39 years ago on the 4th of September 1971, Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 crashed on approach to Juneau, Alaska.

The Boeing 727, carrying 104 passengers and 7 crew members, flew into the Chilkat Mountain range. There were no survivors.

Aircraft Accident Report, Alaska Airlines, Inc. Boeing 727, N2969G

The flight had been cleared for a Localizer Directional Aid (LDA) approach to Runway 8 and had reported passing the final approach fix inbound to the airport. This intersection is located 10.2 nautical miles west of the airport.

No further communications were heard from the flight.

Search and rescue found the wreckage 18.5 NM west of the airport. They had crashed into the slope of a canyon in the Chilkat Mountains. The wreckage was found around the 2,500 foot level, in “near-alignment with the Juneau localizer course”.

Witnesses said they heard a low-flying aircraft but couldn’t see the plane due to the fog.

They further stated that the engines sounded normal and that there was no change in the engine sounds from the time they first heard the aircraft until the sound of explosions was heard approximately 1 minute later.

The weather was not good: scattered cloud at 1,500 feet, broken cloud at 3,500 feet, overcast at 7,500 feet and light rainshowers. Visibility at Juneau Municipal Airport was given as 15 miles but the visibility on the ground near the crash site was estimated at 60-70 yards (55-65 metres).

Correlation between the CVR readout and the approximate flightpath derived from the flight data recorder traces shows that the first, unmistakable abnormality in the flight’s progress occurred at 1201:03 when the captain told the first officer; “‘kay, you’re Howard,” although the aircraft was actually about 9 NM west of Howard. Since prior cockpit conversation indicates that the captain had set the 3530 radial (Howard Intersection) into his CDI, it appears that the crew depended on a display of navigational information that seemed to be correct but was in error by about 450°. Similar erroneous indications of progress along the localizer course are evidence in subsequent intracockpit conversation with the conversation dealing with the passing of Rockledge and Earlow Intersections, although the aircraft, in fact, never progressed as far as Howard.

What this means is that although we don’t know what went wrong with the navigation, the cockpit recorder makes it very clear that the crew believed the plane was 11 miles (18.5 km) further along than it was and thus they descended below the safe altitude for the approach. The weather meant that they could not see the terrain below them nor the landmarks which would have alerted them that they were still in the mountains. There is no evidence that the crew ever became aware that they were flying into the mountain range.

The NTSB concluded that there were a number of different possibilities, ranging from malfunctioning equipment to signal interference to operational factions; however there was not enough evidence to support any one of them as the most probable explanation.

Probable Cause
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was a display of misleading navigational information concerning the flight’s progress along the localizer course which resulted in a premature descent below obstacle clearance altitude. The origin or nature of the misleading navigational information could not be determined. The Board further concludes that the crew did not use all available navigational aids to check the flight’s progress along the localizer nor were these aids required to be used. The crew also did not perform the required audio identification of the pertinent navigational facilities.

That’s not to say that operational issues were the cause but that the crash could possibly have been avoided if the crew had used additional nav aids and especially that the cause could have been better identified if they had checked the audio identification of the VORs.

Neither the aircraft nor the navigational aids were found to have pertinent physical faults, so it does seem quite likely that human factors caused the initial issue. It is refreshing to see that the NTSB did not simply blame the crew. Although the report includes an in-depth analysis of the operational issues which could have led to a basic error being made, they clearly acknowledge that there is no evidence that crew error caused the crash.

These posts and articles of injured aircraft caught my eye this week and I couldn’t help but think that they’d interest you as well. Although it makes my stomach cramp up to see crumpled pieces of plane, in every instance below there were no fatalities. Once you see the images below, I think you’ll agree that’s amazing.

---

This amazing video of a rescue came to me via Golf Hotel Whiskey and My Flying Blog

---

I linked this Cub crashing into a Cadillac last week (follow Fear of Landing on Facebook if you want alerts for the sidebar links). The article on Velozia Air stated that “The pilot and sole occupant of the Piper J-3 Cub suffered only minor injuries to his arm and hand in the accident. The Cadillac was destroyed.” ABC have since posted a set of photographs in a slideshow. Unbelievable:

See the slideshow for the full set: PHOTOS: Small plane crashes into car

---

Looking at this photograph from Le Pays, it’s a miracle that the pilot walked away with only a minor shoulder injury. According to the article, the pilot flew in from England and landed to avoid bad weather. He then decided to carry on after all and crashed into the forest, flipping the plane over after hitting a tree.

You can see the full set of photographs and an article about the accident (in French) on Le Pays.

---

And this plane crash-landed in Bahia last week. According to a commenter on the PPRuNe Forums, “the most plausible sequence of events seems to be a normal approach, slight undershoot and main gear being snapped off by the kerb at the end of the runway.” Amazingly, there were no fatalities and only two minor injuries.

