Boeing and EADS Airbus at odds over black boxes

The world's two largest commercial aircraft manufacturers are at odds over equipping planes with black boxes that eject from planes, making them easier to find in the event of an ocean crash.

Airbus is nearly ready to equip airliners with data and cockpit voice recorders that eject so that they can float to the ocean's surface instead of becoming trapped in wreckage, Pascal Andrei, the French aircraft maker's chief product security officer, told a forum of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday.

Boeing, Airbus' chief rival, has no plans to include such recorders in its planes, Mark Smith, an accident investigator for the aircraft maker, told the safety board.

Such recorders are prone to ejecting accidentally and creating a safety risk, he warned.

Black boxes are equipped with an emergency locator transmitter that would be easier to detect if they are floating on the water's surface.

Questions about whether airliners should be equipped with deployable black boxes arose after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared in March.

The Boeing 777 with 239 people on board still has not been found.

"We can say today that we are quite confident on this solution," Andrei said Tuesday. Airbus is working with its suppliers, he said.

"Something would come very soon after some more studies and assessments," he said.

A slide presentation provided by Andrei indicated Airbus plans to include the deployable recorders in its A350 and A380 airliners, which are designed for long-haul flights over ocean.

Based on previous searchers for planes missing in the ocean, Smith estimated there will be only one accident every 10 years involving a commercial airliner in which black boxes that eject would be useful.

On the other hand, five or six accidental ejections are likely each year, he said.

Boeing 777 and 737 cockpit display change: WiFi threat to pilots' display

The affected Boeing control panel displays are susceptible to interference from Wi-Fi devices intended for routine use by many pilots during flights, according to the FAA document. 

Credit: Getty Images

New electronic display units are to be fitted in the cockpits of Boeing 737 and 777 airliners to address fears that Wi-Fi signals might cause them to go blank in flight.

In an airworthiness directive published Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the switchover involves 1,149 late-model 737s and 177 777s in the United States alone.

The Federal Aviation Administration's safety directive, released Tuesday, aims to ensure that essential information such as airspeed, altitude and heading doesn't temporarily disappear from certain instrument displays manufactured by Honeywell International Inc.

Each installation is estimated to cost about $10,000, said the agency, which set a five-year deadline for the work to be completed.

"We are issuing this (directive) to prevent loss of flight-critical information displayed to the flight crew during a critical phase of flight, such as an approach or takeoff," it said.

Such an incident "could result in loss of airplane control at an altitude insufficient for recovery, or controlled flight into terrain," it added.

Display units are computer screens that give pilots vital in-flight information, such as altitude, airspeed, compass heading and the aircraft's attitude relative to the horizon.

The airworthiness directive—aviation's version of an automotive recall, was prompted by fears that Wi-Fi signals might interfere with a display unit, making it go blank.

Satellite Wi-Fi is being added to a growing number of commercial airliners, enabling passengers to log on to the Internet from 35,000 feet (10,000 meters).

In a statement, Honeywell International, which manufactures the display units, said that none of the devices have ever failed in flight due to Wi-Fi interference.

"The only know occurrence was during a developmental test conducted on the ground," it said, adding that, working with Boeing, it has already come up with new display hardware.

Asiana Boeing 777: Plane Crashes on Landing in San Francisco

An Asiana jetliner from Seoul, South Korea, crashed while landing Saturday at San Francisco International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said. 

The airplane broke into pieces as it careened down the runway.

The jetliner, Flight 214 from Seoul’s Incheon airport, carried 291 passengers and 16 crew members, the airline said.

It is unclear how many on board may have been injured or if any were killed, though many passengers were seen scrambling down inflated escape chutes. The crash was the first in the United States since February 2009.

Smoke billowed out of holes in the fuselage of the Boeing 777 as firefighters rushed to the wreckage on the runway. Aircraft parts were scattered across the tarmac — the plane’s wheels, tail and one engines were ripped off.

“I looked up out the window and saw the plane coming in extremely fast and incredibly heavy,” said Isabella Lacaze, 18, from Fort Worth, Texas, who witnessed the crash from the San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront.

“It came in at a 30 or 45 degree angle and the tail was way, way lower than the nose,” said another witness, Stefanie Turner, 32, from Arizona.

The plane clipped something as it touched down near the sea wall, Ms. Lacaze said. “And then it hit one of the planes that was already on the runway.”

The plane that was hit said United on its side, she said, but did not appear to sustain much damage.

Other witnesses were unsure whether the Asiana plane hit another aircraft.

“I remember watching the nose go to the ground and the tail way up in the air and then the tail back to ground hard,” she said, describing the plane careening out of control. At that point the tail snapped off and the rest of the plane skidded down the runway.

“The smoke was not bad at all at first,” she said. “It was like one cloud. It took maybe a minute or two for the chutes to come out of the side,” she said and people began to pour out almost immediately.

David Eun, who said in a Twitter message that he had been a passenger on the plane, posted a picture of a downed Asiana jetliner from ground level, which showed some passengers walking away from the aircraft.

An aviation official, who did not want to be identified, said the plane was not making an emergency landing, and that the situation had been entirely routine until the crash. The cause was unclear.

Arnold Reiner, a retired airline captain and the former director of flight safety at Pan Am, said that it appeared from television images that the airplane had touched down far earlier than the normal landing point, which is about 1,000 feet down the runway. And that runway, 28 Left, has a “displaced threshold,” he said, meaning that the runway’s usable area does not begin at the start of the pavement. The Instrument Landing System would normally guide the pilot to the proper touchdown point, but in clear weather, pilots will sometimes fly a visual approach.

If the plane touched down too soon, before the paved area or before the area intended for landings, it may have torn off its landing gear, he said, and begin to skid along on its engine cowlings. “At that point, all bets are off,'’ he said, and the tail may have hit the ground with more force than the fuselage was intended to handle.

One question for investigators, Mr. Reiner said, is who was at the controls. The 777 has a two-pilot cockpit but on a flight that long, there is typically a “relief pilot” or two on board, so no one has to work continuously for the entire flight.

Steven B. Wallace, who was the director of the office of accident investigation at the F.A.A. from 2000 to 2008, that “it seems clear that the airplane hit short of the runway.”

“Why that happened, I don’t know,” he said. Mr. Wallace, who is a licensed commercial pilot, said the pilot could have made a mistake and come in too low or there could have been wind shear.

Even though the runway stretches to the sea wall, planes normally would not touch down until they had passed gold markings a safe distance down the runway. But the videos show significant debris between the markings and the sea wall, he said.