Model Airplanes

Six months after its withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran, the United States has reimposed sanctions on flag carrier IranAir — including every aircraft in its fleet. The move will directly target the safety of ordinary Iranians while at the same time imposing an extra burden on a civilian airline already laden with numerous problems in its structure and business model.

In the aftermath of its pullout from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May, the United States has resumed sanctions as part of a strategy to force Tehran to accept more curbs on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and its regional influence. On Nov. 5, Washington reimposed penalties on hundreds of entities and individuals related to Iran’s shipping, shipbuilding, banking, energy and aviation industries. The latter includes 67 aircraft operated by IranAir as well as the airline itself.

Iran has called the sanctions part of an “economic war.” President Hassan Rouhani said Nov. 10, “On the one hand, they [the United States] name an airline company [on its blacklist] and, on the other, they specify the serial number for the planes to fill the pages. This method and the way they inform aims merely to have a psychological impact on the Iranian nation.”

“It’s a re-establishment of all sanctions that were in place prior to the JCPOA,” Saj Ahmad, chief analyst of StrategicAero Research, told Al-Monitor. “Ultimately, in the case of IranAir, the US government sees the airline

Article source: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/11/iran-planes-civil-aviation-iranair-us-sanctions-jcpoa-mahan.html

Boeing failed to communicate with 737 Max operators new procedures for addressing cases in which the airplane’s automatic stall prevention system commands the nose of the airplane downward, potentially resulting the kind of steep dive that appears to have led to the fatal crash of Lion Air Flight 610, according to pilot union officials quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

Meant to improve pitch response at high angles of attack and prevent pilots from raising the airplane’s nose too high, the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS) in the 737 Max 8 and Max 9 does not appear in the 737 NG. Engineers made the change to address differing stall characteristics in the Max resulting from its larger and heavier CFM Leap-1B engines. MCAS can, however, force the airplane into a dive under circumstances such as faulty inputs from its angle of attack sensors, potentially leading to a crash, according to an emergency airworthiness directive issued by the FAA.

The November 7 AD required a revision to the chapters in the airplane flight manual dedicated to certificate limitations and operating procedures for addressing runaway stabilizer. It also highlighted the procedures to follow in the event of runaway horizontal trim caused by faulty angle-of-attack inputs to the airplane’s flight control system. According to the AD, analysis performed by Boeing showed the defect could lead to repeated nose-down trim commands of the horizontal stabilizer, thereby compromising aircraft controllability and leading to excessive nose-down attitude, “significant” altitude loss, and, ultimately, a crash.

“We are issuing this

Article source: https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2018-11-13/boeing-guidance-737-max-stall-protection-system-under-fire

In the aftermath of the crash of Lion Air Flight 610, one of the worst air disasters in recent years, many observers are asking: How could a brand-new, state-of-the-art plane from one of the world’s leading manufacturers fall from the sky 13 minutes after takeoff—especially since there were no other obvious risk factors at play?

The plane had been serviced for a technical problem the day before the flight took off, which reportedly involved airspeed and altitude indicators, but Lion Air executives said the matter was resolved, and the plane was cleared to take off the next morning. (In the wake of the crash, Indonesia ordered an inspection of all Boeing 737 Max 8s belonging to national commercial airlines, reports CNN; investigators at the scene will also include experts from Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board.)

The advanced, fuel-efficient Max model has been flying commercially since 2017, and it’s already on track to be fastest-selling airplane in Boeing’s history—with 4,700 orders on the books, from airlines including Southwest, United, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, and Norwegian. The single-aisle 737 is a workhorse of commercial airlines around the world: it’s been operating for 40 years, and there are more than 10,000 currently in service; a 737 takes off somewhere in the world every two seconds, according to Boeing. “It is a highly reliable, very forgiving airplane,” says Captain Mark Weiss, an aviation consultant, who flew similar planes—Boeing 737s and 777s—during his years as a

Article source: https://www.cntraveller.in/story/often-new-airplanes-problems/