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Real life snake on a plane forces an emergency landing

We have noted odd stories about critters like bats, scorpions and smuggled crocodiles getting loose aboard aircraft along with a snake popping out of a cockpit dashboard, but the Jerusalem Post and other media sources are reporting that there was another real life “Snakes on a Plane” incident that caused an emergency landing. Apparently, an EgyptAir flight bound for Kuwait had to land at Hurghada after the crew were alerted by a Jordanian passenger’s screams after being bitten by a snake concealed in his luggage.

The victim was immediately taken off the plane for medical treatment (which he refused), but don’t feel too sorry for him. Authorities say he is a Jordanian who owns a shop selling reptiles and he was smuggling the snake in his carry-on luggage. They also confiscated the snake (no word on what kind of snake it was) and Egypt Air is conducting an investigation into the incident.

This is not the not the first time a snake has found its way onto a commercial aircraft. Earlier this year, the Scottish SPCA had to be called after Glasgow airport staff found a stowaway reptile under seats on a flight from Cancun, Mexico.

The two types of retractable gear pilots…

There are two types of retractable gear pilots: Those who have landed gear up and those who (eventually) will…

A Cirrus hits an area with known turbulence (and a parachute is deployed)

General Aviation News will often reprint accident reports from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), including one from September 2010 that involved a Cirrus SR22 in Mathias, West Virginia, that encountered serious turbulence and was forced to deploy the aircraft’s ballistic recovery parachute system.

According to the accident report, the pilot was near the end of a two-hour cross-country flight in IFR conditions and flying a holding pattern around the initial approach fix while waiting for weather conditions to improve at his destination airport. While in this holding pattern, the pilot learned that the winds were calm on the surface but higher up, there were wind gusts of up to 40 knots.

After holding for about 15 minutes, the pilot decided to execute the instrument approach but while descending to the final approach fix, the aircraft slowed, the turbulence worsened and the autopilot disengaged. After several pitch and roll oscillations, the aircraft pitched to an attitude of 86° nose down and hit a maximum airspeed of 171 knots and 3.29 Gs – causing the pilot to loose control.

The pilot then deployed the Cirrus’s whole-airframe ballistic recovery parachute system – resulting in the aircraft coming to rest in the woods approximately 25 feet above the ground and 10 nautical miles from the destination. There was one serious injury, one minor injury and one substantially damaged aircraft.

Why the autopilot disengaged was not determined, but it was likely due to a very brief activation of the stall warning or a possible (inadvertent) manual disengagement. However, the forecasted weather for the flight did include widespread instrument meteorological conditions along with turbulence above the destination airport. Moreover, there was a forecast for an adjacent area of convective weather, temperature inversion and wind shear while the weather radar imagery of the area surrounding the accident site around the time of the accident showed areas of light to moderate intensity precipitation.

In other words, the pilot probably should have waited the weather out safely on the ground and not in a holding pattern above his destination airport.

James Bond’s helicopters: The AgustaWestland AW101 and AW159

David Cenciotti, the blogger behind the Aviationist, has brought our attention to the AgustaWestland AW101 – one of the major toys in the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall. The helicopter, known as “Merlin” in aviation circles, is used by Bond’s enemy but its also being used by the militaries of several countries around the world, including the UK. In addition, the movie also featured an AgustaWestland AW159 Wildcat which has been ordered for the British Army and Royal Navy.

According to Wikipedia, the AgustaWestland AW101’s origins date back to 1977 when the UK Ministry of Defence issued a requirement for an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) helicopter to replace the Royal Navy’s Westland Sea Kings. The helicopter was then jointly developed by Westland Helicopters in the UK and Agusta in Italy as well as manufactured in facilities located in Yeovil (south Somerset) and Vergiate (Italy). The AW101 ultimately replaced many older helicopters like the Sikorsky S-61 for medium-sized transport and anti-submarine warfare roles.

The AgustaWestland AW159’s origins date back to 2002 and its an improved version of the Westland Super Lynx military helicopter. Its intended roles include battlefield utility, search and rescue and anti-surface warfare.

