Flying Lessons

AAIB ISSUES UPDATE. Link to the PDF at the end of this post.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the cause of the fire on an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner is not going to be keeping air safety investigators awake nights for long but something else might. The origination of the blaze may already be known by the Air Accidents Investigation Bureau and that is one giant step towards finding how why it started.

I am not buying the fire-in-the-battery of the emergency beacon or for that matter the cigarette-in-the-trash-can scenario. Nor am I inclined to write this one off as just another shake out issue on the world's newest airplane. My suspicions are fueled by a few people I know who have intimate knowledge of the Dreamliner, its innards and the carbon fiber material out of which it is constructed.

"If it is hot enough to melt composites, that was not a cigarette, it had some energy behind it," someone familar with the Dreamliner's design told me, after having seen the photo of a charred eight foot section of the plane's roof. "Looking at that fire, at the heat damage, there was electrical power behind that."

According to this contact, who works in the industry and prefers not to be identified, there is only one electrical source in the area below the fire damage, the power electronics cooling system, a aviation-grade radiator that pumps cool Prestone-like fluid past hot equipment to lower the temperature and prevent equipment overheating.

As a reminder, since before the very first Dreamliner flight, we have heard about how this plane is a whole other level of revolutionary; with a fuselage of new-fangled composites and digitized to the point where how, when and even whether the toilet flushes is determined by a circuit board outside the loo.

There's something else about the Dreamliner that's become obvious, this is an airplane that requires a lot of hand-holding.

You don't want me to write another word about those confounded lithium ion batteries and I'm not gonna. One thing that's changed since the 787 returned to the skies after its four months of not flying is that some airlines want to keep the airplane plugged in while on the ground in order to keep those persnickety devils fully charged. Or as one Dreamliner technican explained to me, "You can only lose two volts before you have to take them off the airplane and send them back to the manufacturer and have them charged again." At $40,000 a pop, some coddling of the batteries is in order.

This may be why Ethiopian was treating its Queen of Sheba ET-AOP like a Queen, plugged into the ground power supply while waiting for the daily 9:00pm flight from London to Addis Ababa. Investigators have said no power was being supplied to the plane, though it was connected to an electrical source.

Clarification of this point is very important. Unlike aluminum airplanes which radiate heat, the Dreamliner's composite fuselage hangs on to it. An aeronautical engineer described the airplane as being like a Thermos bottle. If no power was being supplied, the airplane baked in the summer sun for eight hours elevating the interior temperature to, well, who knows?

If the power was on and all those nifty electronic gizmos were whirring away, then the power electronics cooling system should have been running too, pumping hot air out and cool air over the assortment of heat-generating equipment.

So from this second scenario, one armchair theory is that the power electronics cooling system may have had a role in the fire, either triggering it through a short circuit, or feeding a blaze started elsewhere.

NTSB's Bob Swaim examines wiring from TWA 800

A brief mention of Dreamliner wiring may be in order here, especially since today is the 17th anniversary of the crash of TWA Flight 800, a disaster which prompted many years of examination of what happens to airplane wire when it ages. I'll save the details for some other time. But having spent 5 years participating in the industry group working on that subject, let's just say that old airplane wire is a problem because its insulation cracks, peels and splits - opening the way to short circuiting, like the kind believed to have triggered the explosion of TWA's center wing tank on July 17, 1996.

Installing airplane wiring photo courtesy Labinal

To my amazement, I have been told by someone in the know, that the Teflon insulated wire being used on the Dreamliner is so fragile, mechanics are prone to saying, "Don't look at it too hard or you'll break it." Teflon insulated wiring helped save weight for an airplane Boeing billed as 20% more fuel efficient.

"Somebody made the decision to use it," I was told of Boeing and the French company Labinal that specializes in electrical wiring that Boeing hired for the Dreamliner project. "It will come and bite Boeing on the ass," this person added. "We have a lot of problems with this airplane because of the wiring."

Much of the reporting of the Ethiopian Dreamliner fire of last Friday suggests Boeing has dodged a bullet since the blaze seems unrelated to its previous battery problems. But if the folks talking to me about overheating equipment, delicate wiring and airplanes that need their hands held are even in the vicinity of correct, there's more to worry about on the world's most modern airplane. Time for the hand-wringing to begin.

AAIB issued an update today at 11:00 EST. Read it here.

Boeing may have to take back in that big sigh of relief it expelled when the Air Accidents Investigation Branch cleared the Dreamliner's two lithium ion back up power batteries from culpability in the fire aboard an Ethiopian 787 at Heathrow last week.

That's because a variation of the same controversial chemistry is used to power the emergency locator transmitter according to Lewis Larsen, a theoretical physicist whose work requires him to have a depth of knowledge about lithium ion batteries.

Since 2005, six thousand airplanes have been flying with the Honeywell International RESCU406 emergency locator transmitter without a blip of a worry. Along comes Ethiopian Airlines new Queen of Sheba Boeing 787, which has flown all of six months and darned if the ELT and its lithium manganese dioxide battery doesn't wind up in the middle of a fire that rips through approximately eight feet of the top of the airplane. The question Ethiopian and 787 designers have to be asking is, "Why this plane?"

Is it a coincidence that right after Boeing announced it had solved its first flammable battery problem it now may have another? It is worth considering if the Dreamliner's unique features have a role to play. Today Reuters reported that humidity and wiring are getting the attention of investigators in the U.K.. But I'm also pretty darn sure that the nature of the carbon fiber fuselage may also be under scrutiny.

"Advanced batteries with very different chemistries seem to have a marked propensity to misbehave when installed in Boeing 787 Dreamliners," Larsen told me when I called to get his take on the latest installment in the ongoing Dreamliner saga. Larsen was one of many people I interviewed while working on previous stories about the two fire events on Japanese-operated planes. I paid close attention. I was pretty sure I understood that the cobalt oxide flavored battery selected by Boeing for back up power on the Dreamliner was the bad-boy, super-scary formulation, picked because it was fast charging and packed a punch. But more volatile than iron phosphate and the ELT's manganese oxide.

Investigators examine the Japanese airlines' batteries

To some extent my understanding was correct. But darned if Larsen didn't tell me that the ELT's non-rechargeable batteries can also fail with catastrophic consequences. The only difference is that non rechargeable batteries are less likely to do so than the rechargable carbon oxide lithium ion ones that caused the Dreamliner's problems this past winter.

Stay with me here while I explain that the issue with all of these batteries is that during their lifetime they develop teensy-weensy internal structures called dendrites. That's a bad thing because if they get to close to each other the dendrites will arc. They will release a super hot 4,000 to 6,000 degree electrical spark. By way of comparison, the surface of the sun is about 10,000 degrees.

Okay so the blasted thing is hot, get it? That means the heat is sufficient to breaks down the chemical components in the battery and feed on this as fuel along with and anything else in its way all at a temperature that can melt titanium and - apparently ignite a carbon fiber composite airplane fuselage.

This is a shocking scenario to imagine on an airplane in flight. Lest you jump to the conclusion - as I did at first - that Larsen is some too-far-out-there voice of doom, take another look at the damage on the battery in the Japan Airlines Dreamliner that went bad in Boston.

The battery destroyed in JAL's Dreamliner. Photo courtesy NTSB

Or watch the video of this fire at a lithium ion battery storage facility in Canada:

Or going back to the subject of this post, review the photograph of the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba and ask yourself, what kind of fire is this?

Unless one believes that Airbus executives are poking pins into a voodoo Dreamliner doll, you have to wonder of all the airliners flying with the RESCU406, why does it seem to have gone wrong for the first time on a 787?

Remember, two things make the world's newest airliner significantly different from every other airplane; its digital nature (which I wrote about here) and its carbon fiber construction.

The Honeywell RESCU406S was the subject of a Canadian airworthiness directive in 2009 when two of the devices were found to have faulty ground wire connections. The company was given 2 years to replace them. AAIB is reportedly focusing on the possibility of a wiring problem internal to the ELT battery.

