Flying Lessons

When I'm hard at work, taking notes say, at a National Transportation Safety Board public forum, I will have my laptop open, my iTouch recording and (busted) be checking my email on my Samsung Galaxy Smartphone. All of these devices are powered by lithium ion batteries, and not just that, but cobalt oxide formulations, one of the more volatile chemistries.

This was noted by none other that the NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman as she spoke with reporters at the end of day one of the forum focusing on these batteries. The day was filled with facts and included several experts concluding that the technology may be pushing the limits of safety.

"The growth in the mission (of the battery) is substantial," said Glen Bowling of Saft Specialty Battery Group. "We are powering an airplane - the joint strike fighter - something that has never been done before, because it can be done. We are stretching the battery boundries and we have to be careful when we do that."

Surrounded by reporters and their battery powered devices, Hersman acknowledged the problem, "This is a technology that’s out there. The genie is out of the bottle. We’ve got to figure out how to mitigate these risks."

She is talking about the use of lithium ion batteries on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, sure. As well as ships, subs, buses and cars. And she's also referring to the shipping of lithium ion batteries as cargo on airplanes.

During the lunch break, I sat with two other aviation writers, Alan Levin of Bloomberg and Matt Wald from The New York Times. Both admitted they were astonished at the amount of press generated by the Dreamliner battery woes and both men have been around long enough for their observations to mean something. But interest slash concern about the risks inherent in moving the little batteries on pallets in the belly of cargo planes? Not so much.

During her presentation, Janet McLaughlin of the Federal Aviation Administration said new estimates suggest lithium ion batteries can bring down an airplane at the rate of one every two years. (Would you like to pause here to absorb that figure?)

Cargo being loaded

Okay, moving on.

To bring home the point, she showed a video of a fire in a pallet of lithium ion batteries similar to what might be found on a cargo flight. Flames were firing out of the top and sides like Roman candles.

After the fire on UPS Flight 1307 in 2006 NTSB photo

"We all know that lithium ion is hazardous materials." Ms. McLaughlin told the crowded hearing room in the basement of L'efant Plaza. But what was once about five percent of air cargo, has now increased to something as high as 80 to 85% on certain routes. "That’s difficult to address." Ms. McLaughlin is a mistress of understatement.

"What their assessment shows," Hersman said of the FAA's upcoming one-crash-every-two-years report, "is there is a real risk out there and we need to be paying attention to that."

Day two of the forum begins shortly. And something tells me, it will be more of the same grim news. I'll blog and tweet so whatever electronic device/s you use, keep the battery charged and your fingers crossed.

Presumptive much? In Tokyo on March 16, Boeing's Mike Sinnett made some very bold statements when asked if the Dreamliner's battery woes might result in the Federal Aviation Administration's restricting the airplane's ETOPS overwater capabilities.

Why should it? Mike Sinnett, suggested to a room full of journalists. "The certification plan is designed to lift the AD (airworthiness directive) to fully comply and there will be no additional limitations on the airplane following the lifting of the AD."

That's not what I'm told, and replying to a question in a Senate hearing yesterday the Seattle Times Dominic Gates reports, FAA chief Michael Huerta made it clear the troubled jet's three-hour ETOPs is absolutely under review.

"How can it not be?" I was told by an experienced FAA observer familiar with the ongoing deliberations. In considering whether twin-engine aircraft can operate over water for lengths of time between three hours, which the Dreamliner presently holds and five and a half hours which the planemaker promised to its 787 customers, the FAA must determine if the batteries are part of the plane's electrical system. If so, that makes those lithium batteries troublesome once again because under ETOPs certification all airplane systems must remain available throughout a maximum duration diversion.

Faced with a battery with a propensity to smoke and sizzle as demonstrated by two events in the span of a week in January, Boeing has taken an isolate and disable approach in the new battery design it is proposing to the FAA. Setting aside the question of whether this kind of battery can be certifiable under the one in a billion standard (because I've already blogged about that here) if Boeing can't convince the regulators to give back the plane's ETOPs rating, there are going to be some very, very, angry 787 purchasers.

As I wrote last week for the APEX Editor's Blog, no airlines have yet filed lawsuits against Boeing for its performance failures with the 787. But the Dreamliner's biggest customers have routes that will require ETOPS to fly. These include All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, with 50 Dreamliners in their fleets already and others like United which owns seven and Air New Zealand which has ordered but not received any 787's.

Air New Zealand is waiting for its Dreamliner deliveries

"The fix that we're proposing," Sinnett told reporters one month ago, "is considered a permanent and complete set of fixes and so we've got no limitations on the airplane that results from that." Uh, Mike, wanna give Huerta a call?

The Dreamliner on its world tour in Addis Ababa 2011

Back in the Dreamliner's golden months - before it surpassed laptops and cell phones as the symbol for the frailties of lithium ion (read about the NTSB hearing on the subject here) - the description given to this airplane was "game changer". Come 'on, you've heard it too. That moniker was used to describe how the 787 capabilities would create new ways to connect the world. Now it looks more like if Boeing wants to change the game, its going to have to start by changing the rules.

Ethiopian's 787 ET-AOP on April 27th Boeing photo

THIS STORY HAS BEEN CORRECTED AND UPDATED HERE.

Ethiopian Airlines loaded up Flight 801 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on Saturday and literally lifted the Dreamliner from its three month grounding, the first Boeing 787 customer to resume service on the troubled jet or so the stories say. ~~But wait, announcing a resumption of service may be a tad premature. A more careful reading of the Ethiopian and Boeing press releases seems to indicate that despite the fuss, the flight was a one-off~~.

Tewolde Gebremariam in Addis Ababa

Sure there were passengers on board the plane, including Tewolde Gebremariam, Ethiopian's CEO and Randy Tinseth, Boeing's VP of Marketing, but try to book the flight now and you'll see a Boeing 737 is flying the route. Ask a reservations agent at Ethiopian to book a ticket on any flight from anywhere on the Dreamliner and the answer will be, "We are not operating the Dreamliner yet."

~~So it would appear that the hoopla was about Ethiopian offering the first passenger flight not the first resumption of service.~~ Ethiopian has given a gift to Boeing, providing the plane maker with a happy ending to the seemingly endless Dreamliner nightmare that really got going when two battery events in January caused all 50 of the world's newest airplane to be pulled out of service.

The Ethiopian flight, which made worldwide news stands in contrast to the way All Nippon Airways, a much larger 787 customer plans to reintroduce its 787s into service.

Reuters reported last week that ANA would run anywhere from one to two hundred test flights, the first of which landed at Haneda Airport on Sunday to a precision team of ground workers bowed deferentially to the plane.

From Air India to United, airlines are busy rethinking routes, retraining flight crews and scheduling the Boeing technicians who have been dispatched across the globe to fix the lithium ion battery systems and secure them in fire proof boxes.

