Planes losing electrical power on landing approach Thread

[Avalon]

Flight of plane that crashed in Butte originated in San Diego

Associated Press - March 22, 2009 11:14 PM ET

BUTTE, Mont. (AP) - An airplane that crashed this afternoon in Butte, killing from 14 to 17 people, originally took off from Brown Field Municipal airport in San Diego on Saturday evening.

From there it flew to [b]Redlands, Calif., where it left this morning for Vacaville, Calif., then to Oroville, Calif., and then on to Butte.

That's according to Flight Aware, a Web site that tracks air traffic.

The National Transportation Safety Board could not confirm that information.

At a news conference tonight in Butte, NTSB official Kristi Dunks, said they are still gathering information on the aircraft, it's purpose, what they were doing and where they were going.http://www.kpax.com/Global/story.asp?S=10051643

The plane was registered to Eagle Cap Leasing Inc. in Enterprise, Ore., Fergus said. He didn't know who was operating the plane.
http://www.orovillemr.com/news/ci_11973029

More hopping than all of Peter Rabbit's family put together. It's way out of the way to take all of those stops in California, rather than going directly to Montana from San Diego.

What does Bozeman have that the Sierra Nevadas can't provide closer to home? Were these people untouched by the recession?

A comment (#12) on the Oroville Mercury-Register says, "It seems the plane started in Redlands, stopped for 50 minutes in Vacaville, then stopped 30 minutes in Oroville, where the airport guy said "about a dozen" kids came off the plane to use the bathroom. So, the people might have come from Redlands or Vacavillle. I followed this story because I am in Bozeman, where the plane was headed. It's the last day of spring break here, so it could have been kids coming home. "

Another comment points out "Oroville is in Butte County, California, which may get confusing since the plane crashed in Butte, Montana. http://www.topix.com/forum/source/mercu ... R58UDDS0G0

Bozeman is about 85 miles southeast of Butte.

Steve Guidoni (gwuh-DOH'-nee) rushed to the fiery scene near the Butte airport in hopes of rescuing someone. He says the biggest piece of wreckage he found was the size of a kitchen table. He saw luggage and seat cushions -- but no bodies.
http://www.montanasnewsstation.com/Glob ... S=10051862

If so, how were they able to confirm exactly how many people were on it?

I. Felkamp is listed in Oregon corporate records as Eagle Cap's president. Attempts to reach him by phone were unsuccessful. The flight originated at Brown Field Municipal airport in San Diego on Saturday evening and flew to Redlands, Calif., about 100 miles north, said Rachel Laing, a spokeswoman for the city of San Diego. [Comments are not visible unless you register]
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/articl ... /903230301

Action News has learned a Chico dentist, his pregnant wife and two children, are believed to be among the victims.
http://www.khsltv.com/content/topstorie ... W1bdQ.cspx

But today's Chico Enterprise-Record article does not mention local people on the plane. http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_11975728

[Gouda]

What are the odds...

Butte crash:

Agency officials said the airplane crashed and burned at about 2:30 p.m. Sunday in Holy Cross Cemetery, just 500 feet short of Bert Mooney Airport.

http://www.montanasnewsstation.com/Glob ... S=10050868

FedEx cargo plane Crash in Japan:

FedEx Express Flight 80 took off from Guangzhou, China, and crashed at Narita about 7 a.m. Monday (6 p.m. Sunday ET- [which is 4:00 p.m. U.S. Mountain Time), said FedEx spokesman Matt Ceniceros.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiap ... index.html

[Avalon]

The passengers were three Seventh Day Adventist families, two of whom were related.

http://nuforc.org/webreports/068/S68283.html

[chiggerbit]

The local news person just pronounced it Butt, Montana.

[psynapz]

The passengers were three Seventh Day Adventist families, two of whom were related.

http://nuforc.org/webreports/068/S68283.html

Daytime ball of light flies at ground level only to disappear

I was relaxing on my bed watching TV and happened to look out my bedroom window (actually a glass sliding door) when I noticed something whiz by. It was a white ball of light about the size of a Baseball. The only thing I can compare it to is a large smokeless roman candle projection. It was about 12 feet away from me and 6 feet off the ground. I got up and looked outside and saw nothing. As the ground is covered in snow (at least six inches) I expected to see a smoking visible hole as the trajectory would have had it slam into the side of a foothill behind my house. I found and saw nothing. I considered it might be ball lightning but it was clear and about 30 degrees outside. It also made no sound I could hear.

Connection?

[Avalon]

No connection, the NUFORC connection was to email to a friend of mine who might find it of interest, and I guess it was still on my Clipboard.
Thanks for pointing it out.

