The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

It's official: flying is so safe, it's hard to measure

The National Transportation Safety Board has released its final 2012 statistics:

Part 121 commercial airline operations remained fatality-free, and general aviation accidents were virtually unchanged. In the general aviation segment, the number of total accidents was 1,470 in 2011 and 1,471 in 2012. Fatalities decreased slightly, from 448 to 432, and the accident rate per 100,000 flight hours declined from 6.84 to 6.78. On-demand Part 135 operations showed improvement, with decreases across all measures, the NTSB said.

Part 121 refers to the section of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) involving scheduled commercial passenger service. What these statistics mean is, in 2012, you had a better chance of dying doing anything else than flying on a commercial airliner.

The most disgusting thing in London

I can scarcely imagine how much a team of Thames Water maintenance workers enjoyed removing this:

Last week, officials at Thames Water removed a 15-tonne lump of lard from a trunk line sewer beneath the London suburb of Kingston. It was the fattest fatberg ever recovered from the London sewers, and by extension, probably the largest subterranean grease clump in U.K. history.

"A fatberg," says Simon Evans, media relations manager at Thames Water, "is a vile, festering, steaming collection of fat and wet wipes." Fatberg creation is a vicious cycle, according to Evans, who coined the term. "Fat clings to wipes, wipes cling to the fat," he explains. "They are the catalysts in this horrible fatberg game."

And—you know you want to watch this—Thames Water released video of the thing:

So remember, folks, don't flush your bacon grease or your wet-wipes. Or condoms, but that's another story entirely.

Also, this is probably the first literal use of the "Kitchen Sink" category in Daily Parker history.

Articles I've sent to my Kindle

...because I didn't have time to read them today:

I will now go home and read these things on the way.

The Gimli Glider, 30 years on

It completely passed me by that last week was the 30th anniversary of one of aviation's biggest moments in "it could have been worse," when an Air Canada 767 ran out of fuel over western Ontario:

On 23 July 1983, flight 143 was cruising at 41,000 ft., over Red Lake, Ontario. The aircraft's cockpit warning system sounded, indicating a fuel pressure problem on the aircraft's left side. Assuming a fuel pump had failed,[3] the pilots turned it off,[3] since gravity should feed fuel to the aircraft's two engines. The aircraft's fuel gauges were inoperative because of an electronic fault which was indicated on the instrument panel and airplane logs (the pilots believed flight to be legal with this malfunction). The flight management computer indicated that there was still sufficient fuel for the flight; but the initial fuel load had been entered as pounds instead of kilograms. A few moments later, a second fuel pressure alarm sounded for the right engine, prompting the pilots to divert to Winnipeg. Within seconds, the left engine failed and they began preparing for a single-engine landing.

As they communicated their intentions to controllers in Winnipeg and tried to restart the left engine, the cockpit warning system sounded again with the "all engines out" sound, a long "bong" that no one in the cockpit could recall having heard before and that was not covered in flight simulator training.[3] Flying with all engines out was something that was never expected to occur and had therefore never been covered in training.[4] Seconds later, with the right-side engine also stopped, the 767 lost all power, and most of the instrument panels in the cockpit went blank.

What happened next...is worth reading about.

Thanks to Jim Fallows for reminding me about this anniversary.

Unnerving coincidences in aviation

Three weeks ago, I visited San Francisco. Two days after I flew out of SFO, there was the first fatal air-transport accident in the U.S. in 12 years.

Sunday, I flew out of LaGuardia, and yesterday a Southwest Airlines plane suffered a nose-gear collapse on landing:

The front landing gear of a Boeing 737 operated by Southwest Airlines collapsed upon landing at La Guardia Airport on Monday evening, thrusting the plane’s nose into the tarmac and sending out a stream of sparks as the plane skidded to a stop, officials and witnesses said.

At least [8] people were injured, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport; six of those were taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known, though it appeared that none were serious.

The airport was closed for about 80 minutes, and one of its two main runways reopened at 7:06 p.m.

All the injuries were minor.

Good thing I'm not scheduled to fly anywhere for five weeks.

Cooling off, maybe

Chicago has experienced its first big heat wave of the year, with temperatures above 32°C every day this week. Yesterday, 46 of the lower 48 states reported temperatures in that range, with only North Dakota and Minnesota spared.

A friend who lives in San Francisco posted this with the caption, "Summer hits the Bay Area:"

It cooled down last night, so it's now just about 26°C...here. Only I'm going to New York in a few hours, where today will not only get to 35°C, but will have violent thunderstorms and buckets of rain. Good weekend to visit.

TSA PreCheck now generally available

Two weeks ago, I described my experience zipping through SFO's security lines. Because I have elite status on American Airlines and because I'm in the CBP's Global Entry program, I qualified automatically for TSA PreCheck.

