tagged w/ Airplane Crashes
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An air traffic controller was joking on the phone about barbecuing a dead cat moments before a small plane collided with a tour helicopter over the Hudson River, transcripts obtained by The Associated Pressshow.
Nine people died in the accident.
The transcripts show the controller at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey was talking to someone who works at the airport's operations center at the time of the Aug. 8 accident even while he was guiding the single-engine Piper and other aircraft.
"We got plenty of gas in the grill?" the controller asked. "Fire up the cat."
Seconds before the accident, the controller uttered a curse word and ended the call.
National Transportation Safety Board officials and union officials representing the controller have been at odds over news releases about the accident.
On Monday, NTSB officials changed their account of the accident on a key point, saying the helicopter wasn't initially visible on radar to the air traffic controller handling the plane.
The NTSB had previously said the controller failed to warn the plane's pilot of the potential for a collision with several aircraft in its path, including the helicopter, before handing off responsibility for the plane to another airport.
The board now says in a statement released Monday that while the controller at Teterboro Airport failed to warn of several aircraft in the path of the single-engine Piper, the tour helicopter wasn't one of the aircraft on the controller's radar screen until seven seconds after the handoff to nearby Newark Liberty International Airport.
Officials for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents the controller, said the board's report released Friday, which described the handling of the plane by controllers, unfairly implied the Teterboro controller could have prevented the collision. They had been pressing the board for a correction since then through media conferences Friday night and Monday afternoon, and in conversations with NTSB staff over the weekend.
On Monday, the board removed the union from its investigation of the crash. NTSB Chairman Debbie Hersman said in the board's statement, released shortly after the union's second news conference, that parties to investigations sign an agreement not to publicly discuss the information gathered by the board while the investigation is ongoing...
This guy likes his meat.An air traffic controller was joking on the phone about barbecuing a dead cat moments... more
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This horrible crash is now seen on TV these people recorded the crash on the Hudson River in New York. The air traffic reporter has been suspended untill further notice. The FAA says there is no room for these kinds of errors.This horrible crash is now seen on TV these people recorded the crash on the Hudson... more
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Reports of a lone child having survived Tuesday's crash of a Yemenia Airways flight in the Indian Ocean have people wondering: How does anyone survive a plane crash? "I just don't think there's any pattern to survivability. It's just luck of the draw and depends on how the plane goes in," said aviation expert John Eakin, head of Air Data Research in Helotes, Texas.
Not counting Tuesday's disaster, there have been 12 airliner crashes since 1970 that yielded a sole survivor, according to data compiled by Dr. Todd Curtis, director of the Airsafe.com Foundation. Five of those survivors were minors and four were crew members, accounting for 75 percent of the total.
"I can't figure out for the life of me why crew members and children tend to be disproportionate in these sole-survivor events," Curtis said. "I just don't think there's any pattern to survivability. It's just luck of the draw and depends on how the plane goes in," said aviation expert John Eakin, head of Air Data Research in Helotes, Texas.
Not counting Tuesday's disaster, there have been 12 airliner crashes since 1970 that yielded a sole survivor, according to data compiled by Dr. Todd Curtis, director of the Airsafe.com Foundation. Five of those survivors were minors and four were crew members, accounting for 75 percent of the total.
"I can't figure out for the life of me why crew members and children tend to be disproportionate in these sole-survivor events," Curtis said. "I don't think there's any particular type of aircraft or position in an aircraft which is more survivable, because it pretty much depends on what type of accident -- it depends on how the aircraft impacts," Eakin said. "Sometimes, the survivors are all located in the tail, sometimes in the forward fuselage. I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it."
A 2007 Popular Mechanics magazine article, researched and written by Noland, presented a different view.
Noland analyzed 20 U.S. airline crashes in which at least one person lived and one person died. The statistics indicate that seats farther back in a plane are safer in crashes, the article said.
"Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front," Noland wrote.
Passengers in seats behind the wings had a 69 percent survival rate in crashes that included at least one fatality, Noland wrote. Those with seats in coach areas over and forward of the wings survived 56 percent of the time, and passengers in first class and business class had a 49 percent survival rate, he found.
