If you’ve been reading the blog for awhile, you might have noticed that I’m kind of a weather wonk as well as an airline dork. So I was really interested to see that a recent Air Canada flight that hit turbulence may have encountered an undular bore. What the heck is that?

You may have heard about this flight. An Air Canada A319 was going from Victoria to Toronto when something happened and the plane had to make an emergency landing in Calgary. At least 10 people were injured, but not much other information has been released, except that there was a computer problem.

I read a post in the Turbulence Forecast blog today pointing to an article saying that it could have been a rare atmospheric (aka undular) bore that caused turbulence severe enough that it impacted the computers (or more likely just knocked out the autopilot).

I had visions of a giant tidal wave in the sky crashing down on the plane, but admittedly, I had no idea what an atmospheric bore was at all. Turns out I wasn’t quite right. A little research brought me to this fascinating blog post from ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, Alabama of all places. Now, I’m a huge fan of true weather wonks. I regularly read Tom Skilling’s blog for WGN in Chicago, and I used to really like watching Sean McLaughlin when he worked for channel 12 in Phoenix. After reading this post by Tim Coleman in Alabama, I think I’ve found another weather geek to follow.

Tim explains the undular bore phenomenon very well. Basically, when a warm air mass comes into contact with a cool, stable air mass (or vice versa?), they can create waves in the air similar to what you’d see when you drop a pebble into a body of water, only these waves move at 10 to 50 mph. The tops of those waves will have winds going one way while the bottoms may be going another way. On October 3, 2007, a webcam caught an amazing view of one of these undular bores. Check it out.

Watch the trees at the very beginning. As the waves roll by, the winds quickly shift direction. That’s just cool. But this post makes it sound like this isn’t the rarest event. It actually happens quite often, though you often can’t see it because there are no clouds to show it. That’s a stark contrast to the original article saying it’s an extremely rare event. Maybe it’s only rare at such high altitude. I’m just not sure. Pretty cool stuff though, huh?

I’m just glad I didn’t have fly through it. Then again, it’s nice to know that flying through such violent air only resulted in some minor injuries and the plane landed safely.

If you’ve ever questioned why better visibility around the airport is so important, take a look at this video depicting a near-disaster in Providence last year. (Thanks to Vanity Fair Musings via Don Brown at Get the Flick.

If that doesn’t make you crap your pants, I’m not sure what will. There are just so many problems here that could have been avoided with ground-based radar. It’s a foggy night in Providence so you can’t see much outside. The United pilots get lost on landing and incorrectly state their location as being near inactive runway 25R instead of active runway 25L. That’s bad enough to cause problems. Meanwhile, the controller really blows it. Despite the aircraft saying they were near Taxiway Kilo and hearing a plane fly right overhead, the controller doesn’t pick up that they must be nowhere near runway 23R and on 23L instead.

The hero here? Obviously the US Airways pilots. Had they departed as directed by the controller, they very well could have taken the top off that United aircraft . . . or worse. Fortunately they had the good sense to wait the whole thing out until everyone knew where everyone else was. Wow.

Coming from the capital of runway incursions here in LA, I certainly hope we can get some funding together for better coverage of what’s happening on the ground.

Airplane, meet truck. Truck, fall over and play dead. That’s the gist of what you’ll see if you watch this video of a South African Airways 737-800 landing in Lusaka, Zambia. A reader of the blog alerted me to this a couple days ago, and I definitely think it’s worth a look. The impact happens just after the one minute mark.

This thread questions who is ultimately at fault, and I’d have to go with the pilot on this one. I mean, the truck may not have been parked in the right place, but it was NOT MOVING. Then again, an Enterprise shuttle van hit my stopped car at the airport earlier this year and they’re saying it’s not their fault, so who knows. (Note to everyone: Don’t rent from Enterprise)

Most interesting to me is this Lusaka Times article that says it was ship ZS-SJD. If they’re right, and they may not be considering they misidentified the 737-800 as a 737-700, then this is the exact plane I flew out of Lusaka back to Johannesburg back in December 2003. Neat.

