Flying Lessons

Writing from Canberra -- How many times can investigators slice and dice the electronic back and forth between the missing Malaysia Flight 370 and the inmarsatsatellite system and keep coming up with new details about what might have happened? Well every time someone tells me that sponge has been wrung dry, another new fact-let emerges.

A comparison of the seven distinct communication exchanges on March 8th 2014, indicates that MH-370 still had fuel at 8:11am Malaysia time, seven-and-a-half hours from the time the plane took off from Kuala Lumpur. This is interesting considering that the airplane, loaded with 49,100 kilos or 10,8246.97 pounds of fuel for its flight to Beijing had only an estimated 7.2 hours of flying time. (And has always made incredible, the claims by some reporters that the plane engaged in high climbs and steep descents and radar evading.)

The plane was likely cruising on auto-pilot on a reasonably straight track based on the analysis of the first six transmissions between the Boeing 777 and the inmarsat satellite after the plane went nordo.

These transmissions have been described to me by David Coiley at inmarsat as being like the signals a mobile phone regularly transmits to inform the cellular network of its location and the fact that it is turned on. The MH 370 pings essentially tell inmarsat, “I’m here, I’m on.”

What’s different about the 7th and final ping, is that it was not an “I’m here, I’m on,” communication but rather an attempt by the airplane to log back into the system, which means it followed an interruption in power on the airplane and tells the investigators that this is the point where the plane ran out of fuel.

“What we do know with a reasonable degree of confidence is that the time of the final handshake (this log on attempt) the aircraft was descending,” Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau told me in an interview in his office in Canberra on Tuesday.

This is not a stunning piece of news, of course. Airplanes without fuel will descend. What makes it intriguing is how the Australians and others hunting for this elusive airplane hope to use knowledge of the plane’s fuel exhaustion to narrow the search area. Unfortunately, knowing where the tanks ran dry turns out not to be as illuminating as one might hope.

"It runs out of fuel, it’s been at cruise, that’s the assumption," Dolan said. Did both engines stop running at the same time or did one precede the other? The so-far unknowable answer to that question has big consequences for where the jet wound up in the ocean.

“The behavior of the aircraft is different if it’s simultaneous; you’re likely to get a glide for some period of time. If it’s one (engine at a time) you’ll get a fairly quick stall," Dolan explained.

Whether the plane glided smoothly, was airborne for a while, if it entered the water slowly, these are follow up questions for a simultaneous loss of fuel on both engines. Losing fuel on one engine at a time could cause an entirely different crash scenario; a rapid loss of control, a messy impact and could include the possibility that wreckage might be behind the area where the plane hits the water. "Most of the international research says that if you have a loss of control, which is the most likely scenario, than you’ll find it within 15 nautical miles of the route, of the last known point," Dolan said.

In a case in which every little shard of information can cause a massive readjustment of complicated computer models, creating a newer-better search zone now means working with about 1000 probable scenarios.

Searching the Indian Ocean Photo courtesy JACC

On Thursday, the ATSB is going to reveal to eager reporters the product of all that scenario crunching, with the parameters of a new search field detailed. But don't expect any dramatic shrinking. The new area is expected to be about 60,000 square kilometers, (37,282 square miles) roughly the size of Indiana.

“This is the best analysis we can do with the information available to us,” Dolan said at the end of our time together, reminding me and everyone else, “there is no guarantee of success.”

“But what we said is we want an area that’s practicably searchable within about a year with the right levels of resources - sixty thousand square kilometers, is it.”

Infrastructure chief Warren Truss and ATSB chief Martin Dolan

Writing from Canberra - Despite saying that I don't want to be an "I told you so" I am feeling a bit smug about today's confirmation by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau that an unresponsive crew/hypoxia event seemed the "best fit" for the available information on the missing Malaysia Flight 370.

The Australians have been asked by the Malaysians to head up the search for the Boeing 777 that went nordo on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8th.

The suggestion that hypoxia events have a lot in common with the known facts of MH 370 came in a 58 page report released to reporters by the ATSB as part of its explanation of the new underwater search zone. MH 370 seemed to share these factors with other accidents attributed to loss of pressurization and pilot incapacitation

Radio communications ceased
there were long periods of flight without maneuvers
the cruise altitude was maintained
the flight did not end until it ran out of fuel

The area where MH 370 may lie

The Aussies have not been asked to work on the "why" of the missing flight, just find out where the plane is now, though I suspect they're itching to get their hands on all the evidence collected so far concerning the greatest aviation mystery since Amelia Earhart.

Making the link between MH 370 and other hypoxia-related accidents came as part of a larger compilation of aviation accidents intended to help create a reference base of what happens when a plane drops from the sky; how does its speed change and what is the effect of its impact with the ground or water? These answers became part of complicated calculations giving investigators a revised geographical range for search efforts.

Former Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein in Kuala Lumpur

That's what the report is about. Having spent five weeks in Malaysia this spring, listening to nonsensical and contradictory statements by the country's then-double duty minister of transport and defense, the show-us-your-cards report by the Australians practically had me weeping with joy. And that was even before I read pages 34 and 35, where the Aussies suggested that hypoxia - my pet theory - was a "best fit."

Since day one, I've felt uncomfortable with the rush to pin the mysterious disappearance of MH 370 on the pilots or some unnamed/unknown bad guy on the plane, because there's just no evidence to support it.

Read about hypoxia however, how strips pilots of their judgment while infusing them with a sense of well-being and all the illogical events in the missing airliner story begin to make sense.

The scene of the Payne Stewart crash in 1999

Several years ago I wrote a long article about two high profile plane crashes in which the pilots died from a lack of oxygen but their planes continued to fly; the Learjet carrying American golfer Payne Stewart in 1999 and the crash of Helios Flight 522 in 2005. I spoke to passengers and the pilot of yet another flight that underwent a depressurization and nearly suffered the same fate.

We fly through the sky, seven miles above the ground, watching movies or munching peanuts, forgetting entirely that the environment just beyond is inhospitable to life. Only the constant infusion of oxygen rich air keeps us going. That we can appreciate. It is harder to appreciate how quickly a depressurization can strip the best of pilots of their judgment and skill. Without sufficient oxygen, anything they do defies logic. If that doesn't describe some of the inexplicable details of MH 370, I don't know what does.

To hear a full blown-account of what I think could have happened on board Flight 370 click here or here. For my (lengthy) article on hypoxia, click here. To learn more about my forthcoming book for Penguin about MH 370 and other accident investigations click here.

Minutes after Malaysia Flight 370 disappeared from military radar in the early morning hours of March 8, the airplane experienced a total loss of power but recovered, according to information released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. The Boeing 777 last seen by a primary radar return at 2:22am (Malaysia time) headed north west along the Malacca Strait, was still flying in that direction when the power loss occurred. Three minutes later the airplane sent a log-on request to the inmarsat satellite network, meaning its energy supply was back up and running.

Why the jetliner lost power is not known, but the report explains that a log-on request, indicating that the airplane has disconnected from the satellite communication network, is not common. It happens for only a few reasons;

power interruption to the satellite data unit
a loss of critical systems to the satellite data unit
software failure
a loss of the satellite link because of altitude

The team of experts from the UK, US, Boeing, inmarsat and Thales, who have been studying the scant data associated with airplane's disappearance have concluded the most likely cause was an interruption in power to the SDU.

Whatever its cause, by 2:26am, the problem had resolved itself to the extent that the airliner's in flight entertainment system requested to go back online. Passengers may appreciate movies and games, but IFE is not considered essential by any means. Still, I am told it is given a certain priority in the lengthy list of items supplied by the aircraft's electrical system.

Flight path from NTSB in ATSB report

This loss of power came at an intriguing time in the so-far incomprehensible story of the Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight gone terribly awry, because it occurs within minutes of the plane's last known position over the water; north of Sumatra west of Thailand at its border with Malaysia. (E96.5 N6.5 on the report's graphic) At that time the plane was heading northwest.

How the plane came to do a rough 200+ degree turn and fly south is not known. Nor for that matter is it known when the plane did the turn. Based on my reading of the inmarsat pings and the computer-assisted probability formulas run by the search team and explained in the report, the window is expansive. It places the last "large" change to the aircraft's track no more specifically than happening before 3:15 am (Malaysia time) and that could mean as long as fifty minutes after the power interruption.

At inmarsat HQ in London

This is not to say that the turn didn't happen before then, only that from 3:15 until the plane ran out of fuel five hours later, there's nothing on which to rely for that information.