"To me, it's fairly obvious: You hit something going fast and obviously, the front is going to get crunched more than the back," Noland told CNN. "To quote one [National Transportation Safety Board] guy, 'Planes don't back into mountains.'"
Even in other types of crashes -- runway overruns, forced landings, etc. -- the plane is always going forward, so the front takes the impact, Noland said.
"That's why they put the crash recorders in the tail," he said.
Wide-bodied aircraft -- such as the Boeing 747 and 777 and the Airbus A310 and A330 -- tend to yield more survivors than smaller ones, Curtis said. He chalked up that trend to what he called the SUV theory: Larger crush zones provide more and larger areas of survivability.
Both Curtis and Eakin pointed to the July 1989 crash of United Airlines Flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa. Spectacular video footage showed the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 cartwheeling down an airport runway as pilot Al Haynes and first officer William Records tried to land the airliner without hydraulic controls. Of the 296 people aboard the plane, 111 were killed but 185 survived.Reports of a lone child having survived Tuesday's crash of a Yemenia Airways flight in... more
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A massive rescue effort was under way Tuesday after a young child was found among the wreckage of a downed Yemeni jet off the coast of Comoros in the Indian Ocean. "One child is alive and we hope to find more," Yemenia Airways chairman Capt. Abdulkhalek al-Kadi told CNN. The child has been taken to a hospital.
The French Navy is sending ships and a plan to help Yemeni authorities try to find any more survivors, he said.
The Yemenia Airways flight went down early Tuesday, carrying 153 people en route to the island nation of Comoros from Yemen's capital, Sanaa. Watch as airline describes child's rescue »
A reconnaissance plane spotted traces of the Airbus A310-300 in waters off the town of Mitsamiouli early Tuesday, said Comoros Vice President Idi Nadhoim. Comoros is located off the coast of east Africa, between Tanzania and Madagascar.
It is the second crash involving an Airbus jet in a month. On June 1, an Air France Airbus A330 crashed off Brazil while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, France. All 228 aboard are presumed dead. The cause remains under investigation. Recent plane crashes »
Former pilot and aviation analyst Capt. John Cox said there are no similarities between the two incidents. "These are two dramatically different airplanes flown by two different airlines," Cox told CNN's "American Morning."
"The accidents happened at two different regimes of flight. And Airbus has hundreds of millions of hours flying safely. I don't believe that ... we can draw any conclusions because the manufacturer was the same in these two very different types of accidents."
At first, Comoros officials said there were no signs of survivors among the dead bodies floating in the choppy waters. But then rescuers found the young child.
Cox said it reminded him of the 1987 crash of Northwest Flight 255 in Detroit, Michigan in which only a 4-year-old girl survived, while 156 others died.
"This has come up before and it's where the toddler was seated (during the impact) that allowed them to survive," he said. "It's a miracle and I'm glad ... the toddler is safe. I'm just saddened for the loss of everybody else," he added.
The Yemeni crash occurred as the plane approached the Hahaya airport in Comoros' capital, Moroni. The plane tried to land, then performed a U-turn before it crashed, Nadhoim said. Officials did not know why the plane could not land, he said.
There were 142 passengers and 11 crew members aboard, Yemenia Air officials said.
Kadi, chairman of Yemenia Airways, blamed the crash on bad weather.
"It was high seas and windy weather," he said.
Flight 626 left Sanaa Monday at 9:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) for what was expected to be a four-and-a-half-hour flight. The airline has three regular flights a week to Moroni, off the east coast of Africa, about 2,900 km (1,800 miles) south of Yemen.
The crash occurred about 1:30 a.m., Nadhoim said.
An official at Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris said there were 66 French passengers aboard.
There was no indication of foul play behind the crash, the official in Yemen said.
Yemenia Air had used the jet since 1999 on about 17,300 flights, Airbus officials said. The company said it would assist in investigating the crash.
"The concerns and sympathy of the Airbus employees go to the families, friends and loved ones affected by the accident," the company said in a statement.
In the wake of the Air France crash on June 1, United States accident investigators have been probing two recent failures of airspeed and altitude indications aboard Airbus A330s.
