While air transport is subject to stringent safety regulations, there are still occasions when things can go wrong. Sometimes an air accident is minor; sometimes, sadly not. Either way, there are lessons to be learnt.
In early January, a Saab 340 operated by Loganair veered off the runway while taking off for Glasgow from Stornoway Airport on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. It is thought that the aircraft was caught in a strong crosswind, although at the time of writing an official investigation by the UK’s Air Accident Investigation Branch was still under way.
A spokesman from airport operator Highlands and Islands Airports Limited (HIAL) noted: “There was some disruption on the day itself and over the weekend because, for obvious safety reasons, it was not possible to use the main runway until the aircraft could be removed. It was necessary to leave the aircraft in situ until AAIB officials carried out a full investigation.
“Fortunately, we were able to quickly resume flights using Stornoway Airport’s secondary cross runway. A combination of factors, including weather, fuel capacity and aircraft weight meant that for safety purposes airlines were required to impose payload restrictions, effectively reducing the number of passengers they could carry.
“Nevertheless, the use of the second runway enabled us to keep disruption to a minimum. Without it, the airport would have closed with all flights cancelled until the aircraft was safely removed from the main runway,” the spokesman pointed out.
Elsewhere, at Nairobi’s busy Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA), the same week saw an aircraft crash-land when its landing gear failed during its approach from Wajir to the Kenyan capital. Reports said that the incident resulted in flights being diverted to Mombasa while the Fokker 50 turboprop was removed from the runway, which was reopened later the same day.
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO): “Recovery operations will differ from state to state and from facility to facility, depending on local resources, planning and priorities.”
ICAO’s provisions pertain to the investigation and protection of wreckage in general rather than its recovery. Aircraft accident and incident investigation is covered by Annex 13 to the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation. Paragraph 3.2 of Annex 13 states: “The State of Occurrence shall take all reasonable measures to protect the evidence and to maintain safe custody of the aircraft and its contents for such a period as may be necessary for the purposes of an investigation. Protection of evidence shall include the preservation, by photographic or other means of any evidence which might be removed, effaced, lost or destroyed. Safe custody shall include protection against further damage, access by unauthorised persons, pilfering and deterioration.“
It is further noted that, “Protection of flight recorder evidence requires that the recovery and handling of the recorder and its recordings be assigned only to qualified personnel.”
Paragraph 5.6 of the Annex states: “The investigator-in-charge shall have unhampered access to the wreckage and all relevant material, including flight recorders and ATS records, and shall have unrestricted control over it to ensure that a detailed examination can be made without delay by authorised personnel participating in the investigation.”
A spokesman summed up: “ICAO does not have guidance on recovery procedures themselves and we have no operational role in accidents save to act as international observers/fact-finders/advisors if and when a given State in charge of an Annex 13 accident investigation formally requests we serve as such.”
CIRCUMSTANCES
Clearly, the circumstances and location of an accident will determine whether it is possible to salvage the wreckage. ICAO’s Manual of Aircraft Accident and Incident Investigation outlines: “In most cases, wreckage should be recovered if it is considered that the evidence it might provide would justify the expense and effort of a salvage operation. If the wreckage is likely to contain evidence significant to air safety, the accident investigation authority must provide the impetus needed to ensure that action is promptly taken to recover the wreckage.”
Perry Flint, head of corporate communications, the Americas at the International Air Transport Association (IATA), observes: “Recovery on land, whether at an airport or outside an airport, will require the same technique. The challenges will be to get equipment and the recovery team with other support organisations on site in a timely manner.”
In the case of the Nairobi incident, no casualties were reported, while at Stornoway just four people were injured. In both of these instances the aircraft involved were small and there were few people on board. Tragically, the outcome of an air accident often has much more serious consequences. As Flint points out: “When an accident happens over water, most often it’s a salvage operation.” One recent example is the disappearance of AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed into the Java Sea off Borneo on 28 December last year while flying from Surabaya to Singapore.
A search and rescue mission took place under the guidance of the National Search and Rescue Agency of the Republic of Indonesia (BASARNAS) and the Indonesian Civil Aviation Authority, with the co-operation of AirAsia Indonesia. It was an international effort, with vessels from countries including Singapore, Malaysia and the US helping in the search and the AAIB assisting with the investigation.
AirAsia confirmed that the A320-200 “was on the submitted flight plan route and was requesting deviation due to en route weather before communication with the aircraft was lost while it was still under the control of the Indonesian Air Traffic Control (ATC) [and] had undergone its last scheduled maintenance on 16 November 2014.”
A combination of techniques was used to detect human remains and wreckage; these included visual, sonar and radar surveillance. Debris was found in the Karimata Strait and a large number of vessels, helicopters and deep-sea divers were deployed to identify two large objects detected on the ocean floor by sonar equipment, as well as to search for the aircraft’s black box – a task made difficult by strong underwater currents that impair visibility. Techniques for recovering the larger pieces of wreckage included the attachment by deep-sea divers of floating bags to sections such as the tail piece.
