JUNE 2013 GROUND HANDLING INTERNATIONAL


but also for how they are achieved. It is not only about money and numbers. The leadership must visibly demonstrate engagement and commitment.


As mentioned earlier, achieving and maintaining safety is a never–ending journey and we can never really say that we have done enough or arrived. We can’t give up and we definitely must not accept the status quo. The call to action must therefore continue.


Rolling, rolling, rolling…


An Embraer 190 flying into a Canadian airport narrowly missed a vehicle whilst it was landing. The incident apparently involved an unattended van that had been left running and in gear. At some point, the driverless van started rolling and managed to run across an active runway just as the aircraft was landing. Fortunately the Embraer, which had a seating capacity for 97 passengers, was still able to touch down without incident.


The van was found to belong to another airline at the station and its driver had been busy servicing a Boeing 737 at the time of the incident. For some reason, the worker had left the maintenance van’s engine running and remained oblivious to the fact that it had rolled away, clipping the engine cowling of the 737, before it started heading towards the runway. After crossing the runway, the van proceeded across a taxi-way and into a grassy area, where it was finally stopped by airport officials. The damage was described as minor, the


van’s mirror having apparently grazed the engine nacelle of the B737. However, this simple incident could have had far-reaching consequences had the timescale been slightly different.


Tail-happy but no tragedy


It appears that authorities in Germany are investigating how an aircraft flew across the Atlantic with damage to its rear section and without passengers or crew having noticed that the tail had touched the ground on take-off. The incident involving an Airbus A330


occurred at the start of March on a flight from Chicago to Munich.


“It seems the plane touched the ground on


take-off, thus damaging the rear,” a spokesman for the airline said. The BFU, Germany’s air accident investigator, added that during the tail strike, three or four pieces of fuselage came loose, although the passenger cabin was not damaged. The crew and passengers apparently did not notice the bump and the damage was first spotted after landing in Munich. Such incidents occur two or three times a year to German aircraft, it appears. Tail strike incidents rarely cause significant damage or cause danger, especially when they occur at take-off. If they had noticed the strike, standard Airbus operating procedure would have required the crew to avoid pressurising the cabin and land at an airport to assess the damage.


GroundHandling.indd 1 30/04/2013 14:42


RAMP SAFETY BRIEFING 37


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