787 in New Orleans photo courtesy Marc Wessels

Still, its worth noting a few of the many aspects of this aviation story of the year that are unresolved. Here are my top two:

JAL 787 at Boston Logan, photo courtesy Patrick Smith

The day before the plane was cleared to fly, Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta told a congressional hearing that the agency would take another look at the Dreamliner's ETOPS certification. When the plane was given the all clear with no change from its current 180 minute ETOPS, a spokeswoman for the agency said Huerta's comments were not "correctly interpreted." The Seattle Times Dominic Gates writes that the company seeks a broader five-hour ETOPS. Could that lengthier extended range be what Huerta was talking about? Will airlines with routes that need a more extended range between diversion airports be disappointed by the 787?

Another issue was revealed during a somewhat testy exchange between chairman Deborah Hersman and Boeing's Mike Sinnett during the safety board's public hearing on April 24th.

Explaining that the lithium ion batteries must meet a one in 10 million flight hours level of reliability, Sinnett added the qualification that the standard was based on design and manufacturing of the battery system. If the batteries are damaged or maltreated by airline customers, that's another matter.

"That once in 10 million flight hours doesn't apply to things like abuse of the battery," Sinnett said, (demonstrating again a talent for lawyer-like parsing). "If for example, the battery had been damaged in the installation process and it was an installation-specific piece of damage that led to the failure of the battery, that would not be considered one in 10 million."

This is a question for the investigators examining certification issues. Hersman suggested that Boeing was engaging in "obvious obfuscation".

I'm suggesting that Boeing is still looking for ways to blame any problem with its battery reliability on something other than its own decision to use cobalt oxide lithium ion as a power source on the new airplane.

If I'm right, its no wonder that ANA is flying its own test-flights before putting passengers on the Dreamliner. ~~And it is not surprising that despite its headline making first flight, Ethiopian is taking it slow before scheduling more than that one fanfare-filled flight on Saturday.~~

Readers, an apology is in order. Jon Ostrower of the Wall Street Journal informs me that Ethiopian Airlines is flying the Boeing 787 Dreamliner on its Addis Ababa to Frankfurt route and my earlier post suggesting that the headline making Saturday re-inaugural flight of the troubled twin jet was a one-off is incorrect.

Earlier in the day I was told by Ethiopian reservations agent that the 787 was not flying which I took as an acknowledgement by the airline that before it put the plane and its brand new fire and smoke containing battery box back on the line, it would do a little more flight testing.

That's what All Nippon Airways is doing. But it would seem that Ethiopian feels more confident in Boeing's assurances that all is well with the lithium ion batteries now that the insulation has been beefed up, the charging toned down and the box installed.

My thanks to Jon, an extraordinary aviation reporter and my apologies once again to my readers for leading you astray on this matter.

Ethiopian's ET-AOP prepares for its post-grounding flight on April 27th
photo courtesy Boeing

With air travel books clogging the store shelves like the departure runway at JFK on a Friday afternoon, it takes a special combination of good writing and fresh ideas to break out from the field. Two books I've read recently meet this test; Patrick Smith's Cockpit Confidential, and Tiffany Hawk's novel, Love Me Anyway.

When my inadvertent guffaw at a particular story in Love Me Anyway, was loud enough to get the attention of other passengers while flying to San Francisco last week, the flight attendant came over to ask if I was okay. I should have posed the question right back at her given the eye-opening look at the flight attendant's life offered up in Hawk's first novel.

Love Me Anyway tells the story of two young women just starting out flying for an international airline, whose passage to maturity takes a lot longer and encounters more turbulence than a typical trans Atlantic crossing. In life and literature, if not in aviation, it is the diversions that turn out to be the most beneficial.

Earnest Emily, and her roommate the kookie/sometimes kinky KC, experience exotic ups and downs due to their here-today-and-gone-tomorrow lifestyle. Hawk, who was a flight attendant herself, draws a portrait of older colleagues that suggests too much globetrotting can lead to some leveling off in the ascent to maturity.

We will never know if Hawk would have suffered a similar fate because she gave up flying for a living after September 11th changed much of the world she'd briefly come to know. While she is no longer offering service at 36,000 feet, she is well-equipped to to take readers on flights of fancy in her new profession as novelist.

The challenge for authors writing about air travel is that many readers - accurately or not - feel fully educated on the subject and everyone who has ever been on an airplane has an opinion about the industry.

With Patrick Smith's newest book, that doesn't matter because no matter how much you've read or how much you know, I guarantee you, you haven't heard this perspective on piloting, airline livery, history or security before.

For 10 years Patrick wrote the Salon column Ask The Pilot and I'll guess he's got a fan base to rival some airlines' frequent flyer programs. Okay, I'll grant you, some of them are probably wing nuts and gear heads, but many are drawn to Smith's a laugh-a-page guided tour through the mostly misunderstood world of air travel.

On your next flight, you want a middle seat between Patrick Smith and Tiffany Hawk. Lacking that, make sure you pack copies of Cockpit Confidential and Love Me Anyway in your carry on.

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED AND REVISED

Does the decision of the Federal Aviation Administration to allow the Dreamliner to fly again need judicial review? An airline passenger rights organization thinks so. In a petition to the U.S. Department of Transportation and the FAA, FlyersRights.org is asking that the Boeing 787 be restricted to routes that are no farther than 2 hours from the nearest diversion airport.

Paul Hudson, the president of FlyersRights.org and the chief of the Airline Consumer Action Project says the issue is "urgent" since airlines around the globe are beginning to put the Dreamliners back into service as Boeing's battery-in-a-box safety enhancements are completed. Hudson is using the Administrative Procedure Act, a process that can subject government policies to the review of a court.

JAL's 787 at Boston's Logan Airport. Photo courtesy Patrick Smith

The Dreamliner was grounded for four months this year after two Japanese airlines experienced battery overheating on their 787s. A global investigation and a lot of wailing about the the design and certification of the airplane followed.

"When batteries start burning up, that's a problem for the airlines," said Hudson, explaining why he filed the petition, which was accompanied by "exhibits" consisting of a few newspaper articles related to the grounding and the CV of a battery expert now an consultant in Baltimore.

I won't argue with Hudson's goal, but several things strike me as odd and I'm not alone in wondering who or what is behind this campaign, because I don't see a groundswell of concern coming from air travelers.

David Rowell, the Seattle-based editor of The Travel Insider, read through the petition and was unimpressed. In an email to Ms. Hanni, Rowell wrote that while the idea was a good one, the document could not be taken seriously.

"I don't see any smoking guns in your materials," he wrote. "Quite the opposite, I see embarrassing omissions of factual support for your claims leading to the danger that your petition will be laughed away" he wrote. The problem with that, Rowell added, is that presenting a bad argument could actually lead to the perception that the 787 battery problem has been solved.

Hanni replied that she wasn't making decisions at the flyer's rights group anymore, though her 9 hour stranding on a plane in Austin, Texas in 2006 was the event that launched her into the spotlight as an advocate for air travelers.

A JAL 787 en route to Tokyo in October

Despite Kate Hanni's high profile, neither her (former) organization nor ACAP have much of a presence in air safety circles. ACAP, btw, was started by Ralph Nader 38 years ago. When I asked Hudson why passengers should be be part of a safety review of the Dreamliner he said they have a vested interest.

"It's the passengers and the crews" who are at jeopardy on the Dreamliner he said.

Rowell says "I like the idea of allowing passengers a voice, sort of. But in truth, what level of expert opinion on risks and outcomes can a passenger offer to a high level discussion?"

