Posted on 5th November 2010 by gjohnson in Uncategorized
airplane crash attorney, airplane crashes, Cuban plane crash, plane crash attorney, plane crashes
In the country’s worse plane crash since 1989, all 68 people aboard a Cuban airliner were killed Thursday when the aircraft crashed in the island’s central mountains, according to AOL News.
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/no-survivors-in-cuba-plane-crash/19704213?icid=maing%7Cmain5%7C1%7Clink2%7C23663
The AeroCaribbean Flight 883 was flying from Santiago de Cuba to the capital Havana when it lost contact with flight controllers. The pilot had made an emergency call before the plane landed in a fiery explosion near Guisimal, a village.
There were no survivors among the 61 passengers and seven crew members. The passenger list had 40 Cubans and 28 foreigners, none Americans. The crew was all Cuban.
The fallen jet was a Russan-made ATR-72-212, and it is part of Cuba’s state airine fleet. Flight 883 originated in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and had a stop at Santiago de Cuba before going on to Havana.
The doomed flight was the last one to take off from Haiti before Tropical Storm Tomas, which is looming in the Caribbean. But Cuban officals are investigating and don’t now if the weather played a part in the accident.
According to AOL News, this is Cuba’s worse plane crash since 1989, when 126 people onboard a Soviet-made jet were killed.
Posted on 2nd September 2010 by gjohnson in Uncategorized
airplane accident attorney, airplane accident lawyer, airplane accidents, airplane crashes
It’s been a bad year so far for airline crashes, and it may be hard to keep that number down in the future, according to The Wall Street Journal Thursday.
In a story headlined “The Difficulty in Improving Air Safety Now,” The Journal reports that there have been 13 fatal crashes of passenger airlines through August this year, compared with 10 crashes for all of last year.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704791004575465503445748046.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_editorsPicks_3
And the 13 figure for this year doesn’t include military and private-plane fatal crashes.
But the gist of the story is that there may not be many more air safety improvements that can be made, that in fact these measures may ”be bottoming out,” as The Journal put it.
I don’t know if I agree with that thesis, but the story contains a wealth of information and statistics about plane crashes.
Perhaps not surprisingly, most crashes occur when a plane is taking off or attempting to land.
And regional airlines score have much worse safety records than larger aircraft, “involved in five of the seven fatal accidents on scheduled airline flights in the past 10 years,” The Journal wrote, citing data from the National Transportation Safety Board.
Plane crashes have multiple causes, and about 80 percent of the time they involve human error; about 50 percent have causes like bad weather; and 20 percent of the time there is something wrong with the plane, according to The Journal.
Posted on 17th March 2009 by gjohnson in Uncategorized
air safety, air safety reporting, air traffic control safety, airplane crashes, airplane mishaps, Eurocontrol, flight safety, reporting airlines incidents
Date: 3/17/2009
By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS
Associated Press Writer
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Civil aviation authorities are only told about 20 percent of dangerous flight incidents because pilots and air traffic controllers are afraid of losing their jobs or being prosecuted, a top European air safety official said Tuesday.
Eurocontrol official Erik Merckx said some countries are misusing laws to prosecute those who report problems. He did not specify which countries he was referring to.
Eurocontrol oversees flight safety and efficiency in its 38 member states, which are almost all European but include countries such as Turkey and Armenia.
“In many countries, pilots and also air traffic controllers are afraid to mention things that go wrong because they can be prosecuted and go to jail,” Merckx told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a European air safety conference in the Cypriot capital.
Reporting such incidents is obligatory under Eurocontrol regulations.
He said underreporting problems could hamper efforts to improve flight safety.
“I see it over the last couple of years that in certain countries, laws are actually misused to prosecute people who are, with the best intentions, doing their job,” Merckx said.
He proposed the urgent creation of an information exchange system under which incidents compromising flight safety would be passed on to aviation professionals to ensure mistakes aren’t repeated.
“If one pilot or air traffic controller makes an error, it would be good that everybody else knows that so that they can avoid those mistakes.”
He said Eurocontrol officials are trying to raise awareness about the issue with the justice ministries of several countries and the European Commission in order to rectify the problem.
“I think we’re only going to get it improved if we try to solve this at the European level,” Merckx said.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