One flight was between the United States and Brazil in May and the other between Hong Kong and Japan in June. The planes landed safely and there were no injuries or damage, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.A massive rescue effort was under way Tuesday after a young child was found among the... more
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A Yemeni airliner with 150 people aboard has crashed in the Indian Ocean off the island nation of Comoros, an aviation official in Yemen's capital said Tuesday.
The aircraft, from the national airline Yemenia, was en route to Comoros when it crashed about an hour from its destination, an airline official said. There was no immediate news of the fate of those on board.
The Airbus A310 was en route from Yemen's capital Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of Comoros, and most of the passengers were Comoran, an official at Sanaa's international airport said. Moroni is about 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) south of Yemen, off the east coast of Africa.
"We don't know if there are any survivors among the 150 people on the plane," Comoros Vice President Idi Nadhoim told Reuters.A Yemeni airliner with 150 people aboard has crashed in the Indian Ocean off the... more
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The pilot of a Tunisian plane who stopped to pray instead of following emergency procedure in a 2005 crash has been sentenced to 10 years in jail.The pilot of a Tunisian plane who stopped to pray instead of following emergency... more
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It's reported that a Turkish Airlines passenger jet with 135 people on board crashed while trying to land at Amsterdam's Schipol Airport. Nine people, including the two pilots, are reported killed, and 50 more were injured. The aircraft split into three parts when it hit the runway. Reports say that many people were able to walk away from the wreckage.It's reported that a Turkish Airlines passenger jet with 135 people on board crashed... more
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Here we go again.
Just hours after a place crash landed in Buffalo, another airline has crash landed in London, injuring two of its 72 passengers.
Early reports indicate the front under-carriage of the four-engined plane failed on landing.Here we go again.
Just hours after a place crash landed in Buffalo, another airline... more
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Preliminary reports indicated the Airbus A320 took off normally from New York's LaGuardia Airport, headed for Charlotte, N.C., and climbed to at least 3,000 feet, when the pilots reported that at least one engine had suffered a bird strike and asked air-traffic controllers for clearance to head back to make an emergency landing.Preliminary reports indicated the Airbus A320 took off normally from New York's... more
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A US Airways plane was down in the Hudson River on Thursday after attempting to take off from LaGuardia Airport, officials said. US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320, was headed to Charlotte, North Carolina, the Federal Aviation Administration said. A passenger said he was "pretty sure" everybody on the plane got out.A US Airways plane was down in the Hudson River on Thursday after attempting to take... more
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CBS
Crash site investigators found human remains amid the wreckage of Steve Fossett's small plane on a remote California mountain, the chief of the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday.
CBS
Crash site investigators found human remains amid the wreckage of Steve... more
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MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. (AP) — More than a year after the mysterious disappearance of millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, searchers have found the wreckage of his plane in the rugged Sierra Nevada along with enough human remains for DNA testing.
The remains were found amid a field of debris that stretched 400 feet long and 150 feet wide in a steep section of the mountain range, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday at a press conference. Some personal effects also were found at the crash site, but investigators would not describe them in any detail.
"We found human remains, but there's very little. Given the length of time the wreckage has been out there, it's not surprising there's not very much," said National Transportation Safety Board acting Chairman Mark Rosenker. "I'm not going to elaborate on what it is."
The 63-year-old thrill-seeker vanished on a solo flight 13 months ago. The mangled debris of his single-engine Bellanca was spotted from the air late Wednesday near the town of Mammoth Lakes and was identified by its tail number. Investigators said the plane had slammed straight into a mountainside.
"It was a hard-impact crash, and he would've died instantly," said Jeff Page, emergency management coordinator for Lyon County, Nev., who assisted in the search.
NTSB investigators went into the mountains Thursday to figure out what caused the plane to go down. Most of the fuselage disintegrated on impact, and the engine was found several hundred feet away at an elevation of 9,700 feet, authorities said.
"It will take weeks, perhaps months, to get a better understanding of what happened," Rosenker said before investigators set off.
Search crews and cadaver dogs scoured the steep terrain around the crash site in hopes of finding at least some trace of his body and solving the mystery of his disappearance once and for all.
Rosenker said enough remains were found to provide coroners with DNA.