All of which shows how complex the calculations must be for figuring where that plane ended up in the impossibly large Indian Ocean.

What I find intriguing is that this anomaly - hey let's call it a problem - is that it is a previously undisclosed clue about what caused this plane to veer off its track and go missing and I am not alone in thinking this could be a BIG DEAL. Talking to a experienced Boeing 777 pilot about a loss of aircraft power an hour and a half into the flight, he agreed, "That's not a subtle thing, it's not subtle at all," especially considering the possibility that the power interruption could be associated with the plane's new course to the south.

Third reading of the ATSB report requires coffee

I received the ATSB's 58 page report on Thursday, but filled as it is with complex explanations and assorted graphs and formulas, it has taken me several readings to get the general gist. This is what prompts me to take another look at my earlier post reporting that the plane may have made a dramatic spiral descent into the sea.

While I based this on my interview with Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the safety bureau and his assessment of what would happen in an asymmetrical loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, pilots who fly the 777 suggest even as fuel runs out on each engine separately, other mechanisms are designed to keep the plane on a wings level glide. MH 370 probably did not careen wildly into the ocean, they say.

Pre accident photo of 9M-MRO courtesy Jay Davis

"Generators that are hardwired into the airplane" will compensate for the loss of thrust if one engine quits before the second, I am told. These are "permanent magnet generators. If the engines are turning, just windmilling power is getting to the flight controls."

The difference between slamming abruptly into the sea versus a more stable plane-provided glide is significant. The glide, estimated at 100 nautical miles by the ATSB creates an "impractically large search area," while a spiral descent narrows the range to 20 miles from the point of fuel exhaustion. Given the ATSB's commitment to search sixty-thousand square kilometers in the next year, practicality rather than most-likely scenario seems to have ruled in terms of where to start searching when the hunt for MH 370 resumes in August.

Warren Truss and Martin Dolan in Canberra on Thursday

Once again, however, I'm staggered by how the slimmest of leads can blossom and it gives me hope that sooner or later, the full story of MH 370 will be known.

A press briefing in Kuala Lumpur March 2014

Nearly 18 years separates today's most-riveting air disaster from the explosion of TWA Flight 800 over the Atlantic on July 17, 1996. They are similar in many ways. Both disasters captured world attention, happening suddenly on mid-length trans-oceanic flights. In neither accident was there sufficient warning for a "Mayday" call and neither flight crew communicated to the ground what was happening in the air. Both planes disappeared into a dark ocean, Flight 800 with 230 on board. There were 239 on the still missing flight of Malaysia 370.

The next similarity is a prediction based on covering both accidents for American television networks and writing books about them. (Deadly Departure was published by HarperCollins in 2000. Penguin will publish my forthcoming book on MH 370 in 2016.)

Negroni predicts that the same kind of wild-eyed, never-say-die conspiracy theorists who shadow Flight 800 will forever cast doubt on whatever is ultimately determined to have happened on the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared on March 8th. Without pre-judging the investigation yet to take place, I can say I've already read enough nonsense about how MH 370 has been secreted in Diego Garcia, submerged in the Gulf of Thailand and been flown by radar-dodging pilots in the shadow of a Singapore jumbo jet, to last a lifetime.

Without a doubt, there is more to come.

Unlike TWA 800, where experienced tin-kickers had a hunch about an explosion in the Boeing 747's nearly empty fuel tank within a week of the accident, in Malaysia, we are two months into the mystery with no better idea of what caused the plane to veer west, north then south and finally run out of fuel somewhere in a vast expanse of ocean.

I write this today, having just read the report of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board denying the request to consider once again, its determination of probable cause in the TWA disaster. Lord knows what took them a year to reach the conclusion that there was nothing new in the "new evidence" the petitioners submitted last year around this time.

Last year, however, the folks behind the missile-shot-it-down - no make that three-missiles-shot-it-down - theory had a EPIX Network documentary to flog, and flog it they did with their headline making petition that the safety board take another look at the evidence in the TWA 800 accident.

Now the NTSB has done so, finding once again that a design flaw in the dissipation of heat from the center fuel tanks of all Boeing jetliners - some 8,000 in all - was responsible for the sudden and devastating blast that took down TWA Flight 800. What I find so remarkable about the missile guys is that the real story - that Boeing knew and failed to fix this well documented problem for 35 years wasn't sexy enough. Only scores of homicidal sailors willing to shoot down a civilian airliner and keep it secret for two decades could explain the crash of TWA Flight 800.

So here's hoping I am wrong about Malaysia 370. Here's praying that the plane will be found in the Indian Ocean and that an international corps of air safety professionals will put their noggins together and leverage their combined experience to figure out what went wrong on that airplane.

Here's a final plea that they have the fiber and the fortitude and the government support to press on regardless of where the evidence leads - using the TWA Flight 800 investigation and its subsequent ratification this week - as their guide and their beacon. And that the final report, is both credible and puts to rest the speculation and incredulity that so far typifies this latest aviation mystery.

The first time I flew in an airplane, I was six. It was an Eastern Airlines flight from Miami to Newark, probably in a DC-8, but I can't say for sure. I do remember that a flight attendant strung a cardboard bib in the shape of a Teddy Bear around my neck with my name and other information printed on it, and off I went. If my parents worried about me, I was unaware of it.

Marian flies alone to visit grandparents

Many years later when I bundled my own 8-year old daughter off to see her grandparents in Connecticut, I worried some, but I'd already done it myself.

Try to imagine what it was like to be Abram Pheil, the very first passenger on the very first passenger flight - a 23 minute trip from St. Petersburg, Florida to Tampa in 1914. Like the 12-second flight of the Wright Brothers eleven years earlier, this brief time in the air has had an enormous impact on the world.

Which is why the 100th anniversary of Pheil's flight in a Benoist Airboat is being celebrated by the industry it created. And not just for a day but for this entire year.

First flight: Photo courtesy Florida Aviation Historical Society

In June, at the annual meeting of International Air Transport Association in Doha, Qatar, airline executives on their way to meetings, stopped and admired a replica of the plane, brought halfway around the world by its builders, Bill Barnes and Robert Walker, directors of the Florida Aviation Historical Society.

Barnes (L) and Walker with replica in Doha

"You couldn't envision what happened, what came about from that flight," Barnes told CNN's Richard Quest and Walker added that the promoter of the airline "had vision farther than anybody else."

And while the plane provided the context - the desired lookie-how-far-we've-come-effect, it was the cutting of the enormous 100th anniversary cake with a ceremonial sword that provided the metaphor for look-where-we-are-headed.

Certainly, IATA director general, Tony Tyler with his urbane British accent and waspy-good looks is picture-perfect representing aviation's gentlemanly past. He spend 30 years at Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific, the last 4 years as its boss.

His partner in cake-cutting, Qatar Airways chief Akbar Al Baker represents the back then-unimaginable piece of aviation's future. The combative executive and host of the 2014 meeting is the noisiest of a group of ambitious executives who are piloting airlines of the developing world into new positions of strength.

Al Baker single-handedly wields the knife

One only needed to watch the cake ceremony to be enlightened. A confection so large it required four men just to bring it into the hall, Tyler and Al Baker and Makato Natsume the CEO of Narita Airport each gripped the handle of the ceremonial sword they would use to cut it, but were unable to slice through ten inches of cake and froth.

That's when Al Baker seized the blade and, with with his left arm in a sling from an injury sustained in an auto accident, he single-handedly hacked the cake into serviceable slices.

That's right ladies and gents, aviation is no longer a gentleman's game. The next century of flight will only be more push-and-shove. From hard-ball competitors in previously overlooked corners of the world like China, India, Africa and the Middle East, to the hard-to-please customers who want much but are willing to pay little.

IATA likes to point out that Abe Pheil paid $400 to make the hop across Tampa Bay one hundred years ago. But after the flight, the fare quickly dropped to $5 a trip, a price that "barely covered the cost of operations," according to the Aviation Historical Society. In that respect how different is it from today?

Regardless of what he paid, what Pheil got for his money was a place in world history; the first of billions who have since been able to fly near or far; for business, political, educational or pleasurable reasons. He also got a memory to last a lifetime - just like the little girl the teddy bear bib.

What do you remember from your first flight? Post it on IATA's One Hundred Years of Commercial Flight website.

