Investigators searching for answers about what caused an Alaska Airlines plane to explode midway through a near-catastrophic flight on Jan. 5 are working without a key piece of evidence: audio from the flight’s black box cockpit voice recorder.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said in an audio press conference that Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, carrying 171 passengers, disappeared amid chaos making an emergency landing at Portland International Airport in Oregon 35 minutes into its flight. trip.
“The cockpit voice recorder has been completely overwritten. There is nothing on the cockpit voice recorder,” Homendy told reporters.
Current Federal Aviation Board regulations only require black boxes to record two hours of flight audio, including the pilot’s voice, any incoming or outgoing radio transmissions or any engine noise.
At the two-hour mark, any captured audio will be automatically recorded for the next two hours.
The NTSB is investigating the cause of a near-catastrophic mid-flight explosion aboard an Alaska Airlines flight on Friday, but the flight’s black box audio recording was deleted before it could be retrieved. NTSB/SWNS
The Boeing 787 MAX 9 – which had been scheduled to fly between Portland and Ontario, California – was forced to return to the airport after a plug covering an unused exit flew off mid-flight, leaving a gaping hole outside and prompting an emergency landing.
No one on the flight was injured and the 63-pound door stopper was found by a Portland teacher in her backyard Sunday.
Once the ship landed and was safely evacuated, the maintenance crew went to retrieve the black box but found the audio had been overwritten because the circuit breaker had not been cut.
“We have nothing,” Homendy said.
The visibly disappointed NTSB chief said the agency had investigated 10 other near misses involving commercial flights over the past six years where flight recorders had been overridden.
Most egregious was an incident in 2018 in which an Air Canada plane came “within 60 feet” of landing on a taxiway at San Francisco International Airport that contained four other planes full of nearly 1,000 passengers and crew.
Homendy said such incidents highlight the urgent need to increase the black box recording threshold from two hours to 25 hours, which the NTSB has been pushing for since 2018.
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 had to make an emergency landing at Portland International Airport just 35 minutes after takeoff. AP
In November of last year, the FAA announced a proposed new rule that would require cockpit voice recorders to capture audio for 25 hours, but Homendy insisted that the rule, if enacted, would only apply to newly manufactured aircraft, and therefore would not affect Alaska Flight 1282 Airlines or any other disaster he was referring to.
“Cockpit voice recorders are not only easy for the NTSB or FAA to use in an investigation. They are important to help us determine exactly what is going on,” he said.
“If those communications are not recorded, that’s, unfortunately, a loss for us, a loss for the FAA and a loss for safety. That information is important, not only for the investigation, but to improve aviation safety.”
Homendy later said the NTSB called on the FAA to change the proposed rule to include retrofitting existing aircraft with the ability to record for 25 hours at a time.
“If the FAA doesn’t do it, we hope Congress will take action in the FAA reauthorization bill to make sure it happens.”
Missing door plugs in the cabin left a refrigerator-sized hole in the plane, which was carrying 177 passengers and crew, none of whom were seriously injured. AP
Following Friday’s incident, all Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes used by Alaska Airlines and United Airlines were grounded as the FAA began inspections of each, resulting in hundreds of flight cancellations over the weekend.
Eighteen of Alaska Airlines’ 65 737 MAX 9 planes were put back into service on Saturday, but were quickly withdrawn on Sunday after the company received notice from the FAA that the planes may need more work.
Alaska Airlines did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
All Boeing 737 MAX aircraft worldwide were grounded between March 2019 and November 2020 after two fatal crashes involving the aircraft in the Indonesian and Ethiopian seas that killed 346 people.
American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines were also forced to ground 64 of the 737 MAX aircraft in their fleet in 2021 due to problems with the aircraft’s electrical systems.
Categories: Trending
Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