Christmas trees are going up, shopping season is kicking into high gear, and the weather is getting chillier. Ah yes, it’s time for winter. Now, that doesn’t mean much here in LA where it’s a rare cold night when the temperature heads below freezing, but for the rest of the country, it requires bigger changes.

In places like Denver, it’s time to prepare for snow. And at Denver International Airport, it means hiring seasonal employees to handle the de-icing operation. As you probably know, when airplanes gather ice on their wings, bad things happen because planes lose lift. One of the most infamous icing accidents involved Air Florida flight 90departing Washington/National. Departure delays meant ice built up on the wings, and the pilots mistakenly tried to depart without further de-icing, the plane couldn’t climb and it crashed into the 14th St Bridge in Washington DC.

Obviously, de-icing is a serious business, but the airlines don’t generally handle it themselves. They contract with third parties who handle the seasonal task. So, when channel 4 in Denver starting hearing from “someone inside” Servisair, one of the companies that handles de-icing, that there were improprieties in the hiring process, they had one of their people go under cover and apply for a job.

As you might have guessed, it hasn’t turned out well. The first part included links to videos showing the examiners feeding all the answers to the applicants so that they could pass each airline’s test. Hmm, that doesn’t sound good. There were also other violations discussed in part 2.

Clearly, this is a bad thing. When you’re de-icing, you get up close to aircraft and you have access to the secure part of the airfield, so there needs to be a great deal of training involved. But is it a danger to the aircraft that get de-iced?

It could be. A report from 1993 (yes it’s old) recommended that pilots always double check the wings after de-icing to make sure that they’re clean. The report said that there were cases where pilots did not do that, leading them to depart with some wing contamination. So, if the de-icing crew is not as well-versed in de-icing as they need to be and the pilots don’t check the wings themselves, there could be problems.

This report was in 1993, and I would hope there have been changes since that time, but I don’t know for sure. Any pilots out there who can speak to this?

The company says this is not policy (duh), but I wonder how long this has been going on. Looking back, I couldn’t find a de-icing accident at Denver since a Continental DC-9 crashed on takeoff in November 1987. So even if this has been going on for up to 20 years, it hasn’t caused any de-icing problems in that time. Still, it doesn’t exactly sit well.

You have to love the Danes. It’s cold and dark for much of the year up there, so you know it has to be their sense of humor that gets them through until summer. This time, it’s the Q400 that’s in their sights after having several landing gear problems on SAS-operated flights.

Danish media conglomerate DR has put up a new game on its website called Dash ‘n Crash. For those who only know the Q400 by its short name, this might not be that funny. The airplane’s full name is the Dash 8 Q400. Ah, yes. You know this is going to be fun.

As the game asks, “Tør du lande et Dash-fly?” In English, I believe that translates to “Isn’t flying the Dash 8 more fun than eating pickled herring?” And oh yes, it is. I’m guessing your interest won’t last long when you realize it is impossible to land the Q400 without the gear either collapsing or falling off the airplane entirely. Sweet. Have at it yourself:

If you’ve been watching the news over the last 24 hours, you’ve probably seen countless reports about the Sri Lankan plane that was *gasp* going to fly after it’s winglet sliced into the winglet of a British Airways plane. The reports, which apparently started with this Daily Mail story, make it sound like they were going to fly the plane with its wing missing. And if it wasn’t scary enough with text, they included this picture which appears to imply that the circled winglet belonged to the Sri Lankan plane.

How much more irresponsible can you get?

First off, most airplanes can fly without their winglets. The story says that the plane flew the route a day later. That’s plenty of time to inspect the wing, make sure only the winglet was damaged, and then remove it. The plane can fly with just one winglet with no trouble at all.

Remember when a test A380 lost a winglet in Bangkok earlier this year? Guess what Airbus, the company that also manufactured the Sri Lankan plane, had to say?

“This sort of thing happens every day, in every airport around the world,” said Edouard Ullmo, Airbus’ executive vice president of sales for Asia Pacific.

“We can fly with one winglet or no winglets,” said Ullmo. “This is standard procedure.”