The apparent shooting down of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 in the Ukraine today is a shocker for many reasons, not the least of which is that this is a double dose of tragedy for an airline already off-balance over the mysterious disappearance of another jumbo jet in March of this year. It is also deeply troubling to think of air travelers as casualties of geopolitical turbulence. But perhaps it should not be so shocking. Over the past decades, nearly two dozen passenger airliners have been hit by missiles. Among them

Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 hit and destroyed by the U.S. Navy
Korean Airlines Flight 007 downed by the Soviet military in 1983
Siberian Airlines Flight 1812 in 2001 during an Ukrainian military exercise
El Al Flight 402 in 1955 by Bulgaria military
Libyan Airlines Flight 114 by Israeli military in 1973

Then there was the unsuccessful double missile launching on an Israeli Arkia Airlines Boeing 757 departing from Mombasa in 2002, which prompted a good bit of discussion at the time about airline anti-missile protection devices. I thought the idea had fizzled but today discovered an Israeli company that claims to be in the testing phase with a workable device.

On its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, Malaysia Flight 17 was flying through the Ukraine on a route considered to be dangerous and closed to air traffic up to an altitude of thirty-two thousand feet, according to Eurocontrol. But MH 17 was headed east at thirty three thousand feet, in airspace not subject to restrictions according to the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.

In April, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration prohibited American carriers from flying over a section of the Ukraine where the violent struggle for Crimea is ongoing, but in that case, the restriction had more to do safety than security. Both Russians and Ukrainians were claiming the right to handle air traffic control in international airspace over the Black Sea within the Simferopol flight information region. (Read more about it here.)

That an airliner might be shot down six miles above the hostilities does not seem to have been considered a likely possibility but that’s changed now. All the airspace in Eastern Ukraine has been closed. Lufthansa, Virgin Atlantic and KLM are re-routing flights to avoid the entire country. Emirates announced on Twitter the cancellation of its flight to Kiev while it assesses the situation.

International airline pilots whose jobs require them to fly over global hot spots are briefed on their options for alternate airports should unrest cause them to divert from their destination. But for the most part, concern about operating across our warring world is not something I often hear expressed when I talk to airline crews. Airplanes have long been a focus of interest for criminals and terrorists and more than a few times, airline crews have been targeted, too.

TWA Capt. John Testrake in 1985

One of the most chilling news photos I’ve ever seen shows Capt. John Testrake a gun to his head, after his TWA airliner was hijacked in 1985 and held for two weeks. Passengers were beaten and some were killed while the crew was forced to fly repeatedly between Beirut and Algeria.

Then there is the kidnapping of Turkish pilots Murat Akpinar and Murat Agca, from their crew van after arrival in Beirut on August 9 of last year. The men were held for months before being released. I worried then that this could trigger a domino effect.

Turkish Capt. Murat Akpinar

In some destinations, flight crews arrive and are transported under heavy security, sequestered in their hotels like hostages. How long before there is an impact on their willingness to work certain routes, I wonder.

It’s a world full of conflict out there; Israel and Palestine, Russia and the Ukraine, China and Japan, Iraq and Syria. Malaysia Flight 17’s 295 passengers and crew are not the first - just the latest victims and they are proof that commercial aviation does not fly above the fray.

It is missing the point to "blame"Malaysia Airlines for its decision to continue to fly over the conflict zone in the Ukraine despite the disastrous outcome of that choice. At the same time, Malaysia and the dozens of others who opted to continue using the route should be asking, what exactly are they paying their security advisors for?

Airlines don't bring hundred+ million dollar airplanes and the highly-trained folks who operate them into countries without analysing the security status of the airport and the places where their flight crews will be housed. That's why the kidnapping of two pilots for Turkish in Beirut around this time last year was so startling. The transport van taking the entire flight crew was stopped and the pilots removed at gunpoint. Murat Akpinar and Murat Agca were held for two months after becoming unwitting players in the Syrian civil war. And if the industry needed a reminder that airlines aren't immune to seemingly unrelated conflicts, that was only the most recent of many similar events.

Airline security departments are 24/7 operations run by former soldiers, spies and law enforcement officers. They are paid to keep track of potential security threats in the countries into which they operate. They wouldn't rely solely on government security reports any more than they would depend entirely on protection from local police. So why, with weeks of escalating combat in the Ukraine, were so many carriers still flying through the area?

As early as March 3rd, Korean Air, itself the victim of a missile fired at a Boeing 747 in 1983 changed its routing to avoid Ukraine territory according to spokeswoman, Penny Pfaelzer, who cited "political unrest" as the motivating factor. British Airways abandoned the route as well, though the spokeswoman would not tell me when or why it made that decision. Air France failed to answer my questions but it appears to have opted out of flying on the route even while co-owned KLM did not, according to flightradar24.com.

So while Malaysia is self-evidently correct it its statements; the airspace was open and hundreds flights between Europe and Asia were using it every day, it is a weak reply to a valid question of responsibility.

Photo of presumed launch of missile

In an unofficial conversation, one industry insider complained to me that the media focus on Malaysia's decision to fly the route is akin to blaming the victim of a crime for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't agree. The better parallel would be the bus company that keeps routing its trips through an area of rioting.

Safe and secure passage is just as much a part of route planning as fuel costs and overflight fees. Getting there without being shot down by the combat going on below the plane hasn't been "unbundled" from the ticket price yet.

Where Malaysia is absolutely correct is that only an extraordinary roll-of-the-dice seems to have made it the victim of the missile strike.

In a conversation on Friday, Philip Degare of World Air Ops in Toronto explained that the April closing of the Crimean and Black Sea airspace due to a air traffic control dispute had the effect of pushing more flights into the combat zone. That means hundreds of airliners could have been MH 17.

"There would have been a significant increase in traffic over the conflict zone because of closure of Simferopoleven though the conflict zone didn’t exist when the Simferopol air space was closed," Degare told me. The first aircraft were targeted in the Russian Ukrainian hostilities in May when a helicopter was felled. "From then onwards it escalated," he said.

Regardless of what hell was playing out below, the airlines, civil aviation authorities and government agencies seem to have been lulled into believing that combatants did not possess weapons capable of reaching an airliner's cruise altitude.

In a stunning statement to Josh Margolin of ABC News, an American official said “We didn’t believe they had anything (weapons) that could reach that altitude. Had we known what we know now, that they had things that could reach up to 80,000 feet, the airspace would have been restricted.”

Why authorities didn't know that missiles with greater range were in the area is a bit of a mystery to me.

On Monday July 14th, a radar-guided SA-11 capable of reaching a target as high as 72,000 feet, hit a Ukrainian Antonov-26, according to The New York Times. Two days later on the 16th, a Ukrainian SU-25 was shot down in air-to-air combat. The Kiev Post reported it hours before MH 17 was felled. These developments make irrelevant, the selection of 33,000 feet and above as safe altitude.

Photo tweeted by a passenger on MH 17 before boarding

Did government agencies inform the airlines and civil aviation authorities? If not, why not? Did the airlines and aviation authorities know - either from their governments or from their own research - and disregard what was going on in the air above the Ukraine?

So yes, Malaysia appears to once again be the victim of the fates, once again exposed for complacency in how it goes about ensuring the security of its flights. This time, however, other airlines, aviation organizations and world governments have questions to answer because it appears they share Malaysia's catastrophic obliviousness.

Airplane crashes make headlines. Missing airliners get the all-news channels into round-the-clock regurgitation of speculation. Missile-downed airliners throw global diplomacy and the entire air travel industry into turmoil. All this I get. What continues to baffle is the lack of interest in the news that is far better indicator of how particular airlines handle their duty to protect customers.

Two stories this week make my point. In his excellent article for Forbes, former NTSB member John Goglia reports on the unfortunate case of a mother traveling on Delta Air Lines who was prohibited from using the FAA approved child-seat she brought with her on the airplane. Flight attendants were unaware of the rules and the airline hadn't taught them how to discern which seats can be used and which cannot.

Kudos to the mom for backing up her concern for her son's safety with her pocket book, she purchased a second ticket just for the child seat she was unable to use. It was the airline's ignorance and intransigence that put the infant at risk of injury had something happened on the flight.

As I reported for The New York Times earlier this year, the survival rate is so high in airline accidents due to improvements in cabin interiors and airplane seats that protect occupants from impact. Meanwhile the littlest travelers often fly without any of these protections. Read more about this jarring inconsistency here.