But Larsen is intrigued by the possibility that normal airplane vibrations can shake up dendrites and that those vibrations may be different in some way on a composite airplane. This could explain why the service history of the ELT has been so good on aluminum airplanes, but the device acted up pretty quickly on the Dream.

"In theory, some of the random vibrations on the airplane could trigger micro-arcs by resonantly coupling to nanostructures located inside the batteries," he said. "The plane is sitting on the ground, other planes are going around. There's all sorts of acoustic stuff in the air, the plane is like a big tuning fork."

Lewis Larson photo by Lloyd DeGrane

There's a little of the crusader in Larsen's personality. He is troubled by what he calls a cavalier attitude within the industry about battery formulations that have the potential to create nuclear-reaction-type temperatures inside batteries used on commercial aircraft. "Its nightmare-type stuff," he told me.

For the reasons Larsen suggests, this may not be the incident to dismiss as unrelated to previous battery problems. Quite the opposite, the Ethiopian Airlines fire seems to be pointing right back to the same source, battery technology that is simply not ready to fly.

The latest airplane accident at New York's LaGuardia Airport shows once again how much progress has been made in making airplanes safe even when things go wrong. Just eight of the 150 passengers and crew members on board were reported injured.

Around dinnertime this evening, Southwest Airlines Flight 345 from Nashville to New York landed either without nose gear or with the pilots uncertain that they actually had nose gear locked into place. At this time, its not clear which.
But this video uploaded by Bobby Abtahi from a window at the airport shows the 13-year old plane tail high after passengers have been evacuated by the rear door using the escape slide.

Early reports suggest the pilots had some indication that there was a problem with the front gear. Since this flight landed 40 minutes later than scheduled, it may be that the pilots were aware of the problem and flew around for a while trying to diagnose possible causes and solutions. Broken gear or not, the plane must ultimately land.

Capt. Cort Tangeman is now flying B737s.

This event reminded me of a story in my upcoming book, FLYING LESSONS, told to me by American Airlines Capt. Cort Tangeman. Just after dawn on June 2006, Tangeman and first officer Laura Strand were nearly at the end of flying a red-eye from Los Angeles to Chicago when on approach to O'Hare, they got a warning that the nose gear was not extended. A fly-by the control tower confirmed that it really was a problem with the gear and not the indicator light.

Much discussion ensued considering both how the plane would be handled and what would be done with the passengers after it came to a halt.

When we talked about the event this Spring, Tangeman explained how he decided to manage the landing, "We touched down on the mains and let it roll," explaining he delayed lowering the nose as long as he could. When the aluminum skin of the DC-9 finally hit the tarmac he said the sound was like "running a Skil saw on a garbage can."

Tangeman and Laura Strand (L) with the crew of flight 1740
photo courtesy Cort Tangeman

Other moments the captain remembers were the sight of the fire fighters at the cockpit window. Yep, that's how low an airliner is when it is touching the ground and not supported by the gear. Tangeman and Strand were glad to see the fire fighters, because as the plane scraped across the runway it created firecracker-like sparks as highly flammable magnesium was released from the fuselage's aluminum alloy hull.

So while the Southwest Flight 345 event this evening is causing havoc at the airport, and making headlines, it is worth remembering that landing with inoperative gear is not unheard of, nor is it necessarily a catastrophe. There have been dozens of similar events over the past 10 years including a Mesa Airlines Bombardier that landed in Chicago without its left main gear in 2008, and a bizarre event in 2011 in which a Continental 757 rolled into a six by twenty foot pothole in Greenville, Mississippi.

Who can forget jetBlue Flight 292, an Airbus A320 landing in Los Angeles? The gear was down, but the wheels were perpendicular to the direction of travel. None of the 145 people on board were injured when the plane scraped down the runway, but the landing was sure dramatic.

Getting passengers off the plane quickly can be important. But like Asiana 214 in San Francisco two weeks ago, tonight we have another example of the importance of safety design in seats, belts and other cabin materials. That and well trained pilots and flight attendants can make all the difference. Next time some one tells you, "Nobody survives an airplane crash," you'll know better.

Asiana 214 at San Francisco International Airport. Photo by NTSB

Considering the startling similarities between the crash of Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco on July 6 and Southwest Airlines Flight 345 in New York on July 22, and what they could be telling us about pilot techniques globally, am I the only one wondering why information about the two investigations is being handled so very differently?

After the Asiana Boeing 777 struck its tail on the sea wall boundary, spun up on one side and skidded to a stop killing a total of 3 passengers, NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman spent nearly a week issuing daily updates on the scene in San Francisco. For this, the telegenic representative of the federal investigators was criticized by the Koreans and the Air Line Pilots Association for revealing too much, too soon.

Perhaps that explains the reticence in discussing what is being learned about the very similar crash landing of the Southwest Boeing 737-700 last Monday.

The NTSB released its most recent statement five days ago. In an email today, NTSB spokeswoman Kelly Nantel told me "We aren't planning any update at this point," even though relevant portions of the cockpit voice recorder were said to have been reviewed by investigators last Friday.

The questions the board felt were important to answer in the Asiana event are equally significant when a plane carrying 150 people makes landing so uncommon in commercial aviation, I can find nothing similar in the safety board's database going back 23 years. Flight 345 went from 2 degrees nose up to three degrees nose down in 4 seconds touching down and placing the entire 128,000 pound weight of the airplane on the nose gear. Since the gear is designed primarily to provide directional control for the airplane, not for absorbing the impact of the landing, the gear strut stabbed through the underside of the airplane.

For an "oh-my-gosh" moment, see the gear penetrating the electrical and equipment bay in the photo below taken by the NTSB.

View of nose wheel gear penetration of E&E bay. Photo courtesy NTSB

How the plane arriving from Nashville, wound up in that odd configuration moments before landing has been baffling many of the experienced airline pilots who so generously share their insight with me. One theorized that with the Boeing 737's fast landing speeds the pilots may have changed the flap configuration in an attempt to slow down the approach but over corrected the resultant nose up attitude. A former 737 pilot suggested the pitching nose down may not have occurred until the pilot throttled back.

"The pitching moment is more accentuated with flaps 40, that would cause that kind of pitch moment," he told me. "If you had a stabilized approach but pulled power off at flaps 40 and did not make any correction the nose would pitch forward. If you hand fly the airplane you have to manage that."

Another 737 captain was confounded beyond explanation. "I don't know what happened. I don't know what they were thinking or trying to do," he told me.

The Asiana approach may have been unstabilized - in conflict with ICAO standards and the standard operating procedures of many airlines. As to the Southwest flight, spokeswoman Whitney Eichinger opined in an interview with Newsday that the landing did not appear to be in accordance "with our operating procedures".

As I reported for the APEX Editors blog, disregarding calls to go-around when an approach is not stable is beyond epidemic, it is "a new normal", according to Martin Smith, a psychologist and human factors expert with Presage Group in Toronto.

Smith may be a researcher, but this information is not just academic. Non stabilized approaches are the number one contributing factor to runway excursions and runway excursions are responsible for one third of all aviation accidents according to statistics compiled by the Flight Safety Foundation.

Thanks to the NTSB, the Asiana accident has made public the question, "Is pilot training keeping up with an increasingly technological cockpit?" Due to its inexplicable silence, it is difficult to know what the board is doing in its examination of the Southwest event but examining whether pilots are heeding procedures that require a plane to be ready to land before they put it on the ground ought to be part of the investigation into both accidents.

I'm no different from any other gal, on Friday I like to kick back and think about relaxing. As the weekend approaches, I try to blog about the fun stuff, aviation books, aviation music, aviation movies. Today, though, I'm ticked off so fasten your seat belts because the rant is about to begin.