So there. The irresponsible journalists at the Daily Mail (and those who brought the story over here to the US) then put out that picture circling the BA wingtip. That was just the BA plane, not the Sri Lankan plane. But you know what? All you have to do is take that winglet off the BA plane and it can fly as well. Here’s a picture of that BA plane in-flight without that winglet. If you believe the sources in this Airliners.net thread, the plane actually flew the next day as well. I don’t have official confirmation of that, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Now, I don’t know for sure what happened with the Sri Lankan aircraft. Is it possible that the plane was going to fly in an unsafe condition? I suppose so. But that was a very public incident involving the airplane, and I’d have to think that there were accident investigators swarming all over the place. I would be shocked if they let it fly in an unsafe condition.

Is this really the best fake-scary story they could come up with yesterday?

Judging from comments on previous posts in the last couple of days, I’m guessing many of you have already heard that SAS had yet another Q400 turboprop land with gear problems. This makes for an unbelievable third gear problem resulting in an emergency landing in less than two months. If you’d like to see the rather boring video of this landing, click here.

Before anyone had time to figure out what happened, SAS came out saying that they were permanently grounding the plane type and selling their fleet of 27 as soon as possible. That would certainly imply that SAS blames Bombardier, the manufacturer of the plane, for this. But is it their fault?

I’m not really convinced of that. There are many other operators of the Dash 8 in the world, including Horizon Air here in the US. They operate in the Pacific Northwest in a damp, cool climate not unlike that of Scandinavia. Their fleet is also about the same age as that of SAS with most aircraft being delivered in 2001. So why hasn’t Horizon had a single problem thus far?

Bombardier’s Marc Duchesne did say, “We did an internal investigation that confirmed there was no systemic problem with the landing gear of the Q400.” That would certainly point to something going on with the aircraft’s operation specific to SAS, but of course we just don’t know yet. Bombardier has also said that this problem was unrelated to the previous gear problems.

So, should SAS be grounding these planes and selling them off? It’s not an easy decision, but I would argue that it’s too early to make that kind of decision. They’re estimating this will cost the airline anywhere from $47m to $62m. (Actually 300m to 400m Swedish Krona.) That’s a lot of money considering they don’t even know what the problem is yet.

I think back to the DC-10, an airplane that had more than its share of serious problems. Unlike the Q400, its problems actually caused many fatalities, and it was ultimately grounded by the US for a short time until problems were fixed. That was a situation far more serious than what SAS is dealing with today, yet major operators like United and American did not walk away from the plane and sell their fleets. The planes were fixed and ended up having a good safety record until their retirement in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Of course, it’s easy for SAS to say that this is the third landing gear problem they’ve had and their customers have lost confidence in the aircraft. They have to get rid of it. But what if it really is something that SAS was doing? In that case, getting rid of the planes will only cost them more money without measurably improving public perception. If it is their fault, they’ll take the hit regardless. And what if it is an easily fixable problem? Will it be worth it to ditch the plane entirely? I remain unconvinced.

I completely agree that they should ground the aircraft until they figure out what’s going on and have other airlines do the flying for them in the short run. But selling the planes off right now seems premature. Let’s just hope they figure out what’s going on quickly so that it doesn’t have the opportunity to happen again.

Last week I wrote about SAS’ two accidents involving landing gear problems on the Q400. This story keeps getting stranger.

On Thursday, Horizon Air announced that they had completed inspections of all their Q400s and everything would be back to normal Tuesday, Sep 24. They took ads out in local papers reassuring customers that inspections were completed, but they made no mention of finding anything wrong.

Meanwhile, a report came out this morning saying that SAS found corrosion of the landing gear on 25 of the 27 planes inspected. They were fixing the gear and then they would put everything back into service.

As if that wasn’t enough, there was yet another incident this weekend. Augsburg Airways, which flies regional flights for Lufthansa, had a Q400 land with its nosegear up at Munich over the weekend. The SAS incidents both involved the main gear, but this still has to have many people thinking about the connection, not to mention how this relates to the ANA nosegear problems from March.