Having sat through three days of presentations on lithium ion batteries, fault tree analysis and certification standards last month, I think both men are right. Passengers do have a vested interest, but they don't seem to care. Absent an airplane disaster most air travelers take safety for granted. This is why I can't shake the feeling that something else is going on behind the scenes in this latest episode in the Dreamliner drama. Anybody want to venture a guess what it is?

Disney may not have intended to instigate domestic strife with the release of the trailer for its new animated feature, Planes, but I can tell that the sparks are going to fly around my house.

There they are, all those pretty little airplanes, soaring in time with the swelling chords of the music while cars and trucks with their anthropomorphized windshield-framed eyes remain solidly earth-bound.

My son, Sam, writes about (ho hum) cars.

My husband Jim and middle son Sam, are auto writers, gear heads through and through. As I have complained in a previous post, neither one of them can hold a conversation outdoors without stopping mid sentence to make an observation about what's driving by. On the upside, how great is it to be surrounded by people who, when stuck in traffic, view it as an impromptu auto show?

In Planes, the creators are surely coming from my side of the argument. Sure, in the right car, driving around can be fun. Trains are nice, boats too. But given a choice of any way to get from A to B, who in their right mind won't choose to fly? If you are reading this and silently answering, "me," welcome. Where did you wander in from?

Flying with air show pilot John Klatt in New York

I've flown upside down. I've flown open cockpit. I've traveled in my friend David's home built AcroSport. I've flown in a coach seat so cramped even my 5 foot 5 inch frame needed to be pried out at the end of the flight and slept in Singapore's fancy lie-flat bed, a seat so comfortable an 18 hour flight wasn't long enough. I took a shower on an Emirates A380 and have the photo to prove it. No, you can't see it.

I've occupied the jump seat on a Boeing 747 and a DC-3 and filled the left seat on quite a few flight simulators. When I worked in television in Hartford, I spent a lot of time on the station's Bell Jet Ranger and at CBS News, I had a nail-biting, brace yourself, emergency landing with fire trucks and foam on the runway to greet our charter flight.

Lord knows I've been blessed to experience the highs and the highs because there are just no "lows" in aviation. Nothin' else compares.

Steve Guenard at the controls of N7995

Not one word of dialogue appears in the two and a half minute trailer of Disney's 3-D movie and yet the whole thrilling, liberating, intoxicating miracle of flight is right there. So I'm not going to argue the point at home, Disney's done it for me.

The DC 3 Flagship Detroit at JFK

Disney's Planes Takes Flight on Disney Video

Flight attendants may not rank up there with firefighters or police officers in terms of dangerous jobs, but the story on Wednesday that a Delta Air Lines employee was injured when the plane on which she was working encountered turbulence is proof - as if anyone needed it - that the job can be a pretty hazardous. And indeed if there were to be a fire or other emergency, firefighter/police officer/lifeguard/medic are all roles the cabin attendant is trained and expected to perform.

Firefighter training for flight attendants

Those are not the hazards encountered day-to-day though. It is the mundane tasks like providing meal service and helping get luggage into overhead bins that repeatedly send crew members to the emergency room.

Take this latest turbulence injury for example. Passengers are warned to buckle up and stay that way throughout the flight, but that option is often not available to cabin staff and they are overwhelmingly the victims when a plane encounters rough air, as I reported for The New York Times a few years ago.

Food service carts have caused injuries

Then there are the food service carts, heavy, unwieldy with inadequate brakes and sharp corners. Last Christmas, an American Airlines flight attendant severed a finger on a trolley. These accidents are frequent enough to have prompted the FAA to issue guidance on the use of food service carts more than a dozen years ago. Clearly the problem persists.

So I remain baffled about why Transportation Security Administration boss John Pistole thinks that these hard working and in many cases underpaid airline workers should be prepared to take a knife for us.

Pistole presents the hard-to-understand and impossible-to-believe rationale that allowing 2 and a half inch blades to be carried on to the airplane will enhance security because TSA screeners can turn their attention away from looking for knives and search for real threats like bombs. When he met with Alice Hoagland in April, that's what Pistole told the mother of Mark Bingham who was killed on United Airlines Flight 93.

The sensible Ms. Hoagland pointed out in the Wall Street Journal - and presumably in her meeting with Pistole - that it makes no sense to think that screeners are going to process travelers more quickly once they have to start separating the acceptable knives from the still verboten. The number of carry on bags screened at US airports is more than 100 million a year.

US Airways flight attendant Deborah Volpe

Gail Dunham of the National Air Disaster Alliance was another concerned citizen who met with Pistole to express her concern. Flight attendants like Deborah Volpe of US Airways, pilots like those from the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations and many, many, many others have been vociferous in their opposition. Their efforts combined have had some effect. This week, members of Congress sent a letter to Pistole asking him to reconsider.

I'm a Global Entry member now

Pistole became a hero to many air travelers and airlines when he initiated programs to make security more risk and intelligence based, as I reported in The New York Times last year. Grandmoms, business travelers, busy journalists (uh hem) and other known and likely benign passengers can enroll in trusted traveler programs that speed them through airport checkpoints. That was a policy change rooted in common sense.

But now, Pistole is explaining that his mission must be laser focused. Since knives won't bring down a jetliner, the effect of allowing them in the confined and isolated environment of an airplane is not his problem.

Post 9/11, flight attendants were forced to add security tasks to an already lengthy list of FAA and airline mandated assignments. They could take comfort in knowing they were doing their part in protecting passengers and maybe preventing another terrorist attack.

Now for reasons that continue to mystify, the TSA has taken the preposterous position that its okay to board a plane with the tools to commit mayhem so long as the goal is not terrorism.

Knives aren't guns, I get that. But if knives are allowed in to the passenger cabin, flight attendants and anyone else within reach of blade wielding assailant will be in the crosshairs - and John Pistole will have put them there.

As much as I like to fly, the prospect of being on a 12 hour flight during the daytime (when I probably won't sleep much) makes me a little apprehensive. I have ants-in-the-pants-syndrome; it is very difficult for me to remain seated for extended periods of time.

So Wednesday morning, before I boarded Ethiopian Flight 501 from Dulles International to Addis Ababa, I decided to tire myself out with a good, long strenuous power walk. I have the perfect playlist for this, assembled by my music-loving sister Lee.

Setting out from the Dulles Airport Marriott, I was thrilled to discover I could go all the way to the airport, walking the whole length of the soaring 1960s era Eero Saarinen terminal building, beyond the D2 Dulles construction site, to Signature Aviation's very active flight support area. As I circled back to the hotel with Bette Midler’s hopped-up rendition of Mambo Italiano pumping through my headset, I was more pleased to find a beautiful pond behind the building and a walking path in the woods alongside it.

The paved trail was lined with blooming honeysuckle - not the red variety that doesn't smell but the pungent, white and yellow ones. The air was full of their scent. Bunnies hopped through the underbrush and a family of ducks at the water’s edge skedaddled when I approached.

Towering above what could have been a scene right out of the movie Bambi, was the airport’s air traffic control tower.

By their nature, airports offer a display of airplanes and the pleasant anticipation of eminent travel. And sometimes at some airports - as I was reminded at Dulles - there can be unexpected treats.