In the newspaper world stories are measured in column inches. Well, column miles have been written about the crash landing of Asiana 214, a dramatic accident to be sure, but one in which a surprisingly large number of passengers survived in spite of the plane losing its tail and spinning up on one wing before screeching to a halt. Not long after that, Southwest 345 made its own spectacular nose first landing in New York.

Southwest Flight 345 at LaGuardia Airport

Every emergency landing, every diversion is big news even though commercial air travel is as safe as it has ever been. Getting around on the ground, meantime couldn't be more dangerous. My totally unscientific hunch is that operator distraction is a huge part of the problem and is not being addressed.

In Spain, the driver of the train that hit a wall, derailed and killed 79 passengers was on the phone to his dispatch office at the time.

Horrified Spaniards may be gathered around the television to get the latest update but what they are not doing is taking to the street to demand a ban on the use of digital devices by the operators of vehicles. And in the United States neither are we despite the fact that we have had our own deadly experience with this problem.

In June, I flew to Tampa on jetBlue, comforted by the fact that pilots, the plane and the air space system all comply with high safety standards that ensure safe transport. That all ended when I got on the ground.

As I buckled my seat belt on board the Tampa SuperShuttle I watched as the driver proceeded to answer an email on the tablet positioned to the right of the steering wheel. The van began to move but still he worked on the tablet. I asked him to either stop doing that or let me out and for the rest of the trip he did not attend to the device though we both could hear it chirping away as new messages arrived.

Tampa SuperShuttle, is this any way to drive?

I don't know if this practice was just one driver's way of getting a competitive edge, but I suspect not. Two weeks later in Los Angeles, the driver of my van to Long Beach had a similar set up.

Not content to let this frightening practice go unremarked on, I sent several emails to the Super Shuttle main office, the Tampa Airport, Victor Crist from the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, and Valerie Michael, Director of Corporate Communications at Veolia Transportation Development the French company that owns SuperShuttle and operates bus and train systems in 27 countries around the world. Then I waited for one them, any one of them to acknowledge that this risky practice would be addressed. I'm still waiting.

Several years ago I wrote an article for American Express Executive Travel, a story explaining why aviation is so safe. I included a quote from an unidentified but brilliantly astute pilot who told his passengers as they got off the plane, "The safest part of your journey is now over."

Aviation regulators often take a hit for waiting until there is a crash before addressing known problems. But give credit where due, if the last few rocky months in air travel tell us anything, it is that the system is working pretty well. When you leave the airport, however, it's an entirely different story.

On July 22, as Southwest Flight 345 descended through 400 feet on approach to New York's LaGuardia Airport with an 11 knot tailwind, the captain took the controls from first officer. They were flying onto a runway with headwind of 11 knots, the crew reported. Then, for some reason, the captain put the plane down, nose gear first, sending the gear strut upward into the electronics and equipment bay of the Boeing 737-700 and making a very dramatic screeching skid down Runway 4.

These details are among those released by the National Transportation Safety Board today, as the investigation into the cause of the accident continues. If you've noted that more than two weeks has passed since the accident and these details are just coming out, credit that to some extent to the fuss kicked up by the Air Line Pilots Association which as been "engaged in discussions with the NTSB leadership and senior staff" according to a letter sent by Lee Moak, the union boss to members over the weekend.

ALPA boss Lee Moak photo from ALPA

ALPA was none too happy that information about the pilots in command of Asiana Flight 214 was released by NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman within days of the crash landing in San Francisco and the union's lobbying at L'Enfant Plaza does seem to have had some tranquilizing effect on the safety board's press operation, though spokeswoman Kelly Nantel chalks that up to the fact that the Southwest crash did not have a board member on scene.

Meantime, NTSB investigator in charge Dennis Jones is getting a big assist in the Southwest 345 probe from videos of the accident, at least two of which were made from inside the airplane.

A total of five videos - some from the passenger cabin and some from outside the plane - are valuable Nantel told me this afternoon. "It allows us to look from a variety of different angles." Digital evidence was "critical to determining what happened" in the crash of Jimmy Leeward's P-51 at the Reno Air Race in 2011, she said.

As I wrote for The New York Times these days investigators of all sorts from safety agencies to law enforcement are deluged by digital evidence provided by citizen videographers and their ubiquitous smart phones, iPods, handy cams and tablets. At the same time it can be an overwhelming task for investigators to screen this stuff and evaluate its usefulness.

It that is not enough of a dilemma, don't forget that recording inside an airplane below 10,000 feet is in defiance of safety rules. Investigators have so far found no evidence that electro-mechanical interference from those digital devices affected the flight systems, instruments or controls on the Southwest 737 but the fact that could have should give one pause. And with that possibility in mind, its worth considering the implications when airline passengers feel it's okay to decide which rules they'll heed and which they'll ignore.

"The regulations are in place for a reason and we support them because they afford a level of safety," Nantel said. "Its always a concern when passengers feel they don't have to comply."

Nevertheless, in the case of Southwest 345 investigators find themselves in a dilemma, delighted and yet uncomfortable by the source of what could be illuminating evidence. Asked what the safety board's next step might be to prod someone to sort out the air safety community's use-but-don't-tell relationship with digital devices, Nantel said, "There is no next step, it's up to the FAA to determine if there is some gross non compliance."

There already is gross non compliance that is easy part. The "what's next?" question will be a lot tougher to answer.

Capt. Murat Akpinar

The kidnapping on Friday morning of two Turkish airline pilots in Lebanon is upsetting on a number of levels, beyond the obvious tragedy of their capture in the first place. Captain Murat Akpinar and first officer Murat Agca were taken at gunpoint from the van in which the entire eight person flight crew was being transported from Rafiq Harari International Airport to the crew hotel.

Just the pilots were taken - none of the four cabin attendants -and early reports do not say whether there was security in the van at the time.

A Turkish pilot boards an airport bus in Istanbul

Many airlines use location-based intelligence to determine the level of risk at each destination into which it flies. As far as the safety of flight crew on the ground is concerned, "Our security team works with local authorities and they together take the necessary precautions," a spokeswoman for Turkish told me in an email. She declined to describe the protection these particular workers received on arrival at Harari. Some airlines provide armed protection in global hot spots or regions of the world where kidnapping-for-profit is practiced.

What is additionally troublesome is the fact that this happened to Turkish, an airline that takes great pride in its remarkable growth over the past few years as I reported for the International Herald Tribune last year. With Europe's largest network and flights to 237 destinations, Turkish is fueling economic growth and raising the country's profile as a destination for business and tourism. The same can be said for the airlines of the United Arab Emirates; Etihad and Emirates and - to as lesser extent - Qatar Airways.

In the case of Turkish, Syria is said to be miffed about Turkey's support for Syrian rebels and in this case a group calling itself Zuwwar al-Imam Rida claims to have taken the airmen to exchange for Lebanese citizens who were captured by Syrian rebels in 2012.

The pilots have been caught in the crossfire of Syria's conflict, seized as if they were representatives of their nation. The turmoil in Syria now involves Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey. If airline workers are seen by some to be worth grabbing as bargaining chips, what airline might be next?

Aeroflot has regular service into Beirut

Thirteen carriers fly into Beirut, including the ones from the Middle East mentioned above along with Royal Jordanian, Saudia and Royal Air Maroc. Aeroflot and European carriers, Air France, British Airways, Lufthansa and Alitalia also fly into Lebanon. None have indicated they will cancel flights.

Catherine Walker, a spokeswoman for Turkish told me late Friday that the airline is continuing to operate its flights into Beiruit. "All necessary precautions have been taken to ensure that a similar incident is not repeated," she said. Likewise, Etihad indicated it was comfortable with the level of security it provided for its workers.

"We take our duty of care to ensure the safety of our crew, very seriously and have appropriate security measures in place worldwide at all times," Anne Tullis, an airline spokeswoman told me. Nils Haupt, of Lufthansa said the German carrier had not increased security measures and did not plan to do so.