[justdrew]

Several years ago I saw instructions on how to DIY make a simple EMP weapon, especially of the "flux compression device" type. I may have mentioned this before somewhere, but didn't have the link to the info to back it up, and frankly didn't feel like searching it out. Well, here's more info on that, thanks to cryptogon for spotting this article in New Scientist. The main thing is, given how easy it is to make such a thing homebrew, what if you actually have some facilities to use to build with?
The "assasinators" have obviously had access to this method for decades.

Aircraft could be brought down by DIY 'E-bombs'
ELECTROMAGNETIC pulse weapons capable of frying the electronics in civil airliners can be built using information and components available on the net, warn counterterrorism analysts.

All it would take to bring a plane down would be a single but highly energetic microwave radio pulse blasted from a device inside a plane, or on the ground and trained at an aircraft coming in to land.

Yael Shahar, director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, and her colleagues have analysed electromagnetic weapons in development or used by military forces worldwide, and have discovered that there is low-cost equipment available online that can act in similar ways. "These will become more of a threat as the electromagnetic weapons technology matures," she says.

For instance, the US and Russian military have developed electromagnetic pulse (EMP) warheads that create a radio-frequency shockwave. The radio pulse creates an electric field of many hundreds of thousands of volts per metre, which induces currents that burn out nearby electrical systems, such as microchips and car electronics.

Speculation persists that such "e-bombs" have been used in the Persian Gulf, and in Kosovo and Afghanistan - but this remains unconfirmed. But much of what the military is doing can be duplicated by others, Shahar says. "Once it is known that aircraft are vulnerable to particular types of disruption, it isn't too much of a leap to build a device that can produce that sort of disruption. And much of this could be built from off-the-shelf components or dual-use technologies."
It isn't much of a leap to build a device that can produce that sort of disruption in aircraft

For example, government labs use high-energy EMP devices to test what would happen to critical electronic systems if a nuclear weapon detonated, generating a vast electromagnetic pulse, says Robert Iannini, founder of Information Unlimited in Amherst, New Hampshire, which sells EMP test systems.

EMPs can be created in a number of ways. A machine called a Marx generator can quickly dump an extremely high charge stored in a bank of capacitors into an antenna, which then releases a highly energetic radio pulse. Devices like this are often used to test power lines for their resistance to lightning strikes. An alternative, known as a flux compression device, uses a small explosive to push an armature through a current-carrying coil that is generating a magnetic field. This compresses the magnetic field, again producing a devastating EMP.

Iannini says his company only sells such devices to legitimate buyers. "The only people that buy these things are qualified researchers at labs like Sandia. They never find their way into the labs of pseudo or amateur scientists," he says. "If we get any unknown overseas purchaser we immediately alert the office of export enforcement at the US Department of Commerce."

But Shahar told delegates at the annual Directed Energy Weapons conference in London last month that security at some labs can be lax, while basic EMP generators can be built from descriptions available online, using components found in devices such as digital cameras. "These are technologically unchallenging to build and most of the information necessary is available," she says.

The increasing use of carbon-fibre reinforced composite in aircraft fuselages is also making them more vulnerable, she says, because composites provide poor shielding against electromagnetic radiation compared with metal. "What is needed is extensive shielding of electronic components and the vast amount of cables running down the length of the aircraft," she says.

Jerome Bruel, an electrical systems expert at the European Aviation Safety Agency in Cologne, Germany, agrees that newer all-composite planes like the Airbus A350 will probably need some means of protecting their cabling from all radio energy sources, including TV transmitters. "They may need a metal mesh surrounding them to absorb interference," he says.

Douglas Beason, a director at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, says it may be straightforward to build a do-it-yourself EMP weapon, but more difficult to make one that can be stowed in an aircraft. "A lot of work would need to go into dramatically decreasing the weight, shrinking the power supply and antenna," he says.

Nevertheless, governments are taking the threat seriously. A spokesperson at the UK Department of Transport said the government is well aware of this security issue and has close links with agencies "able to provide a balanced picture in regards to EMP weapons, and their potential to compromise civilian aircraft".

===

it seems like the only safe way to fly is:
make sure your plane has no transponder.

sweep it for 'add on' devices. Trouble there because the tracking device need only transmit for a split second when it's pinged, it doesn't have to transmit continuously.

deviate from filed flight plans and land at unexpected airports. but heck, they could have people positioned at all the little airports in the area if so desired. maybe landing at the biggest airports would be safer.

best yet - stay the hell out of planes.

[Penguin]

justdrew:
Indeed they have.

http://www.amazing1.com/emp.htm

EMP/HERF/Shock Pulse Generators
Shock wave generators are capable of producing focused acoustic or electromagnetic energy that can break up objects such as kidney stones and other similar materials. EMP generators can produce pulses of electromagnetic energy that can destroy the sensitive electronics in computers and microprocessors. Destabilized LCR circuits can produce multi megawatt pulses by using an explosive wire disruptive switch. These high power pulses can be coupled into antennas, conic sections, horns etc for very directional effects. Research is currently being undertaken to disable vehicles thus avoiding dangerous high speed chases. The trick is to generate a high enough power pulse to fry the electronic control processor modules. This could be a lot simpler if the vehicle was covered in plastic or fiber glass rather than metal. The shielding of the metal body offers a challenge to the researcher to develop a practical system. A system could be built that could do this but would be costly, large and produce collateral damage to friendly targets.

