Ground the Airbus? by William John Cox

by William John Cox
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.thevoters.org
June 19, 2009

Since entering service in 1974 with many technological innovations, such as computerized fly-by-wire control systems, user-friendly cockpits, and extended use of composite materials, 5,717 aircraft have been manufactured by Airbus, an European aerospace company. More than 5,100 Airbuses remain in service.

Not including losses attributable to terrorism, rebellion or military action, Airbuses have been involved in 23 fatal crashes causing the deaths of 2,584 passengers, crew members and people on the ground. In addition, there have been five nonfatal accidents causing 21 serious injuries.

While the overall number of accidents and fatalities are not disproportionate to the crash experience of Boeing aircraft, three of the Airbus crashes involved a separation of the composite vertical stabilizer (tail fin) from the fuselage. Five hundred, or one in five of the Airbus deaths, including 228 from Air France Flight 447, resulted from these three crashes.

Key figures in global battle against illegal arms trade lost in Air France crash

Updated

Dandelion Salad

Sunday Herald
From Andrew McLeod

ARGENTINA: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald Dreyer battled South American arms and drug trafficking

AMID THE media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France’s ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world’s most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.

Pablo Dreyfus, a 39-year-old Argentine who was travelling with his wife Ana Carolina Rodrigues aboard the doomed flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, had worked tirelessly with the Brazilian authorities to stem the flow of arms and ammunition that for years has fuelled the bloody turf wars waged by drug gangs in Rio’s sprawling favelas.

Also travelling with Dreyfus on the doomed flight was his friend and colleague Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat and co-ordinator of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence who had worked with UN missions in El Salvador, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Angola. Both men were consultants at the Small Arms Survey, an independent think tank based at Geneva’s Graduate Institute of International Studies. The Survey said on its website that Dryer had helped mobilise the support of more than 100 countries to the cause of disarmament and development.

[…]

via Sunday Herald: International: International

h/t: CLG

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Updated

Air France pilots warned about A330

PressTV
Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:20:17 GMT

A French union has called on Air France pilots to refrain from flying amid fresh reports on the number of fatalities found from the doomed flight 447.

An unnamed authority with the Alter union said on Monday that there exists a “strong presumption” amongst aviators that a glitch in the craft’s external speed device, alias Pitot, contributed to the plane crash.

The union is urging the company to ground its Airbus A330 and A340 fleet in order for experts to fix the Pitot problems that bring about a “real risk of loss of control.”

via Air France pilots warned about A330

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Russia Today video:

Sabotage behind Air France crash?