SEDONA, ARIZONA

The sign at the base of the hill leading up to Sedona Airport says something like: The world’s most beautiful airport. You don’t need a sign to figure that out. The airport is inside one of the region’s notable hiking trails. Across from the parking lot, Sedona’s magnificent buttes provide background to the tile roofed homes and adobe style shops in the commercial heart of town in the valley below.

Talk about your ancillary revenue, far more people visit the lookout than actually fly from the airport and the locals take advantage of the tourists by asking for donations at the entrance to the overlook. Go ahead, cough up a fiver. And if you want to spend more, the airport restaurant Mesa Grill commands an equally spectacular view.

PROVIDENCETOWN, MASSACHUSETTS

I didn’t plan to visit the Provincetown Municipal Airport when I took my new (used) Dahon folding bicycle with me on a weekend road trip to Cape Cod in May, because I didn’t know there was an airport located on the National Seashore bike trail. But there it is.

Provincetown’s population swells and contracts with the seasons and now, with the summer population boom about to begin, Cape Air, the little airline with the big reputation has added flights from New York to its schedule.I hopped off my bike at the fence to have a better look at the airfield and moments later was rewarded with the arrival of the new flight from Westchester County Airport.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY AIRPORT

And while we are on the subject of Westchester Airport (full disclosure this is my hometown airport) I have many memories of bringing my children here to the rooftop observation deck. For a small airport it has an impressive variety of airfield activity; business jets, flight training, helicopter operations, regional and narrow body airliners and sometimes even blimps are parked there. Inside the terminal, historic planes are suspended from the ceiling. That will get anyone in the mood to fly.

MARLBOROUGH AIRPORT BLENHEIM

Granted, there’s a lot of beautiful scenery in New Zealand, particularly in the Marlborough region on the northernmost point of the South Island where the country’s famous Sauvignon Blanc grapes are grown. This makes the view from passenger waiting area at Marlborough Airport spectacular, expanses of vineyards in the valley, purple mountains rising up behind them. The scenery is so sensational, in fact, one might be tempted to remain there all day. Don’t.

Within walking distance of the airport is the Omaka Aviation Heritage Center, a project under the partial charge of movie director Peter Jackson. Spend a great morning here, head to the winery next door for lunch and be back at the airport for a flat white (coffee) and Afghan (cookie) from the teeny tiny airport snack bar which I recommend you consume while looking out the window. Just don’t miss your flight.

AEROPORTO DA MADERIA

The runway at the airport in Maderia’s capital city of Funchal is the must see attraction for aviation aficionados. It is an engineering marvel located where the mountains meet the ocean and perched on 180 columns each one 70 feet in height. The best way to see this is not on foot or on a bike, but on the approach by air or by boat.

ORIO AL SERIO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

This airport in Bergamo is one of the many mid-sized airports like Providenceand Pisa, that over the years has seen its fortunes rise, fall and rise again. Bergamo’s new life is credited to low cost carriers like Ryanair and Wizzair, airlines that were encouraged to enter the market with economic incentives. It’s a controversial issue and I’m not weighing in on whether these tactics are right or wrong.

I will say that Bergamo’s airport has a story book charm; typical airport hustle and bustle on a manageable level. Just 3 miles from the historic center of town, I borrowed a bike one morning and rode out to the airport, pedaling past ancient stone buildings and along a path through a natural wetlands.

Yep, I’m a sucker for any airport I can ride a bike to, so in closing here are a few cities where finding a bike and finding the airport are easily accomplished.

Haneda Airport– There are many places to rent bikes in Tokyo and a ride to Haneda Airport passes a splendid observation deck where fellow bike riders and aviation photographers gather on the platform to watch the jumbo jets landing and taking off right across the water.

Ronald Reagan Washington National– Washington DC now has Capitol Bike Share stations throughout the District and Virginia where so it is easy to get on the Mt. Vernon Trail leading to the airport. As in Tokyo, the route goes right by a park that’s perfectly positioned for photographers. Multi modal treats are in store; planes overhead and amphibious DC Duck Boats drive right into the water.

Copenhagen Airport - Residents can be blasébike riding in Denmark. Visitors will be impressed by a biking infrastructure that not only makes it easy to pedal from place to place, there’s plenty of parking for your bike when you arrive. If you find yourself too tired to bike the 8 miles back to the city, they are welcome on the train. The rail line into the city is located on the second level by the airport hotel.

Quite a bit of kerfuffle was generated - as it always is - when a DePaul University study Tablets Take Flight, was released earlier this month that said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration "found no actual evidence that a consumer electronic device can affect airplane operations."

Having spent a considerable amount of time looking into this issue, I was surprised I'd never heard that, so I asked Kathy Barnstorff a media relations specialist at NASA if she could tell me more. Well, it turns out that while NASA has produced three reports, none make that conclusion. If anything they say the opposite.

In the most recent from 2004, Truong Nguyen at Langley Research Center tested a particular model Samsung phone that had caused some trouble with the GPS on a single engine airplane the year prior. He found "the threat of interference is real." Dr. Nguyen goes on to suggest that laptop computers and PDAs may also provide similar risk of interference.

(Alert readers may notice that Dr. Nguyen is not alone in this finding. Read what others have to say in the story I wrote for The New York Times.)

Dr. Nguyen and his fellow researchers, A.J. Oria and Scott Pace, have prepared a report rich in mathematical calculations, multi-syllabic electrical terms and graphs. But the conclusion is pretty straightforward.

"Additional work" is needed they write, because wireless devices on airplanes and specifically a combination of devices, "may generate undesired signal in the sensitive aircraft bands."

Dr. Nguyen focused on GPS navigation systems only. An International Air Transport Association study cited in my previous blog posts on this subject suggest pilots are reporting electronic interference on all aircraft systems including flight controls and communication.

Meanwhile, back to the DePaul Tablets study, the principal author, Joseph Schwieterman explained in a phone call over the weekend, that his goal was not to take a position on whether electronic devices are a safety hazard on airliners, only to report that people are using technology on airplanes - as many as 90% are using devices at some point during their flight - and that restrictions on their use below 10,000 feet has consequences.

"Technology is often crucial for dealing with family and work-related emergencies, keeping businesses functioning smoothly, and lessening the stress of being away from home," the report says. On Wednesday his report was revised to remove the erroneous NASA reference.

Based on the documents Ms. Barnstorff sent, the last word from NASA was written nine years ago, a lifetime in terms of technology development. But no matter what you read by others on this charged issue, there is no scientific study by the space agency dismissing concerns about the use of electronic devices on airplanes. That theory seems to be coming entirely from device users.

Make of that what you will.

Saturday afternoon I flew from OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg to Cape Town on South African Airways Flight 347, to attend the International Air Transport Association Annual General Meeting. I was pretty sure it would be an on-time flight since Monwabisi Kalawa, the airline's new chief executive was on the plane. Of course he was in business class and I was back, way back in seat 27F.

What I did not know was what a great vantage point that seat would give me for all the goings-on before, during and after we landed in Cape Town. Here are some of the highlights with photos to match:

We started off in need of a tire change.

