KabirTRE: And now for some completel
very nice Georgii….
KabirTRE: A list of major Russian aircrashes….
I agree with Saab…maintanence is the key. An aircraft never grows old, you keep it maintained it will go on forever. Even if you dont maintain a Boeing or an Airbus properly, they can also cause an accident. Agreed that Russian aircrafts arnet the best in technology etc, but they are not as bad as people think too, otherwise they wont be flying.
KabirTRE: A list of major Russian aircrashes….
Ilyushin, Tu etc. CAN be as good companies as Boeing and AI if Russia pays more attention and devote more hard work and money in the civil aviation sector. TU prooved there quality with the TU 204, a good mix of Russian and western technology. Russia can really do well in civil aviation if they want. Well then again thats my opinion.
KabirTRE: LAX-AKL-SYD flight
thanx for the report GD1….a very simple reason for your upgradtion to business class on the NZ B767…..United and Air New Zealand both are members of Star Alliance.
KabirTRE: Airspace capacity reduced after crash
yes…they have cut it by a fifth….
Swiss cut air traffic to avert new tragedy :
Skyguide, the Swiss air traffic control company which was responsible for directing the two planes that collided over Germany a week ago, has reduced its capacity by a fifth, a move likely to cause considerable delays to flights across Europe.
The company said that it was trying to relieve the pressure on its air traffic controllers, who have been suffering “extreme stress” since the accident, in which a Russian Tupolev 154 and a cargo jet crashed into each other over Lake Constance, killing 71 people.
“They are used to stress in their work, but this is another kind of stress,” Philipp Seiler, a spokesman at Zurich Kloten airport, said.
“We are particularly concentrating on reducing traffic in the periods where there is a high concentration of around 40 planes an hour.”
The announcement came as worrying details emerged of the chaos in the skies over Europe. A leaked report from German aviation experts revealed that there were 74 near-misses – known as “airprox” – over Germany last year.
The panel from the transport ministry, the civil aviation authority, the air force and the national aviation accident investigation committee said that 10 of the cases were classified as acute.
They included a British Airways plane approaching Munich airport which avoided collision with a small aircraft by 30 metres by making an emergency landing.
The report, published in yesterday’s Bild am Sonntag, described the German skies as “busier than the motorways”.
An acute shortage of air traffic controllers in Europe is exacerbating the problem, ac cording to Marc Baumgartner, president of the umbrella organisation for the world’s air traffic controllers, Ifatca, who said: “In some countries, such as Spain and Italy, air safety is only guaranteed if air traffic controllers work overtime.”
Europe-wide there is a shortage of about 2,000 controllers. About a tenth of the vacancies in Germany. Britain’s national air traffic services is suffering a similar shortage, a spokesman said.
German investigators have made public their alarming reconstruction of the moments just before last week’s crash, increasing the pressure on the Swiss air authorities to explain the apparent blunders which led to the collision.
The sole air traffic controller on duty in Zurich at the time of the accident was struggling to keep a watch on five planes on two radar screens. The control tower’s collision warning equipment had been shut down and the controller was using a faulty back-up telephone because the network was undergoing maintenance.
Der Spiegel reported that German air traffic controllers had tried to contact the Zurich control tower minutes before the crash to warn of the impending collision, but could not get through because of the phone problems. The Zurich controller, whose colleague was on a break, gave the Russian pilot just 44 seconds to lower his altitude, period considered wholly inadequate by experts.
Skyguide, which is technically a private company although the Swiss government has a 99.85% stake, has admitted that there were communication failures, but says questions about the two planes’ warning systems need to be answered before the true picture emerges.
“Only then will we be able to say whether it’s just a breakdown by us or a breakdown by others as well,” its director, Alain Rossier, told Swiss Radio.
By what is seen as an incredible coincidence, Skyguide renewed its civil liability insurance policy last Monday, just hours before the crash, taking out cover of 500m Swiss francs (£218m) with Pool Suisse aviation assurance, an increase of 70% on last year, the Tribune de Genève reported.
The reduction in air traffic capacity, which applies not only to take-offs and landings but also to planes using Swiss air space, will be reviewed on July 16.
British Airways was forced to divert several flights from Swiss airspace yesterday, causing delays of up to 20 minutes. Flights to Italy were diverted over Austria.
Britain’s air traffic control service said that more hold-ups were “inevitable” while the capacity restriction was in force.
Salvage workers searching for bodies in the countryside and lake around the crash site found the final two victims yesterday, the Friedrichshafen police said.
A Russian plane was to return to Bashkortostan, home to most of the victims, last night with 33 of the 37 bodies so far been identified.
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KabirTRE: El AL pilot reports missile flash!
Russians doubt Ukraine missile denial :
MOSCOW, July 6 (UPI) — Russians cynically greeted Saturday Ukraine’s denials about missile firings, finding an Israeli pilot’s claim he saw an anti-aircraft missile explode over Ukraine too similar to their own and deadly encounter.
“On the eve of its (Air Defense troops) Day, celebrated on the first Sunday in July, the Ukrainian air defense has again found itself in the middle of a scandal,” Moscow’s influential Kommersant daily said.
In Friday’s incident, a Moscow-bound jet with Israel’s El Al airline was flying about 250 kilometers (160 miles) south of the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk when the pilot radioed headquarters that he saw a missile climb from the ground and explode at a higher altitude than his own 10,000 meters (33,000 feet).