Yesterday, TSA administrator John Pistole announced that now, any U.S. citizen traveler can apply:

Until now, travelers could only apply to use PreCheck if they were members of certain airline frequent flier programs or were enrolled in "trusted traveler" programs with the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

The expansion is part of the TSA's efforts to focus more attention on high-risk travelers and cut back on the screening time spent on frequent travelers.

Travelers who pay the $85 must submit to fingerprinting and a background check. Applicants who are cleared by the TSA are enrolled to use the PreCheck lines for five years.

I'd say it's worth $85 to get through security lines at speeds not seen since the last century.

Two "oh, dear" aviation stories just now

First, a Boeing 787 caught fire at Heathrow this afternoon; fortunately, no one was aboard:

Video footage showed the plane surrounded by foam used to quell the flames. The airport said in a statement that it was an on-board internal fire, but didn’t offer more details. It said the plane was empty, parked in a remote area and there were no reported injuries. All flights in and out were temporarily suspended Friday afternoon -- a standard procedure if fire crews are called out.

Ethiopian Airlines said smoke was detected coming from the aircraft after it had been parked at Heathrow for more than eight hours.

You can bet that Chicago-based Boeing will watch this story very, very carefully. Their shares dropped 7% on the news, for one thing.

In other unfortunate aviation news, the San Francisco Police have confirmed that one of the two victims of the Asiana 214 crash got run over by a fire truck, but they don't know yet whether she was alive when this happened:

Medical examiners will not release autopsy results for “at least two or three weeks,” San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault told NBC Bay Area on Sunday. Coroner’s officials are working to determine how 16-year-old Ye Mengtuan died.

Police officials confirmed that the girl was hit by the truck in the chaos that followed the deadly crash, which also killed her classmate and travel companion, identified by the airline as 16-year-old Wang Linjia.

The girl was blanketed in white foam emergency crews sprayed to douse the flames billowing out of the Boeing 777, police said. She was discovered in the tire track of the fire truck, police spokesman Albie Esparza told NBC News.

Not a good week for aviation.

The Decline of North Carolina

The New York Times on Tuesday lamented the state's decline:

In January, after the election of Pat McCrory as governor, Republicans took control of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time since Reconstruction. Since then, state government has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot.

The cruelest decision by lawmakers went into effect last week: ending federal unemployment benefits for 70,000 residents. Another 100,000 will lose their checks in a few months. Those still receiving benefits will find that they have been cut by a third, to a maximum of $350 weekly from $535, and the length of time they can receive benefits has been slashed from 26 weeks to as few as 12 weeks.

At the same time, the state is also making it harder for future generations of workers to get jobs, cutting back sharply on spending for public schools. Though North Carolina has been growing rapidly, it is spending less on schools now than it did in 2007, ranking 46th in the nation in per-capita education dollars. Teacher pay is falling, 10,000 prekindergarten slots are scheduled to be removed, and even services to disabled children are being chopped.

I lived in Raleigh for a few months and went to Duke, so it pains me to see the South's most-progressive state become its most-repressive. As the Times concludes: "North Carolina was once considered a beacon of farsightedness in the South, an exception in a region of poor education, intolerance and tightfistedness. In a few short months, Republicans have begun to dismantle a reputation that took years to build."

Update: Reader TB, writing from New York, says: "I can attribute this to one thing, and that is NC becoming more of a purple state in the last few elections. They are trying to be more punitive towards those who vote Democratic. Not to mention the abortion restrictions they are trying to pass, which McCrory promised during the campaign he would not sign."

I think he's right.

Fatal accident at SFO

Yesterday, an Asiana 777 crashed on approach to San Francisco airport:

Two people were killed and 49 seriously hurt when Flight 214 crashed at 11:27 a.m. But the rest of the 307 passengers and crew members escaped either unscathed or with lesser injuries, Doug Yakel, an SFO spokesman, said at an evening news conference.

The plane came to rest on the side of Runway 28L, one of four runways at SFO, said Lynn Lunsford, a spokeswoman with the Federal Aviation Administration. The jetliner appeared to hit short of the runway and then slowly turn as it careened across the ground - losing its tail and leaving a trail of debris.

(Photo: AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Initial reports suggest the plane had a higher-than-normal angle of attack on an otherwise normal approach, and its tail struck the seawall at the end of 28L—the runway my Alaska 737 landed on last Saturday. It also seems from the reports that the pilots attempted a go-around immediately before the tail strike, which would explain the higher angle of attack and the reports of the plane "bouncing up" and "putting on the gas" from passengers.

I'll be following this story closely. This is the first-ever fatal accident for the Boeing 777, and the first fatal heavy airplane accident since 12 November 2001.