While that was going on, baggage handlers were loading the animals in the hold. We may be in safari country, but the critters were the ordinary, domestic variety - cats and dogs from what I could tell.

I thought for a moment that perhaps the bird strike volunteers were headed home for the weekend.

The sign we passed on arrival at Tambo Airport.

I was enjoying the colorful livery of airlines like flymango.com and Kulula ...

when what should touch down on the runway but an Air Zimbabwe Airbus A320! Did I count this airline out too soon? Maybe so. It's a shadow of its former self, but it started flying domestically and to Johannesburg in April of this year.

Well, my head was swinging around like a bobble-head taking in all this activity, when I noticed the man a few rows ahead of me oblivious to it all, reading the newspaper. Can you see the headline of the story he was reading? I was glad I didn't check my bag.

Check out the headline! Some story to read on an airplane.

Somewhere approaching our destination, a fantastic sliver of clear sky allowed the setting sun to blaze through - creating a sensational contrast between layers of clouds above and below the horizon.

I would have called that an excellent flight right there, but more fun was in store for us on landing. Cross winds made it a rocking time right down to the pavement - then we slalomed across a very wet runway while I applied the brakes with both feet along with every other passenger as we all successfully assisted the flight crew in bringing our Boeing 737 to a halt.

Now, from my hotel in downtown Cape Town, I can watch the lightning and hear the wind and thunder of a winter storm. Its dramatic, yep, but its going to take a lot of fireworks to top the excitement I've already had just getting here.

Does it strike anyone else as odd that of all the foreign airports in all the world, Abu Dhabi International would be one of the few to offer immigration pre-clearance for travelers heading to the United States? Let me answer my own question. Yes it does. Several members of congress - also flummoxed by this proposal have added an amendment to the Department of Homeland Security budget appropriation, that's essentially a not-so-fast-there, yank on the leash to DHS.

Unions, airlines and airport executives were all scratching their heads when it was revealed last year that a dozen or so U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents would be stationed in the Emirati capital - clearing passengers bound for the United States so that on arrival, they would zoom through the airport like domestic travelers.

Anyone who has ever waited for an hour or two or more to clear immigration at one of America's international airports can see the benefit of flying on an airline that effectively eliminates that. Why, it's better than taking your luggage with you on the plane to avoid baggage claim.

The question industry leaders like Airlines for America had was this; Why provide Etihad with this competitive advantage over U.S. airlines, none of which fly out of Abu Dhabi?

The idea of pre-clearing travelers to reduce immigration wait times at ports of entry is a good one. On a visit to New Zealand in 2011, quite a few Kiwis told me when traveling they choose any route other than one that takes them through the United States, which of course means any airline but an American one. Who can say how much money is lost because of this?

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano argues that having American immigration officers on the ground at these foreign airports improves security - giving U.S. agents a level of control beyond our borders. Better to check the passengers before they get on the plane than after they are airborne, she told The New York Times.

Popular international destinations for Americans like Aruba, Bermuda, eight cities in Canada and two cities in Ireland already preclear travelers alleviating a bit of congestion. With 80 million people traveling to the U.S. each year it doesn't seem too hard to come up with a list of candidate airports where adding pre-clearance could do even more to reduce wait times at immigration halls while offering some benefits to U.S. airlines too.

Boeing brings the 787 to Ethiopia in 2011

I have a double major in aviation and journalism - I bring it up to make this point: Several things are happening with the Dreamliner. Some are serious and some are ordinary, new-airplane glitches, dare-I-say, teething problems.

The causes of the recent 787 flight cancellations in Japan may fall in the latter category but grand or minor, the Jaws syndrome means that each nip of the teeth will gnaw on the still-rehabilitating reputation of the Boeing 787.

Jaws Syndrome is the tendency of the media to latch on to news on a particularly hot subject, giving the general public a somewhat distorted notion of the frequency or severity of a particular event. It is based (and I credit my husband Jim for naming the phenomenon) on the spike in reported shark attacks following the release in 1975 of the movie “Jaws”.

Dreamliners have been back in the air only a month, after Boeing successfully convinced regulators that in the case of a thermal event, a new containment box would keep the plane’s volatile lithium ion battery system from emitting smoke into the airplane.

Japanese airlines All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlineswhich together own the bulk of the Dreamliners flying today, held off on using the airplanes for several weeks after other airlines, Ethiopian, Lot and United resumed service. (Japanese pilots are still complaining that they don’t think the new battery design offers enough information to pilots, but that’s another story.)

On Wednesday, while the Federal Aviation Administration was defending its certification of the Dreamliner at a hearing in Washington, ANA was cancelling a 787 flight from the western Japanese city of Ube to Haneda due to a problem with the right engine. This followed an engine sensor malfunction on Monday on another Dreamliner and that plane was taken off line as well. The next day Japan Airlines had an engine icing issue on one of its 787s serious enough to force the plane back to Tokyo and shift Singapore-bound passengers onto another aircraft.

That these problems are apparently unrelated to the battery that started all the fuss, may mean they are run-of-the-mill new airplane glitches. That they are being reported in Japan, where the Japanese press corps has been tenacious in its coverage, doesn't necessarily mean that they're only occurring there.

What it does mean is that the Jaws Syndrome is in full swing and Boeing and its customers should bear that in mind. Shark-sized or piranha-sized, teething issues on the Dreamliner will continue to draw blood.

A computer generated image of the soon-to-open terminal
photo courtesy Heathrow Airport

Hmmm, how to properly thank the authorities at Heathrow for giving Star Alliance airlines their very own terminal at the busy airport? I know! I know! It's brilliant. Name the £2.5 billion building after the Queen!

The world's largest airline alliance didn't just make that announcement today - on the eve of the opening of the Paris Air Show, not to mention the Queen's birthday, they sent along some very lovely historical photographs to go with it.

The opening of Terminal 1 in 1969 photo courtesy Heathrow

Yes! I'm a sucker for black and white shots of hat-wearing, bouquet-bearing royals reminding us with their dignified presence that once-upon-a-time, flying was treated as an adventure. In the case of the ever-growing Heathrow Airport, Queen Elizabeth is the constant, having presided over the opening of the original Terminal 2 in 1955 and I am speculating here, but you know they are hoping that maybe she will deign to be present in 2014 when the new terminal opens to the public.

The Queen visiting the airport in the 70s.
photo courtesy Heathrow Airport

In a press release today, Heathrow executive, John Holland-Kaye, said, “The Queen opened the original Terminal 2 more than half a century ago and we’re delighted that Her Majesty has kindly agreed to give her name to the new Terminal 2."

Terminal 2 The Queen's Terminal will house the 23 Star Alliance member airlines who provide service into Heathrow, over 20% of the airport's traffic, the Alliance says.

Two weeks ago, when I reported on this for APEX from the International Air Transport Association's annual general meeting in Cape Town, airline executives were bubbly about the opportunities. Gathering all their passengers into one terminal will halve transfer times and result in more business, according to the alliances' Christian Klick.

If faster and easier connections in a brand new terminal makes passengers feel like royalty, well there's something to be said for that.