Also in the news, but buried in the back pages, is the story of the latest fine imposed by the FAA on Southwest Airlines. You may recall that the Dallas-based low cost carrier has had problems with fuselage cracks on its Boeing 737s. In 2009 and again in 2011, passenger-carrying flights experienced sudden and rapid decompressions after small sections of the fuselage ripped open at altitude.

In the one 3 years ago, Southwest Flight 836 made hasty descent from 36,000 feet followed by an emergency landing on a military base in Yuma, Arizona. The problem in that case turned out to be Boeing's fault, the airplane had been mis-assembled. (Yep, that's what I said, read the NTSB report here.)

But ever since 2006, and separate from the problems that would later turn out to scare the bejeebies out of its passengers, Southwest had been trying to shore up potential cracks on the aluminum skin of dozens of its oldest airplanes in order to eliminate the need for more frequent inspections. It hired Aviation Technical Services of Everett, Washington to replace the aluminum "along the window rows with all new skin" according to FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford.

ATS claims on its website to be the largest supplier of Boeing 737 and 757 maintenance in the world. That may or not be good news because in levying the fine against Southwest the FAA said the repairs made by ATS were improper. In fact, in 2010, ATS was fined $1.64 million though it only wound up paying a fraction of that - along with its promise to do better next time.

We learn this week that Southwest was told it would have to pay $12 million for its negligent supervision of ATS. That figure however, could be negotiated down.

Proposed penalties, like near-accidents, are smoke - quickly fanned away in contrast to the blazing heat of attention associated with the deadly and bizarre accidents we have seen in the recent past. But when it comes to analyzing how the industry is managing its risks, its more important to pay attention to the little things; flight attendant training, lack of familiarity with regulations and too-casual supervision of repairs for what that behavior says about an airline's commitment to safety.

Whose responsible for making sure airliners aren't in dangerous airspace? Airlines continue to insist it's not them. That story will be posted here in the next few days.

In a startling change of plans, Delta Air Lines today confirmed that it will retire four of its Boeing 747s beginning in September. Employees were notified in a memo penned by Glen Hauenstein the airline's chief revenue officer. Hauenstein described the decision as way to "reduce Delta's footprint at Tokyo Narita" and to do less intra-Asia flying.

Sixteen 747s came to Delta through its 2009 merger with Northwest. This spring, when I interviewed vice president of fleet strategy Nat Pieper for an article on the plane for Air & Space magazine, he told me executives spent a lot of time trying to decide whether to keep the planes which ranged in age from 7 to 20 years. Ultimately they decided to upgrade the interiors and fly them. The benefit of ownership was worth the extra operating expense, he told me.

It seems to have taken a lot less time for the airline to do an about face because as recently as two weeks ago cockpit crews were offered opportunities to bid for captain and first officer positions on the jumbo. So they were surprised yesterday when the offer was rescinded. Regarding the flight crews, Delta spokesman Anthony Black said the company's plan for them was "still to be communicated."

In 2012, not all flights to Narita were on the 747.

Boeing 777 and 767s now flying Atlantic routes will be re positioned to the Pacific. The first two 747s will be retired on September 30th and October 1 when the Atlanta -Tokyo and Los Angeles - Tokyo routes are converted to Boeing 777s.

Numbers three and four stop flying on October 26 when Detroit - Nagoya will be converted to an Airbus A330 and the Tokyo - Hong Kong and Nagoya - Manila flights will be canceled.

Last month, I was thrilled to return to the states on an Air New Zealand 747. Parked at the gate in San Francisco, the crew kindly let me sit in the left seat and posed with me for a photo. Then they confirmed my suspicion that the very plane we'd come in on was soon to be out of service.

Was I back in my office a day before Cathay Pacific was inviting me back to San Francisco to say goodbye to their last Boeing 747 flight to the United States? I won't be able to make that, though I will return to San Francisco for a more joyous occassion.

No, I'm not talking about my daughter's wedding October 4th - though that is SUPER JOYOUS - after the nuptials I'll stick around to see United Airlines, with Delta, the last American passenger airline to fly the 747 put that beautiful airplane on display for the Fleet Week air show.

United's 747 during Fleet Week. photo courtesy Don Wolfe

We will watch the highly choreographed display of the world's most glamorous, most celebrated airplane, the plane that changed the way we travel, as it roars over the Golden Gate Bridge. It will be glorious and it will be sad. The world is shedding 747s and with each decision like Delta's many of us are shedding tears.

Click here for my post on meeting Joe Sutter

The Japanese media is out today with news that the Japan Transport Safety Board is preparing

a report on what caused the lithium ion batteries on three Boeing 787 Dreamliners to emit smoke (and in one case catch fire) in 2013 and 2014. The newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported that the JTSB has concluded there is deterioration of the electrolyte solution in low temperatures. All three battery events on Japanese airliners occurred in the month of January.

A translation of the articles provided to me by my correspondent in Japan, Takeo Aizawa, says a phenomenon called deposition, or a build up of lithium metal, creates needle-like objects that can connect and create short circuits in the battery solution. Deposition, is the opposite of dissolution, or from what I can tell, a re-solidification of elements previously suspended. Cold can be a factor in dissolution.

This is the first update since March 2014, when the Federal Aviation Administration wrote its report clearing the Dreamliner of any safety issues related to its novel new lithium ion battery and other pesky concerns having to do with the plane's design, certification and production. (Read more here about why that report reminds me of Woody Allen's famous joke about sex.) Still, as far as new news goes, the Japanese suggestion seems to me to be different words applied to the same well-known issue.

Since the first two 787s batteries went haywire, a Japan Airlines Dreamliner in Boston on January 7, 2013 and an All Nippon Airways plane on flight to Tokyo on Jan 16, investigators have been troubled by the possibility that teeny-weeny dendrites - let's call them particles - will form and grow within the battery structure.

Battery exam by JTSB

In 2010, a year before the very first commercial flight of a B787, Lewis Larsen wrote that this creates "the probability of dangerous internal electrical shorts as the battery ‘ages’." So dendrites are not a new phenomenon or a newly discovered hazard. Nor is their production exclusively linked to cold.

From what I can see, dendrites are more like ants at a picnic; another natural phenomenon. Just throwing down the blanket and unwrapping the sandwiches is invitation enough. You may get through lunch and even a nap in the shade before the ants arrive or you may not.

For air safety authorities, acknowledging the inevitability of dendrites is the first step, though from the reports its not clear whether they have actually taken it.

The second step is determining if Boeing's post-grounding design changes are sufficient to mitigate the consequences of a thermal runaway whether initiated by dendrites or something else.

The JTSB apparently is prepared to say that the Dreamliner's battery issues are the result of several factors. "No single cause will result in emitting smoke, but complex causes will."

Complex designs lead to complex failures, no surprise there. When the bright investigative minds in Japan and America decide if enough has been done to protect travelers from the known and unknown hazards designed into the world's newest airliner, that will be big news.

Is Boeing already redesigning the Dreamliner? Click here.

A disciplinary commission in Chicago has upheld a censure decision against a lawyer who just last week came under its scrutiny for her behavior related to Malaysia Flight 370.

Monica Ribbeck Kelly, who made worldwide headlines when she filed the first case against Boeing and Malaysia Airlines following the mysterious disappearance of the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March, has been battling the ethics board of the Illinois Supreme Court since 2011 when she mishandled her representation of the victim of another crash.

In the earlier case, Kelly continued to file papers on behalf of Mustafa Gumus, who was injured when Turkish Flight 1951 crashed near Amsterdam in 2009. Gumus already had a lawyer when people from Ribbeck’s firm went to see him as he recuperated from surgery in the Netherlands. Whether from confusion, or the effects of medication is not clear but Gumus signed a retainer agreement with Kelly’s firm Ribbeck Law Chartered. Shortly after that he sent a letter rescinding his decision.

Even so, for more than a year, Kelly claimed Gumus as her client and would not honor the letter firing her unless his present lawyers, the New York firm of Kreindler & Kreindler paid her fifty percent of its fee. Kreindler & Kreindler balked and filed a complaint with the Attorney Regulatory and Disciplinary Commission instead. (For 7 years and before the events in this post, I worked for Kreindler & Kreindler.)

Grogan photo courtesy ABA

Monday's censure was a reaffirmation of an earlier finding that Kelly engaged in conduct “involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”. The three member review board’s decision was unanimous. “They found she had violated the ethics code,” said James Grogan, the deputy administrator and chief counsel for the ARDC. The next step is up to the state supreme court which can adopt the finding or dismiss it, Grogan said. “They could suspend her or do whatever they think is appropriate.”

