FAA to allow airlines to lift many mobile device restrictions

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced on 31 October 2013 that it will allow passengers to use personal electronic devices (PEDs) during all phases of flight, and is immediately providing the airlines with guidance for implementing these changes.

These changes will not happen immediately. Airlines will first have to review their fleets and prove to the FAA that that they can safety allow passengers to safely use their devices in all phases of flight. The FAA expects that many airlines will be able to do so by the end of the year.

As with most changes to FAA regulations, these changes happened only after extensive consultations with technical experts and other representatives from the experts from the airlines, aircraft manufacturers, and the consumer electronics industry, as well as representatives from pilot, passenger, and flight attendant organizations.

What this means for passengers
These upcoming changes mean that passengers will soon be able use smaller devices like iPads, mobile phones, handheld video games, and ebook readers on the ground or in the air, with very limited exceptions. Electronic items will have to be either held or placed the seat back pocket during the actual takeoff and landing. The key rule changes that passengers should be aware of include the following:

• Changes to PED policies will not happen immediately and will vary by airline, and may not apply to your particular aircraft. Check with your airline to see if and when you can use your PED.

• Current PED policies remain in effect until an airline completes a safety assessment, gets FAA approval, and changes its PED policy.

• Your airline may have a PED use policy that is more restrictive than the FAA policy.
  
• While in flight, mobile phones and devices that can connect to the Internet will have to remain in airplane mode while in flight (the cellular connection must be disabled).

• You may use the Internet connection on your device if your airline offers an in-flight wireless connection.

• Even if your airline offers an in-flight wireless connection, it may not allow you to make voice calls using Skype or a similar Internet-based voice communication system.
  
• Your airline may also allow you to use short-range Bluetooth accessories, like wireless keyboards.

• You will have to stow heavier devices like laptops under seats or in the overhead bins during takeoff and landing.

• During the safety briefing, the airline will request that you pay attention to the safety briefing.

• There may still be some situations where the airline may request that you not use your PED, and if this happens, follow crew instructions and immediately turn off your device.

Related resources

• Advice on the use of personal electronic devices 31 October 2013 BBC interview with Dr. Curtis about the rule changes

• 3 May 2012 WTOP interview with Dr. Curtis arguing for a change in the old policy

• Protecting your laptop when you fly

Photo credit: Anna Langova

Lao Airlines ATR 72 crash kills all 49 on board

16 October 2013; Lao Airlines ATR 72-600; RDPL-34233; flight QV301; near Pakxe, Laos: The aircraft was on a scheduled domestic flight from Vientiane, the capitol of Laos, to Pakxe in the southern part of the country. It crashed into the Mekong river during its approach and sank. The crash occurred about eight kilometers (five miles) from the airport. All five crew members and 44 passengers were killed.

About this aircraft
According to Airfleets.net, this ATR 72 was the newest aircraft in the Lao Airlines fleet, having been delivered to the airline fewer than seven months ago.

About the ATR 72
This is the sixth crash of an ATR 72 passenger flight involving at least one fatality. The previous events were:

1. 31 October 1994; American Eagle (Simmons Airlines) ATR 72-200; N401AM; flight 4184; near Roselawn, IN: This was a scheduled domestic flight from Indianapolis, IN and Chicago, IL. During descent, the crew activated the airframe deicing system. The crew was in a holding pattern at about 10,000 feet (3050 m) and while the aircraft was descending to 8,000 feet, the aircraft went out of control due to the effects of icing and crashed. The four crew members and 64 passengers were all killed. The icing occurred in areas of the wings that were beyond the area protected by the deicing system.
   Fatal American Airlines Events
   Wikipedia Entry for this Accident
   NTSB Accident Report Volume I  (Summary)
   NTSB Accident Report Volume II  (Summary)

2. 6 August 2005; Tuninter ATR 72-200; near Palermo, Italy: The aircraft was on an unscheduled international flight from Bari, Italy to Djerba, Tunisia when the aircraft reportedly developed engine trouble. The crew ditched the aircraft off the coast of Palermo. The aircraft had been on a scheduled domestic flight from Kish Island in the Persian Gulf. Two of the four crew members and 14 of the 35 passengers were killed.
   Fatal Events for Airlines of the Middle East and Africa

3. 4 August 2009; Bangkok Airways ATR 72-200; HS-PGL; flight 266, Koh Samui, Thailand: The aircraft was a scheduled domestic flight from Krabi to Koh Samui, Thailand, and skidded off the runway during the landing, hitting the control tower building. One of the four crew members was killed, but all 68 passengers survived.