I wish I had more answers than questions at this point, but I don’t. What the heck is going on here? Why is it that Horizon would seemingly find no problems (unless they just aren’t telling us) yet SAS would find some on almost every plane? It’s not like they operate in very different climates. I’d argue that the environment is about the same for both operators. Anyone else have any theories?

What a strange week for the Bombardier Q400 and for Scandinavian airline SAS. After having the gear collapse on two separate landings within a couple of days, I think it’s safe to say there’s a problem here.

First, there was the landing in Aalborg, Denmark last Sunday. You can watch the really cool video coverage by clicking below.

That may look worse than it actually was. Everyone got out fine, as they usually do with gear collapses upon landing.

The second one happened yesterday on a flight to Palanga (Lithuania). According to the release from SAS, the flight apparently “experienced technical difficulties” and diverted to Vilnius (also Lithuania). Once again, everyone was fine, but there are really no details here, but I’m told it was again a landing gear collapse.

This makes sense because Bombardier immediately called for inspections on all Q400s with more than 10,000 cycles (1 takeoff and 1 landing count as 1 cycle). SAS decided to ground their entire fleet immediately until inspections could be completed even though not all of them had more than 10,000 cycles.

In the US, I believe this only affects Alaska’s regional airline Horizon Air. These guys canceled about a quarter of their flights yesterday and will do the same today. Make sure you check with them before you go to the airport to find your flight canceled. Other than that, nobody here should be affected. Continental will have Q400 flights from a regional partner starting next year but that’s not an issue now. And Hawai’i’s Island Air recently got rid of their Q400s as they try to survive.

I’m curious to see what this means going forward. If they don’t find any problems on the existing fleet, will they just started requiring inspections as each plane turns 10,000 cycles old? Something tells me that the accident investigations will turn up some common thread. If not, it’ll have just been an amazing coincidence.

Six years later. It’s been especially strange this year as Sept 11 once again falls on a Tuesday, the first time that’s happened since 2001. As I write this on the evening of the 10th, I can’t help but think back to the same Monday night back in 2001. It wasn’t a special night by any means back then, but of course now it marks the end of an era.

Last year, I wrote about what my September 11, 2001 was like, but I didn’t know what to write about this year. Should I have a day of silence? Or should I just go on like it was any other day? Nah.

I decided that I’d like to try to help build a tradition that Holly Hegeman over at PlaneBusiness started a few years back. Every year, she’s published the names of the crews onboard the four aircraft that crashed in her weekly Banter. On a day when everyone honors all those who died, I think it’s fitting that those of us who love this industry honor those who were “in the family.”

American 11 (Boston to Los Angeles)
Crashed into World Trade Center
John Ogonowski, Dracut, Mass., Captain; Thomas McGuinness, Portsmouth, N.H., First Officer; Barbara Arestegui, flight attendant; Jeffrey Collman, flight attendant; Sara Low, flight attendant; Karen Martin, flight attendant; Kathleen Nicosia, flight attendant; Betty Ong, flight attendant; Jean Roger, flight attendant; Dianne Snyder, flight attendant; Madeline Sweeney, flight attendant

United 175 (Boston to Los Angeles)
Crashed into World Trade Center
Victor J. Saracini, Lower Makefield Township, Pa., Captain; Michael Horrocks, First Officer; Amy Jarret, flight attendant; Al Marchand, flight attendant; Amy King, flight attendant; Kathryn Laborie, flight attendant; Michael Tarrou, flight attendant; Alicia Titus, flight attendant

American 77 (Washington/Dulles to Los Angeles)
Crashed into the Pentagon
Charles Burlingame, Captain; David Charlebois, First Officer; Michele Heidenberger, flight attendant; Jennifer Lewis, flight attendant; Kenneth Lewis, flight attendant; and Renee May, flight attendant

United 93 (Newark to San Francisco)
Crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Jason Dahl, Colorado, Captain; Leroy Homer, Marlton, N.J., First Officer; Sandy Bradshaw, flight attendant; CeeCee Lyles, flight attendant; Lorraine Bay, flight attendant; Wanda Green, flight attendant; Deborah Welsh, flight attendant