Air Accidents Investigation Branch

This continues a bit of an update on last week's sad story about the double fatality that took place in France with an Elixir aircraft which crashed during a pre-production test flight with two of its test pilots on board.

The BEA, which is the French equivalent of the AAIB, along with Elixir, have determined that the problem was the left flap departed the aircraft as it kind of turned.

right and therefore lost control they also stated that the um br sorry not the br yeah the brs was activated although pretty late and pretty low yeah um so the the fleet remains grounded the fa of uh of additionally grounded their fleet as well that before then they hadn't done that but they have done it now and we're just waiting to find out what caused the flap to depart whether that's something that can be fixed with a kind of fleet-wide inspection or whether it was something that was unique to that one aircraft So I guess we'll find out about that in due course.

Yes.

Uh, it was Air India.

There was the Canadian authorities 'cause there were some Canadian citizens, the NTSB, the FAA, NTSB, the AAIB over there in India.

Yeah.

All of those agencies, hopefully, on paper, cooperate with each other in the investigation.

Mm-hmm

... uh, controls only aircraft flying and being manufactured in the United States.

Is, if the FAA initiates something and Boeing is following it, is it safe to assume that, like, the AAIB and the, like, the other international bodies of aviation, like, is ICAO going to step in to that point and say, "Hey, the FAA has done this.

We're going to do similar"? Is it a little bit how the FAA goes, the rest of the world goes? Or is this only going to apply to domestic?

And certainly when I first started in aviation, which is some 30 odd years now, MORs were very much embedded in the way of working and the way of understanding what happened and learning those lessons from those and making those improvements.

In where it sits with what we do at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which is to investigate aircraft accidents and serious incidents, if you imagine a triangle and you put the accidents and serious incidents at the top of that triangle, that's events that have either happened as in an accident or with a serious incident, something that was very close to being an accident.

But underneath that, you then have a whole layer of events that are not serious enough to be a serious incident or accident, but in themselves would enable learning and in some cases to actually put in place changes.

So you never get to that situation of a serious incident or an accident.

Yeah.

But the AAIB report completely exonerated Commander Roberts and First Officer Soule.

As it should have.

They didn't panic.

It happened because a crew trained for exactly this kind of moment executed what they had been trained to do, made deliberate decisions with the information available to them, and put their aircraft and everyone on board back on the ground safely.

The UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch, known as the AAIB, handles investigations of this kind in Britain.

They are the counterpart to the National Transportation Safety Board here in the United States.

The AAIB publishes detailed, thorough reports, and if a formal investigation is opened on this event, their findings will be worth your time when they are published.

AAIB reports are some of the best safety reading available in aviation, and they are publicly accessible.

Worth bookmarking sources today include AeroTime and the Aviation Press.

More at RadioHangar.com. I'm Tower.

kilos.And after an aborted landing at Edinburgh when the pilots declared a fuel emergency mayday, the total flight time from the first go-around at Prestwick to landing at Manchester was one hour and 45 minutes.

Air ast- uh, Air Accident Investigation Branch, AAIB, said, "Following two wind shear escape maneuvers that transitioned into go-arounds at Prestwick, the crew requested divert to Manchester Airport, but the request was not accepted and the aircraft diverted to Edinburgh Airport.

Following a further wind shear escape maneuver at Edinburgh, the crew declared an emergency and diverted to Manchester, where they landed with a fuel quantity significantly below the final reserve fuel." Detailing the incident, AAIB, following two wind shear escape maneuvers at Prestwick caused by the presence of Storm Amy, the crew asked ATC if they could divert to Manchester.

Although the airport and handling agent policies at Manchester meant that the diversion should have been accepted, a breakdown of communication within the airport led to it being refused.

Who's Rebecca Harp?

From Air Accidents Investigation Branch.

Shit.

And that's also in the findings of this report.

Any news provider can enlighten you as to why.

Yeah? Missiles, drones, Iran.

His role is nothing to do with the Air Accidents Investigation Branch.

You are an independent body that sits within...

This flight is, you know, squawking 7700 and, and diverting to Manchester.

Well, it turns out that wasn't the first time they wanted to go to Manchester during that flight, and the UK AAIB had a few things to say about what went down that day.

This was a Ryanair flight from Pisa to Prestwick that was being operated by a Malta Air 737-800.

They approached Prestwick as the storm was passing through Scotland.

1100 kilograms is the mandated remaining fuel for this particular aircraft.

So they landed well below minimum fuel.

And so the AAIB's investigation goes into why did this happen? Like, why didn't they go to Manchester when they said they wanted to? And one of the things is that there was a communication breakdown between different airport units at Manchester, and the airport didn't follow its own policies, and the airport's handling agents didn't follow their own policies because the AAIB says the diversion request should have been accepted.

It also says that- At that time, if they had declared a fuel emergency, they would've been accepted.

So how does the strongest part of the aircraft, the front windshield, taking all the aerodynamic force, just pop out?

Well, that's where the Air Accidents Investigation Branch comes in.

The AAIB sends a senior investigator named Stuart Culling.

What does he find?