Fossett vanished on Sept. 3, 2007, after taking off from a Nevada ranch owned by hotel magnate Barron Hilton. The intrepid balloonist and pilot was scouting locations for an attempt to break the land speed record in a rocket-propelled car.
His disappearance spurred a huge search that covered 20,000 square miles, cost millions of dollars and included the use of infrared technology. Eventually, a judge declared Fossett legally dead in February. For a while, many of his friends held out hope he survived, given his many close scrapes with death over the years.
The breakthrough — in fact, the first trace of any kind — came earlier this week when a hiker stumbled across a pilot's license and other ID cards belonging to Fossett a quarter-mile from where the plane was later spotted in the Inyo National Forest. Investigators said animals might have dragged the IDs from the wreckage while picking over Fossett's remains.
"Everything we could have done was done," Butts said.
Searchers had concentrated on an area north of Mammoth Lakes, given what they knew about sightings of Fossett's plane, his travel plans and the amount of fuel he had.
"With it being an extremely mountainous area, it doesn't surprise me they had not found the aircraft there before," Lyon County Undersheriff Joe Sanford said.
As for what might have caused the wreck, Mono County, Calif., Undersheriff Ralph Obenberger said there were large storm clouds over the peaks around Mammoth Lakes on the day of the crash.
"I hope now to be able to bring to closure a very painful chapter in my life," Fossett's widow, Peggy, said in a statement. "I prefer to think about Steve's life rather than his death and celebrate his many extraordinary accomplishments."
MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. (AP) — More than a year after the mysterious disappearance of... more
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James Stephen Fossett (born April 22, 1944; missing September 3, 2007; declared legally dead February 15, 2008[1][2]) was an American businessman, aviator, sailor, and adventurer and the first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in a balloon. He made his fortune in the financial services industry, and was best known for many world records, including five nonstop circumnavigations of the Earth: as a long-distance solo balloonist, as a sailor, and as a solo flight fixed-wing aircraft pilot.
A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Explorers Club, Fossett set 116 records in five different sports, 60 of which still stand, as of June 2007[update].[3]
On September 3, 2007, Fossett was reported missing after the plane he was flying over the Nevada desert failed to return.[4] Despite a month of searches by the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and others, Fossett could not be found, and the search by CAP was called off on October 2, 2007. Privately funded and privately directed search efforts continued.
After a request from Fossett's wife, he was declared legally dead on February 15, 2008.[1]
On September 29, 2008, a hiker found personal items, cash, and identification documents confirmed as Fossett's near Mammoth Lakes, California.[5][6] Three days later, an aerial search spotted the wreckage of Fossett's airplane. No human remains were found and at least one official doubted anyone would have been able to walk away from the crash.[7][8][9][10]
James Stephen Fossett (born April 22, 1944; missing September 3, 2007; declared... more
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US INVESTIGATORS say they have found the wreckage of a small plane in California mountains believed to have been piloted by billionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, who disappeared more than a year ago.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it had sent a team to investigate the plane.
The wreckage was found in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains, close to Mammoth Lakes, California, where items including cash and ID containing Fossett's name were found by a bushwalker on Tuesday.
The bushwalker, Preston Morrow, 43, said he came across Fossett's Federal Aviation Administration identification card, his pilot's licence, a tattered sweatshirt and about $US1000 ($A1260) in cash in bushes in the Mammoth Lakes region.
Authorities had confirmed that two documents - including a pilot's licence - that had been partially covered by pine needles belonged to Fossett.
The other confirmed document was a membership card of the Soaring Society of America.
A third document, a membership card of an aeronautics association, was too damaged for a positive identification.
"The crash looked so severe I doubt if someone would have walked away from it," Madera County Sheriff John Anderson told reporters.
"There was no body in the plane. We have not found any human remains at the crash site."
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Fifty searchers and five dog teams will fan out across the area in an effort to find remains of Fossett.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board will also study the wreckage to determine what may have caused the crash.
Anderson said the crash site was about 0.5km from where the identity cards and cash were found by hiker Preston Morrow.
Fossett, 63, disappeared on September 3, 2007, while on a solo pleasure flight from a remote ranch in Nevada. He was flying a borrowed, single-engine Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon.
The subsequent search for him spanned about 52,000 square kilometres, including the high country of the eastern Sierra Nevada mountains.