Star Alliance members begin the countdown to the opening of the new Terminal 2

NEW POST REVISES THIS ONE. READ IT HERE

It has taken 17 years but the most qualified of the amateur investigators into the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 seems to have found his voice in a powerful documentary that's making headlines this week. Tom Stalcup teamed up with Kristina Borjesson in the (too long by half) 90 minute documentary. Together they raise intriguing questions about what might have caused the explosion that brought down the Boeing 747 on a flight from New York to Paris on July 17, 1996. All 230 people on board died.

It is with careful parsing that I praise this film, having authored Deadly Departure, a book that deals with the air safety issues related to this same air accident. I am concerned about the filmmakers decision to interview subjects of questionable expertise and their heavy reliance on eyewitnesses.

My most serious problem, though is the false premise that dominates the first section of the documentary and that is that the FBI was up-to-no-good from the get-go, as demonstrated by the fact that they arrived en masse, seizing control of everything and hoarding information.

This entirely characteristic behavior is given an ominous "what-were-they-up-to?" spin in the beginning of the film, when it is the default modus operandi of the FBI - not to mention a natural product of the chaos of a huge, complex and pressure-filled operation such as the crash of a jumbo jet under mysterious circumstances.

I did not believe then and I do not believe now that within hours of the crash the FBI marched into Long Island with orders to initiate a cover up because they already knew what happened. The FBI isn't that clever. Trying to read something nefarious into the banal undermines credibility.

Where the film is persuasive is in exposing an incomplete investigation. Having spent 4 years and millions of dollars on the probe, the film raises questions that ought to be addressed in the NTSB's final product.

For all its faults, and there seem to have been many, the investigation did result in new design standards that eliminate the propensity of Boeing airliners to fly with fuel tanks in an explosive state. That's a good thing.

But is it enough? What if there's more to the Flight 800 disaster? At a minimum, the safety board needs to address why critical evidence was left unexamined, including missing wreckage, an unidentified residue on the exterior of the fuel tank and radar returns that suggest something outside the plane moments before the event.

Former NTSB investigator Hank Hughes plays a large role in the film joining others whose opinions I hold in regard. On Wednesday Hughes filed a petition for reconsideration of the crash report and it is under review, a spokeswoman said.

The safety board did not participate in the documentary, perhaps concluding it would continue to feed a conspiracy theory that is alive and well and populated with crackpots. Truth be told, there is an element of the outrageous in this film - which is also gratuitously sentimental.

At the program's end, a woman who lost a loved one in the crash says, "its very frustrating that no one gives a shit anymore." The headline-getting power of this not-yet-aired documentary demonstrates she is wrong about that.

NEW POST REVISES THIS ONE. READ IT HERE

Damage to the engine on QF 32. Photo courtesy ATSB

It would take some really big news to eclipse the release of the final report by Australian air safety investigators into what happened to Qantas Flight 32, an event on the world's newest and largest airliner that came thisclose to disaster. The Australian prime minister might have to be ousted, for example. Or an American might have to spill state secrets and become an international fugitive. Whoops, those are the stories on the front page today relegating everything else -including the just-released findings of the Australian Transportation Safety Board - to the inside pages.

No worries. Here, in brief are some of the highlights from the 300 page report.

First a quick recap: You may remember that Qantas Flight 32 with 422 people on board, departed from Singapore's Changi Airport on November 4, 2010. An uncontained engine failure at 7,000 feet on ascent sent debris flying and created all kinds of chaos on nearly all of the plane's systems. For a fuller account, see some of my previous posts here, here and here or purchase a copy of Richard DeCrespigny's excellent book, QF32.

Broadly speaking the ATSB separated its review into three categories; The failed Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines powering the airplane, the effects of the engine failure on the systems and performance of the airplane and the challenges faced by the crew.

I'm not saying that the engine is not a highly-complicated component. Tens of thousands of parts go into each one along with considerable hours of engineering, design and manufacturing brainpower. Still, reading the report, one gets the impression that finding the error that led to the Qantas turbine overheating and flying apart was the easiest part of the investigation.

"The crack in the oil feed pipe was a result of fatigue and had developed over some time," the ATSB report says. When the crack grew large enough, oil in the pipe was "released into the buffer space between the bearing chamber and the hot air surrounding the IP turbine disc. The oil was released as an atomised spray and the air within the buffer space was sufficiently hot for the oil to auto-ignite."

With that information the investigators worked upwards, trying to discover how the crack could have developed in the first place, and not just as a one-off on the incident airplane but potentially on others as well, as a result of repeated manufacturing inconsistencies not reported to quality control at the engine maker.

"A culture existed within the manufacturer’s facility," the report says, "where it was considered acceptable to not report what were considered to be ‘minor’ non-conformances."

In a statement as the report was released, Colin Smith, Rolls-Royce's director of engineering and technology acknowledged where the company had gone wrong. "This was a serious and rare event which we very much regret." The company has already instituted the changes detailed by the safety board investigators.

Well, I should say so. It is not a pretty picture that is painted of one of the most storied engine manufacturers in the world, but in its review, the ATSB does seem to bring the engine investigation to a close. This is not the case with other aspects of the harrowing flight.

Illustration of engine debris trajectory provided by ATSB

When the engine burst, the entire circumference of the engine case was ruptured. Parts penetrated the belly of the aircraft, the left wing leading edge and front spar. Damage included a loss of engine control, fuel transfer, some hydraulics and engine fire protection. There was a real risk that a fuel leak and fire in the left wing could have escalated. This is only a partial list of the mayhem that day. But it raises the question of the plane's vulnerability. In its report, the investigators do not make any conclusions about whether the plane should have/could have performed better.

The damage on the plane exceeded any prior expectation or safety analysis, the investigators write, "and therefore represents an opportunity to incorporate any lessons learned into the advisory material."

The five pilots on the flight deck of QF 32
photo courtesy Richard De Crespigny

In his book, Captain Richard De Crespigny keeps readers riveted as he describes the work load on the flight deck that day as error messages and checklists churned out from the flight management system. When I met with him in Singapore six months after the event he described the relentless arrival of information by saying messages and checklists were coming out "like dinner plates at a buffet."

Despite its size and passenger load, the report reminds readers pro-forma that the Airbus A380, super jumbo is certified for two pilots. It is notable then that on Qantas Flight 32 there were five men in the cockpit who together had more than 76,000 hours of flying experience. Whether that flight would have had its happy outcome with fewer people working on the problem is unknowable though concluding that landing this horribly crippled flight could be duplicated with fewer pilots seems a stretch.

The ATSB spent two and a half years examining Qantas Flight 32. But its report is disappointing in that it has not resolved these important questions about durability of the plane or the ability of a two-person crew to successfully fly it in similar circumstances. Is QF 32 an "opportunity" to incorporate lessons learned? No. It is more than that. It is a mandate that safety officials keep on learning from this near-disaster.

In the past, the decision makers at the National Transportation Safety Board might have tried to hang tough through the crescendo of publicity for the soon-to-be-aired TWA 800 conspiracy documentary. But that's not the way this board behaves. On Tuesday, they'll launch a counter-offensive, inviting journalists into the NTSB Training Center in Ashburn, Virginia. There, several of the men who worked on the 4-year investigation will take questions and explain what led them to the conclusion that the mid-air explosion of the Boeing 747 was the result of a long-standing design problem and not a criminal act.

