Aircraft in the News and Odd Stories

A shipment of $93 million in cash on a Swiss Air flight arrived Monday at JFK Airport with $1.2 million missing, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

BA relaxes rules on phone usage after landing

British Airways is expected to now allow its passengers to be able to activate their mobile phones and other handheld electronic devices after landing. The airline says it "has now demonstrated to the Civil Aviation Authority that their customers can safely use their handheld electronic devices, once their aircraft vacates the runway". The new British Airways policy is expected to take effect from 1 July. Prior to this announcment all passengers have had to wait until their aircraft has come to a complete stop at the terminal before they could use cell phones and other electronic devices.

Earlier this week, an American Airlines aircraft was forced to be delayed. The Frankfurt-bound flight was shelved at the last minute after a hole was noticed in the right hand wing of a Boeing 777-200. Anyways American sent another Triple Seven and the delay ended up being about 2 and 3/4 hours. The holed 777 was put into maintenance for about 30 hours to get the problem rectified. Turns out the the hole was made by a bird strike the flight before.

Mysterious fog appears on Delta Airlines plane and in flight. Apparently fog/smoke/mist entered the cabin of a Delta Airlines flight recently freaking out a number of the aircraft's passengers. At one point the fog was said to be chest high in the cabin.

The below photo was posted by user Ficcolo on the site Reddit and this is what he had to say. “Last night flying out of JFK....this happened and freaked us out. Disco rave flight!” Comments suggest this was due to the hot 90 degree weather New York has been experiencing, coupled with an air conditioning system malfunction. Basic science is able to explain the appearance of the fog in the cabin: hot humid air outside mixing with cool conditioned air from inside the plane, and the mist begins to form,” reported The Daily Mail.

Solar Impulse reached New York at the JFK International Airport from its DCto NY leg of the cross America flight.

Really? I didn't hear about that. At least it got there without incident to the pilot.

This 747 from China Airlines Cargo had a gear problem today...

Richard Quest checking out an A330-300 from Virgin Atlantic and chatting with Virgin and Delta officials.

http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/international/2013/07/11/business-traveller-aviation-future-a.cnn.html

World's smallest twin engine..the Cricket.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knb3qNq-Uho

not aircraft but cabin crew uniforms from Virgin Atlantic, they have changed theirs...looking decent. Pics by Virgin and Westwood

A male flight attendant who was fired from Virgin Australia in 2011 because his hair was apparently too long took the airline to court and won! David Taleski is expected to fly again as of next week, after winning a 15-month legal battle against the airline. Two years ago, Virgin Australia claimed that Taleski had repeatedly failed to comply with the carrier's personal grooming manual, the Look Book.

Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev has won a case against GECAS over its handling of a deal involving seven Airbus A320s. The case centred on how GECAS behaved when it repossessed the planes, which had been bought by now-defunct Lebedev-backed German airline Blue Wings with a loan from a GE subsidiary in 2007-08. Lebedev, who avoided a jail sentence this month after being convicted of punching a rival during a Russian television talk show, owned a stake in Blue Wings through his investment firm Alpstream. Blue Wings closed in 2010 due to financial problems.

His legal team said GECAS had not lived up to its duty as a mortgagee when it sold the planes by auction, as it was supposed to get the best price for the fleet, recoup its loan and return the remainder to Lebedev's company. The planes were bought by GECAS itself for USD$146.8 million at the auction and later leased to US airline JetBlue Airways. Lebedev's team said GECAS had not conducted the auction fairly as it had intended to lease the planes to JetBlue from the outset and had bought them for far lower than their market value of USD$157.3 million. GECAS's defence was that the auction was held to ensure transparency, had been well publicised and had attracted 38 potential bidders.

Judge Michael Burton at the High Court ruled in favour of Lebedev, calling the auction a "charade" and saying GECAS should have paid the market price for the planes as a special purchaser given its intentions. He said Lebedev's company had suffered a loss of USD$10.17 million, plus interest, which it could claim against GECAS. A second claim by Lebedev that GECAS had spent too much in refurbishing the planes after they were foreclosed on, which again meant that less money was left, was rejected by the judge who said costs had been reasonable.

Lebedev said he felt vindicated by the court's ruling.

"GE tried to crush us by the use of their financial firepower in the face of the facts and failed. All of our efforts to reach an out of court settlement were rebuffed," he said.

A GECAS spokesman said the company was disappointed by the decision.

"We did everything in our power to manage the claimants' defaults appropriately and in accordance with standard industry practices. There was no wrongful conduct here and we plan to appeal the decision," he said.

(Reuters)

A Lion Air jet lands in Indonesia and crashes into a cow

http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2013/08/08/landing-lion-air-jet-gets-unusual-welcome-in-indonesia-by-cows/?mod=e2tw

An EasyJet Airbus A320 apparently lost a fan cowl yesterday. Following previous events of fan cowl door separation on A320-family aircraft, Airbus recommended that operators strictly adhere to Aircraft Maintenance Manual (AMM) task 71-13-00 for proper latching and closing of fan cowl doors after each maintenance action requiring cowl opening.

The Airbus A320-family Flight Crew Operating Manual (FCOM) Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) PRO-NOR-SOP-05 for the exterior walk-around includes a check on each engine that the fan cowl doors are closed and latched. To perform this check it is necessary to crouch down so that the latches are visible.

July is one of the worse if not the worse months in aviation but it is done, yet the crashes are continuing into August.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/float-playing-six-people-missing-presumed-crashed-b-215618196.html

Russian authorities are investigating an serious icing incident in cruise during which three engines on a Boeing 747-8 freighter sustained damage and two suffered a loss of thrust. Federal air transport authority Rosaviatsia identifies the aircraft involved as an AirBridge Cargo 747-8F, registered VQ-BGZ. The 747-8F is powered by four General Electric GEnx-2B engines. It had been operating between Moscow Sheremetyevo and Hong Kong on 31 July, and was cruising at 41,000ft at the time.

Three 'significant hits' every week, that's the number of bird strike incidents at the UK's airports, and they have almost doubled, according to the Civil Aviation Authority. Including both minor and major incidents, where the latter results in damage to the aircraft, the CAA recorded over 2,200 reports of bird strike in both 2011 and 2012, compared to only 1,299 in 2007.

Have a look at this...a few different incidents with components of the main gear detatching or collapsing on the Bombardier Q400.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezNyqIZPsNY

There are many things staff expect to find in a Marshall Aerospace hangar, but a ferret is not one of them. This is exactly what was discovered on Sunday, following a flight from Eindhoven to Cambridge.