The full-sized photograph and an article in Portuguese are on O Globo’s website: Avião da Embraer com 27 pessoas a bordo pousa de barriga na Bahia

---

And while we’re talking about miracles … on the off chance that there is anyone left who hasn’t seen this great chart from Jeppesen memorialising the Hudson Landing by Captain Sully, I’ll link it once more:

Click on the image to view it at full-size. It’s a beautiful piece of work.

---

And finally, from the PPRuNe forums, this article about an escaped vulture:
Vulture alert for the air traffic over England – PPRuNe Forums:

Warnings were issued to air traffic over Scotland and England yesterday after a vulture which is capable of soaring at heights of more than 30,000 feet escaped during an air show.
Britain’s air traffic control group to issue the warning. “We made pilots aware of the possibility of seeing this bird as it has a three-meter wingspan and can fly at altitudes used by commercial aircraft,” a British air traffic control spokesman says to the Telegraph of London.

…and my favourite comment from the thread:

She’s probably just gently winging it along one of the upper link routes as I type – If you happen to establish visual contact, gently wave your wings and she may squawk ident.

Not much carrion about at those sort of flight levels.

The vulture, who was named Gandalf, was returned to his home in Cumbernauld last week: BBC News – Delight after missing vulture found safe and well

Oh, but I do love a happy ending…

I have been collecting my essays, articles and blog-posts into a single volume to see if it would read well as a book. This is the introduction: how I ended up studying for my Private Pilot’s Licence out of a grudge rather than actual interest. It didn’t take long before I was hooked!

I’ll post more in this sequence soon.

“You don’t need a real licence,” Tom said. The stern-faced ex-RAF instructor had already chided me for dressing inappropriately in my skirt and open-toed sandals. Now I realised he wanted to get rid of me.

He continued. “You want a wife’s licence. Forget the technical mumbo-jumbo. I’ll show you the radio and we’ll go up — you can even play with the flight controls.”

A strangled sound escaped me. A wife’s licence?

His condescending smile didn’t falter. “You’ll be done in a day so you can leave your boyfriend to concentrate on his studies. But if he has a heart attack in the air, you’ll know how to contact ATC and take instruction.”

It was Cliff with the crazy idea of buying a plane. I was just along for the ride, no interest in slogging through physics and engine mechanics. I was too old for exams. But wife’s licence? As if I weren’t competent to learn.

I twisted in my seat towards Cliff. The bastard was grinning.

“I’m getting my pilot’s licence.” The grit in my voice surprised even me.

“Fine,” said Tom. He turned his back to me, stacking up the course books at the front of the room. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. In long trousers and sensible shoes.”

“You will.” I walked out without another word and sat in the car until Cliff came out to join me.

My determination lasted until dinner time.

“Honey, I don’t think I’m going to be able to learn from Tom.” As the owner of the flight school, his attitude towards me was going to affect all of us but I didn’t think I could manage to stay polite for the four weeks of the course.

“You don’t need to.” Cliff was reassuring, clearly thrilled that I’d decided to take this on. “He’s going back to England next week.”

English flying lessons local to us in Andalucía had been Cliff’s idea and he’d dealt directly with Tom to make it viable. The Oxford-based school had flown over with two Cessnas and three instructors, specifically to teach a group of four men that Cliff had gathered together to do a four-week, intensive course for the Private Pilot’s Licence, taking advantage of the weather. When the course was finished, the instructors would fly the two aircraft back to England to resume teaching at Oxford. Tom’s instructors had jumped at the chance to spend a few weeks in Spain and Cliff had found enough people to commit to full-time training that it was worth Tom’s time. Adding another person would make everyone happy and Cliff clearly thought I should get my PPL.

“You got along fine with the younger instructors,” he said. “I’m sure you won’t have any problems. It’ll be fun. And it’s only four weeks.”

Which was part of the problem. What if I didn’t keep up? At a normal flight school, I would keep doing lessons until I was good enough to take the exams. This set-up meant that if I lagged behind, the flight school was going to disband around me – or worse, take a loss trying to get me up to speed before they leave. Or really worst – push me to fly a plane before I was competent to do so.

Also, I’d looked at the books again. I started easy and sat down with the meteorology book – it was just weather, how hard could it be? I discovered wind charts and METAR’s and Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts with coded messages that were supposed to tell me if it was safe to fly. The radio-telephony book offered some solace: I already knew my international alphabet and I amused myself for a short time by parroting the phrases in a mock English accent. But the bulk of the stack was simply frightening. There were seven volumes, with detailed text on Flight Training Manoeuvres, Aviation Law, Navigation, Mechanics, Human Factors…

This did not sound like a fun holiday in Spain. This sounded like a lot of cramming, along with early mornings to fly “before the runway got too hot” and no beer at lunch time and at the end of it, I was going to know fine detail about a plane I didn’t even like.