4. 4 November 2010; AeroCaribbean; CU-T1549; ATR 72-212; Flight 883; near Guasimal, Sancti Spiritus Province, Cuba: The aircraft was on a domestic flight from Santiago to Havana, Cuba. The crew reported an emergency situation shortly before the aircraft crashed in mountainous terrain. All seven crew members and 61 passengers were killed.

5. 2 April 2012; UTair ATR 72-200; VP-BYZ;flight 120; Tyumen, Russia: The aircraft was on scheduled domestic flight from Tyumen to Surgut, Russia. The airplane crashed broke up, and caught fire in a field about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) from the end of the departure runway. All four crew members and 27 of the 39 passengers were killed. This was the second fatal passenger jet crash involving this airline. The first was a 17 March 2007 crash of a UTair Tupolev Tu134A in Samara, Russia that killed six passengers.
   Fatal crashes of airlines of Russia and the former Soviet Union
   Additional information about this crash

Graphic: Central Intelligence Agency

Review of the new fear of flying book from SOAR

The new book from long time pilot and therapist Captain Tom Bunn, Soar: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying, takes a unique approach when it comes to dealing with a fear of flying. In short, he brings the systematic and logical approach of an aviator to address anxieties and fears that make it difficult or impossible for some people to fly. Because of this systematic approach, Captain Bunn is able to explain the foundation for his methods for treating fear of flying in terms that make sense to the average passenger.

With this book, Captain Bunn has provided both fearful flyers and other airline passengers with three distinct benefits. The first was his development of a conceptual model of how the mind experiences and deals with fear, and explaining it in terms that are understandable to someone who is not an expert in psychology or sociology. His second benefit was to explain the basics of airline operations in ways that demystifies the mechanics of flight and gives an average passenger a very clear idea of how pilots can calmly deal with situations that can lead to debilitating anxiety in a fearful flyer.

Using his conceptual model of the mind as a foundation, Captain Bunn provided his third and most significant benefit for a fearful flyer by creating numerous resources and techniques that a passenger can use to overcome flying related fears, and showing how a person can systematically use his or her mind to consciously and unconsciously control fear.

The SOAR approach to regulating emotions
The basic SOAR approach is to first help a fearful flyer understand the basis of their fears and how their mind and body reacts to fear inducing stress, and then to show them how to automatically regulate and control their flight anxiety. The book, which is based on Captain Bunn's decades of experience helping thousands of fearful flyers, asks the reader to do two things, the intellectual task of reading the book, and the emotional task of working through numerous exercises that when completed will provide a fearful passenger with numerous tools and techniques to address their anxieties before, during, and after a flight.

Combining aviation with psychology
At first glance, it may seem that aviation and psychology don't have much in common, but Captain Bunn manages to combine elements of both worlds in his book. Like a pilot who has a combination of systems to fly a plane under normal and stressful conditions, so too does a human being have multiple systems to control emotions. As with an aircraft, there may be systems that run for the most part automatically or are used for routine situations, and others that come into play during stressful situations or when primary systems fail or are overwhelmed. So too with the mind, where an automated, unconsciously controlled system for dealing with fear is moderated by several other systems that can be consciously guided and controlled by any airline passenger.

What this book provides the reader
Just like the case with an airline pilot, having multiple sophisticated control systems at your fingertips won't give you any benefit unless you have a basic understanding of how they operate, and a good working knowledge of what procedures to use and when to use them. Just as a pilot doesn't have to become an aeronautical engineer to fly a plane, a fearful passenger does not have to become a psychologist to understand how to manage their emotions. Captain Bunn's greatest gift to the reader is the way that he has successfully combined a basic explanation of how the mind deals with fear with practical instructions for how to eliminate or manage that fear.