The only remedy Kelly has at this point according to her lawyer, George Collins, "is to petition the Supreme Court" to review. Collins told me Kelly had not decided whether to do that.

Kelly’s problems with Illinois' arbiters of ethics got worse last week, when, as Lee Ferrin and I reported for ABC News, the ARDC charged the 47-year old lawyer with making a frivolous pleading following the disappearance of MH 370. Ribbeck Law Chartered petitioned for discovery in Cook County Circuit Court against Boeing and Malaysia Airlines claiming the plane went missing as the result of their negligence.

MH 370 passenger Firman Siregar

Given what we know about Kelly and other members of Ribbeck Law Chartered, that she has been accused of “wasting judicial resources” and conduct that is “prejudicial to the administration of justice” seems a little underwhelming.There is no mention in the complaint of a number of the firm's even more egregious activities.

In her legal action, Kelly claimed to be representing the father of MH 370 passenger Firman Siregar. In fact, Januari Siregar was a distant relative. Siregar’s real parents sent a letter to the national newspaper and the Indonesian government within days of the filing disavowing the suit and claiming Januari Siregar had no authority to act for the family.

Kelly, von Ribbeck, and a number of others associated with Ribbeck Law Chartered spent weeks in Indonesia, Malaysia and China getting victims’ families to hire them in spite of the fact that in the United States, solicitation by lawyers is largely prohibited.

Ribbeck Law Chartered goes after clients in transportation disasters but the legal work is left up to other firms, including Miami's Colson Hicks Eidson. Whether Ribbeck Law is selling the cases - which is not allowed - or sharing fees, which is, is really a matter of semantics.

Why none of these elements wound up in the ARDC complaint was mystifying to me, so I asked Grogan, who responded with a little semantic maneuvering of his own.

“Whatever is in the complaint, is in the complaint and I'm not going to stray. We don't want to make it too expansive and broad.”

The average reader who is not savvy about how lawyers in the sometimes-lucrative world of air crash litigation, may wonder; "Why does an attorney bring a frivolous case? Isn't it embarrassing when an irritable judge tosses it out of court as Judge Kathy Flanagan did, and threatens to impose sanctions on the errant lawyer?"

The answer is this: The first to file a lawsuit following a high profile disaster, claims the next news cycle. And that puts the firm’s name in front of anyone looking for a lawyer. Some might call it a publicity stunt.That is the end game, the courthouse is just a stop along the way.

That’s my opinion anyway, not the ARDC’s. Still, in a hint of what may be in store for Monica Ribbeck Kelly the next time she’s before the folks who determine what lawyers ought not to do, Grogan did suggest more interesting developments could be forthcoming.

“We are a regulatory authority but also prosecutors. We articulate a position at trial as prosecutor,” he said. “When you get to trial that’s when you see the motivations and the details.”

Menzies Aviation, the Scotland-based, mega airport services company and hazardous workplace recidivist has been slapped with a $77 thousand dollar fine in California after the state's labor safety authority found it discouraged the use of safety belts on the ramp of Los Angeles International Airport. But in the case of Cesar Valenzuela, the restraint on his tow tractor wasn't even working on the night he was thrown from the truck to his death.

The 51-year old Valenzuela, was working with cargo at the airport in February when he was found dead, his head beneath a wheel of the truck. A portion of the driver's seat belt was missing according the Cal/OSHA, which issued its report on the worker's death today.

It was a death "that could have been prevented," according to Christine Baker, an official at the agency who went on to include in a written statement that key to having safety equipment that actually enhances safety, is implementing the safety plan.

Menzies in California should have been on a very short leash considering four company employees have been killed at two California airports since 2006; two in 2006 at LAX for which the company was charged with serious safety violations and one at San Francisco International Airport the following year, according to statistics compiled by the Service Employees International Union and government records.

Let's not forget that it was was a Menzies ramp worker who ran a luggage loader into the side of an Alaska Airlines MD-80 in Seattle in 2005 and failed to report it to the airline. I know you did not forget because that's the little gash that turned into a big ole hole when the airplane reached 26 thousand feet forcing an emergency landing and scaring the bejeebers out of the people on board.

But the leash can't be too short because in the letter released by Cal/OSHA today, the state claims that the company keeps on making those "serious" infractions, defining the term "serious" as something that has a "realistic possibility that death or serious physical harm could result."

For fibbing that Valenzuela suffered a heart attack rather than reporting he'd been killed on the job, Menzies was also charged with violating workplace safety regulations.

The death of the father of two is tragedy enough, but Menzies's actions before and after the accident, and a history of callous disregard for workers' well-being is illustrative of the troubled but little examined side of aviation safety. Despite the fact that industry committees have been formed and airlines now undergo comprehensive audits of their ground-handling operations, the deaths and injuries keep on coming.

I've been asking around about this and in an upcoming post, I'll tell you what I've found.

FBI video of laser illumination of an airliner cockpit

No less a brainiac than Albert Einstein could have weighed in on the phenomenally ineffective efforts of American aviation and law enforcement to combat laser attacks on airplanes. The German American physicist defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

For the past eight years, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other authorities have taken a blame and shame approach to miscreants who aim laser pointers into the night sky causing momentary blindness or distracting pilots during a high workload phase of flight. I've written about this disaster in the making for The New York Times, MSNBC and Air & Space.

Speaking about the laser threat on MSNBC

But by the end of 2013, when despite all efforts, there were 3960 attacks reported, the highest since the FAA started keeping track, I was tired of hearing the officials complain they were helpless to do more. I took aim at the federal government's nonsensical approach to the problem and its complaint that there is no money to conduct a more sophisticated publicity or social media effort. That article can be read on Mary Kirby's Runway Girl Network.

Every night, the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department Aero Bureau launches Eurocopter AS 350 helicopters with flying cops at the controls. These men and women engage in a variety of crime fighting, but part of their job is responding when pilots report being hit by lasers.

MacNair and Dailey near LAX

When I flew with David MacNair and Ken Dailey last summer, we hadn't been in the air more than 15 minutes when a call came in that a Southwest Airlines crew had seen laser activity on approach. Off we went. MacNair and Dailey's job was to note the location and hover over the spot until ground officers could arrive to arrest the laserist but the light did not appear again.

This is the high-tech, heavy-metal, dollar-intensive approach to the problem. And it certainly has its place. Where the program has gone terribly wrong is that all the energy has gone into arresting, prosecuting and jailing the tiny number of laser wielders who have been caught with an eye towards riding the wave of publicity when the perpetrator is marched off to prison.

Here's why that hasn't worked. Everyone who has studied the problem says the vast majority of those using lasers are teens and young men, as ignorant of the law as they are of the possible catastrophic consequences of their actions. Patrick Murphy, a expert who participates in the laser aviation safety committee tells me, "There are so many cases, even now, where perpetrators say they never heard that lasing aircraft is unsafe and or illegal. The word is simply not getting out to the demographic likely to do this."

On laser patrol with the LASD

These folks don't watch television news, read the daily newspaper or log on to the FAA laser education website before heading out into the night with their nifty green or blue laser pointers.

Sometime around 2008, when traditional news organizations were well into their downhill slide, my tech-savvy friend, Steve Hart, suggested the industry wouldn't recover until it recognized how younger people consumed information. "If the news is important enough, it will come to me," is how Steve described the news reading habits of the digital age. He was right. Just look at how many people now learn about significant events on their Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Hollywood gets it right explaining the crime of piracy

This summer, the FBI started off in the right direction by creating an ad to be shown in movie theaters. Rather than take the opportunity to educate young people in a fun and imaginative way like Hollywood's now legendary anti-piracy campaign You wouldn't steal a car! the captive audience got the far less entertaining message that if they provided information leading to the arrest of someone using a laser to target an airplane they could earn a $10,000 reward. The FBI has also posted a four and a half minute video on You Tube. Its no Oscar contender, but hey, its a start.

Educating the masses doesn't have to be rocket science but it takes some creativity. Just ask the great minds behind the #ALSIceBucketChallenge, or good old Albert Einstein. But to keep on doing what doesn't work and what hasn't worked for years, well that's #insane.

Chart courtesy of Patrick Murphy http://www.laserpointersafety.com/

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An Irish friend of mine told me many years ago to think twice before dismissing Michael O’Leary, the face and chief executive of Europe's largest low-cost carrier, Ryanair. At the time, O'Leary was relatively unknown outside of Ireland. And while I took that advice, I have over the years, poked him for his headline-grabbing anticsand the ridiculous, combative and sometimes even vulgar comments he is wont to make.

