* Industry day.

* Industry day. For its proclaimed inferior annual industry day, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will landlord a one-day symposium Tuesday, Feb 29 in succession Controller Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC) The technology is seen as a promising means of alleviating airspace congestion and resulting flight delays (see ASW, Dec 13 1999) The proceedings begin at 8:30 a.m. in the third floor auditorium at the FAA's Washington, DC headquarters, 800 Independence Ave.

* Deadline reach outed The comment period for what is to be done about flammable vapors in combustibles tanks has been extended to March 27 (Federal Register Doc. 00-2262) When the Federal Aviation Administration published its Notice of Propos Rulemaking (NPRM) Oct 28 1999 solely 90 days was allowed for the industry to remark (Docket No. FAA-1999-6411, Notice No. 99-18)

undivided of the problems involved publication of the NPRM without the associated advisory circulars (AC's) that were mentioned in the call for make comments [i]or[/i] remarks Those circulars were not published until Feb 12 about pair weeks after the original Jan. 27 deadline for make notess expired. For a complete package, those desiring to submit make comments [i]or[/i] remarkss need to review the original NPRM plus these associated AC's:

AC No. 25981-1X Date 1/12/00 (Draft), Subject: firing Tank Ignition Source Prevention Guidelines. Note: This draft AC supercede a 29-year olden AC, 25.981-1A, Guidelines for Substantiating Compliance With the firing Tank Temperature Requirements. Available forward the web at: http://www.faa.gov/avr/air/acs/259811x.pdf

AC No.25.981-2X, Date 1/12/00 (Draft), Subject: combustible matter Tank Flammability Minimization. We call readers' attention to Appendix 1 in this AC, in which a "go/no go" line is not awayed based on the relationship of (1) material for burning temperature to total air temperature to (2) the rate of firing temperature change. Available on the web at: http://www.faa.gov/avr/air/acs/259812x.pdf.

* ETOPS reminder. March 6 is the deadline for remarks to the Federal Aviation Administration's conditional approval of 207-minute ETOPS (Extend Twin-Engine Operations). For fitly equipped B777 aircraft, the extension from 180-minute to 207-minute ETOPS takes purport automatically March 21, barring any just discovered "show stopper" comments submitted to the docket casting a whole just discovered light on the situation (see ASW, Jan. 31)

The docket can be viewed at this URL: http://dms.dot.gov/ (Docket No. FAA-99-6717). symbol in the last four digits of the docket number to access the "Disposition of elucidations on 207-minute ETOPS" and to papal court other comments submitted to the docket in the wake of the FAA's Jan. 18 call for extra submissions. From what we can own only Britannia Airways has submitted expositions suggesting that there are other means of assured communications than from satellite voice and data. With High common occurrence Radio Data Link (HFDL), provided global data link is available, voice communications are not necessary. Britannia commended expanding the required satcom voice and data capability to include means which are not at the disposal of on VHF line-of-sight communications - if it were not that not limited to satcom.

Meanwhile, we have an unconfirmed still reliable report of a Malaysia Airlines B777 onward a flight to Auckland, just discovered Zealand that had to turn back to Kuala Lumpur after the inflight shutdown of united engine and near-failure of the next to the first The event occurred in mid-January. The aircraft had freshly come out of maintenance and, according to accounts, the two engines began losing oil enroute at a significant rate, to be ascribed to plugs not replaced or not fitly replaced after borescoping. Apparently, the same technicians carried on the outside simultaneous critical maintenance on the couple engines of an ETOPS jet thereby unraveling all the fine calculations about ETOPS failure probabilities. Boeing warned about the potential for a human factors failure in an article about ETOPS maintenance in the July 1999 issue of its Aero magazine:

"two similar connected views should not be maintained or repaired during the same maintenance visit. a operators may find this difficult to implement because all maintenance must be done at their abode base. However, methods exist for avoiding riddles that may be introduced by means of working on two similar theorys simultaneously. For example, different personnel can perform the required work upon the similar systems, or they can ask each other to review the work done upon each system."

Extracted from http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_07/etops.html.

* Correction. In our Feb 21 p 9 story about the play running in novel York City based on actual cockpit voice recorder transcripts, the Aug. 1985 crash involved a Japan Air Lines B747 not 757

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