Airplanes have long been a favored target for terrorists but less often do we see flight personnel ensnared in regional conflicts. Patrick Smith an airline pilot, author and blogger finds the event unsettling but not totally unanticipated. "For airline crew members who work international flights, incidents like this are something we keep in the backs of our minds."

If commercial aviation becomes an involuntary player in regional conflicts, it will have ramifications beyond the airline's workers and passengers. It could start a domino effect through the complex economic and developmental system of which airlines are such a significant part.

The bike path approach to Bergamo's Orio de Serio Airport

I've written before about airports that are dear to me because I can get to them by bike. There were some notable omissions from that post; forgive me I didn't know about Calgary International Airport. Now I do and for that, I can thank Sid Barber, a reader of my blog who upon learning that I would be in Calgary for interviews and a tour of the scrappy upstart, WestJet, invited me to visit his airline, Canadian North.

There are a lot of stories at that airline, which specializes in those not-so-easy flights into territory above the treeline and way, Way, WAY below freezing for most of the year which I will save that for another day.

What I want to write about today was my first ever airport/airline tour conducted by bike.

Look up and follow the airplanes to the airport

Calgary is a bike-friendly community and my airbnb hostess in town made a cute little multi-colored bike available to me during my stay so I planned to get to Canadian North on that.

Unfortunately, the directions Sid earnestly sent via email wound up in my spam folder where I did not think to check for them, so I had to set out on my own with a map and a general idea that if I followed the airplanes on approach flying above me to Calgary's charming inner-city airport, I would probably get pretty close to my destination.

From the map I could tell it would be a beautiful ride, on rolling hills full of wildflowers and passing two golf courses, one of which is on airport land - get that!

What I did not anticipate was that within a mile or two of the airport, Sid would come pedaling up to meet me. But that he did, making a big U turn in the middle of 19th street introducing himself and taking me on a backstage tour of the backside of the airport, the places few Air Canada or WestJet passengers ever see.

This included FBOs, arctic flight specialist Ken Borek Air and the Viking plant where deHavilland airplanes come off the assembly line as they have for the past 85 years.

Passenger check in at Canadian North

Oh the stories Sid told as we toured the beautiful renovated hanger where the airline now checks in and clears through security, miners, oil field workers and a variety of other passengers both scheduled and charter.

The challenges facing airlines like his that must land on runways made of perforated ice, in destinations where the presence or absence of food and medicine depends on air access are mind numbing. Somehow, though, the airline with a dozen and a half airplanes, is making it happen and turning a profit for its owners, native Canadian Inuit of Nunavut and the Inuvialuit.

A Canadian North Boeing 737 on the ramp at Calgary Airport

Biking to an airport tour combines two of my great loves and is an experience I'll never forget. By the end of the tour however, I had a deeper appreciation of the important role aviation plays for those who live and work in otherwise inaccessible parts of the world. Keeping it all going - and going safely - is no ride in the park, no matter how it much fun it seems on a lovely, sunny day in August.

Yucking it up with Sid Barber during a tour of Canadian Northern

Capt. Grant Tamminga, 42, a sea plane pilot for Vancouver's Harbour Air, probably does not make the kind of money other airline captains make, nor does he stride through the airport on his way to work while travelers sneak surreptitious looks, imagining his glamorous life. Many are the times, though, that a jetliner pilot traveling as Grant's passenger will admit to jealousy.

It may come after the single engine deHavilland TurboOtter begins its short takeoff run across the water and the boat effortlessly turns into a plane. It may not be said until the little 14-seater is one thousand feet above the magnificent Georgia Strait, forests below, mountains to the north and sea to the south. It may not come until the conclusion of the flight when Grant scans his intended landing zone looking for a place to put the airplane down between the barges and sail boats, the sea planes heading out and the kayaks passing through. Amid all this, a wind sock flutters from the center of a midget island and a gas station dominates yet another.

"They tell me, 'this is real flying,'" Grant said, on a flight between Victoria, British Columbia and Vancouver on a late summer afternoon. The lucky ones sit on the right (co-pilot) side of the airplane which is used to allow one more fare-paying passenger.

This is where I sat as I watched Grant fly with one hand on the yoke and both eyes scanning his instruments; a collection of round analog dials from more than a half century ago. They framed a rectangular full color Garmin GPS. I thought that must be a very new addition but Grant told me it has been used as guidance to pilots for the seven years he's been at Harbour Air.

At a time when pilots feel increasingly disconnected from their aircraft because the machine has morphed into a computer, Grant's handling of the Turbo Otter is a reminder of the importance of judgment and situational awareness and the sheer joy of the elemental principals of flight, lift, weight, thrust and drag.

It’s not just the pilots who feel a special connection with this sort of flying. Waiting in a bright and sunny terminal building with a view to planes and boats moored in the picture-postcard harbor, then walking down to the wooden dock to board the airplane via an aluminum step stool are actions so far from contemporary air travel this kind of flight ought to be called something else.

Takeoff comes with few delays and a minimum of fuss. The engine whine increases and the plane careens through the water causing the sea spray to slop up below the windows. Imperceptibly, the plane is in the air and the rocking ends in a tranquil cushion of air. The big cruise ship that was threateningly dead ahead is now below us and turning smaller. The mottled sea flattens into a deep shade of jade green.

Inside the cabin, newspapers are in view but lying in laps. After all, this sensory-dominating experience removes the ability to focus on anything else. We are connected to the process in a way that is impossible on a jumbo jet.

Victoria native Peter Crawford who works as a lawyer in Vancouver leaned over to thoughtfully point out and name for me the islands dotting the strait and the communities nestled in the coves. He was headed home for a weekend reunion with his law school pals. To cover the 60 miles over the ground would take him 3-4 hours. By air he's at his destination in forty minutes.

Beyond appreciating the benefit of getting from A to B in a quarter of the time, flying in a sea plane liberates everyone from the antiseptic process that air travel has become. I know there’s no turning back the clock. Continents can’t be spanned in a 55-year old airplane.

Still, an afternoon in a sea plane is a fantastic antidote to the experience we have become accustomed to since 9/11. It works for those on board for sure. I suspect it is equally effective for those standing in the harbor, or looking above the tree tops to see these beauties make their daily rounds from sea to sky and back again.

Bjorn Kjos in the cockpit of a Norwegian 737

About a year ago, Nancy Branka, my editor at Executive Travel magazine assigned me to interview Bjorn Kjos, the affable boss of the upstart airline, Norwegian. Give the gal credit, she knew long before the rest of us, that Kjos was the kind of airline executive who makes his dreams come true.

In the past few weeks, the Oslo-based low-cost carrier has made several big announcements. New service will begin (and in some cases already has) between Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm and Los Angeles, Stockholm and Oslo to Oakland and Oslo to Orlando giving the airline four-points-on-the-U.S. map to Scandinavia. It started flying from Oslo to New York in May and from Copenhagen to New York on Tuesday.

"Non-stoppable service" the press release says. Whether the oblique reference to the airline's brush with disaster-by-Dreamliner was Norwegian's idea or came from the press reps for Orlando International Airport, I can't tell. The grounding of the airliner delayed delivery of Norwegian's first Boeing 787. It was pretty upsetting at the time but making light of it now seems typical of Kjos's roll-with-the-punches persona.

Norwegian's 1st 787 Photo courtesy Matt Cawby

Well, he's got reason to be jovial. All the drama and cost associated with having to lease a larger and less fuel efficient Airbus A330 (read my article on this in The New York Times here) to fly the New York route, doesn't seem to have held the airline back. Norwegian boasted it carried more than two million passengers in July with a load factor of 86 percent, an increase in passenger volume of 17 percent over July 2012.