“What’s it called again? The plane you bought.”

“Piper Saratoga.” Cliff waved the brochures at me, I was pretty sure he carried them with him everywhere. He told me, once again, what made it special and why it was the perfect aircraft for us. It looked like a plane.

I cleared the table and made my escape, leaving Cliff trailing a loving finger over a photograph of the propeller. He’d last flown over a decade previously but he’d done all this before, so he was simply renewing his PPL, not learning it all for the first time. It was easy for him.

The stack of books leant precariously on the coffee table. I turned my back on them and sat down at the computer to play solitaire.

They were all Englishmen, white, middle-class businessmen looking for adventure. I was a German-American woman, far from home and out of my depth. I’d lived abroad for over a decade: it was probably time that I got used to it. On the bright side, I had more time than the men – I was working freelance and could pare my projects down to the bone for the four weeks. They had to worry about businesses and family whereas my son was just at an age where he was happier hanging out with his friends and Cliff certainly wasn’t going to be jealous of my attention if I actually did this.

So I had a time advantage.

On the other hand, they’d discussed engines and mechanics with a comfortable ease. The conversation about airflow may as well have been in a foreign language: angles of attack and incidence, centrifugal force, lateral stability. They shouted loudly at each other as they cased the two Cessnas, peering at the wings and trying out the “captain’s seat” in the cockpit. I did too, of course, but at just under 5-foot in height, I couldn’t reach the pedals. I did not feel like a natural talent.

Solitaire, now there was something I could play all night long. A useful skill, solitaire.

The computer bleeped, an email from my best friend asking what was new. At least I would have something interesting to write back. I consoled myself with that thought. I’d be the life of the party, telling people all about the grease and the physics lessons and the macho comments and the spluttering engines and the weirdness of taking exams as a grown-up.

And it would be good for me to read the books. It would build character. So I’d go along for a laugh, take the tests, prove to Tom that girls could fly too. And then, I could forget it all and go back to being the passenger I’d intended to be all along.

Last week, an Azerbaijan Airlines Airbus 319 collapsed at the end of the runway at Atatürk International Airport in Istanbul. The nose-gear and fuselage appear to be severely damaged. There were no injuries.

Azerbaijan Airlines is the state-owned airline of the Republic of Azerbaijan, an independent Turkic state. The flight from their base in Baku, Azerbaijan to Istanbul was uneventful … until after touchdown.

These photographs appeared on Turkish site Airkule.com with the headline KAZADAN FOTOĞRAFLAR yesterday.

(Click through to Airkule for the full set of 19 photographs)

Flightglobal reports:
Azerbaijan Airlines A319 damaged in Istanbul incident

Images from the scene show that the twin-engined aircraft appears to have suffered the loss of its nose-gear in the event. It has come to rest near a fence, with its forward fuselage in contact with the ground.

The images also show that the nose of the jet carries the name ‘Guba’, identifying it as serial number 2588, registered 4K-AZ04.

Flightglobal’s ACAS database shows that this A319 is a five-year old airframe fitted with CFM International CFM56 engines.

Circumstances of the event are unclear.

Turkish media state that the aircraft was operating as flight J2075, from Baku, and was transporting 121 passengers and seven crew. No injuries are reported.

The plane appears to have touched down without incident but then came off the runway as the plane was taxiing to the final exit. Airkule state that the aircraft was travelling too quickly to make the turn and that initial findings imply that the accident was probably caused by pilot error.

On the 24th of July, Tony Weedn’s engine failed. He was flying a Cessna 172 with three passengers in Florida en route to Orlando. Weedn is a very experienced pilot who dealt with the emergency professionally and brought the plane down safely onto a local golf course.

Pilot makes emergency landing on 17th Hole at Shark’s Tooth | tooth, landing, 17th – News – The News Herald

PANAMA CITY BEACH — When the engine on his Cessna 172 went out Saturday while he was flying at 4,000 feet above Bay County, Tony Weedn did not have many options.

“He looked at the beach, and there were a lot of people on the beach. He looked at the highway, and there were a lot of cars on the highway,” said Justin Landingham, one of Weedn’s passengers. So, Weedn picked the 17th green at Shark’s Tooth Golf Course to make an emergency landing. He had to dodge large trees and sand traps in order to get the plane to safety.

The preliminary report isn’t available on NTSB July 2010 Aviation Accidents yet but you can see the direct response of one of the passengers:

Weedn wrote about his experience for other pilots and you can see the detail on the PPRuNe Forums. It makes for fascinating reading.

