Aviation News

Two men were arrested Wednesday night at Miami International Airport after one punched an American Airlines pilot on a flight headed to San Francisco, an American Airlines spokesman said.

Flight 1755 was taxiing out of the Miami airport at about 9 p.m. Wednesday when one passenger failed to comply with flight crew instructions and seemed intoxicated, airline spokesman Tim Smith said.

The plane returned to the gate and the man deplaned without incident, but then the second man, who was traveling with the first man, got involved, Smith said.

“(Crew) didn’t want that to escalate in the air,” he said.

The second passenger walked onto the jet bridge and police were called. Just before police arrived, the second passenger punched the pilot a couple of times, Smith said.

At the time of the assault, the pilot had been walking to the gate to discuss flight logistics, not to deal with the passenger, Smith said. The pilot was checked out by paramedics and declined further treatment.

After the pilot was punched, Dade County authorities arrested both men. Because assaulting an airline crewmember is a federal offense, the FBI is now involved in the investigation, Smith said.

No other passengers were involved, though some of the passengers at the front of the plane went to see if they could be of assistance before police arrived, Smith said.

A few hours later, the flight was able to take off and arrived at SFO early this morning, Smith said.

source: http://millbrae.patch.com

A technical fault with a type of wing flap on a Qantas jumbo left 341 passengers stranded in Hong Kong airport for almost 15 hours overnight after the airline was unable to find accommodation for them.

“There was some sort of conference in town and all the hotels were fully booked,” a Qantas spokeswoman said this morning.

“Our ground staff tried a number of options, including dividing up the group of passengers to try to get them into a range of hotels but there was no accommodation available,” she said. “They tried everything.”

That left a planeload of passengers waiting in the terminal for hours, after it became clear the aircraft fault could not be readily fixed.

The plane, a Boeing 747, had flown the QF30 route from London to Hong Kong on Wednesday evening, and had touched down in Hong Kong at 5:20pm yesterday.

A fault was found with an aileron — a type of flap — on one of the aircraft’s wings, during pre-flight checks in the 90-minute turnaround period in preparation for its leg to Melbourne.

The Qantas spokeswoman was unable to say whether the problem was electrical, hydraulic or mechanical, but it could not be immediately fixed.

Qantas issued blankets and food vouchers to passengers, as they settled in for an enforced break on hard airport floors or bench seats.

Travellers with children were granted Qantas lounge access, turning it into an impromptu child-minding centre.

As morning dawned today, Qantas had put another plane into service, bumping 243 passengers from the outbound QF29 Hong Kong-London flight.

They had to be found flights with alternative airline that are partners with Qantas in the Oneworld alliance.

The Melbourne-bound passengers left Hong Kong this morning after 8am local time.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A pilot aboard an Asiana Airlines cargo plane that crashed Thursday in waters off a southern South Korean resort island reported a fire just before losing contact with air traffic workers, an official said.

The pilot yelled “Cargo fire!” and “Emergency!” about 10 minutes before the plane disappeared from radar screens, according to an air traffic official who declined to be named because the investigation was ongoing.

The plane also signaled an emergency to Jeju International Airport on the resort island, where it was trying to land, the official said.

The South Korean pilot, identified by the airline as Choi Sang-ki, was flying a Boeing-747 with a co-pilot, transporting computers, semiconductors, resin solution and paint among other items to Pudong in China, the airline said.

Asiana Airlines said the cargo had been loaded in line with international air transport regulations.

Five coast guard patrol boats and four helicopters searched the area for signs of the pilot and the co-pilot, Jeju coast guard spokesman Choi Kyu-mo said.

The coast guard recovered part of a wing with an Asiana Airlines logo on it, life jackets and parts of a pilot seat, the coast guard said in a statement.

The plane took off from South Korea’s Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, according to the airline.

Asiana officials got a report early Thursday morning from the pilot that the plane was having mechanical difficulties and would try to make its way to the Jeju island’s airport, said Jason Kim, a spokesman for Asiana.

Officials then lost contact with the plane and asked the South Korean coast guard to investigate, Kim said. The airline also sent its own emergency specialists to the area.

South Korea has been lashed with extraordinarily heavy rain this week, with landslides and floods killing dozens and causing havoc. Kim said it was unclear whether the weather was a factor.

Coast guard officials said there was no rain in the area but stronger-than-normal wind.

North and South Korea are in a tense military standoff across their heavily armed border, but there was nothing to indicate that the crash had any military connection.

Asiana Airlines was in the news last month when two South Korean marines fired rifles at an Asiana plane carrying 119 people.

South Korea’s military later apologized, saying the marines mistook the plane for a North Korean military aircraft. The military said it planned to strengthen training so troops can better distinguish civilian planes. Officials said the plane wasn’t in range of the rifle fire.

A Dubai-bound Emirates flight with 202 passengers and crew on board made an emergency landing in Mumbai on Wednesday after fuel leaked from one of its engines, the Press Trust of India reported.

The Airbus A330 aircraft was carrying 187 passengers, including an infant, and 15 crew members, the Dubai-based airline told the news agency.

“The Mumbai-Dubai Emirates flight EK507 returned to the Mumbai airport shortly after takeoff due to a technical issue,” an airline spokesman said.

The airline did not disclose the nature of the problem.

But PTI quoted an unnamed source as saying fuel was leaking from one of the engines and the airline had to jettison fuel in mid-air to ensure a safe landing.

“Following a crisis call from the Emirates flight, the air traffic controller declared a full landing emergency at the airport” but the flight landed safely, a spokesman for Mumbai International Airport told PTI.