US INVESTIGATORS say they have found the wreckage of a small plane in California... more
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MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. (AP) — Searchers found the wreckage of Steve Fossett's plane in California's rugged Sierra Nevada just over a year after the millionaire adventurer vanished on a solo flight, and the craft appears to have hit the mountainside head-on, authorities said Thursday.
Crews conducting an aerial search late Wednesday spotted what turned out to be the wreckage in the Inyo National Forest near the town of Mammoth Lakes, Sheriff John Anderson said. They confirmed around 11 p.m. that the tail number found matched Fossett's single-engine Bellanca plane, he said.
Anderson said no human remains were found in the wreckage.
"It's quite often if you don't find remains within a few days, because of animals, you'll find nothing at all," Anderson said.
Teams led by the sheriff's department would continue the search for remains Thursday, while the National Transportation Safety Board was en route to probe the cause of the crash, he said.
Most of the plane's fuselage disintegrated on impact, and the engine was found several hundred feet away at an elevation of 9,700 feet, authorities said.
MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. (AP) — Searchers found the wreckage of Steve Fossett's... more
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for raw video check their website
http://cbs5.com/video/?id=39051@kpix.dayport.com
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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― A Cessna 210 Centurion plane crashed into the San Francisco Bay south of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge shortly before 2 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The U.S. Coast Guard says it rescued two people from the water after the plane went down near the Bay Bridge toll plaza and new bridge contruction around 2 p.m. Wednesday.
The two passengers were not seriously injured.
The FAA said the Cessna had reported a loss of power before it crashed.
Preliminary information indicates the single-engine plane experienced engine problems before it crashed into the bay, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said.
The Emeryville and Oakland fire departments, as well as the California Highway Patrol, California Department of Transportation and U.S.
Coast Guard, were responding, Oakland fire spokesman Lt. David Brue said.
Preliminary information indicates the single-engine plane experienced engine problems before it crashed into the bay, FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said. The Emeryville and Oakland fire departments, as well as the California Highway Patrol, California Department of Transportation and U.S. Coast Guard, were responding, Oakland fire spokesman Lt. David Brue said.
for raw video check their website
http://cbs5.com/video/?id=39051@kpix.dayport.com
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Ed Robertson, frontman of Canadian band Barenaked Ladies, has survived a plane crash in Ontario.
His plane crashed in woods in the south-east of the province on Sunday, after he tried to take off from Baptiste runway.Ed Robertson, frontman of Canadian band Barenaked Ladies, has survived a plane crash... more
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The last radio call made by the pilot Garcia Luna (38) was about a warning light appearing in the cockpit: “A light has come on, but I dont know what it means.” Shortly afterwards, the Spanair plane exploded into a ball of fire.
Other passangers have already spoken about a red light that appeared in the cockpit. An investigator has been interrogating the mechanic who allowed the plane to fly. Spanish media have already reported that technical problems had been noted in the engine, but the MD-82 was allowed to fly regardless.
The last radio call made by the pilot Garcia Luna (38) was about a warning light... more
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BERLIN (Reuters) - A German couple had a lucky escape after their light aircraft hit a 380,000 volt power line and then hung upside down from a wheel for nearly three hours.
"They had a very, very lucky accident," said police officer Edmund Martin at the scene in Durach, southern Germany.
Emergency services freed the pair suspended 20 meters (65 feet) from the ground late on Sunday with a hydraulic lift after a helicopter rescue was ruled out as too dangerous.
The couple suffered only minor injuries.BERLIN (Reuters) - A German couple had a lucky escape after their light aircraft hit a... more
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MADRID, Spain: A gauge that indicated overheated air was entering a Spanair jetliner just under the cockpit forced pilots to scuttle a first attempt at takeoff, about an hour before the plane crashed in flames.
But airline officials refused to speculate Thursday on what caused the crash that killed 153 people, and aviation experts said the gauge was probably not a factor.
As investigators tried to reconstruct the last, hellish minutes of the MD-82's flight, relatives crushed by grief went to a makeshift morgue to identify loved ones. Officials said many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition.MADRID, Spain: A gauge that indicated overheated air was entering a Spanair jetliner... more
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