AgustaWestland itself is playing up the James Bond connection with a dedicated page on its website that notes the aircraft in the movie were flown by their test pilots and filming required very precise flying due to the proximity to the film set and camera helicopter. In fact, 15 hours were spent rehearsing and shooting the scenes involving the helicopters and they have even put together the following video posted on the AgustaWestland YouTube video channel:

Pilotless aircraft: A great idea for Michael O’Leary (and a bad one for co-pilots)

Over the next few weeks, a twin-engined Jetstream will fly from the Warton Aerodrome in Lancashire towards Scotland but it won’t be an ordinary flight as the aircraft will be pilotless according to the Economist. That’s not entirely accurate as there will be a pilot. Its just the pilot will be flying the aircraft from a control room on the ground (but just in case things go wrong with the experiment, there will be a pilot in the cockpit to take over). The flight itself is part of a project to develop the technologies and procedures that ultimately will allow large commercial aircraft to operate pilotless.

No doubt such an idea would have airline executives like Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary salivating because after all, think of how much cost savings there would be if there were no pilots in the cockpit? Or better yet, how much more cost savings there would be if you had one guy on the ground “piloting” a couple of aircraft?

But jokes aside, we are nearly at that point already as modern aircraft are already perfectly capable of taking off, flying to a destination and landing automatically. Its just there are a couple of (very expensive) pilots in the cockpit to keep an eye on things and make sure the rules of the air are complied with.

So part of the experiment is to test how well air-traffic controllers can communicate with a pilot on the ground through the aircraft and how to make the radio and satellite links both secure and reliable. However, the engineers behind pilotless aircraft will still need to be prepared for the inevitable break in communication where the aircraft will have to figure out how to safely operate or land on its own.

The Economist also made the point that while pilotless aircraft may not be here just yet, such experiments are are improving aircraft systems while in the early days of commercial aviation:

Many early large aircraft had a crew of five: two pilots, a flight engineer, a navigator and a radio operator. First the radio operator went, then the navigator, and by the time the jet era was well under way in the 1970s flight engineers began to disappear too. Next it could be the co-pilot, replaced by the autonomous flight systems now being developed.

So if you are a co-pilot who has not made Captain yet, you better work on getting that promotion before your job goes the way of the flight engineer and the navigator!

Bonhams to auction the Gipsy Moth from “Out of Africa”

Bonhams has issued a press release to announce they will auction off the 1929 De Havilland DH 60GMW Gipsy Moth bi-plane flown over the Kenyan savanna by character Denys Finch Hatton (played by Robert Redford) in “Out of Africa” – the seven-time Oscar-winning 1985 film. Moreover, the aircraft is in excellent condition with a permit to fly and it still has its yellow-and-black livery seen in the movie with the registration G-AAMY in homage to pioneering English aviatrix Amy Johnson.

In the movie, character Finch Hatton would take Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke (the real name of the book’s author, Isak Dinesen), played by Meryl Streep, flying over her farm and other parts of Africa (Dinesen herself would describe the flights as “the most transporting pleasure of my life on the farm”). However and when her affair with Finch was likely over for good, he is killed when the Gypsy Moth crashes after takeoff at the Voi aerodrome.

So where has the Gypsy Moth been since “Out of Africa” was filmed? Late last year, someone under the user name of EnoAeroPics on FlightGlobal found her in back of the hangar of the Flying Museum at Seppe airport in The Netherlands (EHSE). EnoAeroPics also snapped this picture of her:

The Gipsy Moth itself measures 24 ft long by nearly 9 ft high (7.3 meters by 2.7 meters) with a 30ft (9 meter) wingspan and its capable of a maximum speed of 105 mph (169km/h). It will go on sale at the Bonhams auction during Rétromobile week (from February 6-7th) at the Grand Palais in Paris where bidding is expected to be in excess of €150,000 (£120,000 or $180,000).

(And let’s hope whoever buys the aircraft chooses to not keep it parked in the back of a hangar somewhere…)

Golf Hotel Whiskey: for pilots and aviation enthusiasts