Willie points finger at techie

LONDON, 7 June 2017: The head of British Airways’ parent company has indicated that its giant computer crash, which sparked global flight chaos late last month, may have been caused by human error.

Some 75,000 passengers were affected by the computer system outage that caused chaotic scenes during the final weekend of May at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports.

Willie Walsh, chief executive of BA parent firm International Airlines Group (IAG), suggested that an engineer disconnected and then reconnected a power supply to the data centre in “an uncontrolled and uncommanded fashion”. Read more

Lukla lives up to its nickname

KATHMANDU, 29 May 2017: The co-pilot of a cargo plane that crashed at Lukla a small airport near Mount Everest, killing the pilot, has died from his injuries, Nepali officials said Sunday.

Lukla has been nicknamed the world’s most dangerous airport, but still remains the gateway for Everest trekkers and climbers.

The plane, which had departed from Kathmandu, broke into three pieces when it crashed in heavy fog while trying to land at Lukla airport on Saturday. Read more

MH370: Looking in the wrong places?

SYDNEY, 21 December 2016: Missing flight MH370 is almost certainly not in the current search zone in the remote Indian Ocean and may be further north, new analysis showed Tuesday, but authorities indicated the hunt may not be expanded.

No trace has been found in the massive underwater search off Australia for the jet lost en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March, 2014, carrying 239 passengers and crew.

However, more than 20 pieces of debris recovered mostly on western Indian Ocean shorelines have been identified as likely, or definitely, from the doomed Malaysia Airlines plane. Read more

Football mourns plane crash

LA UNIÓN, COLOMBIA, 30 November 2016: The football world mourned, Tuesday, after a plane carrying a Brazilian team crashed in the mountains in Colombia, killing 71 people, but miraculously leaving six survivors, officials said.

Football legends Pele and Maradona as well as current superstars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo led tributes to the players of Chapecoense Real, a humble team whose march to glory was cut abruptly short.

Having risen only recently from obscurity, the team was on its way to play in the finals of the Copa Sudamericana, South America’s second-biggest club tournament, when disaster struck. Read more

Ultralight crash in Pokhara

KATHMANDU, 24 November 2016: A Russian pilot was killed and a Canadian woman injured when their ultralight aircraft crashed in western Nepal on Wednesday, police said.

The aircraft crashed shortly after taking off from the mountain resort town of Pokhara, said Kaski district police chief Gajusiddhi Bajracharya.

“The two were rushed to hospital but the Russian pilot died while undergoing treatment,” Bajracharya told AFP. Read more

New theories on fate of MH370

CANBERRA, 13 September 2016: An American amateur investigator handed possible debris from missing flight MH370 to Australian officials Monday and said several pieces were blackened by flames, raising the prospect of a flash fire on-board.

Mystery has surrounded the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 since it disappeared, 8 March 2014, carrying 239 passengers and crew on a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The Boeing 777 is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean after inexplicably veering off course, but its final resting place has not been found despite an intense underwater search off Australia’s far west coast. Read more

MH370 crash zone correct

SYDNEY, 10 August 2016: MH370 plunged into the ocean at high speed — up to 20,000 feet a minute — reinforcing analysis that the missing Malaysia Airlines jet crashed in the current search zone, a report said Tuesday.

The Boeing 777 disappeared, 8 March, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on-board.

An extensive underwater hunt in the southern Indian Ocean has not yet found the crash site, fuelling speculation it may be outside the current search zone, particularly if someone was at the controls at the end of the flight. Read more

Firefighter dies in Emirates blaze

DUBAI, 4 August 2016: Hundreds of passengers were safely evacuated from an Emirates airliner that crash-landed and caught fire in Dubai Wednesday, resulting in the death of a firefighter and a four-hour shutdown of the busy airport but no other fatalities.

The exact circumstances of the accident involving a Boeing 777 flying from India with 300 people on board were not immediately clear.

Footage on social media showed thick black smoke billowing from the aircraft on the ground. Read more

EgpytAir flight broke up mid-air

NEW YORK, 25 July 2016: An EgyptAir flight that crashed into the Mediterranean in May likely broke up in mid-air after a fire erupted in or near the cockpit, the New York Times reported Friday.

However it remains unclear whether the blaze was triggered by mechanical malfunction or a criminal act, Egyptian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Times.

Last Saturday an Egyptian-led investigative committee reported that the word “fire” could be heard on EgyptAir flight 804’s cockpit voice recorder before it crashed. Read more

Egypt needs more time

CAIRO, 6 July 2016: Experts investigating the EgyptAir plane crash in May need more time to analyse and match the information gathered before they can reach “very basic conclusions,” the Egyptian-led investigative committee said Tuesday.

Experts will compare information downloaded from the flight data recorder and “establish time correlation” with the information gleaned from the cabin voice recorder, the Egyptian Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee said in a statement.

The committee had said Saturday that the memory chips of EgyptAir 804’s black box voice recorder are intact and investigators should be able to access them. Read more

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