Runway overrun and collision, Platinum Jet Management, LLC, Bombardier Challenger CL-600-1A11, N370V, Teterboro, New Jersey, February 2, 2005 /

"PB2007-910401."

FAA BCAS concept /

Issued Apr. 1978.

Die flugkunst am scheidewege.

Mode of access: Internet.

Aviation safety : air taxis--the most accident-prone airlines--need better oversight : report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, Committee on Public Works and Transportation, House of Representatives /

"B-246219"--P. 1.

Aviation accident law /

Issued with supplement: Primary source pamphlet, which is updated periodically.

An overview on how failure analysis contributes to flight safety in the Portuguese Air Force

Failure analysis has been, throughout the years, a fundamental tool used in the aerospace sector, supporting assessments performed by sustainment and design engineers mainly related to failure modes and material suitability. The predicted service life of aircrafts often exceeds 40 years, and the design assured life rarely accounts for all in service loads and in service environmental menaces that aging aircrafts must deal with throughout their service lives. From the most conservative safe-life conceptual design approaches to the most recent on-condition based design approaches, assessing the condition and predicting the failure modes of components and materials are essential for the development of adequate preventive and corrective maintenance actions as well as for the accomplishment and optimization of scheduled maintenance programs of aircrafts. Moreover, as the operational conditions of aircrafts may vary significantly from operator to operator (especially in military aircraft), it is necessary to access if the defined maintenance programs are adequate to guarantee the continuous reliability and safe usage of the aircrafts, preventing catastrophic failures which bear significant maintenance and repair costs, and that may lead to the loss of human lives. Thus being, failure analysis and material investigations performed as part of aircraft accidents and incidents investigations arise as powerful tools of the utmost importance for safety assurance and cost reduction within the aeronautical and aerospace sectors. The Portuguese Air Force (PRTAF) has operated different aircrafts throughout its long existence, and in some cases, has operated a particular type of aircraft for more than 30 years, gathering a great amount of expertise in: assessing failure modes of the aircrafts materials; conducting aircrafts accidents and incidents investigations (sometimes with the participation of the aircraft manufacturers and/or other operators); and in the development of design and repair solutions for in-service related problems. This paper addresses several studies to support the thesis that failure analysis plays a key role in flight safety improvement within the PRTAF. It presents a short summary of developed

Computer modelling of human behaviour in aircraft fire accidents

The mathematical simulation of the evacuation process has a wide and largely untapped scope of application within the aircraft industry. The function of the mathematical model is to provide insight into complex behaviour by allowing designers, legislators, and investigators to ask ‘what if’ questions. Such a model, EXODUS, is currently under development, and this paper describes its evolution and potential applications. EXODUS is an egress model designed to simulate the evacuation of large numbers of individuals from an enclosure, such as an aircraft. The model tracks the trajectory of each individual as they make their way out of the enclosure or are overcome by fire hazards, such as heat and toxic gases. The software is expert system-based, the progressive motion and behaviour of each individual being determined by a set of heuristics or rules. EXODUS comprises five core interacting components: (i) the Movement Submodel — controls the physical movement of individual passengers from their current position to the most suitable neighbouring location; (ii) the Behaviour Submodel — determines an individual's response to the current prevailing situation; (iii) the Passenger Submodel — describes an individual as a collection of 22 defining attributes and variables; (iv) the Hazard Submodel — controls the atmospheric and physical environment; and (v) the Toxicity Submodel — determines the effects on an individual exposed to the fire products, heat, and narcotic gases through the Fractional Effective Dose calculations. These components are briefly described and their capabilities and limitations are demonstrated through comparison with experimental data and several hypothetical evacuation scenarios.

The AASK database V4.0: aircraft accident statistics and knowledge. A database to record human experience of evacuation in aviation accidents

This paper describes the AASK database. The AASK database is unique as it is a record of human behaviour during survivable aviation accidents. The AASK database is compiled from interview data compiled by agencies such as the NTSB and the AAIB. The database can be found on the website http://fseg.gre.ac.uk

A high precision instrument to measure angular and binocular deviation introduced by aircraft windscreens by using a shadow casting technique