[Gouda]

More follow-up on the Turkish Air Boeing Crash in Amsterdam (that killed 4 Boeing employees on a Pentagon mission to Turkey) which seems to have lost engine power on approach to landing due to failure of the left radio altimeter (according to preliminary reports).

FWIW:

Laptops In Dutch Crash Said To Contain US Military Secrets

CNN Money - of all sources! - LINK

April 10, 2009

THE HAGUE (AFP)--Four laptops said to contain U.S. military secrets were recovered from a Turkish Boeing Co. (BA) plane that crashed near Amsterdam in February and handed to U.S. authorities, a Dutch official said Friday.

According to a newspaper report the laptops contained U.S. military secrets linked to plans for a sophisticated airborne radar system to be used by the Turkish air force.

Four Boeing employees were among the nine people who died when the plane crashed near Schiphol airport near Amsterdam on Feb. 25 after a problem with its altimeter.

The prosecutor's office in Haarlem, west of Amsterdam, "gave instructions that four Boeing laptops should be removed from the plane," a spokeswoman for the office told AFP.

"We then handed them over to the U.S. embassy in The Hague and 48 hours after the accident they were returned to Boeing."

The four Boeing employees were returning from Turkey after a mission for the U.S. Department of Defense.

"According to Boeing they had with them four laptops containing confidential and sensitive information," the spokeswoman said.

"The United States asked us to hand them over."

The newspaper De Telegraaf said the laptops contained Boeing's plans to build a sophisticated airborne radar station, named "Peace Eagle", to be installed in a Turkish airforce Boeing 737.

[barracuda]

Schwarzenegger's plane makes emergency landing

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal investigators on Saturday were looking into what prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plane to make an emergency landing, a mishap the governor called "a little adventure" on Twitter.

The chartered jet was about 10 minutes away from landing Friday at the Santa Monica Airport when the pilot reported smoke coming from an instrument panel.

The pilot made a "quick, steep, but safe landing" at 6:23 p.m. at Van Nuys Airport in the San Fernando Valley, Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said.

No one was injured.

Authorities intend to follow-up with the New Jersey-based private charter company that ferried Schwarzenegger, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said Saturday.

Gregor said the FAA will make sure NetJets Inc. diagnoses and fixes the problem that prompted the emergency landing on Friday.

Schwarzenegger, who was heading to Santa Monica after a speech in Mendota, tweeted about the incident, calling it "a little adventure," and posting a link to a photo of the jet parked on the runway on his Twitter feed.

"All's OK, though," he tweeted.

NetJets spokeswoman Maryann Aarseth said the NetJets Hawker 800 was carrying the governor, three passengers and two crew.

"The crew followed standard emergency procedures by informing the passengers of the situation and diverting to Van Nuys where they landed the aircraft safely," Aarseth said in a statement Saturday.

[Gouda]

How about a Plane Vanishing on Landing Approach?!

*****

Plane carrying 13 missing in Papua New Guinea
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090811/ap_ ... sing_plane

SYDNEY – A charter plane carrying 13 people — including nine Australians — to a popular tourist site in Papua New Guinea vanished on approach to an airport on Tuesday, the airline and Australia's foreign minister said.

The twin-engine plane left the capital of Port Moresby en route to an airport near the country's Kokoda Track, a mountainous 100-kilometer (60-mile) trail. The plane's crew radioed air traffic controllers as it was approaching the airstrip, but the aircraft never landed, said Allen Tyson, a spokesman for Airlines PNG.

A search and rescue mission was immediately launched, Tyson said. The plane, carrying 11 passengers and two crew, had an emergency locator beacon but it was not transmitting, he said. No further information was immediately available, he said.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed nine of the passengers on board were Australian. The trail is a popular destination for Australian tourists.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith expressed grave fears for the passengers' welfare in Parliament.

"We are, of course, concerned for all of the passengers and the crew," Smith said.

The Australian High Commission in Port Moresby was working with Papua New Guinean authorities to determine what happened to the plane, Smith said. Searchers were checking other small airstrips in the area to see if it may have landed elsewhere. But poor weather conditions were hampering searchers' efforts, he said.

