Model Airplanes

“The Garden Lady”

By Susan Dworkin

Publisher: Divided Light Projects, LLC

Pages: 200

“The Garden Lady,” a new novel by Susan Dworkin, is a moving redemption story, but also an edge-of-your-seat suspense drama.

Maxine Dash Vandeblinken is a once-glamorous fashion model who comes to realize she is growing older. What she has had to do in her life to survive has filled her with regret and a determination to make things right, to get justice, and rediscover her own righteousness. She does it all by creating a garden that frees her to put her ill-gotten fortune to good use, and instead of burying the past, to go deep in excavating the poisons lying beneath the surface.

When Maxine suddenly loses her parents to an accident in New York at age 8, she is sent to live with her Aunt Gladys, who is teaching at the Indian School on a reservation in Sweet Pea, Ariz. Maxine becomes friends with a local girl, Celestita Rodriguez, and they remain like sisters. The life they share in Arizona is ideal in many ways, but the prejudice against Mexican people and the suspicion of Gladys, who is active in socialist causes, puts pressures on their family life. More than that, the local sheriff turns out to be part of a child abduction ring and the girls must make a harrowing trip back East to live with Maxine’s Uncle Harry in New York. The trip does not go well in several ways, and the abuse Maxine suffers shapes her

Article source: https://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/book-review-the-garden-lady-will-keep-readers-in-suspense,568358

Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another.

Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes, according to a person familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public. Boeing started moving on the software fix and the equipment change before the crash in Ethiopia.

The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy. Neither feature was mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. All 737 Max jets have been grounded.

“They’re critical, and cost almost nothing for the airlines to install,” said Bjorn Fehrm, an analyst at the aviation consultancy Leeham. “Boeing charges for them because it can. But they’re vital for safety.”

[After a Lion Air 737 Max crashed in October, questions about the plane arose.]

Earlier this week, Dennis A. Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, said the company was working to make the 737 Max safer.

“As part of our standard practice following any accident, we examine our aircraft design and operation, and when appropriate, institute product updates to further improve safety,” he

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-safety-features-charge.html

The Lion Air passenger plane carrying 189 people when it crashed off the coast of Indonesia is the latest in a long list of incidents for the budget flight charter.

The low-cost airline has been involved in numerous crashes in recent years, AeroInside historical incident reports reveal. 

In 2017, one of the company’s Boeing jets collided with a Wings Air plane during a botched landing at Kualanamu airport on the island of Sumatra.

Nobody was injured in the collision.

In May of 2016, two Lion Air planes collided at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport. 

Only one month prior, a plane operated by Batik Air, which is a part of the Lion Group, clipped a TransNusa plane. 

Three years earlier, in 2013, a Lion Air jet, piloted by a young, inexperienced rookie underestimated the runway while attempting to land the plane in Bali.

The plane, carrying 108 passengers crashed into the sea and subsequently split in two.

Several people were injured in the crash, but nobody was killed.

In 2013, a Lion Air jet, piloted by a young, inexperienced rookie underestimated the runway while attempting to land the plane in Bali

Indonesian rescue workers helped remove a section of a Lion Air Boeing 737 from the sea four days after it crashed while trying to land at Bali’s international airport (Pictured 2013 crash in Bali)

Several other documents confirm there have been multiple occasions involving miscalculation of

Article source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6828697/Off-duty-pilot-saved-doomed-Lion-Air-flight-disaster-one-day-earlier.html

One of the world’s leading crash expert, Greg Feith has slammed critics of 737 MAX certification process.

Feith, a retired senior crash investigator at the US National Transport Safety Bureau, is one of the world most respected authorities on the air accidents and today is a commentator and safety consultant.

Feith was with the NTSB for 21 years and investigated some of the most famous and difficult air crashes in history including Eastern Airlines flight 980 which crashed into Mt. Illimani at an elevation of 21,223 feet MSL in 1985. He was the Investigator in Charge of the NTSB “Go-Team” from 1993 to 2001 and in 2014 Feith was inducted as a member of the Living Legends of Aviation.

He has also investigated some of the most defining air crashes in history; Aloha Airlines Flight 243, American Airlines Flight 1420, American Eagle Flight 4184, British Airways Flight 9, Korean Air Flight 801, SilkAir Flight 185, Swissair Flight 111, USAir Flight 1016 and ValuJet Flight 592. (More details on Mr. Feith are at the bottom of this story)

Speaking with AirlineRatings.com Feith warns that “there continues to be a definite disconnect between some of the TV talking heads with a title and their understanding of reality in various aspects of aviation” and criticized Captain Sully Sullenberger for his comments in an opinion piece in Market Watch.

Captain Sullenberger became famous for his landing of an Airbus A320

Article source: https://www.airlineratings.com/news/crash-expert-greg-feith-slams-critics-737-max-certification-process/