If you are a passenger who has anxieties about flying and don't know how you can deal with it, reading this book would be a good first step toward overcoming your fear of flying.

Additional resources
Buy the book
About the SOAR fear of flying program
Fear of flying basics
Fear of flying warning signs

United Airlines captain dies after suffering heart attack during flight

26 September 2013, United Airlines; 737-900; flight 1603; near Boise, ID: A United Airlines captain suffered a heart attack while en route on a scheduled flight from Houston, TX to Seattle, WA. Although the captain received prompt treatment while in flight and after the aircraft made an unscheduled landing in Boise, ID, he was pronounced dead after arriving at a local hospital. The flight later continued onward to Seattle with a replacement pilot.

According to several media reports, after the 63-year-old pilot was stricken, two passengers, both military physicians stationed in Washington State, attended to the pilot, and the remaining pilot, as well as an off-duty United pilot who was also on board, made an emergency landing in Boise, ID. An autopsy performed the following day confirmed that the pilot had died of a heart attack.

Selected previous events
This was not the first time that an airline pilot was incapacitated during a flight. The following are just some of the more recent events:

• 20 January 2012 - A 44-year-old reserve first officer of a UTair 757 suffered a heart attack while en route from Chengdu, China to Novosibirsk, Russia. Although the pilot received prompt medical attention, including help from a passenger who was a cardiologist, the pilot died before the crew could make an emergency landing. The pilot was in the cockpit, but not at the controls, when he suffered a heart attack. In April of that same year, a UTair ATR72 crashed in Russia, killing dozens of passengers.


• 14 October 2010 - The 43-year-old captain of a Qatar Airways A330-300 suffered a massive heart attack roughly an hour after takeoff during a flight from Manila to Doha, Qatar. The first officer diverted the aircraft to Kuala Lumpur, where the pilot was pronounced dead after the plane arrived.


• 14 June 2010 - About an hour into a flight from San Francisco to Chicago, the first officer of an American Airlines 767 felt ill and was unable to continue with his flying duties. There were no off-duty pilots on board, and the captain chose to have a flight attendant with several hundred hours of flight experience provide assistance for the remainder of the flight.


• 18 June 2009 - The captain of a Continental Airlines 777-200 died while en route from Brussels, Belgium to Newark, NJ. The 60-year-old captain was replaced by a reserve first officer and the crew declared an emergency. The aircraft landed without further incident.


• 28 January 2008 - The first officer of an Air Canada 767 on a scheduled flight from Toronto to London became mentally incapacitated and the captain needed he help of several flight attendants to physically remove the first officer from the cockpit. The captain, along with the help of a flight attendant who held a commercial multiengine license, diverted the aircraft to Shannon, Ireland.

How frequent are these events?Y
While accidents involving serious injury or death to pilots or crew are routinely reported to civil aviation authorities around the world, deaths, injuries, or incapacitations due to natural causes are not. While there are many media reports of such incidents, especially in recent years with the increased use of social media, there are few formal studies of incidents of pilot incapacitations. One of them is a 2004 study from the FAA's Civil Aerospace Medical Institue, which found that in the six-year period from 1993 and 1998 there were 39 cases where a U.S. airline flight crew member was unable to perform any flight duties and 11 cases where the flight crew member was impaired and could only perform limited flight duties.

These 50 cases occurred on 47 different flights (two crew members were affected on three of the 47 flight). Four of these events involved a crew member death, all due to cardiac arrest. According to the FAA, in seven of these events the safety of the flight was seriously affected:

1. A 737 first officer experienced an alcohol-withdrawal seizure, applied full right rudder, and slumped over the control wheel, causing a loss of altitude until flight attendants could pull the first officer off the controls.


2. The foot of a DC9 first officer became lodged against a rudder pedal after his leg stiffened during a heart attack. The captain applied opposite rudder until the first officer's foot could be dislodged.


3. The flight engineer and the captain of a 727 lost consciousness after the flight engineer accidentally depressurized the aircraft. The first officer donned an oxygen mask and made an emergency descent.


4. A captain suffered an epileptic seizure while the aircraft was taxiing and applied enough force to the rudder to cause the aircraft to turn sharply and stop. The first officer removed the captain from the controls and taxied back to the gate.