Engine Failure – PPRuNe Forums

Approximately 30 miles East of DTS and passing 3800’ the engine went from about 2400RPM to 1000RPM. It was as if the throttle linkage had disconnected and the engine went to idle. I was on the radio with flight watch getting a weather update when it happened. I told them to standby and maintained aircraft control by immediately trading airspeed for altitude.

We were at about 90-95 KIAS when the engine went to idle so I pitched for 65 KIAS (best glide) and we were able to get to almost 4000’. I then began to analyze the situation as we descended quickly. After trouble shooting as much as I could, I pushed the throttle in and pulled it out looking for a response. I pulled the carb heat hoping that it would remedy the idle engine. In the limited amount of time that I had I tried every feasible solution; unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to keep the C-172 from descending.

I spun the Garmin 430 and saw that the closest airfield was 12 miles away. Too far! With only a few minutes to spare, I realized that I had to make a decision quickly. Below me was the ocean, the beach and a busy road. At my 9 O’clock, I saw Shark’s Tooth golf course and it was my only realistic option.

You can read his full description on the thread along with the experiences of other pilots who have experienced an engine failure (although it being PPRuNe, there’s already a fair amount of arguing).

It seems to be fairly well understood these days that planes have slots – it’s common for the flight crew to announce delays because the flight missed its slot or was given a bad slot. However, I’ve noticed a tendency to blame the airport, passengers mumbling about overcrowding and bad organisation. Slots are not about sharing the runway with other planes – I’ve flown from some very busy airfields including Málaga, and I have never been allocated a slot. That’s because I am VFR traffic, I fly visually and choose my route as I go, much like a sail boat. IFR flights, including but not limited to commercial passenger flights, are based on routes which they must apply for in advance and which are then approved. An IFR flight is not working on a basis of see-and-avoid and so the traffic must be managed to ensure that no two flights are at the same place at the same time. A slot time or a slot is a part of this flow management.

So if Cliff files a route to fly IFR from Málaga, he will be allocated a slot, even though he’s flying the same plane as I am out of the same airfield. He will be given specific clearance and expected to stick to his route. I am following instructions and getting permission to enter taxiways and use the runway at specific points, but I don’t have a detailed route. I am not given a slot, although I may cause someone else to miss their slot (by not getting out of the way in time).

I’ve struggled to explain this in the past (as I think you can tell) but this week I stumbled upon a perfectly brilliant explanation on the PPRuNe Forums.

A journalist asked about a rumour that an airline could not get enough ATC slots for the flights because the airline didn’t have enough staff available to man the planes due to staffing cuts. A further poster commented that an airline wouldn’t advertise a schedule unless they had already secured the ATC slots for the flights. This exhance shows fairly typical confusion regarding how slots are allocated for commercial flights. Luckily, Jumpseater came to the rescue and set everyone straight.

It seemed a shame that the guide would only be available on PPRuNe. I contacted Jumpseater, who blogs at Norven Munky’s Weblog, and he kindly allowed me to share his explanation with the rest of the world.

Idiot’s Guide to ATC Slots

by Jumpseater

ATC slots are issued as a function of airspace capacity.

It’s very simple: if you have a room that holds ten idiots, you can’t put eleven idiots in the room, as much as you might like to.

Idiot number eleven has to wait until one or more idiots come out or the room is made bigger, so the idiot (No11) is given a slot time. This is the time the idiot has to present himself to commence his journey to the room.

If there’s only seven idiots in the room, then you can get three further idiots in there without restricting their progress at all, but the fourth idiot and any subsequent idiots will have to wait their turn.

If that room is in fact a corridor joining two rooms, then you can only get so many idiots down that corridor at any one time, even if the room at either end has a limitless supply of idiot capacity. Therefore any idiot wishing to pass through the corridor may get a slot time for the corridor, depending on how many idiots wish to use the corridor at any given time.

If there is another different corridor joining the rooms, you can send the idiots down those corridors, which may mean that the idiots will not be restricted at all.

So using the above Idiot’s Guide, you should be able to see that ATC SLOTS do not get secured by an airlines schedule or their staffing levels, they are a tactical daily/hourly response to airspace capacity.

Any questions?

On the 23rd of July 1983, Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel at FL410 – 26,000 feet halfway through a 2,829 kilometre (1,768 mile) flight from Montreal to Edmonton. The Boeing 767-200 carrying 61 passengers managed to glide to safety to the Gimli Industrial Park Airport in Manitoba, a Canadian prairie province.

What went wrong? The sequence of events leading to the incident is somewhat convoluted.