Objects viewed through transparent sheets with residual non-parallelism and irregularity appear shifted and distorted. This distortion is measured in terms of angular and binocular deviation of an object viewed through the transparent sheet. The angular and binocular deviations introduced are particularly important in the context of aircraft windscreens and canopies as they can interfere with decision making of pilots especially while landing, leading to accidents. In this work, we have developed an instrument to measure both the angular and binocular deviations introduced by transparent sheets. This instrument is especially useful in the qualification of aircraft windscreens and canopies. It measures the deviation in the geometrical shadow cast by a periodic dot pattern trans-illuminated by the distorted light beam from the transparent test specimen compared to the reference pattern. Accurate quantification of the shift in the pattern is obtained by cross-correlating the reference shadow pattern with the specimen shadow pattern and measuring the location of the correlation peak. The developed instrument is handy to use and computes both angular and binocular deviation with an accuracy of less than +/- 0.1 mrad (approximate to 0.036 mrad) and has an excellent repeatability with an error of less than 2%. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4769756]

AASK - Aircraft accident statistics and knowledge: A database of human experience in evacuation, derived from aviation accident reports

Computer based mathematical models describing the aircraft evacuation process have a vital role to play in aviation safety. However such models have a heavy dependency on real evacuation data in order to (a) identify the key processes and factors associated with evacuation, (b) quantify variables and parameters associated with the identified factors/processes and finally (c) validate the models. The Fire Safety Engineering Group of the University of Greenwich is undertaking a large data extraction exercise from three major data sources in order to address these issues. This paper describes the extraction and application of data from one of these sources - aviation accident reports. To aid in the storage and analysis of the raw data, a computer database known as AASK (aircraft accident statistics and knowledge) is under development. AASK is being developed to store human observational and anecdotal data contained in accident reports and interview transcripts. AASK comprises four component sub-databases. These consist of the ACCIDENT (crash details), FLIGHT ATTENDANT (observations and actions of the flight attendants), FATALS (details concerning passenger fatalities) and PAX (observations and accounts from individual passengers) databases. AASK currently contains information from 25 survivable aviation accidents covering the period 4 April 1977 to 6 August 1995, involving some 2415 passengers, 2210 survivors, 205 fatalities and accounts from 669 people. In addition to aiding the development of aircraft evacuation models, AASK is also being used to challenge some of the myths which proliferate in the aviation safety industry such as, passenger exit selection during evacuation, nature and frequency of seat jumping, speed of passenger response and group dynamics. AASK can also be used to aid in the development of a more comprehensive approach to conducting post accident interviews, and will eventually be used to store the data directly.

An aircraft accident database of human experience in evacuation derived from aviation accident reports

Computer based mathematical models describing the aircraft evacuation process have a vital role to play in aviation safety. However, such models have a heavy dependency on real evacuation data. The Fire Safety Engineering Group of the University of Greenwich is undertaking a large data extraction exercise in order to address this issue. This paper describes the extraction and application of data from aviation accident reports. To aid in the storage and analysis of the raw data, a computer database known as AASK (Aircraft Accident Statistics and Knowledge) is under development. AASK is being developed to store human observational and anecdotal data contained in accident reports and interview transcripts. AASK currently contains information from 25 survivable aviation accidents covering the period 04/04/77 to 06/08/95, involving some 2415 passengers, 2210 survivors, 205 fatalities and accounts from 669 people. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An analysis of the passenger to cabin crew ratio and exit reliability based on past survivable aviation accidents

A hotly debated issue in the area of aviation safety is the number of cabin crew members required to evacuate an aircraft in the event of an emergency. Most countries regulate the minimum number required for the safe operation of an aircraft, but these rulings are based on little if any scientific evidence. Another issue of concern is the failure rate of exits and slides. This paper examines these issues using the latest version of Aircraft Accident Statistics and Knowledge database AASK V4.0, which contains information from 105 survivable crashes and more than 2,000 survivors, including accounts from 155 cabin crew members.

Investigating the impact of aircraft exit availability on egress time using computer simulation

This paper examines the influence of exit availability on evacuation time for narrow body aircraft under certification trial conditions using computer simulation. A narrow body aircraft which has previously passed the certification trial is used as the test configuration. While maintaining the certification requirement of 50% of the available exits, six different configurations are examined. These include the standard certification and five other exit configurations based on commonly occurring exit combinations found in accidents. These configurations are based on data derived from the AASK database and the evacuation simulations are performed using the airEXODUS evacuation software. The results show that the certification practise of using half of the available exits predominately down one side of the aircraft is neither statistically relevant nor challenging. For the aircraft cabin layout examined, the exit configuration used in certification trial produces the shortest egress times. Furthermore, three of the six exit combinations investigated result in predicted egress times in excess of 90 seconds, suggesting that the aircraft would not satisfy the certification requirement under these conditions.

Aircraft accident in Brazil: Boeing vs. Legacy?