On June 19, former NTSB investigator Hank Hughes, filed a petition for reconsideration asking that the board re-open the investigation based on new evidence. (New evidence, btw, is the only trigger for probable cause review. During my time as an investigator for the law firm Kreindler & Kreindler, attorney Andrew Maloneydid convince the board to revise a finding of pilot error in a commercial helicopter crash in the Gulf of Mexico. Even so, it was a hard slog.)

In a statement, the board explained the decision to hold the briefing and tour of the reconstructed center fuselage of the jumbo jet saying, "Since the accident occurred 17 years ago, many who are now covering the petition filing are less familiar with the details and findings of the NTSB’s four-year investigation."

That was obvious from the first headlines heralding the new documentary. "Investigators break their silence" many trumpeted and the documentary's experts were characterized as "federal investigators". Having seen the documentary (and having been overly generous to it in a previous post) let me set that record straight.

Hughes, 2nd from left, during documentary interview
Photo courtesy Epix

Hank Hughes, whose experience was largely in automobile accidents, is the one - and only one - who worked for NTSB. All the others were part of the probe through their employers or unions. Jim Speer, as a member of the Air Line Pilots Association, Bob Young, with TWA, Charles Wetli as the medical examiner of Suffolk County and Dennis Shanahan, on loan from the Army Aeromedical Research Lab.

Granted, these men are not crackpots. And in my earlier review of the film, I was most swayed by the fact that with the exception of Hughes and Speer, who I have never met, I know and respect the other men named. Likewise, Tom Stalcup, the man behind the missile-theory-that-won't-die is an educated physicist and a seemingly good-hearted person.

It's flat out hyperbole to say that these men are "breaking their silence". They may be many things, but silent is not one of them. I'd be a rich woman if I was paid by the hour for all the time I've spent listening to these guys. Despite their apparent good intentions and impressive resumes, when it comes to their theory about what happened to TWA Flight 800, they're simply wrong.

Are there lingering mysteries about the evening of July 17, 1996? You betcha. Did agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation descend on Long Island throwing their weight around, talking more than they listened and turning a normally open process into a highly secretive one? Yes again.

Jim Kallstrom

The FBI, led by the powerful and ambitious and not entirely honest, Jim Kallstrom swallowed poor Robert Francis whole. As the NTSB's board member on the scene Francis was woefully outclassed, enthralled by Kallstrom's charisma and disinterested in what his own folks were discovering. A similar bigfooting was ongoing on the political side as New York's then-mayor Rudy Giuliani overwhelmed Suffolk County and TWA executives to serve his own interests.

All of this is detailed in my book, Deadly Departure, which I urge you to buy if you can find a copy online. (Perhaps HarperCollins, my publisher will reissue it as an ebook, hint, hint?)

As a journalist, I've often heard people say disasters bring out the best in people. Maybe so, but one of the many lessons of TWA Flight 800 was how it brought out the worst in people. It was a hothouse of scheming, arrogance, suspicion. And I haven't even mentioned the more benign incompetence, grief and confusion - there was plenty of that, too. Just believe me when I write that all the elements needed for a missile theory to take root and bloom were there in abundance.

The miracle is that in spite of all that, the investigation did ultimately uncover what I have called a conspiracy of inaction. The final report shows that over three and a half decades the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing failed to address a very real problem on the Boeing 747 that actually was the culprit in the explosion aboard the TWA flight to Paris; an airplane design that often allowed the center fuel tank to be in an explosive state. This design was common to all Boeing airliners at the time.

Here we are, 17 years later. Fixes are being made, albeit slowly. Still, people who have never been able to revise their own early conviction that Flight 800 was brought down by a missile are able to get the news media churned up with their nonsense.

So when I opined that the NTSB should review the points raised by the conspiracy crowd it was with the hope that somehow the board would address the more significant questions raised in the petition for reconsideration and that would put the missile theory to rest once and for all.

What I failed to realize but strongly suspect now, is that the missile theory has a life of its own. It will never go away for those who believe in a movie-drama reality where a nefarious, all-knowing government controls everyone but a few honest heroes like the TWA documentarians.

Come Tuesday, I'll be at the briefing in Virginia with my notebook in hand and my positive face on, hoping - but not expecting - that the safety board will prove me wrong.

An earlier post incorrectly identified Dr. Wetli as Robert. His first name is Charles. Apologies Dr. Wetli.

In the beginning of the new documentary about the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, amateur investigator Thomas Stalcup stands in front of a huge reconstruction of a section of the Boeing 747. The patchwork of torn aluminum airplane skin is tacked onto a frame that extends 90 feet. Stalcup looks on quietly for a moment before beginning to explain why he thinks missiles brought down the airliner. In Stalcup’s version of events, government investigators collaborated to hide the true story of Flight 800.

Stalcup has chosen the most recognizable image of the air disaster to launch his 90 minute documentary, but that stunning 747, put together from pieces recovered from the Atlantic, is also a symbol of government dysfunction. The story behind the reconstructed wreckage is one of warring bureaucracies, competing agencies and appeals to the White House. If anything, the mockup argues against the kind of widespread cooperation required for a successful conspiracy.

I covered the crash as a correspondent for CNN, and later wrote a book about it that included many of the alternative scenarios about what caused the disaster, including Stalcup’s missile theory. I also wrote about the tortured relationship between law enforcement and accident investigators.

The bad blood between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the NTSB started practically the moment they arrived on Long Island. It is easy to understand why. Acting on the possibility it was a terror attack, the FBI seized control of all aspects of the investigation and enacted rules that conflicted with the NTSB’s far more open procedures.

The FBI’s Jim Kallstrom went on television talking about finding the perpetrators which infuriated the NTSB. Working unhappily together in a hot, smelly, cavernous hangar, cliques formed and splintered. Resentment and second guessing colored every decision.

Then-cabinet secretary Kitty Higgins sometimes intervened, pleading for reason. “My job was to hose people down and say, ‘Back to your corners’” she told me.

Taking a page from the investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, Kallstrom decided in November to reconstruct the airplane. The NTSB balked. The said there was no need. They were certain the problem was mechanical. And back to the White House they’d all go.

“How could I ever answer the question, “What happened?’” Kallstrom pointed out when they were assembled in the meeting with the White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta. “We know what happened” was the reply of the NTSB’s Bernie Loeb. He thought the idea was a publicity stunt; a waste of time, effort and money. “The FBI was clueless,” Loeb told me. “They never have been involved in plane crashes. They act viscerally on what they see.”

Panetta sided with Kallstrom and ordered the rebuilding of the plane. By February 1997 it was done at a cost of $500,000. Then the families of the crash victims were invited to visit the reconstructed cabin and to see the seats where their loved ones had died.

That may have been the moment when the NTSB began to see the value of rebuilding the airplane. Today it is the centerpiece of its Safety Center in Virginia, which is where Stalcup went to film his documentary, scheduled to air on Epix on July 17 the 17^th anniversary of the crash.

In response the NTSB is staging a media briefing at the reconstructed wreckage on Tuesday inviting journalists to ask questions of investigators whose four-year effort concluded that the disaster was causedby aging wiring and a faulty fuel tank design.