Flight attendants should learn how to land airplanes so Ryanair could eliminate the second pilot was one outrageous idea he championed. Standing seats should be installed on airplanes in order to make room for more fare-paying passengers was another. His proposal to eliminate the potty on board or charge for its use made O'Leary air travel's bad-boy as the idea ricocheted around the globe.

O’Leary confessed to me those were “Wheeze” statements, (note to readers, wheeze is a British expression for a "clever or amusing scheme or trick uttered to generate publicity" according to audioenglish.org) And while O’Leary may never have considered any of those ideas literally, at a news conference with Boeing held in New York this morning, the former accountant turned airline boss made it clear; all he’s really wanted for Christmas was to get more passengers on his airplanes so he can make more money.

The 737 Max-200 Photo courtesy Boeing

“I feel like a child whose woken on Christmas morning to find Santa has given him exactly what he asked for," O'Leary said in announcing with Boeing's Ray Conner, the airline's planned purchase of 200 Boeing 737 Max-200s.

O'Leary (L) and Conner shake on the purchase deal

Lean, unlined, clean-shaven and with little white hair to speak of, Conner fits no version of Santa Claus I’m familiar with but indeed, to make O’Leary happy, the president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes presided over a redesign of the still-under-development Boeing 737 Max. Add a mid fuselage door, remove one forward and one aft galley and voila, a 197 passenger short-to medium haul airliner.

“If you build the extra seats, we’ll pay extra for the seats,” O’Leary said he told the plane maker. And to make them feel extra special he added, “It’s the first time in the history of Ryanair that we paid a higher price for a new aircraft.”

“It’s entirely justified," O'Leary explained later. "The seven extra seats are worth about a million dollars a year to me,” per plane.

Boeing executives also seem to be feeling a little bit like Christmas arrived early. Of the plane designed for O'Leary, Conner told me, “All the low cost carriers there are around the world, every one is a potential candidate,” for the dash 200.

“It is 20 percent more operating cost advantage and you can take that advantage against any airline flying something with less seats in it."

The news conference, held in New York City’s Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue, was a posh contrast to the no-frills business model on which O’Leary and Boeing are banking. Was it coincidence then that just today Jay Sorensen’s IdeaWorks CarTrawlerYearbook ofAncillary Revenue reported that the amount of money each airline passenger spends over and above the ticket price rose to $16 in 2013? Ryanair ranks 5th among the top ten airlines for ancillary revenue generation, earning $1,689,457,120 last year according to the report.

Perhaps he’s inspired by those eye-popping numbers. Perhaps he’s just feeling generous in light of receiving the gift he’s always wanted, or because he dodged the coal in his stocking that is due to mischievous, bad boys. But before he cleared out of the Palace to meet with investors, O’Leary made a promise to his customers.

“You can assume bathrooms remain on the aircraft and I guarantee free access to all those bathrooms,” he said, adding, the new Ryanair has “run out of road” on wheeze of threatening passengers that they cannot wizz on Ryanair flights. But when I asked if, given his new built-just-for-him airplane, he was ready to give up on all the gimmicks, his denial was clear.

"We just need a new PR wheeze," he said.

No, now would not be the time to dismiss Michael O'Leary.

I spend so much time writing about the safety and economics of aviation every now and then its good to go back and remember that flying was pioneered by risk takers who were motivated by many things, convention and common sense not among them.

The role of adventurers in aviation was very much on my mind while reading Dick Smith's thrill-a-page book, The Earth Beneath Me, the story of his solo helicopter flight from Fort Worth, Texas to Sydney, Australia in 1982.

Smith flies us through a rainbow

I met Smith this past June and flew with him for a not-to-be-forgotten hour. An Enya tune filled our headsets as we climbed above the trees of Sydney's Terrey Hills. Turning towards the ocean Smith directed the helicopter towards Sydney Harbor. Ahead of us, a magnificent rainbow stretched from sea to sky.

I shared a cockpit with him and I know that he was successful in circumnavigating the globe alone in a Bell Jet Ranger, but that did not stop my heart from beating double-time while turning the pages of the journal of his trip the following month. The Earth Beneath Me is filled with fingernail-biting stories and decisions made by weighing risks against benefits and finding only ounces of separation.

Smith masters the selfie; forced down in Baffin Island
Photo courtesy Dick Smith

Prince Charles with Smith's daughter, Haley
Photo courtesy Dick Smith

In The Earth Beneath Me, Smith is often afflicted with get-there-itis especially as he makes his first transoceanic crossing; a flight eastward over the Atlantic to make a previously scheduled appointment with Prince Charles at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Weeks later he nearly has to call the trip to an halt when, after landing the Jet Ranger on a beach on the coast of Malaysia during a tropical storm, the aircraft's skid sinks into waterlogged sand. Air safety woes pile up but the fates keep smiling on Dick Smith.

The book ends on his arrival in Sydney in October. The following May he is back in the air headed eastward to Texas where he lands two months later on July 22, 1983.

A 1987 helicopter trip to the north pole, a history-making fixed wing flight around the world via the poles in 1989 are followed by a change in aircraft and a change in program. Flying a Sikorsky in 1994, his wife, Pip, an accomplished photographer joins him for yet another circuit of the globe. They tell that story in the photo book, Above the World.

Coral and Sophia de Crespigny sit in the backseat

A pilot with a resume like that tends to alleviate any pre-flight jitters so for my June flight, I happily climbed in the left seat of Smith's twin engine AgustaWestland A109 while fellow passengers Coral and Sophia de Crespigny took the seats behind. (If the name de Crespigny sounds familiar that's because Coral and Sophia are the wife and daughter of Richard de Crespigny, an Australian hero pilot and author of his own adventure flying a Qantas Airbus A380 with a couple of busted engines. Read more here and here.)

Smith has two daughters, so I'm going to guess Coral, Sophia and I were not the first of his passengers to get emotional as we hung in the sky over Sydney on that beautiful afternoon. Below us was the loveliest of cities. And one of the most proficient helicopter pilots was our guide to it.

Only later, after he landed the A109 and towed it back into the hangar beside his flower-filled garden did Smith say the words that would give me pause.

"I'm a risk taker and its a drug," he told me when I asked what motivated him to fly here and there in this machine or that from a Cessna Caravan to a hot air balloon. "It's the incredible adrenaline-pumping excitement of 'can you get away with it?'"

Arriving in Australia in 1982. Photo courtesy Dick Smith

A man who has repeatedly tackled the elements and won, financed by the success of not one but two businesses he started from scratch, is not likely to be a modest man and indeed, Smith is not. But while he praises his own risk management skills and the experience gained in thousands of hours at the controls, he is also effusive about contributions of the innovative, American-made machines he's chosen to fly and he credits much of his success to the support and companionship of of his wife, Pip.

Family man, businessman, pilot, adventurer, geographer, photographer, inventor, philanthropist, Dick Smith, is all those things. To my eye, he is also an illustration of flying's glorious contradictions. Science and art, business and sport, simple and complicated, heart-racing, heart-stopping and heart-breaking.

On arrival in Australia.
Photo courtesy Dick Smith

Flying into a rainbow over Sydney

Pip and Dick Smith, the de Crespigny women and me
in the Smith home
in Terrey Hills

Far from dismissing three safety events on Japanese Boeing 787 Dreamliners as mysteries that will go forever unresolved, the nation's safety authority has issued a series of recommendations to Boeing, and the Federal Aviation Administration that suggest the two entities don't fully understand the ways the volatile lithium ion batteries and their chargers can fail.

The Japan Transport Safety Board (along with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board) has been looking into what happened on board three Japanese airliners in 2013 and 2014 to cause the revolutionary new airplane's lithium ion batteries to fail. This resulted in smoke, fire and a lot of panic among passengers not to mention the global aviation industry. After the first two events two weeks apart in 2013, the 787 was grounded from January to April.

JTSB's Goto

In telling reporters earlier this week that "Maybe we have not found the cause but we have a workable solution," Norihiro Goto the JTSB chief makes it clear the board's just-released final report is not the final word.

Instead, the report, released in English on September 25, says during its examination of the batteries and charging devices and a lengthy series of tests, the investigators learned that the battery system performed in unexpected ways, "outside of the design envelope".

