Aviation News

Two pilots from Australia and New Zealand are believed to be among four survivors of a plane crash in Papua New Guinea in which up to 28 people died.

The Airlines PNG Dash 8 plane, carrying 32 people, crashed in dense forest on Papua New Guinea’s north coast about 5pm local time (6pm AEDT) on Thursday.

It was on a flight from Lae, PNG’s second largest city, to the resort centre of Madang, when it crashed near the mouth of the Gogol River, about 20km south-east of Madang.

The aircraft was believed to be carrying parents of students attending the Divine Word University in Madang, for a thanksgiving ceremony this weekend.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says initial indications are that no Australians are among those killed, but that an Australian and a New Zealander were pilots on the flight and had survived the crash.

It could not confirm early reports that two Australians were among three crew to survive the crash.

Local firefighter Joe Dunar said the crash happened at Gogol, about 50km outside of Madang.

“All the police and hospital personnel, they attended at about 9pm (8pm AEDT),” he said.

“It was hard to get there. Very dense.”

He declined to comment on reports of survivors.

Villagers near Madang told the National Broadcasting Commission, PNG’s government-owned radio station, there were four survivors.

Duty manager at the Madang Resort, Donald Lambert, told AAP that six of the plane’s occupants – one passenger and five crew – had booked to stay at the resort.

“I went to meet them at the airport,” he said.

Residents in Madang said there was a violent storm in the area at the time of the crash.

Airlines PNG confirmed one of its Dash 8 aircraft had crashed and said it had grounded its fleet of 12 aircraft until further notice.

In a statement on its website, the airline said there were 28 passengers and four crew members on the plane and there appeared to be some survivors, while a number of people remained unaccounted for.

“We are sad to confirm that there has been an accident involving an Airlines PNG Dash 8 aircraft near Madang late Thursday afternoon,” the airline’s media statement said.

“Airlines PNG is working with the emergency service authorities to confirm this information in more detail.”

The airline said it had grounded its Dash 8 fleet of 12 aircraft until further notice and it was cooperating with authorities to mount rescue and recovery efforts.

It said a full investigation was under way by authorities and Airlines PNG about the possible cause of the accident.

“Our prayers and thoughts are now with all those affected by this very sad day for Papua New Guinea,” the statement said.

source: http://news.smh.com.au/

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Gulf Air, Bahrain’s national carrier, on Wednesday became the first airline in the world to offer passengers global live TV onboard after it took delivery of its first A330-200 aircraft fitted with Panasonic Avionics Corporation’s (Panasonic) Global Communications Suite, the airline said.

The comprehensive communications and entertainment solution, ‘Sky Hub’, offers passengers onboard full broadband connectivity to access internet, mobile phone services and, for the first time in the world, a global live television service onboard. The Global Communications Suite is being installed across Gulf Air’s entire fleet of aircraft progressively.

“It is another important milestone in our customer service journey as we unveil our latest inflight entertainment system, ‘Sky Hub’ on our fleet,” Samer Majali, Gulf Air Chief Executive Officer, said as he unveiled the ‘Sky Hub’ onboard the aircraft to the media and senior Bahrain civil aviation officials.

“We are bringing to you, for the first time in the world, fully integrated broadband connectivity offering high speed internet with high speed Wi-Fi and data services, voice over the internet (VOIP), streaming videos and the world’s first in-flight live TV satellite stream across continents.”

Gulf Air, in tune with the fast-paced economy, is providing the fastest, affordable and unlimited internet and mobile access onboard for our customers to stay fully connected in the air and we are pleased to be the first in the industry to offer our customers a connected airline, he said.

“I am sure this avant-garde, cutting-edge technology will fundamentally change our passengers’ communication and entertainment experience onboard setting a new standard for in-flight entertainment” Majali said.

Using Panasonic’s Global Communications Suite, Gulf Air will offer two-way broadband connectivity at speeds of up to 50 Mbps to the aircraft, enabling faster browsing, chatting and other internet based services.

“We will offer deeply immersive, content-rich entertainment in addition to live, uninterrupted television services on routes across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Travelers will no longer have to wait in anxiety until they land to find out scores from their favorite sporting events or news from around the world. Now they can watch their favorite football teams on IMG Media’s Barclays Premier League channel or keep up with world events on favorite news channels such as BBC World News, BBC Arabic and Euronews,” Gulf Air said.

Passengers also will be able to browse the web at broadband speeds, and access social media services such as Facebook and Twitter.

In addition, business travellers can access their virtual private network (VPN) to send and receive emails while watching live-news and stock market updates at 35,000 feet.

They simply need to turn on their personal device, connect to the in-flight Wi-Fi network, and log onto the service through Deutsche Telekom, the wireless internet service provider onboard.

source: http://gulfnews.com

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The US government’s unmanned Predator and Reaper drones are continuing to fly remote missions overseas despite a computer virus that has infected the plane’s US-based cockpits, according to one source familiar with the infection.

Government officials are still investigating whether the virus is benign, and how it managed to infect the heavily protected computer systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where US pilots remotely fly the planes on their missions over Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

“Something is going on, but it has not had any impact on the missions overseas,” said the source, who was not authorised to speak publicly.

Armed tactical unmanned planes have become an increasingly valuable tool used by the US government to track and attack individuals and small groups overseas, but the virus underscores the vulnerability of such systems to attacks on the computer networks used to fly them from great distances.

Wired magazine first reported the virus infection on its website on Friday in the US and said it was logging pilots’ every keystroke as they remotely flew missions over Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Wired said the problem was first detected nearly two weeks ago by the US military’s Host-Based Security System, but there were no confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source.

The virus had resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, Wired said, quoting network security specialists.

The US military and intelligence communities have used Predator and Reaper drones, built by privately held General Atomics in San Diego, to carry out increasingly precise attacks on top Al Qaeda officials and other US targets in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Last week, US officials confirmed that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric linked to Al Qaeda, was killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen.

In August, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, Atiyah abd al-Rahman was killed in a drone strike in northwest Pakistan. Ilyas Kashmiri, an alleged leader of both al Qaeda and one of its Pakistan-based affiliates, was killed in a suspected US drone strike in June.

The US military has achieved its goal of flying 60 combat air patrols overseas with the unmanned planes, according to one US defence official.

The CIA now operates Predator and Reaper unmanned aircraft over at least five countries including Yemen, Afghanistan and Libya.

For some very important security reasons, the EU has added to its blacklist of airlines, the machines of two airlines from Ghana. The blacklisted airlines may in future not be allowed to land in Europe, for safety reasons.

According to the EU experts in Brussels the airlines are due to some acute security reasons not worthy for flights to Europe. The EU has therefore set those two airlines from Ghana to its blacklist.
The two Airlines are, THE MERIDIAN AIRWAYS which has been given a complete ban on flights to Europe because the company had failed the inspection of both the aircraft and several ground facilities. The second airline which is, AIRLIFT INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY has three of his machines affected, with serious deficiencies noted. However a fourth aircraft of the Airlift Int. society may continue to fly (to and) in Europe.

The EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said that should be allowed in the flight safety without compromise. “If we have evidence that the flight operations of airlines is not safe, we must interfere.”

The blacklist of the EU was first published in 2006 and now updated 15 times. A total of 278 companies from 17 countries are covered with a flight ban.

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