[smiths]

it was one of two planes in a convoy,

there was intense cloud cover and the first plane turned round and went back to where it took off,
planes in this region regularly look for holes in the cloud to drop down into and land,
i think it is almost certain that this will turn out to be pilot error

[Sweejak]

Crash kills 20 after air safety meeting

* Death toll in Polish military plane crash rises to 20

FYI

Only two weeks ago the newly elected in last September, Polish government was declaring officially its hardly concealed hostility towards this “shield” as the USA-owned, dangerous for Polish citizenry, military installation on Polish territory. And than suddenly, on the February 1st, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Radek Sikorski (a member of the American Enterprise Institute, by the way) suddenly changed his mind and inclined, during his visit in Washington, to all pressures exercised by White House. This American “master of Eastern Europe” is wishing to establish in Poland not only the (anti)missile base, but also several subsequent, US Army owned, military bases. This supposedly in order to protect Poland from Russian hegemonistic drive.

What happened, which changed the mind of Polish government so rapidly? On January 23rd a big military cargo plane, which was bought only two years earlier from the Spanish CASA producer, crushed in northern Poland, killing in this accident 20 high officers of Polish Air Force, including the chief of the personnel assuring the security of Polish airspace, general Andrzejewski. The origin of this crush still remains a mystery, supposedly pilots made a too narrow u-turn during the second attempt of landing in relatively good weather conditions. This, seriously wounding Polish military staff accident, professor Ivo Cyprian Pogonowski, an 85 years old, internationally known historian, living since decades in USA, commented in a following way, quoting information he found in a book of John Perkins “Confessions of Economic hit-Man”:

“Every one politician (trying to liberate his country from “pincers of freedom” imposed by US Department of State) was told: “If you will be docile, you will be rich, but in case of disobedience you will finish like Allende in Chile, Arbenz in Guatemala or Lumumba in Congo”. The presidents of two countries, men whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits - Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama - both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.”

End of Perkins’ quote.

It is of interest to know whether the recent death, in Poznan Voievodie, of Polish generals, commanders of air forces, was a similar one, for they were not giving the permission for the construction of “shield” in Poland, and they did not want to endanger their country with the possibility of Russian nuclear counter-strikes.”

Pogonowski indeed turned to be a prophet bringing bad news: only a week after the crash of CASA cargo aircraft, Polish government has changed its mind concerning the installation of the (surely nuclear) “shield”, Its installation is planned at the abandoned military airport of Redzikowice, which is situated only 2 km from Pomeranian Academy of Pedagogy, where I teach, and only 4 km from the center of city of Slupsk, with its 100 thousand of citizens.

Of interests are two “small” facts:

1/ The CASA cargo plane crushed only 20 minutes after an inter-landing at Krzesiny military airport near Poznan, where at present a US military air base is located.

2/ The article titled “Global Corruption”, in which Pogonowski enounced such an “interesting” explication of the recent CASA catastrophe in Poland, has disappeared from Pogonowski”s website www.pogonowski.com. It happened that I copied earlier the passage translated into English above, so I repeat Pogonowski”s “miraculously missing” prophecy in its Polish original:

Ciekawe, czy niedawna śmierć w Poznańskim polskich generałów dowódców lotnictwa, była analogiczna, ponieważ nie zgadzali się na budowę “Tarczy” w Polsce i nie chcieli narażać ojczyzny na rosyjskie bomby nuklearne. “

More:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/A ... 8896.shtml

[Gouda]

Sweejak, interesting context on the Polish crash.

Smiths, I haven't seen anything about the PNG flight being part of a convoy, but it does look like a strange, tragic accident; the pilots probably couldn't land the first time and swung around for a 2nd attempt but crashed into a cliff. But I wonder why these reportedly 'highly experienced' pilots with new navigation equipment didn't radio in their intentions and subsequent maneuvers?

Wreck of Papua New Guinea plane found
The plane was carrying two "highly experienced" Papua New Guinean pilots... Authorities could not immediately say what had caused the crash. The plane had recently been fitted with new navigation equipment, and the pilots were familiar with the route, "having both flown in Papua New Guinea for approximately five years on this aircraft type," the airline said. "Earlier in the day, an Airlines PNG flight had operated into Kokoda under normal weather conditions, but conditions in the mountainous terrain can be subject to sudden changes," the airline said.

UPI: Plane crash in Papua New Guinea kills 13
David Inau, a pilot and former air safety investigator, told The Brisbane Courier-Mail the pilot apparently made one attempt to land at Kokoda and then hit a cliff face as she came around for a second attempt.

Tragedy was avoidable with bigger plane, says Kokoda expert
Villagers at Abuari, about an hour's walk from Isurava, had heard the aircraft overherad, Mr Barlett said. "They reported also hearing an explosion," he said.

[smiths]

i havent got a link to it gouda,

it was on abc radio yesterday morning whilst i was making my porridge,
the pilot of the first plane was describing that the other was following him and he had returned because of an inability to land,

he presumed they had tried to land despite the conditions