aviation safety events of last year, the most noticeable fact about this 13th annual review is that 2008 had fewer fatal airline events than any of the previous 12 years reviewed by AirSafe.com. The most was 19 fatal events in 1997, and the previous low was eight fatal events in 2003, 2006, and 2007.

AirSafe.com counts as a fatal event any airline flight where one or more passengers are killed, including those events involving hijacking, sabotage, and military action. This review counts only those events that occur on aircraft that can carry at least 10 passengers, and that are commonly used in regular airline service in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and Japan. Significant events are those events that were noteworthy for other reasons. Several of these 15 significant events were non-fatal events involving large jet airliners, but others included crashes involving celebrities, military aircraft, and smaller airline aircraft.

One of the more interesting observations from the 2008 review is that it represents the second consecutive year with no fatal airline events involving the US or Canada. That includes any US or Canadian airliner operating anywhere in the world, or any other airliner operating to or from the US or Canada. The last such event was the crash of a US airliner in Kentucky in August 2006. Since the introduction of jet airliner service to North America in 1958, there had been no previous two year period with zero airliner passenger fatalities.

To put this in a global context, Canada and the US account for about 60% of all airline traffic involving larger aircraft. In other words, 40% of these kinds of airline flights were responsible for 100% of the fatal passenger events. In 2008, the seven fatal events included one airliner from Europe, two each from Africa and Latin America, and two from countries of the former Soviet Union.

The fifteen other events in AirSafe.com's review were included either because of the amount of media attention they attracted, or because of the safety and security issues associated with the event. Among these 15 significant events were seven non-fatal jet airliner events. The most recent was a December 20 takeoff accident involving a Continental Airlines 737 in Denver. Although the plane experienced significant structural damage and a post-crash fire, all passengers and crew members successfully evacuated the aircraft.

The other significant airliner events included the first ever crash of a 777, two in-flight events involving Qantas, another two involving Air Canada, and a takeoff accident involving Iran Air.

The other eight significant events included an F/A-18 crash in San Diego, four fatal crashes involving small airliners, and three crashes involving celebrities. Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification Church, survived a helicopter crash in South Korea; Travis Barker, former drummer for the music group Blink-182, was one of two survivors of a crash of a chartered jet in South Carolina, and President-Elect Barack Obama was on board a plane that had a collision with a parked aircraft on the ground in Chicago.

For more information on all of these 2008 events, including links to incident reports, investigation updates, plane crash videos, and podcasts, please visit 2008.AirSafe.org. There you will also find links to additional information such as what you can bring on board, lists of banned items, instructions on how to successfully complain about your air travel experience, and fear of flying advice.

Listen to the Annual Review for 2008

Crash of an F/A-18 Jet near San Diego

On 8 December 2008, a US Marine Corps F/A-18D jet based at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station crashed during approach about two miles short of the runway. The pilot successfully ejected, but four people, two children, their mother, and grandmother were killed in one of the two houses destroyed by the jet. No one else on the ground was injured.

The investigation is ongoing, but reportedly the two-seat jet, flown by a single pilot on a training mission, had some kind of mechanical or flight control difficulty. The crash occurred as the pilot was returning from training on the carrier USS Lincoln, off the San Diego coast.

The F/A-18 has first entered operational service with the US Marines in 1983. The D model of the aircraft involved in the crash is used by the Marines as either a training or attack aircraft.

For the audio podcast from AirSafe.com, visit http://www.airsafe.com/podcasts/show76-f-18.mp3.


The AirSafe.com video podcast is available below:


The following video was produced by Glenn Pew.

F/A-18 Crash 8 December 2008