I had a lot of fun tailing Kjos on a trip from Oslo to Copenhagen where the fighter pilot, turned lawyer, turned novelist turned telecommunications executive turned airline boss toured a UNICEF distribution center and showed me there are some things he can't do well. Joining the charity's employees packing boxes with educational materials, Kjos made a bit of a mess and slowed down progress.

Leaving the warehouse work to the professionals, Kjos told me on the flight back to Oslo that he intends to turn Norwegian into a global, low-cost, long haul carrier.

"You will compete with everybody globally. Your largest competitor in the future that will be the Chinese and the Far East airlines. You’ have just got to face it, deal with it," he said. "That means you can have your headquarters in Scandanivia" but you have to have local people.

His decision to outsource jobs including cabin crew and pilots to countries like Thailand and Spain, where labor costs are lower has been controversial. His apparent and early success must be tempering the fallout though, as he's widely admired in Norway.

Whether the airline lives up to the PR billing "Non stoppable" remains to be seen, but the good news does seem to keep on arriving for Norwegian, as if on schedule.

As if we were waiting in the passenger boarding area for news of a delayed flight, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is providing just the merest trickle of information about the airport hotel it has long promised to bring to John F. Kennedy International Airport.

It is astonishing to me that the 19th busiest airport in the world does not have even one hotel on premises. Not the new one promised, not the replacement for the old Ramada at JFK that closed in 2009.

Nice view from my room at the Hilton Charles de Gaulle

Compare this to Paris, where I am sitting this very minute at the very lovely, very close to the airplanes, Hilton Charles de Gaulle, one of 4 - count 'em four hotels on the property of the airport.

Frankfurt has two hotels the Sheraton Frankfurt Airport Hotel and Conference Center with 1,008 rooms and the Hilton Frankfurt Airport. Or London's Heathrow with a Hilton in Terminal 4 a Hilton in Terminal 5 and a Sofitel also connected to Terminal 5. Don't let me leave out Dallas International with two hotels, the Grand Hyatt at the entrance to Terminal D and the Hyatt Regency.

Granted, Heathrow is the 3rd busiest airport in the world with nearly 28 million passengers passing through each year. Frankfurt, the hub of Lufthansa and an international financial center is also ahead of JFK with 21 million. Dallas with 24 million ranks eighth.

But this is about more than passenger volume. Orlando International Airport made the Hyatt Regency the centerpiece of its main terminal and last month, while visiting Canada's upstart family airline, WestJet in Calgary, I stayed in the Delta Calgary Airport Hotel, with 296 rooms and a pool in the lobby. Calgary Airport handles six million fewer passengers than JFK, but there it is, putting the finishing touches on the outside of the second hotel that will be located at the airport.

Delta hotel in Calgary will soon have another hotel as neighbor

What is it that Calgary, Orlando, Istanbul, Tokyo, Milan, Singapore and dozens of other airports know that the aviation authorities in New York do not? That hotels and air travelers go together like white on rice. Not only that, there's significant money to be made if Orlando is representative. Hotel revenue contributes a large share to the MCO airport budget and that in turn leads to lower airport fees.

Nevertheless, at JFK, the sadly out-of-date, Ramada Hotel has been closed since 2009. An unidentified Port Authority spokeswoman told Crains New York Business, "A marquee airport needs marquee facilities to provide travelers with a first rate airport hotel" but the PANYNJ has been unable to get the Ramada building re opened even after approving hiring a hotel expert at $250,000 a year to make it happen.

The effort to renovate the historic Earo Saarinen designed TWA terminal, predates even the Ramada plan. The authority requested proposals for the "adaptive reuse" of the building in December 2006. Yes, that would be nearly 7 years ago. (For more history on the terminal read Patrick Smith's column here.)

This rant on the Port Authority's impotence when it comes to accomplishing what other airports haven't found all that difficult follows the leaking of tidbits of information about PANYNJ's negotiations with New York hotelier Andre Balazs. The two seem to disagree over how much of the original Saarinen design will be/can be preserved when the TWA building is turned into a hotel, aviation museum and meeting venue. Outside of comments it made in response to the Page Six story, the authority remains mum.

Each time I pass through JFK, I eye the former TWA hall trying to imagine how it could be turned into a hotel. I'm no architect and even I can see it is a hefty challenge.

The Ramada on the other hand already exists. So before anybody else at the airport authority calls JFK "marquee" they ought to check the dictionary because that means "superlative." When it comes to providing accommodations for air travelers, the only thing is notable about JFK is how unfavorably it compares to so many other airports.

Planes right outside my window at the Westin Detroit Airport

(For a detailed list of hotels located on airport property see my travel blog - an expansion of my story in The New York Times. I share the joy of waking up in the morning to a view of jetliners ready for take off, here and here. For photos of some airport hotels I have visited, see below.)

The Hyatt at DFW

Right next to Terminal 3 at Charles de Gaulle, the Hotel Ibis

The cheery airline crew lounge at Malpensa Sheraton

Lobby of the TAV Airport Hotel at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul

Airfield view from desk at Tokyo's Haneda's Excel Hotel

The LOT Polish Dreamliner SP-LRB before it was grounded

Take a good look at this Boeing 787 in flight, then remember, that's not a sure thing with the troubled Dreamliner. In the most recent interruption, the six-month-old LOT Polish 787 tail number SP-LRB seen left and another plane, tail number SP-LRC were grounded for several days when mechanics discovered missing fuel filters on the planes' Rolls Royce engines.

A source tells me during testing at Boeing in Everett, Washington, mechanics at the plane maker removed the engine's fuel filters and failed to re install them. The planes were then delivered to the airline and began flying in passenger service - even though running the engines in this condition could lead to engine damage.

SP-LRB was delivered to LOT from the Everett assembly plant on December 20th, 2012. SP-LRC arrived this year on May 15th, after the 4 month grounding of Dreamliners by regulators over the winter.

These two planes operate on routes to New York, Chicago, Peking and Toronto.

I am told the fact that the filters were missing on three of the four Trent 1000 engines on these two planes, was discovered during an engine check in Warsaw. The planes were grounded immediately and Boeing sent service technicians. One plane was repaired and put back in service on Saturday and the second was flying again the following day.

Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel told me in an email that "Potential contamination could occur in a fuel system component such as a fuel system nozzle or heat exchanger." But he added that while doing the repairs, the workers "did not observe any contamination in any fuel system components on the LOT airplanes."

Still, LOT is none too happy to have had to operate without its Dreamliners even for just a few days considering what it has already been through especially since the problem seems to have its roots back at Boeing. My source tells me that Boeing is in full "Oh shit!" mode and when asked how this could have happened, Birtel said that the company is "doing a full assessment. An investigation is still underway."

In case anyone needs to be reminded, the world's newest wide-body airliner was the subject of a global grounding of the fleet of 50 planes in January, after two fire events associated to the lithium ion batteries used on 787s operated by Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways.

In July, a spokesman for LOT expressed displeasure with what he said was a dismissive attitude by Boeing in paying compensation to airlines that suffered financial losses during the grounding. LOT was said to be seeking around $30 million.

LOT's Robert Moren told Bloomberg's Justin Bachman, “Those [costs] are not probably gigantic money for Boeing, but for us—while we are in the process of restructuring—it’s quite substantial.”

By contrast, this weekend's interruption of service on two of the airline's five Dreamliners is a minor glitch. I understand that regulations allow some limited number of flight hours without filters, but left unrepaired, this situation could lead to clogged fuel nozzles or damage to the combustors. In this case, operating the engines without fuel filters caused no serious damage to the engines according to Birtel. Boeing is confident no other airplanes were delivered with missing fuel filters.

It seems that LOT has avoided a problem but whether the latest 787 event casts further doubt on the reliability of the airplane is less than clear.

Conner, Photo courtesy Boeing

Last year when he was given the job of piloting Boeing's Commercial Airplane division into the next generation of aviation, Ray Conner told reporters he was "really excited" - and why not? The company was selling airplanes like hot cakes matching its dreamy aspirations with real Dreamliner-building capacity at the company's second assembly plant in South Carolina.