The first link in the chain of events took place almost three weeks prior to the fault, on the ground in Edmonton. Boeing had issued a service bulletin for the Fuel Quantity Indicator System (FQIS) to be checked on all 767s. From an operational standpoint, the plane could not be flown if the FQIS was not functional at all, but with partial functions, the plane was considered operational but the fuel quantity needed to be measured with a float stick. The Boeing 767 C-GAUN was given a routine check by an Air Canada technician, who found that testing the three fuel quantity indicators caused them to go blank. However, during a later check the indicators worked fine.

The same technician saw the issue again, although he wasn’t aware that it was the same plane. This time he traced the problem to a faulty circuit breaker. Disabling it meant the back-up circuit breaker kicked in and the gauges worked. He pulled the breaker, tagged it as “inoperative” and apparently left a note in the log book which was not very clear.

The next day, C-GAUN flew to Montreal. Here, a maintenance worker saw the note in the logbook and checked the circuit breaker. While waiting for the fuel truck, he decided to try resetting the breaker and the fuel quantity indicators went blank. The fuel truck arrived and he got to work, forgetting about the faulty circuit breaker that he had reactivated.

This action was considered to have “contributed significantly” to the accident.

The return flight to Edmonton was a different crew. The captain noticed the blank fuel gauges and stated to the crew that they would need to perform a drip test to check fuel levels. He decided to load the full amount of fuel needed to fly directly to Edmonton with an en route stop at Ottawa to verify fuel levels.

This fuel requirement is expressed as a mass, in this case 22,300kg of fuel.

There was an estimated 7,682 litres of fuel remaining in the tanks.

The maintenance crew worked out how many litres of fuel were needed to make up 22,300kg of fuel, then subtract the 7,682 litres on board and then use the fuel gauge on the refuelling truck to fill the aircraft tanks with the remaining required litres of fuel.

Canada was at this time changing from imperial to metric. The Boeing 767 was the first plane in the fleet to measure fuel in kilograms rather than pounds.

The maintenance crew had a multiplier of 1.77 for converting from litres. Somehow, no one noticed that this figure was for a conversion to pounds, not kilograms.

The maintenance crew calculated the amount of fuel needed using a factor of 1.77 pounds/litre rather than 0.8 kg/litre and reported that the plane had 22,300kg on board. It actually held 22,300 pounds, which is just over 10,000kg.

“The 156-tonne Gimli Glider”

In the past, when fuel was calculated manually, a flight engineer’s duties included checking the fuel load. Flight engineers were a thing of the past on this 767, as a Presidential task force, under Ronald Reagan, had determined that aircraft could be built to be operated by two pilots instead of three, if the tasks previously given to the second officer (flight engineer) were either fully automated or handled by ground staff. Responsibility for ensuring adequate fuelling had passed to the maintenance branch. But because these men were not trained to calculate fuel, they assumed the pilots would make sure it was done properly.

The problem was neither of the pilots was trained in this technical task. Safety procedures had failed to keep pace with new technology. As the investigation later concluded: “Air Canada … neglected to assign clearly and specifically the responsibility for calculating the fuel load in an abnormal situation.”

The flight crew checked the figure but they only checked the arithmetic, not the conversion factor, so they came up with the same result. They manually entered the fuel amount into the flight management computer as 22,300kg. The computer tracks fuel consumption by subtracting the fuel burned from the total amount.

At Ottawa, a further drip-stick test was made and there was a further chance to spot the error. The Captain was told that the aircraft had 11,430 litres of fuel on board. He converted this using the figure that the ground crew had given him in Montreal: 1.77/litre and came to the conclusion that they had 20,400 kilos of fuel remaining. Still no one realised that the previous crew had used pounds rather than kilos. The aircraft had less than half the fuel remaining that the captain thought it did, 9,144 kilos of fuel, and nowhere near enough to complete the flight to Edmonton.

The flight crew verified the remaining fuel against the computer and took off.

When the first low fuel pressure warning sounded, the Captain believed that the left fuel pump had malfunction. He turned it off, asked for a a divert to Winnipeg and began his descent. Another low fuel pressure warning sounded, this time for the right side. Then the left engine failed, rapidly followed by the right engine.

The Gimli Glider / Air Canada

As Pearson began gliding the big bird, Quintal “got busy” in the manuals looking for procedures for dealing with the loss of both engines. There were none. Neither he nor Pearson nor any other 767 pilot had ever been trained on this contingency. Pearson reports he was thinking “I wonder how it’s all going to turn out.” Controllers in Winnipeg began suggesting alternate landing spots, but none of the airports suggested, including Gimli, had the emergency equipment Flight 143 would need for a crash landing. The 767′s radar transponder had gone dark leaving controllers in Winnipeg using a cardboard ruler on the radar screen to try and determine the 767′s location and rate of descent.