Last October Ukrainian artillery accidentally hit a Russian-owned Tu-154 airliner with a missile over the Black Sea during military exercises. All 78 people aboard the plane were killed. After weeks of denying any involvement, Kiev’s military chiefs finally admitted the error following an investigation by Russian and Ukrainian rescue agencies.
Kommersant quoted Ukraine’s Defense Ministry spokesman Konstantin Khivrenko as saying Friday that “no exercises involving missile launches over Ukraine’s territory had been scheduled recently.” But military leaders would have a tough time denying the latest incident after at least three separate sources confirmed the Israeli pilot’s report, the newspaper noted.
First, the crew of a Tu-154 plane flying from the Black Sea resort of Odessa to Russia’s major city in the Ural Mountains, Yekaterinburg, said they observed for 10 seconds the “movement of a shining object.”
Another Russian crew flying an Il-86 from Moscow to Turkey said they noticed “glow resembling a summer lighting, but of a different color.”
Finally, an unidentified flight director at southern Ukraine’s Melitopol airport told reporters he had seen the “light emitted by an unidentified flying object” that eventually went beyond the horizon.
Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh said Friday he had talked to the Israeli airplane’s captain, a Boeing 757 pilot who was previously a veteran fighter pilot who has seen anti-aircraft missile launchings. “He said that what he saw looked like a missile that exploded in the air,” Sneh said.
At 1:35 a.m. Saturday Moscow time, the jet safely landed at Moscow’s Sheremtyevo-1 airport and took off for Tel Aviv after an hour-long stop.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma called the Israeli allegations “absurd” as he spoke from the Danish capital, Copenhagen, where he was on a two-day visit.
“There were no exercises in Ukraine. Moreover, I had imposed a ban on missile launches over Ukraine after that hapless incident,” Kuchma said.
Whatever the reason behind Friday’s incident, military and political observers say the level of trust to the Ukrainian military is likely to plummet again as a string of incidents involving its air defense troops continues.
Moscow’s Vremya MN newspaper said Saturday that on April 2000 a surface-to-surface missile fired from the Chernigov training ground strayed from its path and landed on a residential building in the town of Brovary in the Kiev region.
The rocket pierced the building’s nine floors to the ground, completely destroyed one of its sections and killed three people.
Ukrainian military officials denied involvement until investigators discovered the rocket’s fragments in the rubble.
This time around, officials in Kiev are looking for other clues that could divert attention from the military-related theory behind the incident.
“The pilots could have seen the glow of a missile, launched from Russia’s Astrakhan training ground,” Yaroslav Skalko, deputy director in Ukraviatsiya agency told Moscow’s Izvestia newspaper.
“At the same time, the clouds could have been lit up by the fireworks and floodlights in (Ukraine’s Azov Sea resort of) Berdyansk — a film festival was taking place there,” added Skalko.
The flash seen by the pilot could have been merely an optical deception, proposed Anatoly Prokopenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s weather service to Moscow’s Novye Izvestia newspaper.
“The Dnipropetrovsk region is situated in an anti-cyclone zone that provides for hot air near the surface, absence of precipitation and high visibility,” Prokopenko said.
“Taking into account such transparency of the atmosphere even a fire on the ground can be reflected far away and any flash can be seen tens of kilometers (from its original site),” he concluded.
Israeli and Russian authorities have both expressed concern over the incident, seeking assistance from the U.S. military whose intelligence satellites should provide footage that may help clarify the issue. Moscow also sent its investigators to Ukraine to collect evidence and work on the case with their local colleagues.
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KabirTRE: El AL pilot reports missile flash!
yes…they are two seperate incidents.
KabirTRE: Flaps June
yea Ja…add those titles under ur sig…it will help alot.
KabirTRE: first pic of Air Switzerland…Do 328!
with the DO 328 they are just starting routes inside Switzerland….they will start from Berne. International routes are destinations like Bangkok, Singapore, Las vegas, Dubai, Hong Kong and Cape Town.
latest:-http://www.air-switzerland.net/en/pressreleases/05062002.htm
KabirTRE: Aeroflot To Get Airbus Medium Range Fleet
That must be a very welcomed move……i think the A320/321.
KabirTRE: air new zealand to get a320s
you really hate Air NewZealand dont you Comet… :9
KabirTRE: British Airways London Eye
hehe i agree on that with you Saab 🙂
KabirTRE: Pic Of The Day- SAA B747 with fifth engine!
[updated:LAST EDITED ON 05-07-02 AT 03:52 PM (GMT)]this was no test…a SAA B743 was stranded at FRA due to engine loss….this a/c carried a spare engine for it….this just happened on June 30th 2002. It carried an engine for this a/c….ZS-SKA…which got stuck at FRA the day before….ZS-SKA is an ex-Swissair B743.
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KabirTRE: Tupolevs X 2
the TU-334 is already looking obselete to me…very old design. This design has been with TU for around 12 years now….12 years ago they wanted to bring out a small capacity jet like this, the project was also started (i think was called TU-J-X), but they ran out of funds. Now they have got it. Technology maybe new but the design is old.
KabirTRE: A new fresh alliance would be nice
having ties is not even near of having the advantages that a member of an alliance has….i dont think Swiss will go in a new boy alliance. GD1 if you are in a SIA B777….you might get a spacebed 🙂 …only 3 till know have been fitted with them.
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