Those happy comments at the Farnborough Air Show in 2012 must seem like a distant memory now as Conner maneuvers through the turbulence created by a questionable battery design, assembly lapses and technology glitches. Unhappy customers are issuing error messages about the airplane the company calls "game changing."

Two Boeing customers who have been pretty vocal about their displeasure with the way the game is being played are LOT Polish and Norwegian. Like the other Dreamliner customers, these two took a hit when the US and European safety authorities issued an airworthiness directive that put the Dreamliner out of service from January until April of this year. This followed mysterious thermal events of a still undetermined origin on the batteries of two Japanese 787s.

The night the planes were grounded, LOT was about to begin a big inaugural flight party from Chicago to Warsaw. Guests were ready to board the plane when the news broke.

Even though LOT means "flight" in Polish, these days, poor LOT, seems more like the Biblical character of the same name the way the problems keep on coming. Already in financial difficulty before the 787's arrived, the Dreamliner has just added to their trials.

On July 25th, LOT officials arrived at Boeing in Everett, Washington to take possession of their 5th Dreamliner, tail number SP-LRE seen in the photo on the right. Only when they got there, the plane was not ready to fly. Not even close. It took 4 more days before the company could get the aircraft home to Poland.

Two months earlier, LOT took possession of SP-LRC without realizing that on it and SP-LRB, the one before it on the assembly line Boeing failed to replace engine fuel filters after flight testing. You can read more about that in my previous post, here.

Well as you can imagine, LOT's boss, Sebastian Mikosz is now more energized to push Boeing for financial compensation for this and other interruptions in the airline's service on routes to Toronto, Beijing, Chicago and New York. The number that will satisfy the company has been reported from between $15 and $30 million. Today, LOT boss, Sebastian Mikosz sat down with Conner in Warsaw to go over these numbers again.

Photo courtesy Matt Cawby KPAE

When he's done in Poland, Conner's next European stop is Oslo where he can expect a similar "What the F?" question from executives of low cost carrier, Norwegian.

Kjos on a flight to Oslo in 2012

"We are not happy about the operations of our two Dreamliners," company spokeswoman Asa Larsson told me. It's an attitude change from those days before the company actually took possession of two 787s.

When the plane was grounded in January over those battery mishaps, Norwegian boss Bjorn Kjos assessed the problem as "minor". He was wrong about that, but considering how important the fuel-efficient little wide-body is to Norwegian's business plan, he may have felt optimism was the best course.

Optimistic is exactly how Ray Conner started out last year. How quickly things have changed.

The joke about the mixed emotions when ones' mother-in-law drives off a cliff in your brand-new-car surely must describe how Boeing feels today watching Tesla defend the lithium ion batteries powering its cars.

Tuesday (while I was writing a nice little feature for the Times about a Tesla S as wedding coach) a similar sedan caught fire in Washington state, a roaring blaze captured on video by a passing motorist who spontaneously opined "Oh, s--t dude, that's a brand new car!"

He then adds, "Wow, I can feel the heat in here." That may be the more significant statement which I will get to in a moment.
For now, I want to remind readers that when Boeing experienced two thermal events on Dreamliner batteries in January, prompting safety regulators to ground the airplane for four months, Tesla's boss, Elon Musk told FlightGlobal that the planemaker's design was "inherently unsafe."

Along with others, I've been saying that as well. The difference here is that Musk believes his company figured out the secret sauce; more, smaller and more widely separated cells while Boeing was using large, more closely-spaced cells in the Dreamliner.

Celina Mikokajczak at the NTSB hearing on lithium ion battery safety

This is what makes the batteries on Tesla electric cars safer than Boeing's electric plane, according to Musk. Celina Mikokajczak, an Tesla engineer explained this and more to the NTSB at a hearing in Washington DC in April.

In order to get the airplanes back in the air, Boeing did create more breathing room between the eight cells per battery on the two batteries on each 787. Boeing also constructed a big box it claims will contain any thermal event and vent any fumes. But whether Musk and his clever chemical engineers (or Boeings' for that matter) have really tamed the beast is still up for discussion.

Lewis Larsen about whom I have written in the past, is already overheated about the Tesla fire. In a mailing to me today, he writes that the fire "is really a form of thermal runaway" and that far from being the smartest folks in the room regarding lithium ion batteries, the Tesla folks have just been the luckiest.

He wasn't there of course, but Larsen is concerned that the battery may have caught fire spontaneously because Tesla hasn't solved the problem thermal runaway problems, nor has anyone else.

Tesla, however, is telling reporters "a large metal object" hit one of the modules on the battery triggering the blaze. This is not a minor distinction as far as Larsen is concerned because he's telling anyone who will listen that these battery cells go bad without notice and that when they do, they can heat up to nuclear-reaction-like temperatures.

Now, the comment of our citizen videographer, who driving by the flaming $70,000 sedan says, "Wow, I can feel the heat in here," begins to sound more ominous.

Which is why, Boeing executives may be tempted to feel a bit of schadenfreude now that the negative news spotlight has turned from their airplane to Musk's fancy car. But that's going to be fleeting. There's no reveling in Tesla's discomfort because when it comes to lithium ion batteries, the heat goes both ways.

Photo courtesy Times of India

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT NEW INFORMATION:

Boeing is confirming that a section of the underbelly of an Air India Dreamliner came off during landing, though spokesman Doug Alder will not say whether the plane is the newly delivered VT-ANO, as the Times of India reported, or a Dreamliner delivered ten months ago.

The panel "was recovered at the airport," Alder said in an email, reiterating what he said when the story was first reported that there was no safety of flight issue.

The event occurred on October 12. on a passenger-carrying flight from Delhi to Bangalore with 148 people on board, according to the paper. The identity of the aircraft is important because VT-ANO had been in the airline's possession for not yet a full week.

If the damage was on VT-ANO, that would be the very same airplane that earlier last week was sitting in Charleston, South Carolina, outside the (also brand spankin’ new) Dreamliner assembly facilitywaiting for Air India to come and get it. That panel on that plane had been opened recently in Charleston, to perform a modification to the environmental control unit, a Boeing-ordered fix to all 89 of the airplanes, to drain a build up of moisture that was interfering with the cooling of electronics.

Air India has eight 787s. Most or all of which were put together in South Carolina while the Dreamliners delivered to Norwegian, LOT Polish and United, were assembled in Everett, Washington. (At some future date, we can revisit the controversy over Boeing's decision to start shipping high-paying aerospace jobs down to the lower-cost south. Boeing saw a union-free haven. Mechanics saw an environment long on unemployment but short on workers with experience in the highly complex and exacting field of airplane building. But as I said, that’s a story for another day.)

If the skin came off VT-ANO, then a lot of folks are running around the North Charleston plant collecting all the paperwork related to that work to find out just how the panel - which is attached with screws and locking bolts - came free. The same can be said in Delhi, if the panel was disassembled at Air India. Clarification of just what plane this happened on is not forthcoming, though the Directorate General of Civil Aviation is said to be investigating.

An experienced airliner mechanic knowledgeable about the Dreamliner suggested the only way the panel could have come off is if it was put on with the wrong attachment bolts. With each part of the airplane carefully mapped on engineering diagrams and the appropriate hardware placed at the assembly station, it is hard to imagine how that could have happened. Clearly though, something went amiss on this airplane. The follow on questions of course are; Just this panel? Just this airplane?

“If the bolt is too short the nut barely captures the threads. It will tighten up but come loose quickly because of the pressure,” my source told me.

If you are wondering, as I was, how the plane made it half way around the world without losing this piece I was told that the plane is designed to fly with 25 percent of fasteners missing.

"Even if they forgot to tighten the nuts, the panel would not fall off. It would fall off if they put in screws that were too short," my contact told me.