Air accidents represent a small proportion of the flights registered worldwide. Airplane collisions in the air are rare. In September of 2006, a Boeing 737-800 collided in midair with a Legacy Jet. It was the largest accident registered in the history of Brazilian aviation until that time. The present study explores aspects of press coverage of the accident. Data and information reported in the media about the accident from September 2006 to August 2007 were collected and discussed. Media coverage called attention to two unusual aspects: politicisation of the discussion, culminating in the opening of congressional inquiries, and equally the concomitance of police investigations interfering in the work of agencies responsible for the official accident investigation. Emphasis on assigning guilt and establishing penalties may close the windows of opportunity an accident had opened for discussions on the improvement of air safety. In Brazil, political imperatives and organizational pressures have interfered and the possibilities of organizational learning from the accident have been drastically curtailed.

Development of a 3-Dimensional Mathematical Collision Risk Model Based on Recorded Aircraft Trajectories to Estimate the Safety Level in High Density En-Route Airspaces

Como en todos los medios de transporte, la seguridad en los viajes en avión es de primordial importancia. Con los aumentos de tráfico aéreo previstos en Europa para la próxima década, es evidente que el riesgo de accidentes necesita ser evaluado y monitorizado cuidadosamente de forma continúa. La Tesis presente tiene como objetivo el desarrollo de un modelo de riesgo de colisión exhaustivo como método para evaluar el nivel de seguridad en ruta del espacio aéreo europeo, considerando todos los factores de influencia. La mayor limitación en el desarrollo de metodologías y herramientas de monitorización adecuadas para evaluar el nivel de seguridad en espacios de ruta europeos, donde los controladores aéreos monitorizan el tráfico aéreo mediante la vigilancia radar y proporcionan instrucciones tácticas a las aeronaves, reside en la estimación del riesgo operacional. Hoy en día, la estimación del riesgo operacional está basada normalmente en reportes de incidentes proporcionados por el proveedor de servicios de navegación aérea (ANSP). Esta Tesis propone un nuevo e innovador enfoque para evaluar el nivel de seguridad basado exclusivamente en el procesamiento y análisis trazas radar. La metodología propuesta ha sido diseñada para complementar la información recogida en las bases de datos de accidentes e incidentes, mediante la provisión de información robusta de los factores de tráfico aéreo y métricas de seguridad inferidas del análisis automático en profundidad de todos los eventos de proximidad. La metodología 3-D CRM se ha implementado en un prototipo desarrollado en MATLAB © para analizar automáticamente las trazas radar y planes de vuelo registrados por los Sistemas de Procesamiento de Datos Radar (RDP) e identificar y analizar todos los eventos de proximidad (conflictos, conflictos potenciales y colisiones potenciales) en un periodo de tiempo y volumen del espacio aéreo. Actualmente, el prototipo 3-D CRM está siendo adaptado e integrado en la herramienta de monitorización de prestaciones de Aena (PERSEO) para complementar las bases de accidentes e incidentes ATM y mejorar la monitorización y proporcionar evidencias de los niveles de seguridad. ABSTRACT As with all forms of transport, the safety of air travel is of paramount importance. With the projected increases in European air traffic in the next decade and beyond, it is clear that the risk of accidents needs to be assessed and carefully monitored on a continuing basis. The present thesis is aimed at the development of a comprehensive collision risk model as a method of assessing the European en-route risk, due to all causes and across all dimensions within the airspace. The major constraint in developing appropriate monitoring methodologies and tools to assess the level of safety in en-route airspaces where controllers monitor air traffic by means of radar surveillance and provide aircraft with tactical instructions lies in the estimation of the operational risk. The operational risk estimate normally relies on incident reports provided by the air navigation service providers (ANSPs). This thesis proposes a new and innovative approach to assessing aircraft safety level based exclusively upon the process and analysis of radar tracks. The proposed methodology has been designed to complement the information collected in the accident and incident databases, thereby providing robust information on air traffic factors and safety metrics inferred from the in depth assessment of proximate events. The 3-D CRM methodology is implemented in a prototype tool in MATLAB © in order to automatically analyze recorded aircraft tracks and flight plan data from the Radar Data Processing systems (RDP) and identify and analyze all proximate events (conflicts, potential conflicts and potential collisions) within a time span and a given volume of airspace. Currently, the 3D-CRM prototype is been adapted and integrated in AENA’S Performance Monitoring Tool (PERSEO) to complement the information provided by the ATM accident and incident databases and to enhance monitoring and providing evidence of levels of safety.