Pearson glided the 767 at 220 knots, his best guess as to the optimum airspeed. There was nothing in the manual about minimum sink – Boeing never expected anyone to try and glide one of their jumbo jets. The windmilling engine fans created enormous drag, giving the 767 a sink rate of somewhere between 2000 and 2500 fpm. Copilot Quintal began making glide-slope calculations to see if they’d make Winnipeg. The 767 had lost 5000 feet of altitude over the prior ten nautical (11 statute) miles, giving a glide ratio of approximately 11:1. ATC controllers and Quintal both calculated that Winnipeg was going to be too far a glide; the 767 was sinking too fast. “We’re not going to make Winnipeg” he told Pearson. Pearson trusted Quintal absolutely at this critical moment, and immediately turned north.

Only Gimli, the site of an abandoned Royal Canadian Air Force Base remained as a possible landing spot. It was 12 miles away. It wasn’t in Air Canada’s equivalent of Jeppensen manuals,but Quintal was familiar with it because he’d been stationed there in the service. Unknown to him and the controllers in Winnipeg, Runway 32L (left) of Gimli’s twin 6800 foot runways had become inactive and was now used for auto racing. A steel guard rail had been installed down most of the southeastern portion of 32L, dividing it into a two lane dragstrip. This was the runway Pearson would ultimately try and land on, courting tragedy of epic proportions.

The co-pilot suspected that the Captain had not seen the guardrails nor the crowds of people. Knowing they had only one chance at landing, he decided to keep his mouth shut. Pearson came in high and fast but managed to use the rudders to lose speed and altitude in the same way as you would in a glider or small aircraft. It worked.

“The 156-tonne Gimli Glider”

The rally spectators were startled to see a huge aircraft bearing down on them, silent except for the rushing of wind against its body. People scattered as quickly as they could, but only the friction between the aircraft nose and the ground as the partly extended nosewheel collapsed, brought the aeroplane to rest in front of them. The time was 2038 hours. Just 17 minutes had elapsed since Pearson had started flying a powerless 767 from 28,500 feet to a safe landing.

In 2008 the Boeing 767 was decommissioned. Its final flight is documented on YouTube:

Amazing plane, amazing story. And for people like me, flying an American plane using gallons in Europe where fuel is measured in litres, it is not a bad reminder always to check the conversions.

I only today started reading the news about the UFO over Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport in China. On 7 July, they had to shut down the airport after an unidentified flying object was reported above the runway. This event has dominated the news in China for the past week, with rumours ranging from Chinese military tests to extra-terrestrial visitations to a private small aircraft.

Thaindian.com has been covering the story in detail in English.

Alien object disrupts air traffic in China

An unidentified flying object (UFO) disrupted air traffic over Hangzhou, capital of east China’s Zhejiang province, authorities said Thursday.
Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected late Wednesday and some flights were rerouted to airports in Ningbo and Wuxi cities, Xinhua quoted an airport spokesman as saying.

UFO Sighting Closes Down Major Airport in China

According to witness accounts and pictures of the object, it was said to have looked like a “twinkling spot” which disappeared very quickly. Stunned witnesses claim to have seen a fiery, comet-like ball in the sky, but airport workers stated that the UFO was only visible on radar and would have been impossible to see with the naked eye.

Just a few hours before the airport closing, however, many residents of Hangzhou claim to have seen a glowing object which was hovering in the sky and making odd movements. A city bus driver by the name of Yu stated that the object moved down toward the ground for about 6 minutes dragging a comet like tail, and then changed direction quickly.

UFO In China Baffles All, Government Stands Clueless

The unidentified flying object sighted on Wednesday in the Chinese skies continues to baffle the officials investigating the case. After the radars picked up the object in their track path, all passengers were stopped from boarding flights. The military officials were also called for assistance by the airport authorities of Xiaoshan airport.

People’s Daily Online originally printed this photograph purportedly of the UFO in their article about the closure: Flights diverted, delayed as UFO detected hovering. You can see the image at full-size in the article.

The video above has been published all over the internet as live footage of the UFO, however it has been confirmed as a video taken earlier of a flying object which has already been identified.

UFO China News : Latest China Xiaoshan Airport UFO Picture // Current

The video footage is actually a “Kazakhstan UFO Video”, which was videotaped over the capital city of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan 30th June 2010.

UFO video footage was later on identified as Russian Soyuz rocket which was blasted off on 30th June 2010 carrying a new robotic cargo ship filled with tons of supplies for astronauts living on the International Space Station.

The same site has posted a number of photographs that they believe are legitimately of the UFO over the airport last week. You can see the images full-size on the article: UFO China News : Latest China Xiaoshan Airport UFO Picture // Current

An announcement by the Chinese government is expected today.