On board JAL's Dreamliner in 2012

In short, the Japanese are saying that the 787 Dreamliner, 180 or so of which are now flying around the globe on ultra long haul operations, hours from an emergency landing airport, continues to baffle the scientists and engineers who designed it and those who supervise its safety.

This may come as a surprise to those who took the FAA at its word that in issuing the "special condition" back in 2007 that first allowed volatile lithium ion batteries to fly, it and Boeing exhaustively studied, comprehended and mitigated the dangers. But in the report, the Japanese say, the safety of the lithium ion batteries was overstated. In one of several recommendations it makes to the American safety agency the JTSB asks it to reassess its earlier "inappropriate calculation of the failure rate."

To me, the most significant failure noted by the JTSB was in performing tests prior to certification of the 787, Boeing did not replicate how the battery and charger would be installed on the airplane.

The Dreamliner battery brace bar photo courtesy JTSB

In the set-up for certification the battery was not grounded. The JTSB has come to conclude that when the first cell on ANA flight 804 failed, there was arcing to the stainless steel bar bracing the battery box, electrifying it and leading to the thermal runaway. This does not explain the initiation of the first cell failure, but does suggest how it got out of hand leading to the emergency landing.

Who can answer why the earlier tests conducted by Boeing and ostensibly approved by the FAA were different from how the lithium ion batteries would ultimately be assembled in the aircraft? Whatever, the report concludes that the battery standards "do not appropriately address the electric environment."

Further, the battery charger performed in ways that threaten the ability of the lithium ion batteries to provide emergency power for plane, which is, curiously, one of their most important functions. The FAA and Boeing need to "improve" that, the report says.

The ANA battery examined

In its conclusion, the Japanese say the use of lithium batteries in flight should be reviewed in light of the actual failure rate, not the optimistic one put forward by Boeing. And in a tone, not unlike the way I would speak to my misbehaving children, it offers that in the future, the FAA should require that equipment tests simulate actual flight operations. (These suggestions were in part, reinforced by the French Bureau d' Enquents et d' Analyses, included in a letter to the JTSB at the conclusion of the report.)

So, no, there's no answer to the question "what initiated the battery event" on the ANA Flight that sent passengers scrambling down the emergency evacuation slides on a winter day at Takamatsu Airport in 2013. But there's enough what-could-have-been discussed the report to send a lot of airplane designers and safety experts back to take another look at the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. And that's without knowing what the NTSB intends to conclude about the Japan Airlines event in Boston.

But it is a far, far different summation of the Dreamliner's airworthiness than what the FAA concluded earlier this year. To understand why that reminds me of Woody Allen's views of sex, click here.

Nils Haupt hosts salon on MH 370 mystery

Last month at the invitation of Nils Haupt, Lufthansa's former head of North American PR, I spoke to a small group of aviation and business writers about the book I have been contracted to write about the disappearance of MH 370 and other aviation mysteries. It was thrilling to be questioned about my theories and my experiences covering the story for ABC News from Malaysia, by people who had given the subject a lot of thought.

With me that night, was Emily Baker, the acquisitions editor at Penguin who purchased the book and who, to my delight, is a big aviation geek. Don't ask her about Amelia Earhart unless you have a lot of time on your hands.

But the time for salon talks is drawing to an end. This weekend, I will blubber like a baby at the wedding of my daughter, watch her and her new husband Elliot Speed head off on their honeymoon, then leave for Australia and the annual seminar of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators. A number of the people actively involved in the search for the missing airliner will be presenting papers.

Yes, the time for talk is over. The reading, researching and yes, even the writing has begun. Because I intend to bring you along during the process, I thought I'd review the tools I've acquired and a review of their usefulness.

Readin' - Samir Kohli, a pilot, air safety investigator and the 2014 recipient of the Flight Safety Foundation's Cecil A. Brownlow award, has penned Into Oblivion, Understanding MH#370, a comprehensive book explaining the theories, technology and science related to Malaysia Flight 370. He drills deep to explain aspects of the air travel infrastructure allowing readers to come to their own conclusions about the likelihood of certain theories about the mystery.

Kohli at an ISASI conference in 2011

Kohli's book is too dense to be a hit with the general public and the grammar errors are rampant. I've rolled my eyes at editors in the past, but Kohli could have used a more aggressive one, that's for sure. Nevertheless, this is an excellent resource book. Samir Kohli, Welcome to my bibliography.

Researchin' - I actually read Into Oblivion on my Lenovo Yoga Ultrabook. The latest, slimmest, lightest laptop computer I've ever owned, which converts into a large Windows 8 based tablet for reading books like Kohli's. I've owned Lenovos for years because I have found them hard-working, ultra-reliable and user friendly. The Yoga, provided to me by Lenovo this spring, accompanied me on my trip around the world in June, and will be in my backpack for my second global venture beginning later this month.

Perhaps it is because I am a woman of a certain age, but I am feeling simpatico with the benefits and the flaws of my Yoga. It is my only computer. I take it on the road with just one accessory, a Kensington bluetooth mouse. At home, I dock the laptop, hooking it up to my Samsung monitor, Dell keyboard and mouse. It is a seamless operation but I am not enthused by all of the personality traits that Yoga and I share.

On the upside, I’m blessed/cursed with an abundant energy supply and so is the Yoga. The battery lasts a good six hours with multiple programs running and splendid wifi reception. When the “plug in your charger” message appears, don't mess around; the computer will turn off without a second warning. Yeah, I can be snappish too.

Having raised 4 children, I know its important to be a multi-functional power source for others. So is the laptop. It can juice any USB powered device even when it's turned off so long as it is plugged into the wall.

Age and experience have enabled me to make wiser choices. I no longer believe I have to be everything to everybody. Likewise, my Lenovo has given up on the center crank hinge that turned the laptop into a tablet and now does an age-defying 360 degree bend, stopping enroute to become a tabletop monitor or a full-sized tablet. Yoga anyone?

On my Yoga in Addis Ababa

Sometimes, as a reporter, I have to attack a problem from multiple directions. The Yoga is equally flexible. It has a touch screen which is just so intuitive both in the way it harkens back to working with paper and in how it gives the user the ability to push documents and photos around to focus on or expand. There is also a trackpad and eraser pointer, but I don’t like working with them at all.

Sure, I too can be reactive, overly sensitive and irritable. This is another middle-aged lady quirk. But the track pad is just plain squirrely, not just hard to get accustomed to; impossible to figure out. Sometimes the right click works with a tap on the right corner, sometimes it does not. Fifty percent of the time I inadvertently call up the Windows 8 menu bar and have to backtrack. Other times, it reacts so quickly, entire blocks of text are highlighted and deleted.

I've spent a lifetime trying to keep my weight down and travel well. My Yoga is just three pounds, making it easy to tote around in a backpack. This is the first version of the laptop that is light enough so that I don't have to think twice about bringing it with me anywhere if I think I'll have a few spare moments to work. That's a weight reduction, worth bragging about.

Writin' - When I showed up at the physical therapist complaining about pain in my neck, back and arm, the first thing he wanted was a photo of me working at my desk and he was not pleased with what he saw. One cannot spend hours a day twisted like a pretzel over a child's school desk without repercussions, he told me. Pain being a tremendous motivator, I had a new glass-topped standing desk installed in my office before the week was out.

I am enormously pleased with my new Rebel Desk. It converts from a 28 inch high conventional desk to a 48 inch high standing work platform with a hand crank. The process of changing the height takes about 30 seconds. A power supply mounted on the side gives me 2 USB and two regular power plugs.

Since placing it at the window overlooking my garden last month, I've spent about equal amounts of time sitting and standing and both positions are more comfortable so I find I am more productive.

Haupt (L) with Emily Baker and Alberto Riva

This may be a terrible thing for a writer to admit, but I've long felt that I am ill-suited to this profession. Its sedentary nature conflicts with ants-in-my-pants me. So I'm excited with the possibilities of the Rebel Desk because it allows me to stand - and wait for it - with the optional treadmill, even gives me the opportunity to burn some of that energy while writing.

If ever a tool provided both the reality and the metaphor for moving forward with a project, my new Rebel Desk is it. Emily at Penguin will be glad to hear that.

After three episodes of seats separating from the track on American Airlines flights in 2012, the Dallas-based carrier may have thought its maintenance woes were out of the public eye. Note I did not say that its woes were over, only that the spotlight was off.

That changed Tuesday when American Airlines Flight 2293, a Boeing 757 en route to Dallas, returned to San Francisco after interior cabin panels separated in flight.