5. An A300 captain suffered a cerebral infarction during approach, and neglected to lower the landing gear. After landing, the captain applied reverse thrust longer than necessary, and attempted to apply takeoff thrust on the taxiway.


6. An MD88 Delta Airlines captain, who was using unapproved contact lenses, misjudged his approach a LaGuardia Airport on 19 October 1996 during conditions of reduced visibility and struck approach lights near the end of the runway. The aircraft was substantially damaged, and three passengers received minor injuries during the evacuation.


7. The captain and first officer of a DC8 cargo flight both had their judgement affected due to fatigue, and they allowed the aircraft to enter an unrecoverable approach stall while on a approach to the airbase at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The captain, first officer, and flight engineer were all seriously injured in the 18 August 1993 crash.

Graphic: FlightAware.com

Boeing releases annual airline safety summary

The main goal of AirSafe.com is to provide the public with useful and reliable information about airline safety and security. One of the best sources for information about accident rates for specific airline models is Boeing's Statistical Summary of Commercial Airplane Accidents. The newest edition, covering the period from 1959 to 2012, was released in August 2013, and includes a variety of resources, including a summary of selected airliner crashes from 2012, as well as comparative data on the accident rates of various aircraft models.

This publication is very useful in part because it provides a snapshot of accident trends for different aircraft models and for different areas of the world. It is also useful for the AirSafe.com audience because it provides a different point of view. These differences are most noticeable if you compare AirSafe.com's safety review for 2012 with the list in the Boeing publication.

While there is some overlap between the two annual lists, particularly the crashes that resulted in passenger deaths, there are some key differences. Boeing, like much of the airline industry, has a focus on events that cause significant and unrepairable damage to aircraft, and their accident statistics reflect that focus. While AirSafe.com does make note of a number of nonfatal events, only those events that result in passenger deaths are used in any statistical comparisons on the site. Also, Boeing does not list events, even ones involving passenger fatalities, if it involved aircraft designed in the former Soviet Union, or events involving turboprop driven airliners.

In spite of those differences, Boeing's Statistical Summary is one of the industry publications that has very high quality data, and should be consulted by anyone who has an interest in airline safety, especially to answer specific questions about airliner accident rates and how they have changed over the last several decades.

Related resources
2012 Boeing Statistical Summary
2011 Boeing Statistical Summary
2010 Boeing Statistical Summary
2009 Boeing Statistical Summary
2008 Boeing Statistical Summary
2007 Boeing Statistical Summary
AirSafe.com's fatal events by aircraft model

The role of unidentified aerial phenomena in airline safety

Ongoing technological advances and other developments in the airline industry continue to lead to a greater understanding of the causes of accidents and incidents, one area that has not received much attention is unidentified aerial phenomena, also known as UAP. These are visual phenomena that occur in the sky that don't have a logical or rational explanation, even after a close review of the evidence by relevant experts.

Why UAP events are a safety issue
Unexplained aerial phenomena are important to aviation safety because some of these events are associated with effects to an aircraft's navigational or flight control systems, and also because sightings may cause flight crews to take abrupt, unplanned, and potentially hazardous maneuvers because the UAP is perceived as a threat to the aircraft.

NARCAP dedicated to studying UAP

NARCAP, the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena, is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to studying unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP) and their role in aviation safety. They regularly accept confidential submissions from pilots, air traffic controllers, and other aviation professionals who have witnessed UAP events, and have published a number of studies about UAP. You can find out more about NARCAP at uap.airsafe.com.

Interview with Dr. Richard Haines of NARCAP
Last month, Dr. Todd Curtis interviewed Dr. Richard Haines, the chief scientist of NARCAP, where they discussed his organization's efforts to reduce threats to aviation caused by unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).