As the one who does the household repairs at my home, I confess, sometimes I substitute whatever I can find lying around the work room for original parts. If it fits and holds, I figure that's good enough. This is a bad idea when attaching fuselage panels to airliners. Here's why.

“There is a locking feature at the end of the nut. For it to work, the threads of the bolt have to protrude 2-3 threads,” my Dreamliner mechanic explained. “Put the torque gun on and it will click, it will show that it (the nut on the screw) is tightened up.” But its not. Drum roll here.

It should not take too long to figure out what happened. Not so sure we can say the same about determining why it happened.

Earlier this month, the Charleston assembly plant boss Jack Jones called workers together for an all hands meeting. Quality standards would have to improve, he told them according to someone who was present.

He ticked off a list of the dissatisfied customers, Norwegian, LAN, Qatar. And of course Japan Airlines who gave a thumbs down to the Dreamliner and its associated nightmares when it opted to purchase Airbus A350s a few weeks ago. (Click here for a great story today on the politics behind the decision from Reuters.) These planes weren't made in South Carolina, they were built back in Washington where the experienced hands are turning the wrenches. (And where, someone forgot to replace filters in the engines on two LOT airliners, about which more here.)

Boeing's Ray Conner Boeing photo

Confirming what I reported in my post about commercial airplane division boss Ray Conner's round the world apology trip, Jones told workers that senior executives at Norwegian did an analysis for Conner that predicted future Dreamliner failures. The mathematical calculations concluded with this stunning figure; With all the maintenance, diversion and reliability problems, the Dreamliner was costing the international low cost carrier fifty as in fifty percent more to operate than anything else in their fleet.

Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen, a spokesperson for the airline would not confirm the figure but did say that as far as fuel efficiency is concerned the Dream is living up to Boeing's promises of twenty percent savings.

Jack Jones in Charleston in happier days

Until the U.S. government shutdown, inspectors with the Federal Aviation Administration were reviewing each and every airplane off the assembly line. I am told, they said they would not leave Charleston until the planes passed inspection with two or fewer write-ups. Instead the South Carolina 787s are garnering 20, 30 and 40 write-ups. "We're not getting better, we're getting worse," Jones reportedly told the workers.

From India, Qatar, Chile, Norway, Poland and Japan the chorus of complaints is getting louder. What will it take for Boeing to heed what they are saying about quality control?

SEE THE UPDATE ON THIS POST BY CLICKING HERE.

An Air India 787 in Charleston, SC in 2012

Getting information from Air India is not such an easy assignment. And as I learned from my readers and Jason Rabinowitz of @AirlineFlyer, information on the missing fuselage panel on an Air India Dreamliner reported by Times of India was not correct. Neither Air India's spokesman G.P Rao, nor anyone from the office of air safety have answered my emails seeking details on the Boeing 787 flight which appears to have been made with a unsecured or entirely missing panel.

In a post the other day, I suggested that this problem could have been the responsibility of Boeing assembly plant workers in Charleston, South Carolina, where VT-ANO was put together. An insider at the plant told me only using the wrong attachment screws could have allowed the plane to be delivered with the panel intact and then having it fall off in flight, which is how the incident was reported by the Times.

The fact that this panel was removed on every one of 89 Boeing 787s to conduct a manufacturer-ordered modification of the environmental control system to correct a problem of condensation and poor drainage led me further to believe the news account that the panel came off a brand new 787.

Early Friday morning Rabinowitz sent me a link to a story in First Post, reporting that an Air India mechanic has been suspended for removing the panel and failing to put it back. How a four by eight foot gaping hold was not detected during the pilot walk around prior to the flight is mystifying for me as it is for some of you who have commented on this story.

Having already relied on information that the event happened on one plane when it probably occurred on another, I'm giving this report a skeptical eye. It does remind me, however, that not all the facts are known. I will recap the underlying issues.

Air India and many other carriers in that country are significantly behind in safety relative to their size and importance in the global economy. Various audits and investigations into safety oversight have been going on for several years. Air India tried and failed to win membership in the Star Alliance, due in part to its inability to meet their standards for safety.Things have hardly improved.

Meantime, back at Boeing numerous factory-related problems continue to heckle Dreamliner operators, including Norwegian and LOT Polish, which received two airplanes with missing fuel filters on their engines. Mechanics in Everett forgot to reinstall them after engine testing. I was told that LAN (LATAM Airlines Group), a Dreamliner customer, offered to loan mechanics to Boeing to help the company get airplanes assembled since the company seemed to be having trouble accomplishing it on its own.

The Air India missing panel could ultimately be determined to have been an oversight at Boeing or at the airline. My blog should have made this more clear. The publicly available details just aren't conclusive. What this tells me is that when it comes to the Dreamliner, everyone needs to perform better. Including me.

Tight shot of airplanes taken from a long, way off.

There are not too many cameras that suit the needs of a frequently-traveling airplane geek who is fastidious about not only packinglight, but packing small. That’s why I bought the Lumix Panasonic ZS10. There were lots of things I liked about this camera and I wish I could recommend it. BUT I CAN'T.

The camera is compact; slightly longer and not much heavier than a pack of playing cards. Yet it packs a powerful zoom lens that can zero in on airplanes across an airfield even in low light conditions. This is what persuaded me to plunk down $329 for the camera and another couple of bucks for the protective case in July 2011.

Photo of my not-so-good Lumix taken with my Samsung Galaxy

So I was disturbed (to put it nicely) when less than a year later, bits of hair-like debris started to appear across the images whenever I used the super-duper-telephoto lens. I was even moredisturbed when - after the first fix, which left me without a camera for nearly a month - the problem reappeared 3 months later.

View on Delft (at least through my Lumix camera)

Unwilling to be without my camera, I soldiered on, becoming a master at using Picassa’s “retouch” button to erase the lint and other smudges on my photos. In September, after a great morning shooting from my room at the Hilton Charles de Gaulle perfectly perched over the runway this is what my photos looked like.

On my return home, I fired off a letter to Joseph M. Taylor the head honcho at PanasonicCorporation of North America. You would have been proud of me. While inside I was screaming, “WTF?” I wrote with restraint. I asked Mr. Taylor what needed to be done to get a “good working Lumix”. “Panasonic is not living up to its promise of providing ‘quality, value and innovation,’” I said.

I’ve had some success in the past going right to the top rather than to the customer service office. Several years ago, Laura Covarrubias from Samsung, bless her heart handled my problem with a bad telephone rapid-fire right from the executive office. Once when Delta failed to reunite me with my garment bag on arrival at my destination hours before I was to attend a reception in my honor, the assistant to the president arranged for me to purchase something appropriate to wear in time to save the day.

Taylor of Panasonic North America photo from Panasonic

At Panasonic, however, my letter went from Mr. Taylor’s office right back down to a customer service agent named Warren. In a phone call, he explained the Lumix S10 was made with an “air port” in the lens. On extending the lens, the port allow fibers into the camera that then appear in the photos. Well that was illuminating. Warren also explained that Panasonic would fix the camera, and I would only have to pay half price for the repair.

I was still trying to figure out how Panasonic felt that was a responsible way of rectifying a camera design problem when I met Robert and Linda Fasteson, travel writers and photographers who own 2 Lumix cameras similar to mine.

Over dinner, at the exceedingly picturesque Peeks of Otters Lodge, (and you’d know that if I had a working camera but I didn’t) they told me they’d experienced the same thing right down to the offer from a Warren-like employee to split the repair cost “fifty fifty”.

Ah, but Robert and Linda are a clever pair. They didn’t like that response either. So, figuring there was nothing to lose, they put a vacuum cleaner hose on the lens and darned if that didn’t pull the fibers right on out of the camera. The very next morning I tried it myself with equally satisfactory results.

One week has passed and here’s a photo from LaGuardia Airport taken Saturday morning, as I waited to board my plane to Nassau.