James Wilson, a passenger on the flight from Kyle, Texas told Associated Press passengers watched in horror as the wall along Row 14 split "from the floor to the ceiling."

"It sounded like it was popping and banging so loud at first I thought stuff was coming from the overhead compartments," he told reporters.

After a first announcing the flight would continue to Dallas, Wilson said the crew then decided to turn the flight around and land back at SFO. The plane would be ferried empty to American's maintenance base in Tulsa according to an airline spokesman.

Whether the event was just startling or a serious safety risk is debatable. But this is only the most recent maintenance event on American's airliners over the past months.

In July, the airline issued a special bulletin to its mechanics after two Boeing 737s and two MD-80s flew with access doors or panels open or missing. Failing to secure an engine cowling on one of the 737s resulted in repairs costing the airline more than a half million dollars, the advisory reports. The event, reported in the Aviation Herald, occurred in April of this year.

In another episode, a hydraulic service door was not latched properly by a security agent and was not noticed prior to takeoff. In the flight from Miami to Brazil, the unsecured door caused the over wing slide to deploy in flight resulting in nearly $3 million in damages.

These reports reach me as I gaze out over the tranquil sea from a conference room in Adelaide, Australia where I am attending the International Society of Air Safety Investigators annual seminar. The room is filled with people engaged in spirited debate over how to make an astonishingly safe commercial aviation industry even safer.

Is reducing hazards about culture or climate? Can safety compete as a priority with profits? These are intellectually stimulating discussions until news likes this from American Airlines intrudes to remind us of the unrelenting, persistent and frustrating reality that talking is not enough; safe skies are darned hard accomplish and just as difficult to maintain.

Flight attendant Kama Iona, on an Ohana by Hawaiian flight

When I peeled back the foil on my in flight meal somewhere over the Pacific between Tokyo and Honolulu, I was not thrilled to discover a thin sheet of seaweed, a rectangular wad of rice and a chunky slice of spam. "This can't be a traditional Hawaiian dish," I harrumphed. "Where are the Waikiki meatballs with pineapple?" But the funny thing about authentic cuisine is that sometimes it has a way of undoing Betty Crocker-inspired notions of what various cultures eat.

Turns out Spam Musubi is a traditional island favorite. Judging from the hearty appreciation for the dish shown by my fellow travelers on Hawaiian Flight 458, it is also popular among the hordes of Japanese who flock to the island at a rate that necessitates various airlines sending a total of 18 jumbo jets to Honolulu per day, according to Hawaiian Airlines' president and CEO, Mark Dunkerley.

"It's on a scale that people don't appreciate," he told me of the Japanese fascination with all things Hawaii during a wide ranging conversation in his office on Monday. I am visiting the company HQ because I've been intrigued by the airline since reporting for The New York Times in June of 2013 about its new service from New York to Auckland via Honolulu. Only this east to Pacific route is new. Hawaiian operates from 11 US gateways on the mainland and offers service to six international destinations from its base in Oahu.

"Japan, Korea, Australia, people there have a positive view of Hawaii and we benefit from that," Dunkerely told me. "It creates a demand that we try to meet."

I might have thought that Hawaiian was looking to create a tropical, Dubai-like transfer hub here in one of American's most beautiful and culturally exotic cities, by providing onward service to New Zealand, Australia, and other points east, but Dunkerley set me straight.

Dunkerley accepts ukulele from Reyes in Molokai

"Our raison d'etre is to sell Hawaii as a destination. Our product is focused on that destination. We differential ourselves from our competitors who want to be all things to all people but are clearly not that."

Hawaiian comfort food like Spam Musubi is part of the differentiation and it doesn't stop there. The marketing plan may have started out with the airline wanting to give slices of the Hawaiian life to travelers, but when executives resumed long-idled service between Honolulu and the sparsely populated islands of Lanai and Molokai, the locals wanted to make their own cultural contribution.

Molokai residents Kauila Reyes and Julie Hoe presented Dunkerley with three ukuleles; one for each of the ATR 42s to be flown on the routes. They are intended to be used by any passenger who gets a hankering to play on the brief flights. Don't let it get dusty, Hoe told the airline bosses. "Bring it out and jam."

Vic Walters (L) and Tim Komberec of Empire with Hawaiian's Watt (center) and the ukuleles

The gift thrilled Dunkerely, Ohana executive Haddon Watt and Empire Airlines, the Idaho-based company which holds the lift contract with Hawaiian. "We must be the only airline in the world that has a ukulele as inflight entertainment," Dunkerely told me.

For both Dunkerely and Watt, Hawaii is an adopted home with a potent identity that has proven seductive. Here in the state many Americans seem to forget, Hawaiian is attempting to elevate generic air travel to something unique, not unlike Icelandair and Ethiopian which have also had success incorporating their identity into their marketing programs.

No one was inclined to play the ukulele on my flight to Lanai on Monday, but to be fair, tourists occupied most of the seats and they can be shy. After we landed, however, first officer Tyler Westhoff did agree to strum it for me, while insisting if his wife was around to sing, they could have really put on a show.

Again this month, the International Air Transport Association announced another hike in the number of people traveling by air. How would the industry could keep up with this continued growth without the big and oftentimes, bland legacy carriers? They have their place. At the same time, seaweed-wrapped spam and ukuleles are tiny but powerful reminders of how creative companies can put some of the joy back in the journey.

Flight 345 on the runway NTSB photo

The Southwest Airlines captain who flew a Boeing 737 into the runway nose first at LaGuardia Airport last summer had been on the receiving end of multiple complaints by first officers at the airline who did not want to fly with her, according to an employee at the airline who asked not to be identified. The process, called a bid avoidance, is not unique to Southwest. Delta Air Lines, United and others also give their pilots a way to opt out of sharing the cockpit with captains they find difficult to work with.

Brandy King, a spokeswoman for the airline explained as part of its labor contract with pilots, first officers can "express a preference not to fly with up to three captains without the necessity of providing any reason for such preference." She told me, "the program is not intended to address safety concerns."

It's not clear to me that all pilots understand that distinction. One who filed two bids to avoid other captains over the years described something close to a dysfunctional atmosphere when flying with them. One captain, "actively degraded you personally throughout the entire flight, second guessing every decision you did." In the second instance, the senior pilot was "intentionally non compliant".

The National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating what happened on Flight 345 to make the plane go crashing nose wheel landing gear-first, onto runway 4 on a grey day in July 2013.

Damage to Runway 4 NTSB photo

It will be examining why the crew did not initiate a go-around after the captain noticed the airspeed was for flaps 40° even though the flaps were set at 30°, below 1000 feet on final approach. A summary of her three-hour interview with the NTSB investigators says, the captain considered doing a go-around and that "by the book, it would have been".

It is not hard to imagine this accident being tagged with the dreaded "pilot error", but the way this particular captain presumably made other subordinate pilots feel on the flight deck, should not be discounted as unique. Every airline has the kind of pilot, best described in Skygods, Robert Gandt's book on the collapse of aviation giant, Pan Am. Call them arrogant, call them as----s as my friend did, whatever you call them, they are pilots for whom communication and collaboration better known as crew resource management, did not take root and flourish.

"There are certain people who should not be flying airplanes," an airline pilot told me. "They're qualified but not adaptable," to create and execute a shared view of a successful flight.

I've harangued before on the fallacy of using pilot error as a probable cause in accidents but that doesn't mean sometimes the pilots aren't a contributing factor. Even more reason then that when an airline has information about difficult captains it should use it to provide said captains with more training, counseling or if necessary, to show them the door, before a difficult situation becomes a catastrophe.

There is "lots of stuff here that no one wants to talk about," an airline captain recently told me. And indeed, the Air Line Pilots Association declined to speak to me when I put questions about this policy to the union on Tuesday. The opt-out practice at Southwest is part of the pilot labor agreement.

Southwest Airlines says giving first officers the ability to decline to fly with captains does not require them to declare the reason, which is a shame since Southwest and every other airline doing this could be sitting on a treasure trove of information about whether crew resource management is being purposefully ignored or simply misunderstood.

From a United pilot comes this troubling comment, "I have always thought that this was a fundamental threat to safe operations when recalcitrant pilots are not remediated by management. And trust me, they know who these people are!"

"These avoidance bid things, they are a clear indication of CRM failures," my friend at Southwest told me of Flight 345, which cost the pilot her job, destroyed the 13-year old airplane, injured nine, but took no lives. "It doesn’t get handed to you on a silver platter better than this."

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