Next-generation Airbus A350 plane gets EU green light

EU authorities gave the green light Tuesday (Sep 30) for Airbus's new long-haul A350 plane to enter service, opening the way for delivery of the next-generation aircraft to first client Qatar Airways.

Designed to help the European manufacturer catch up with its American rival Boeing in the market for long-haul, fuel-efficient planes, the A350-900 makes extensive use of light composite materials which reduce fuel consumption and costs.

"Airbus demonstrated that the aircraft complies with the regulatory safety and environment requirements defined by EASA (the European Aviation Safety Agency) for the European Union," the EU aviation watchdog said in a statement. Airbus has positioned its A350 between the Boeing's popular 777 and its 787 Dreamliner, hoping to eat away at both planes' markets.

"Every new type of aircraft needs to obtain a ... certificate before it can be delivered to an airline," EASA said in its statement. "This EASA certificate guarantees that the A350-900 is set for delivery from a safety and environment point of view."

The plane can carry 315 passengers over a distance of 14.500km, and to date, 750 A350 aircraft have been ordered by 39 customers worldwide. In August, Airbus had announced that the plane had completed its "route proving", a round-the-world in 20 days trip aimed at testing the aircraft's readiness for airline operations, during which it flew 180 hours and stopped off in 14 airports.

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Europe widens in-flight use of portable electronics

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said on Friday (Sep 26) it had authorised airlines to allow passengers to use mobile electronic devices, including phones, throughout the flight.

The move allows European airlines which first carry out a safety assessment to permit portable electronic devices such as smartphones to stay switched on without being on "airplane mode", it said in a statement. Other such devices include tablets, laptops, e-readers and MP3 players.

"This is the latest regulatory step towards enabling the ability to offer 'gage-to-gate' telecommunication or Wi-Fi services," the EASA said in a statement. It will be up to each airline to decide to allow their use, it added.

"In order to do this, the airline will have to go through an assessment process, ensuring aircraft systems are not affected in any way by the transmission signals from the PEDs", or personal electronic devices, it said. "For this reason, there may be differences among airlines whether and when PEDs can be used."

Last November EASA said it would follow the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States and similarly relax its rules by allowing the use of a range of mobile electronic devices in flight with very few restrictions.

It said at that time however that the devices must be used only when the "flight mode" or "airplane mode" is switched on.

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Europe aviation agency urges extending black box life

Europe's aviation safety watchdog called on Tuesday for the transmission time of tracking beacons fitted onto black box flight recorders to be extended from 30 to 90 days, a reform that may have made it easier to find the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

The aircraft disappeared on March 8 with 239 people on board, and an intense search for the plane has been scaled back after coming up with nothing despite an air and sea hunt over 4.64 million square kilometres of the southern Indian Ocean.

Part of the problem is that the batteries to the beacons fitted onto the so-called "black box" cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder -- which are crucial in locating a plane and determining what caused it to crash -- have died, making the search even more difficult.

In a statement, the European Aviation Safety Agency urged "the extension of the transmission time of underwater locating devices (ULD) fitted on flight recorders from 30 days to 90 days".

The agency suggested that all large planes flying over oceans be equipped with a new type of ULD with a longer locating range.

The minimum recording duration of cockpit voice recorders installed on new large planes should also be increased to 20 hours from the current two hours, it added.

"The tragic flight of Malaysia Airlines MH370 demonstrates that safety can never be taken for granted," said Patrick Ky, EASA's director.

"The proposed changes are expected to increase safety by facilitating the recovery of information by safety investigation authorities."

The recommendations need to be adopted by the European Commission, and will apply to all planes and helicopters registered in the 32 EASA member states.

Australia on Monday hosted a meeting in Canberra with the transport ministers of Malaysia and China to determine the way forward in the hunt for the missing plane, which will focus on an intensified undersea search.

China is involved because two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, while the plane is believed to have gone down in Australia's search and rescue territory.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss admitted the hunt will take time, with the ocean bed in the prospective search zone several kilometres deep and largely unmapped, meaning specialist sonar equipment and other autonomous vehicles are needed.

He said a tender process would start soon to acquire them, but it would likely be two months before the equipment was actually in the water, while more oceanographic mapping was required to better understand where they would be looking.

A submersible Bluefin-21 has been scouring the seabed in an area where undersea transmissions were detected, believed to have come from the plane's black box flight recorders before the batteries died.

It will soon be joined by a dedicated team of vessels from Australia, Malaysia and China. An Australian P-3 Orion jet will also be available to follow up any leads.

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Four in ten pilots admit falling asleep in the cockpit

Recent research also revealed that a third of these pilots admitted waking up to find their co-pilot asleep as well.

In a 2012 survey for the European Cockpit Association (ECA), more than half of around 6,000 pilots from all over Europe said tiredness had hampered their ability to fly.

Of those who felt unfit, 79 per cent said that this was “sometimes” or “often” the case.

The research also suggested the issue is under-reported. Fearing the reaction of employers, 70 to 80 per cent of tired pilots said they would not file a fatigue report or declare they were unfit to fly

To the ECA, the results were not surprising. The organisation claims that long duty and standby hours, night flights and disruptive schedules contribute to pilots spending long periods awake.

The body, which represents European pilots, is using the survey to bolster its campaign demanding safer flying time regulations. It says the final proposals from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) on Flight Time Limitations, published in October and designed to "harmonise" regulations across the EU, fail to protect passenger safety, and would only marginally improve the current situation.

“Fatigue impairs the judgment and ability of air crews to react quickly, with potentially disastrous consequences,” said Philip von Schöppenthau of the ECA. “We cannot wait for another accident before the EU wakes up and realises its rules are insufficient.”

The British Airline Pilots’ Association is also opposed to EASA's proposals which it said are more permissive than those currently in place in Britain. It said pilots will be able to land an aircraft having been awake for 22 hours, could face night flights of up to 11 hours long and be forced to work up to seven early starts in a row. Currently British pilots can go up to 18 hours without sleep.

However, a Government report published on September 11 said the current draft of the proposals "will not lead to a diminution of safety in the UK". In response to a Transport Committee Inquiry, it said the rules will offer a similar level of safety to that set by the US Federal Aviation Administration and noted that some other EU member states believed the proposals too restrictive in some areas.

The proposals will now enter the legislative process and must be finalised by the European Commission and approved by Member States before being adopted into EU law after mid-2013.

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40% of them fell asleep in the cockpit, and some of them woke up seeing that their co-pilot is asleep too. That's undesirable but this doesn't come as a surprise. Pilots are a bunch of sleep deprived fellows having to fight jetlag, time difference and long hours in the cockpit. The ideal lifestyle of a pilot is go to work, then sleep, eat and exercise moderately well. But nothing is ideal, we're all humans and are going to need some sort of entertainment to de-stress, otherwise life will be meaningless.

Hopefully the airlines will acknowledge this point and improve the conditions so as to provide the passengers with a safer flight.