As you can see, the vacuum solution has its limits. Picasamy old friend, you haven’t seen the last of me.

It’s a different story for Panasonic. As long as I need to use a vacuum to clean up the dust that stows away on the Lumix “air port” I’ll associate this company’s products not with “quality”, “value”, or innovation” but with the four-letter verb that starts with S and ends in K and describes what a vacuum cleaner does.

New safety video photo courtesy Virgin America

High fives and "You go girl!", to Virgin America for its new safety video that has all the required information set to a rockin' beat. Like Air New Zealand, Southwest and Cebu before it, and fingers-crossed, more airlines to follow, Virgin America is acting on the simple truth that boring, read-by-rote pre-flight briefings are the white noise of air travelers. No one is listening.

To be sure, Virgin America's 2007 attempt to amuse while informing seems to have gone terribly wrong a bad combination of too-subtle humor delivered by a deadpan announcer who had me snoozing within the first 30 seconds. Not the case this time.

In the new five minute video, the beat is pumpin' and the joint is jumpin' as a variety of cabin crew members and passengers do the unthinkable in commercial aviation today, be serious about safety and have fun at the same time.

I write this having just flown with an airline currently in crisis over its planned merger with another U.S. carrier. I'm going to withhold the name because, gosh darn it, I just can't kick them while they're down. Anyway, its not important to the story.

This trip involved four flights. On not a single one of them did the flight attendant greet me at the door or even make eye contact. Throughout the flight on three out of four, I never saw any one of the cabin crew smile at all. The safety briefing was a video punctuated by a soundless seat belt and floor lighting demonstration. Those folks weren't having fun. Looking around, I can confirm passengers weren't either.

Airlines can decide they're going to compete for customers based on having the lowest ticket price and vast numbers of passengers are locked into their airline decisions based on loyalty programs. And yet, in an interview with Rick Garlick, an analyst with J.D. Power & Associates the other day, he told me the smart companies are realizing "There's a financial return in providing a positive customer experience," for a reason I had not fully appreciated. It's not all about wooing new customers, though there is that. It is also about getting the folks already on board to enjoy themselves because happy passengers are "more likely to buy ancillary services".

In an industry where aggressive airlines can earn twenty percent of their revenue from al la carte fees (thanks Jay Sorensen at Idea Works for the stats!) you can see the return on investment in making passengers happy.

So while safety is one beneficiary of Virgin America's fun-to-follow video, its not the only one. They've gone to some trouble and expense, gotten in touch with their creative side to so passengers will loosen up and flight right. At the end of the flight if that means a little more money in the till for Virgin America it sounds like a square deal to me. (For an opposite viewpoint, think he said/she said, click here for Patrick Smith's take.)

The Twitter message from New York Times editor Damon Darlin came minutes after the Federal Aviation Administration began a news conference announcing a change in policy on electronic devices on airplanes. Darlin pinned the credit for switch to a Times reporter. "And thank you Nick Bilton," his message to me read.

Many, many people are like Bilton, Darlin and company, thrilled that the FAA has promised to streamline "the approval of expanded PED use by giving airlines updated, clear guidance." Though each airline will continue to decide for itself, how and when it will allow passengers to use PEDs, the FAA is making it clear, it won't be an obstacle anymore. Within hours, Delta Air Lines and JetBlue filed for FAA approval of expanded use of gadgets on their flights.

As I've written many times, both for the Times and for this blog, electronic devices interfer with airplane systems. In the report on which the FAA based its new policy, the panel of experts reiterate that much remains unclear about the impact of EMI emitting devices on air safety. Here are five of the many alarming points made by the FAA's advisory committee.

The potential for interference depends on the aircraft, its systems and the PED.
Even newer aircraft have sensitive receivers that may be vulnerable to emissions from PEDs.
Some ground based navigational aids may be as receptive to interference now as they were in the 1960s
Navigation assistance for ILS approaches may also be impacted
Devices transmitting a signal like Wifi or Bluetooth, that can generate spurious signals, are an even greater concern.

Those troubles and more, however, had to be balanced against a population of travelers who did not believe the worries were real and voted with their power on buttons.

Whether the electronics and inflight entertainment industry pushed their agenda I can't say, though Bilton quoted them many times. The Washington Post's Lydia DiPillis suggests that Amazon executive Paul Misener was a questionable choice to head up the FAA's advisory committee. (This took considerable courage since her new boss is Amazon chieftan Jeff Bezos.)

DiPillis' worry, that scientific ethics could be compromised by putting someone with a financial outcome in the decision in charge of fact finding could be true. Except, it doesn't appear that the committee's alarming conclusions were squelched at all. Reasonable people reading the report have to wonder, "Is this really a good idea?" (See points made above, or read the report yourself by clicking here.)

The fact of the matter is that the facts don't matter. With a report that suggest safety issues exist the FAA welcomes the widespread use of devices on airplanes. The science takes a backseat to other factors that are social, political, economic and logistical.

So now we have an outcome. Whether its a good or a bad one, remains to be seen.

Were times simpler in the sixties, or was there something unique about Joseph Sutter that allowed him to do what airplane makers can’t seem to accomplish now? We can speculate but Sutter, one of the creative engineering minds behind the Boeing 747 gets the credit for taking what was then the world’s largest passenger jet from concept to flight in just 29 months.

“When we designed the 707," Sutter recalled, of the days before his 747 assignment, Boeing wrote the certification rules for the jet. "The CAA, the FAA wasn’t around yet, they didn’t know how to certify an airplane. We taught them how to do it,” before going on to create the domed wide-body 747 that still symbolizes modern aviation.

During a dinner in New York, I asked him why, in the 21st Century, Boeing’s Dreamliner and the Airbus A350 have encountered so many delays and the 92 year old engineer explained the regulatory atmosphere is different now.

Interviewing Sutter Photo by Patricia Thomas/Lufthansa

“It’s a very complex design progress heavily influenced by regulators, as it should be,” he told me. “Our world now is a more demanding world.”

A lifelong resident of Washington State, Sutter was brought to New York by Lufthansa to receive the airline's first Lifetime Achievement in Excellence Award.

I’m guessing, the large framed certificate and lunch plate-sized plaque will wind up in a room already cluttered with similar gifts, or what Ty Swensen of the West Seattle Herald described as the room in Sutter's home that “doubles as an ever-expanding museum of his life.”

Woelfle, Buchholz, Sutter & VP Juergen Siebenrock Photo by Patricia Thomas/Lufthansa

Still, there were aspects of the celebratory dinner at the Lamb’s Club that had to be firsts even for someone accustomed to regular fetes. Runway Girl Network chief Mary Kirby moderated what was supposed to be a gentle question and answer session with Sutter, that had the engineer lambasting lawyers and criticizing airlines, correcting the questioner in the audience who speculated he must be treated like a VIP when he flies.

"On my recent trip I was treated like any other human being, which is almost inhuman," he said. And as the aviation geeks among us fed photos and tweets to our followers, Sutter paraphrased and expanded on the thoughts of American Airlines' former boss Bob Crandall.

Aviation is a tough business.If you want to make money, go into Twitter."

Sutter with Buchholz and Kirby. Photo by Patricia Thomas/Lufthansa

All three of Sutter’s children, Gabrielle, Jonathan and Adrienne and daughter-in-law Barbara were at the dinner. As the first European airline to fly the Boeing 747 forty years ago, Lufthansa made sure that two executives with skin in the game were also there; Nico Buchholz, the man responsible for the most recent airline purchase of 15 Boeing 747-800 jetliners and Norbert Woelfle, former head of the 747 fleet.

And just when the evening could have devolved into a lot of handshakes and stuffy speeches, the airline's director of corporate communications, Niles Haupt announced to the Father of the 747 that the music was about to begin. At which point, German Korean cellist Isang Enders took to the stage and without a blue print or a wind tunnel in sight, took a night to honor an aviation legend and raised it to a whole new level.

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