Aviation News

A DISABLED passenger has accused airline staff of breaking his leg while transporting him during a stopover.

David Joya is suing Aerovias De Mexico, operating as Aeromexico, over the February incident, local media reported.

According to the complaint filed in court an Aeromexico employee handled Mr Joya “aggressively” during a stopover in Mexico, where he was transported from one plane to another.

The traveller claims that this resulted in his broken leg. He is suing the airline for negligence and failing to provide comfort and service promised.

The amount he is seeking in damages has not been revealed but includes medical expenses and court fees.  The case is being heard at Harris Country District Court, US.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au

Airbus SAS, the world’s biggest commercial planemaker, will continue to ramp up jetliner production “progressively” as orders climb, the head of parent company European Aeronautic, Defence & Space said today.

“The market is very good for the time being,” EADS Chief Executive Officer Louis Gallois said in an interview. The jet market “goes up and down” and Airbus is tapping current demand by “increasing the production rate of all our planes,” he said.

Airbus won more orders in the first half than in the whole of 2010 while handing over 258 planes to customers, only eight more than in the first six months of 2010, it said July 7. The Toulouse, France-based company will carry on boosting output of its A320, A330 and A380 models to manage the backlog, Gallois said at the opening of a factory in Ghimbav, central Romania.

A380 superjumbo output will reach 25 planes this year, Gallois said, declining to disclose the rate for 2012 because it’s “market-sensitive.” Production of the widebody A330 is at 8.5 a month and will rise to 10 by mid-2013, while the single-aisle A320 will go from 38 jets a month in August to 42 in the second part of next year, he reiterated.

Airbus, the No. 1 planemaker since overtaking Boeing in 2003, is ramping up the build rate as airlines and leasing companies refresh their fleets with more fuel-efficient planes.

Boeing produced 31.5 of its 737 narrowbodies in March and that’s set to rise in two steps to 38 by 2013 and as high as 42 later. The Chicago-based company delivered 222 planes in the first half, unchanged from a year earlier.

Romanian investment

EADS’s Premium Aerotec unit is spending more than 40 million euros ($US56 million) on the Ghimbav factory, which will manufacture and assemble metal parts for the A320, A330 and A380 models, Gallois said. Romania will provide 19.4 million euros of funding by 2013, when the plant reaches full production, Finance Minister Gheorghe Ialomitianu told reporters at a briefing.

“Romania is the country where we have invested the most, besides our home countries,” Gallois said. EADS may also consider investment to make helicopter parts, he said.

Premium Aerotec was spun off as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Paris- and Munich-based EADS in 2009.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au

The Antonov-24 belonging to the Angara airline was carrying 37 passengers and crew today between Tomsk and Surgut when an engine caught fire, forcing it to ditch in the Ob river in the Tomsk region of Siberia, the investigative committee said in a statement.

“According to preliminary information, five people died and the fate of two more is unknown,” investigators said, adding that the passengers included a baby.

“The crew said an engine was on fire and announced on the radio their intention to make an emergency landing,” a spokesman for the Russian civil aviation agency, Sergei Izvolsky, told AFP.

“As a result, the plane received considerable damage, with the tail ripped off and the fuselage damaged,” the regional transport prosecutors said in a statement.

Rescuers had pulled out five bodies from the plane, all of them passengers, the prosecutors said in a statement.

This afternoon, the plane was still lying in shallow water close to the river bank, with its tail section broken off, Russian television reported.

There were 35 confirmed casualties, including five dead, as divers searched for the bodies of two more missing in the section underwater, the emergencies minister Sergei Shoigu told Medvedev, the Interfax news agency reported.

Medvedev said in televised comments that the Antonov-24 plane should be subject to the same measures as another Soviet airliner, the TU-134, which he ordered last month to be withdrawn by 2012 after a deadly crash.

“Everything I said recently about the TU-134 is just as applicable to the AN-24,” Medvedev said.

“Since we are changing our fleet of planes, I suggest the same approach should be applied to the AN-24,” he said, while calling for a total transport review due to the Volga tour boat accident on Sunday that left 100 people missing and presumed dead.

The AN-24 plane is a plane used for transport and regional airlines, which has been in service since the early 1960s. The last plane was built in 1979, but several hundred remain in service in the ex-Soviet Union and Africa.

The crash comes less than a month after 47 people died when a Tupolev 134 plane crashlanded onto a highway in the northern region of Karelia on June 20 after the pilot apparently missed the runway in bad weather.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au

THE same pilot was at the controls during the two recent safety scares that led to the grounding of Tiger Airways.

The Australian pilot, understood to be based at Avalon, was flying a Tiger Airbus aircraft on both occasions when it flew too low during landing approaches at Avalon and Melbourne.

The two safety breaches were the final straw for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, which suspended Tiger’s licence to fly in Australia due to safety concerns.

Sources close to the investigations into the incidents told The Sunday Telegraph the captain was an experienced pilot who had flown Airbus A340s for Emirates before joining Tiger 18 months ago.

Two sources confirmed he was in charge when the aircraft breached minimum altitude requirements on June 7 and 30.

CASA, which had previously ordered Tiger to demonstrate why its operations certificate should not be revoked, reacted swiftly after the second low-flying breach, immediately grounding the low-cost carrier. The earliest the airline can fly is August 1, which will cost the company an estimated $18 million.

Australian Federation of Air Pilots industrial relations manager Lawrie Cox defended the pilot, but conceded “human error” in the cockpit had played a role in the breaches.

“They (CASA) are claiming that it (the low-flying incidents) was the straw that broke the camel’s back, but both of the incidents have been investigated and part of the investigation process has also been about the safety management processes at Tiger,” he said.

“The two incidents have been used as part of the excuse for the grounding. It’s our view that the Tiger pilot group is very experienced.”

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau last week released an interim report into the earlier incident at Tullamarine. It blamed conflicting navigation information for cockpit confusion that led to the jet dipping to 2000ft in a minimum 2500ft zone over Epping in Melbourne’s east.

Mr Cox said Tiger suspended the pilots from flying for two days while it launched an internal investigation.

Three weeks later, the same captain was flying a different A320 when it dropped to 900ft below the 2500ft limit on approach to Avalon Airport.

“At no stage was there any risk of crash or hitting terrain or anything associated with that,” Mr Cox said.

Tiger refused to comment.