By mid-January, both parts of the aircraft’s black box had been recovered from depths of up to 30m and sent to Jakarta for investigation by Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee. At the time of writing, 50 human remains had been recovered from the crash site and surrounding area, with search and rescue operations continuing.
LEARNING LESSONS
Recovery operations include investigations of the causes of each incident. Keith Conradi, chief inspector at the AAIB, describes the organisation’s purpose as “To improve aviation safety by determining the causes of air accidents and serious incidents and making safety recommendations intended to prevent recurrence… It is not to apportion blame or liability.”
Similarly, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has its own team dedicated to helping the industry meet the changing needs of aircraft recovery in the light of industry developments as well as accident investigations. The Aircraft Recovery Task Force (ARTF) works with IATA’s Engineering and Maintenance Group (EMG) to identify the aircraft recovery requirements of the newer – and often, therefore, larger – aeroplanes that are entering the global fleet these days. And there are other issues too.
Flint notes: “The changes for aircraft recovery are a result of several factors, including the introduction of larger and heavier aircraft, increased environmental concern, personal safety and the growing use of composite materials in new aircraft.
“For example, owing to the increased size of aircraft, stability of recovery equipment has become more important. Efforts to minimise contamination of the environment around an incident have meant lengthier and more expensive clean-up processes. Composite aircraft structures add another dimension to recovery operations as a result of the different behaviour of composite structure compared to aluminium.”
According to the ARTF, its role is to “work with OEMs to develop practical and safe aircraft recovery procedures to minimise secondary damage to the aircraft structure and minimising exposure to health and safety risks; work with equipment manufacturers and make recommendations for the development of new recovery tools; recommend updates for ICAO Airport Services Manual (Doc 9137) Part 5 Removal of Disabled Aircraft; [and] increase awareness of economic and operational impact of aircraft recovery”.
It is this knowledge that represents perhaps the most important thing that can be salvaged from an air accident. The sharing of experience among OEMs, airlines, airports, equipment manufacturers and working groups should result in a positive legacy, not only making air transport safer but also improving recovery operations to make them safer and more efficient. To this end, the ARTF provides training courses on aircraft recovery, aimed at civil aviation authorities, airline managers and operational staff, and airport managers.
Flint outlines: “The IATA ARTF defined a training syllabus for both classroom and practical training. The IATA Training and Development Institute offers classroom training, while there are a number of equipment vendors who offer a complete training package based on the ARTF syllabus. Currently there are no licensing requirements for maintenance staff involved with aircraft recovery. Some airlines have developed an in-house qualification requirement based on the individual’s recovery experience and related training.”
AIRCRAFT ARCHAEOLOGY
What we might refer to as ‘normal’ aircraft recovery operations focus on accident investigation and clearance of obstructions that could be a hazard to navigation or the environment. But there are times when the purpose of aircraft recovery is very different indeed.
According to Richard Gillespie, executive director of Oxford, Pennsylvania-based TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery): “Historical aircraft recovery differs from ‘normal’ recovery operations in that the objective is preservation rather than salvage.”
Gillespie, whose background in aviation insurance includes accident investigation, continues: “Properly done, historical aircraft recovery begins with a detailed archaeological survey before the site is disturbed. Recovery techniques are selected based upon an assessment of what will cause the least damage. If the aircraft is submerged, conservation measures should begin as soon as the airplane comes out of the water. In reality, most recoveries of historic aircraft are not historical aircraft recoveries. They are salvage operations with the objective of securing an aircraft that can be rebuilt using new material to create an attractive, and often flyable, machine to exhibit. Little of the original aircraft survives that process,” he commented.
Among its projects, TIGHAR has been carrying out investigations into the disappearance of Amelia Earhart (who vanished in the mid-Pacific during an attempt to be the first woman to fly around the world in 1937) for 26 years. Gillespie confirms: “The most recent of 10 Earhart expeditions was in 2012 and involved the use of an AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) to perform a side-scan sonar search for underwater ‘targets’ that were then investigated by a tethered ROV (remote operated vehicle) equipped with lights and cameras. The operation was plagued by equipment failures that reduced the planned 10-day search to less than half. Nothing of interest was found during the limited search but upon later examination of the sonar data we identified a highly suspicious target that had been missed by the contractor.”
TIGHAR plans to investigate that target – which, Gillespie said, could be the wreckage of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra aircraft – when it returns to the site in June 2015, as part of its Niku III expedition.
In November 2014, TIGHAR announced that it had “to a high degree of certainty” identified a piece of aluminium found on Nikumaroro Island in the western Pacific as having come from Amelia Earhart’s lost aircraft.