I can’t say whether they will be successful in changing the opinions of those who give the missile theory credence. But having talked to so many of the people who lived through the investigation, I know it would have been impossible for those sparring government workers to agree to much of anything, let alone concoct an elaborate fiction to cover up a missile downing a commercial jetliner.

For all the squabbling though the NTSB did pick up a few tricks from the FBI. It learned not to sit back and do nothing when its credibility is challenged, and it now embraces the headline-generating power of the crash reconstruction it once fought so hard not to build.

It is a testament to the considerable film-making skills of Kristina Borjesson that the TWA 800 documentary she produced had me actually paying attention to Thomas Stalcup, believing for some of the 90 minutes I watched the program that he actually had discovered something new.

Conspiracy theorist, Hughes (R) talks to a reporter

With great enthusiasm Stalcup and former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Hank Hughes present radar data that they say is the “smoking gun” in their efforts to cast doubt on the official cause of the explosion - Stalcup in the documentary and Hughes in a petition for reconsideration of the probable cause he sent to the NTSB on June 19.

Granted the crash on a Boeing 747 bound from New York to Paris was 17 years ago. Deadly Departure, my book on the accident was published in 2000 and a several other air disasters or near disasters have captured my attention since then. These are excuses for my first, slightly positive impression. After some memory-refreshing interviews and a briefing at the NTSB, I see now that Thomas Stalcup has added nothing new to the argument he has been making for the past decade and a half.

A radar document examined by O'Roark for the TWA 800 investigation

The "smoking gun" turns out to be a well-known and previously examined document, showing a cluster of radar targets in apparent close proximity to the TWA airliner just prior to the explosion. It is proof he says that the blast was high velocity (as in missile) not a low velocity (as in fuel-air) as the safety board concluded.

Stalcup in Ashburn, VA on Tuesday

No radar expert is cited as the source for this opinion. No one at all in fact. In an interview in Virginia on Tuesday Stalcup told me he made the conclusion based on the NTSB report prepared by radar expert Michael O’Roark.

“The radar data shows a high velocity explosion,” Stalcup told me. “I based my analysis on Michael O’Roark’s report.”

As a hired consultant to several agencies looking into the crash, O’Roark analyzed radar data from a number of reporting stations. When contacted by Stalcup to appear in the documentary, O’Roark agreed. They met at a hotel near Dulles Airport.

“He wanted to know about the radar,” O’Roark told me. That was fine with O’Roark. He knew the blips Stalcup was referring to. “He’s got one little hit that first appears simultaneously with the fragmentation,” about a mile and a half off the right side of the airplane.

O’Roark said he told Stalcup, it could be the airplane, it could be a boat or a ship, it could be a false high-speed target. Since a primary radar return doesn’t give altitude, there’s no way of knowing where in space the object actually is, or as O’Roark said, “Things that appear to be close together could be quite far apart.”

O'Roark quibbled with making any conclusion about the speed either. "Specifically I said, you can't tell velocity by the primary return until you get a second return." But by the time the radar swept by four and a half seconds later, there were 700 primary returns. Whatever happened to the plane had already happened.

Curiously, not a frame of this interview appears in the film. Perhaps because O’Roark also told Stalcup he thought the missile theory was nonsense. When I pushed O’Roark to think long and hard, asking “Is there any possible way, even if it is extremely remote, that the radar images you guys talked about could be interpreted to be a high-velocity explosion next to the airplane?” O’Roark said, “Call me in 3 hours, maybe then I’ll be drunk enough to think so.”

These men differ on the amount of ambiguity that can exist in something as seemingly definitive as radar data.

Who to believe? This is the question for viewers of the documentary and more importantly for people like Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf. Based on media reports alone he has already sent the safety board a letterasking for the investigation to be re-opened.

You have a guy like O’Roark, whose clocked more than half his lifetime in front of a radar scope, who in fact has been reading radar returns since before computers (Yep, he’s that old!). You have a guy like metallurgist Jim Wildey, with nearly 38-years of experience examining how materials fail in transportation disasters saying there is no evidence of "pitting, cratering, gas washing or petaling of the metal. No high velocity penetrations into the tank. All of those things are present when you have high explosives detonating near metal."

Swaim examines wiring from TWA 800
photo courtesy NTSB

You have a guy like Bob Swaim who has eyeballed so much of the wire from the accident airplane he could run a line of it the length of Connecticut with wire left over. His precision led him to admit during the TWA 800 final hearing that he did not have the exact section of wire that triggered the blast. In a remarkable overstatement and an under simplification, Stalcup concludes there is "no evidence" that wiring triggered the blast.

I really don't want to write about these conspiracy theory guys anymore. I don't understand their peculiar view that it is them versus the world and the rest of us are blind stooges to some vast all-knowing government.

Still, I can't stop wondering, "What is it like to be Thomas Stalcup?", to think having PhD and small band of loyal acolytes makes one’s work superior to the investigators mentioned above, superior to the thousands of others - many with their own PhDs from dozens of academic, commercial and research organizations that provided their expertise during the four year probe?

Viewers susceptible to the manipulation of the movies may find the phenomenally hubristic Stalcup & company credible. If wiser and cooler heads don’t prevail, Borjesson's film may actually succeed in confirming Dr. Smarty-pants' inflated view of his own brilliance by convincing the NTSB to needlessly reopen its investigation.

The Air Line Pilots Association is making a big deal over the National Transportation Safety Board’s release of information from the initial stages of the investigation into the crash of Asiana Flight 214. They’re right and they’re wrong.

The statements made over the past 4 days by board chairman Deborah Hersman, have unleashed a torrent of speculation and premature judgments.

On the other hand, as I reported in the blog of the Airline PassengerExperience Association, a number of thoughtful, safety-aware and circumspect pilots have contacted me with their thoughts about this odd accident in which Asiana crew was flying too slow and too low and plowed the tail of the Boeing 777 into the sea wall boundary at San Francisco International Airport. That’s reasonable commentary as is the now widely distributed PPRUNE essay on one man’s experience training Korean pilots.

That so much information was available so quickly is attributable to the fact that the crash was at a major airport and the data recorders were recovered and reviewed before the event was a day old. Many survivors gave interviews to the press and a chilling video of the accident also provided early information.

But the pilots’ union is mistaken if it believes any aspect of the media coverage would be more responsible with less information shared by the safety board. The opposite is true.

The media not only abhors a vacuum, it will not tolerate one. Talking heads will talk.

Rather than complain over that which it does not control and even worse complain about an established and successful aspect of the way Federal crash investigations are handled, ALPA would be better served by offering up commentary and context. It represents pilots from airlines that fly the 777 on trans-Pacific flights into SFO and it staffs an entire safety and engineering department at its headquarters in Herndon, Virginia.

Further, ALPA has a storied history of actively supporting air safety. Next week it will hold its 59^th annual safety seminar, no small gathering, this three-day event draws attendees from throughout the industry.

ALPA of late, has made many, many efforts to contemporize itself. Heck, it’s on twitter! so here in less than 140 characters is my message: @WeAreALPA - Starving the beast does not silence the beast. You’re old enough to know better & smart enough to make a positive contribution.

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