Editorial – A Tribute to Bernard Ziegler
by Yannick MALINGE – SVP & Chief Product Safety Officer
Take Care of the Wheel Tie Bolts
A significant number of missing wheel tie bolts have been reported to Airbus over the last 5 years. A few of these reports have described significant damage to the wheel or brakes. Carefully checking the condition of the wheel tie bolts during aircraft walkarounds can allow detection of missing or damaged bolts and help to prevent serious incidents in service or during maintenance. Strictly observing the preventive maintenance practices, including planned inspection intervals, ensure that any damaged wheel tie bolts are replaced before they are at risk of failing.
News: A Statistical Analysis of Commercial Aviation Accidents 1958-2020
The latest Statistical Analysis of Commercial Aviation Accidents is available and updated with 2020 figures. In a year that saw half the number of flights of the previous year, there were still three fatal accidents and six hull losses. The industry fatal accident and hull loss rates are steadily decreasing over time, but this trend faces a unique challenge due to the many aircraft grounded at the peak of the pandemic in 2020. From a safety perspective, this scenario requires all actors to be focused on the right priorities, which is to ensure safety as more aircraft, crews, and passengers return to the skies.
Unreliable airspeed at Takeoff
Since the beginning of 2020, Airbus has received an increasing number of reports of unreliable airspeed events at takeoff due to Pitot probe obstruction. Despite the existing prevention means and the preflight exterior walkaround, takeoffs with obstructed air data probes may happen. This article highlights why it is so important for pilots to actively monitor the airspeed during the entire takeoff roll, to detect an airspeed discrepancy as early as possible, and safely reject the takeoff, if required to do so.
A Focus on the Takeoff Rotation
An appropriate takeoff rotation maneuver is a balance between good takeoff performance and sufficient margin versus tail strike, stall speed, and minimum control speeds.Applying the 3°/s rotation rate requested in the SOPs is the key to ensure that the aircraft meets the expected takeoff performance. Flight data monitoring shows that the rotation rate values in service vary and a lower rotation rate is observed in some cases with the associated degradation of takeoff performance. This article describes both the takeoff rotation laws available on Airbus Fly-by-Wire (FBW) aircraft and the recommended rotation techniques that will enable flight crew to achieve consistent takeoff rotations at the requested rotation rate.
News: Parking and Storage / Return to Service Summary Letter
A dedicated task force in Airbus Customer Support was created in response to the unprecedented impact of the global pandemic on our industry since March 2020. As there have been many aircraft grounded for an extended period of time, this letter provides Operators with the latest Airbus guidance on parking & storage of aircraft and to ensure their safe return to service.
Attention Crew at Stations
An emergency evacuation is always a stressful situation for passengers, cabin crews, and flight crews. Decisions have to be made rapidly and if the communication between the cabin and cockpit is not clear, or the evacuation is delayed by passengers trying to take their personal belongings, these can have critical consequences on the outcome.From the preflight briefing until the safe evacuation of all aircraft occupants, this article provides recommendations for both flight crew and cabin crew to ensure a safe and efficient emergency evacuation is performed.
Prevention of Unstable Approaches
Unstable approach has been a problem since the very beginning of commercial aviation. Even so, it is still one of the most common contributing factors to many of the incidents and accidents that occur on landing today. Regardless of the changes or cycles our industry faces, this article is a timeless reminder for the importance of efficient preparation for approach including anticipation of late changes, and the need for cooperation between flight crews and air traffic controllers. The article also provides tips to detect a potential unstable approach in advance so that it can be corrected long before the stabilization height. Respecting stabilized approach criteria is also highlighted as well as being go-around minded in the case of late destabilization.
A Focus on the Landing Flare
There were several cases of aircraft touching down with their nose landing gear first or hard landings reported to Airbus over the last 2 years. This article will present some key points coming from the analysis of two of these incidents and recall the operational recommendations for performing the flare phase that are key to ensuring a safe landing.
Mind the OEBs
Operations Engineering Bulletins (OEBs) are temporary procedures published for flight crews. They must be applied only in specific conditions to ensure safe and efficient operations of the aircraft.This article explains why OEBs are issued, the importance of communicating them to flight crews as soon as possible, and the importance for flight crews to comply with the OEB procedures. This article also stresses the importance of applying the available modifications that will cancel an OEB as soon as possible. Airbus provides support to Operators to assess and prioritize the implementation of service bulletin modifications that can remove applicable OEBs from their fleets.