Injured On An Airplane?

Toxic Air and the repercussions of being exposed have been covered in a news story by CNN.

Within this clip you will hear from the following:

-John Hoyte a pilot who after 30 years walked off an aircraft after suffering illness. “I thought I had Altimers. I had all kind of issues, brain fog, word finding, memory, I thought, ‘What is going on?’. If I fly today I am going to kill myself, I’m going to kill my passengers.”

-John Hotye’s Dr. who found Tricresyl Phophate in his blood.

-Susan Michaelis a former pilot who is researching incidents of Toxic Air on board a number of European airlines.

-Responses from Airbus, Boeing, and the Aviation Safety Administration.

Follow the link to watch the story.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2010/03/11/durgahee.toxic.air.on.flights.cnn?iref=allsearch

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Air France Flight 445 made it through heavy turbulence on November 29 as it flew from Rio to Paris. That was the same route, the same airline and same aircraft type - an Airbus A330-200 - as Air France Flight 447, which plunged into the Atlantic on June 1, killing all 228 people on board.

France’s accident investigation agency BEA said its probe of last month’s incident could help explain why the June flight went down.

French newspaper Le Figaro reported Thursday that pilots in November made the distress call when the plane was just 10 nautical miles from the area where the ill-fated jet went down months earlier.

Flight 447 jet was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris when it went down about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) off Brazil’s mainland and out of radar coverage. Investigators have not yet solved the crash.

In a Dec. 1 statement, Air France said an internal investigation found that about four hours into the November flight, the pilots carried out a “normal descent” to avoid a zone of severe turbulence. The pilots sent an emergency radio call to indicate that the jet was leaving its flight altitude level, Air France said.

The flight, with 215 people on board, experienced moderate to heavy turbulence for half an hour then continued on normally, said the carrier.

Flight 447 was Air France’s deadliest crash. Investigators may never determine what happened because months of searches in the Atlantic did not turn up the flight recorders.

the rest here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2010469163_apeufranceflightinvestigation.html?prmid=obnetwork

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By Simon Hradecky

Published by The Aviation Herald

An Emirates Airlines Airbus A330-200, flight EK-775 from Dubai (United Arab Emirates) to Durban (South Africa) with 220 passengers, was enroute at around 13:30Z about 2 hours prior to estimated landing in Durban, when the airplane encountered severe turbulence. A doctor on board provided first aid to the injured on board. The airplane continued to Durban for a safe landing. 8 passengers were brought to a local hospital, 12 more were treated at the airport for minor injuries, all other passengers were offered trauma counselling.Passengers reported, that trolleys, bags, passengers and flight attendants were flying through the cabin hitting the ceiling and overhead lockers. Panels got broken, wires were hanging down from the ceiling, seats and armrests were broken. The initial upset, during which the airplane seemed to plunge, lasted for about 10 seconds, the turbulence continued for a couple of minutes.

The hospital reported, three people received spinal injuries, one received a broken hand, the other 4 received minor injuries. All eight could be released from hospital already.

The aircraft was able to depart for the return flight with a delay of 4 hours (total ground time 6 hours).

the rest here: http://www.avherald.com/h?article=4247e85d&opt=0

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Published by The New York Times

Written by CHRISTINE NEGRONI

Wreckage spotted by Brazilian military planes in the Atlantic Ocean is that of missing Air France Flight 447, the Brazilian minister of defense said Tuesday afternoon at a news conference. The jet, bound for Paris from Rio de Janeiro with 228 aboard, disappeared Sunday night without any distress call.

Nelson Jobim, the defense minister, said that “without a doubt” the debris was from the Air France plane. Military planes located the wreckage in a three-mile strip in the ocean, as hope of finding survivors all but vanished. The debris included “an orange life vest, an aircraft seat, a drum, kerosene and oil,” an earlier statement from the Brazilian military said.

Confirmation that the debris, floating 600 miles from the coast of Brazil, is from Flight 447 is sure to help investigators, who have few clues to go on. With no radar information from land and no distress call from the pilots, a series of data messages transmitted by satellite from the plane to Air France’s maintenance office was all the data they had.

Finding the tail of the plane is a high priority for investigators, because that is where the voice and data recorders are located.

The more critical recorder in this crash will be the cockpit voice recorder, said one investigator familiar with flight data devices. “The flight data shows how the aircraft is being operated, but the voice recorder tells you the pilots’ perceptions of what’s happening,” said the investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he might be asked to work on the inquiry.

Evidence of a lightning strike — one theory of why the plane went down — would not be recorded on the flight data recorder, he said, but might very well be documented by the pilots’ observations in the cockpit.

The earliest indication of what may have happened on the airplane came 4 hours 11 minutes after the plane departed Rio, when a series of 10 reports transmitted from the Airbus 330 suggests that the flight encountered difficulties with stormy weather and electrical problems. Those issues could be interrelated; a loss of power could set off a catastrophic cascade of events.

The Airbus 330 is a fly-by-wire plane, in which flight controls are activated by electronics. “Very severe lightning may have caused some malfunction in the electronic control system,” said Tom Swift, a former chief scientist for fracture mechanics and metallurgy at the Federal Aviation Administration.

If lightning, turbulence or some other problem caused a malfunction in the electronic control system, pilots might have difficulty flying or the airplane might begin maneuvers without being commanded to by pilots.

Another avenue of interest to investigators may be a special emergency directive to operators of A330 and A340 models issued by European safety authorities this year.

The directive followed several troublesome events in the models’ electronic flight system. More than a dozen people were seriously injured in October on a Qantas flight to Perth, Australia, from Singapore when the heavily loaded airplane, while cruising in level flight, abruptly pitched down. The authorities said the plane had provided random and erroneous information to the pilots, including a loss of altitude readings and warnings that the plane was about to stall.

Whether Air France reported problems with any of its A330s was not clear.

Mr. Jobim said Tuesday that finding wreckage of the plane would ultimately give hope to relatives of the crash victims that they would learn what had happened to their loved ones.

Charlstie Laytin, 31, of Island Park, N.Y., whose uncle and aunt, Michael and Anne Harris, were two Americans on the flight, agreed. “We certainly do hope to see the investigation continue until we know what happened,” she said. “It’s so hard to come to the point of closure when you don’t have your loved ones in front of you to grieve over.”

Air France did not release a passenger list on Tuesday but said that in addition to 2 Americans, it included, among others, 61 French citizens, 58 Brazilians and 26 Germans.