UPDATE 23 August

UFO & Paranormal News says that:

One of the heads of China’s famous Purple Mountain Astronomical Observatory, Prof. Wang Sichao, has gone public admitting the UFOs are real and aliens are visiting Earth and that the observatory has observed their craft many times. The admittance of UFO reality was made yesterday within a official speech entitled tellingly ‘China’s UFO truth’… In the event that these aliens do not come in peace, he stressed they are not gods and have flaws and thus we can possibly defend ourselves.

I’ve yet to find a reference to this in English in any journal not specifically focused on extra-terrestrial visitations.

However, a few days ago on the 21st of July, an update to this article was posted:
forgetomori » UFO over Hangzhou, China: a long exposé

Bruce Maccabee takes a look at the photos and confirms that “the images are consistent with being the result of taking nighttime, ‘long’ exposure photographs of a helicopter with a searchlight”. As for what actually caused the airport shutdown, Maccabee is, like Oberg and everyone else, at a loss from the lack of reliable information. “It may have been a ‘military vehicle’ as suggested by recent stories or something else. … We may never know”.

Last week, Aviatrix linked to a gallery of photographs in in the Berliner Morgenpost of an emergency landing.

You can see all the photographs at full size at Rosinenbomber muss notlanden – Berlin Aktuell – Berliner Morgenpost.

The initial photographs in the set were taken by Frank Wandrei and Stefan Schurwanz who were taking photographs at the airport when the vintage plane lost engine power as it was coming in to land. The plane landed short on the road before the runway and then ran through a fence. There are 31 photographs in all showing the sequence of events and the after-effects. The photographs are chilling but there were no serious casualties. Only the pilot needed hospital treatment.

There’s also a video of the aftermath from the Berlin news but you are forced to watch an advertisement first.

The plane looks in a bad state although Air Service Berlin says they believe it can be made airworthy again if they can find the finance to do the repairs. Steffen Wardin told Berlin RTL, “We can not do this to history, to scrap the plane now.”

I was intrigued by the fact that the DC-3 was referred to as a “Rosinenbomber” – literally, a raisin bomber. The nickname made no sense to me, especially when I read that the plane dates from 1944 and was the last remaining flight-capable Rosinenbomber in Germany.

A raisin bomber in World War 2? What could that possibly mean?

It turned out that the nickname actually stems from 1948/49, after the war. West Berlin was under a Soviet blockade and all land routes were cut off.

The Berlin Airlift

However, British Commander Sir Brian Robertson offered an alternative: supply the city by air. A daunting task. Supplying the Occupation forces of 22,679 was easy, but the entire population? The only aircraft the Americans had available for the task were 5 year old Douglas C-47 Skytrains, which would only hold 3.5 tons each. After some consultation, the decision was made: it was worth a try. Earlier in April, US Forces airlifted in supplies to replace the ones being delayed by the Soviets. This was what became known as the “Little Lift”. West Berlin had two airports, Tempelhof, which was Berlin’s main airport and located in the American Sector, and RAF Gatow, in the British Sector. Supplies could be airlifted in by C-47 and there was nothing the Soviet Union could do about because, in 1945, someone had foresight. On November 30, 1945, it was agreed, in writing, that there would be three 20-mile wide air corridors providing access to the city. These were unarguable.

The initial planes were two-engine C-47 Dakotas, the military version of the DC3, which dropped coal, fuel and food for distribution, especially dried fruit. As a result, the inhabitants of Berlin took to referring to the planes as Raisin Bombers. The planes did not have a lot of storage space and so after a few weeks, the four-engine C-54 Skymaster was used instead but the Raisin Bomber nickname stuck and became the general reference for the friendly planes over the city, regardless of type or contents. The mission was referred to as Operation Plane Fare by the British and Operation Vittles by the Americans.

An American pilot is quoted in the German press as having said “Up until 3 years ago, I flew through night and fog with bombs for Berlin. Now I can come with raisins.”

In the US, the planes are commonly referred to as the “the Candy Bombers” as a result of Gail Halvorsen’s expansion of Operation Vittles.

According to Gail Halvorsen, a command pilot stationed in Germany at the time, it started when he met children watching the planes at the aiport in the American sector of Berlin. He was impressed with their bravery and wanted to give them treats but he had only two sticks of gum on him. He told them that he would drop something special just for them and they should watch for the plane that wiggled its wings before dropping its cargo.

In an Interview on HistoryNet, he said:

My copilot and engineer gave me their candy rations—big double handfuls of Hershey, Mounds and Baby Ruth bars and Wrigley’s gum. It was heavy, and I thought, Boy, put that in a bundle and hit ‘em in the head going 110 miles an hour, it’ll make the wrong impression. So, I made three handkerchief parachutes and tied strings tight around the candy.