Dr. Haines, who founded the organization in 1999, provided several examples of why unidentified aerial events may have put aircraft and their occupants at risk in the past, and also explained that such events happen to a significant fraction of active airline pilots. Dr. Haines also encouraged crew members who have observed such events to contact his organization at narcap.org and file a report on any past sightings.
Listen to the interview (1:01:28)

NARCAP resources and research studies
NARCAP advice to pilots
Report unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)
NARCAP technical reports

Social media leads to friction between airlines NTSB and FAA

A Wall Street journal article from 26 August 2013 highlighted the increasingly role social media tools like Twitter are playing in recent airline accidents in the US, leading to some friction between airline officials, the NTSB, and the FAA. In the article, Tim Logan, the senior risk management official at Southwest Airlines, expressed frustrations that speed at which information is released after an accident has led to problems like a lack of coordination between the FAA and the NTSB during an accident investigation, specifically the 22 July 2013 Southwest landing accident in New York.

Logan is not the only airline industry voice with concerns about the speed of information flows to the public. On 8 July 2013, just two days after the of an Asiana 777 in San Francisco, the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) sent out a press release stating that the organization was "stunned by the amount of detailed operational data from on-board recorders released by the National Transportation Safety Board," saying also that the amount of information released during the field portion of the investigation was unprecedented.

NTSB post accident policies on information
The speed at which NTSB releases information is part of their normal policy. On its web site, the NTSB states that after an accident, it strives to conduct two press conferences a day when on scene, where Board's spokespersons discuss factual, documented information about the accident. The NTSB may remain on site for up to a week, and they may also have several public affairs specialist to handle media requests.

Media involvement past and present
While the NTSB's policies with respect to being transparent and providing factual information to the public in the early stages of an investigation has not changed over the last few decades, the media realities are far different from the past. A little as a generation ago, only the largest media organizations had the resources needed to send video to viewers around the world, and most people had to wait until the following day's newspapers to get photos and interviews from those involved in the accident. Because of these kind of limitations, it could take days or weeks before minute details of an accident would be available to the public.

Compare the past with the present, where it takes little more than a YouTube or Twitter account (both available for free) for any individual or group to communicate with the entire world within seconds. Anyone interested in an accident can choose from a wide range of resources for information, and can get plenty of information directly from the investigating authorities unfiltered and without delay.

NTSB and social media
A 23 July 2013 article published by Twitter quoted an NTSB official stated that sending out tweets after an accident is standard NTSB policy because it helps to keep both the media and the public stay informed during an accident investigation.

The Wall Street Journal article discussed how the NTSB's use of Twitter to communicate with the media and the public after an accident has forced other parties involved in investigations, particularly airlines and the FAA, to speed up their responses both the the investigating authorities and to the public. The following chart was taken fro the article, and shows that NTSB sent out 86 tweets in the days after the 6 July 2013 crash of an Asiana 777 (flight 214) in San Francisco, with the largest number (30) sent the day after the crash.

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A search for tweets sent by NTSB (@NTSB) about the crash reveals that many of the tweets contained links to a wealth of information, including photos from the crash site, videos of press conferences, and the number of times the original tweet was retweeted:
Tweets from NTSB containing the word 'Asiana'
Tweets from NTSB containing hashtag #Asiana214
Tweets from NTSB containing the number '214'

Note that the search was conducted on the Twitter search site at search.twitter.com, and as is the case with most search engines, different search terms give different results, so it helps to use various search terms associated with an event.

NTSB uses a variety of social media tools to provide information to the public. In addition to Twitter, NTSB uses Flickr to post high resolution photos from accidents, and also has a YouTube channel where past press conferences can be reviewed at any time. Because all of their published information is in the public domain, anyone can use these photos and interviews without cost, and without first asking permission.

The future has more and not less social media
In spite of the protests about the speed at which the NTSB releases information, it is very likely that the future will see a greater role for social media in accident investigations. In the recent Southwest and Asiana crashes, photos and videos taken by some of the passengers involved in the accidents are being used by the NTSB to help further the investigations.

Perhaps the best description of what the future holds is from a headline from this recent headline from an article from the Airline Passenger Experience Association, "Social media becomes important tool in accident probes whether safety professionals like it or not." The article is about the August 2013 meeting if the International Association of Air Safety Investigators (ISASI), where among other things, an informal poll of the roughly 300 air safety specialists in attendance showed that almost all of them used Twitter. Representatives from the Canadian and German aviation accident investigation agencies, as well as a representative from Southwest Airlines, agreed that information supplied by passengers and other witnesses, and shared online, have helped investigators.