The next day, I came in over the field, and there were those kids in that open space. I wiggled the wings, and they just blew up—I can still see their arms. The crew chief threw the rolled-up parachutes out the flare chute behind the pilot seat. Couldn’t see what happened, of course. It took about 20 minutes to unload the flour, and I worried all the time where the candy went. As we taxied out to takeoff, there were the kids, lined up on the barbed-wire fence, three handkerchiefs waving through, their mouths going up and down like crazy.

Three weeks we did it—three parachutes each time. The crowd got big.

The commanding officer found out about the drops and Halvorsen thought he’d be in big trouble. But instead, the officer approved of their actions and Operation Little Vittles became official. In the end, there were 25 planes dropping dried fruit and sweets onto the city, all of which were referred to by the Berliners as Raisin Bombers.

The Rosinenbomber that crashed last month had been restored in 2000 and was used for aerial tours over historic Berlin. According to the Berlin newspaper, Gail Halvorsen – now 90 – has donated money towards the repairs of the Rosinenbomber. He wrote to the Berlin newpaper BZ saying that the plane must be made airworthy again as a visible memorial of the Soviet blockade of Berlin.

I hope they make it happen.

Recently I was talking to Julien of Making Time for Flying and he mentioned that his wife was from the same part of Germany as I am. He had never flown into the local airfield there and I was able to reassure him that it is a very nice airfield with easy access and friendly ATC and staff. It reminded me of an older blogpost I wrote about a staff member who was perhaps a little bit too helpful. So this week, something from the archives: Fear of Landing » Just Being Helpful originally posted in September, 2008

Cliff taxied the plane over to the pumps and I hopped out to get us some fuel.

“I’ll get out in a moment,” Cliff said. “I just want to put our route into the GPS first.”

“No problem.”

I walked over to the tiny booth behind the pumps and tapped at the door. A pale round face peered out at me.

“Hi,” I grinned. “We radio’d to say we needed some fuel?”

He chewed his bottom lip and then nodded. “How are you going to pay?”

I paused for a quarter second and he started listing the payment methods they would accept.

“Credit card,” I interjected quickly.

“We only take VISA and Mastercard,” he said with a frown.

“VISA is fine.”

“OK,” he said and finally came out of the hut. “We don’t take American Express though.”

I presumed he’d had a bad experience with a previous client. I nodded in what I hoped was a reassuring manner.

He put on a large pair of goggles and walked over to the tanks. Then he stopped and stared at the plane. I scuttled over to him.

He nodded at Cliff. “The pilot will need to disembark,” he said, distaste dripping from every word. “I can not start until he exits the plane.”

I nodded and walked to the plane to tap in the window. Cliff climbed out of the plane and then watched as the man reset the pumps. He glanced around to make sure no one was near the plane and then hooked the earth wire to the front before wandering back to the pumps to pulling the hose out.

“Could have finished by now,” muttered Cliff.

One last look around to make sure everyone was in position and finally he was ready to offer us fuel.

He filled one side and called Cliff over. He handed him the cap to screw in and watched Cliff close the tank. “You should have checked it,” he said.

Cliff looked at him blankly.

“The fuel. You didn’t check the level before closing the tank.”

“I did,” growled Cliff. The man shrugged and moved over to the other wing. He then smiled at Cliff and held up the cap.

“Check the level and then close it!”

I sniggered as Cliff stalked over and closed the tank under the man’s watchful eyes. Once he was happy that Cliff had done his job correctly, he rolled up the hose, took off his goggles and asked us to follow him to the hut.

He smiled as the credit card transaction went through without a hitch. Another potential crisis averted through proper planning. Cliff signed and we turned to go back to the plane when the man put his hand on Cliff’s shoulder.

“Your safety stickers,” he said, shaking his head. “They are old.”

Surprised, we walked out to the plane to look at our decals. They seem fine: big print stating AVGAS ONLY, a picture of a pump and Grade 100LL written underneath. Everything you need to know to to ensure someone doesn’t fill the tanks full of jet fuel.

The man waved a sheet at us with two bright red squares saying AVGAS. “It says AVGAS on our stickers already,” complained Cliff.

“Yes, but they are getting dirty around the edges. These are new.” He pressed the stickers into my hand. “You can put them next to yours if you want but I think replacing them would be better.”

I searched for a response that would get us out of here. “I will,” I told him. “But the wings are so dirty now. I will go wash the wings and put the stickers on once they are clean.”

His chest swelled with satisfaction. He patted me on the arm. “That’s a good idea,” he said and retreated back to his hut.