Posted on 09/22/2008 1:05:56 PM PDT by Right_Handed_Writer
CHICAGO (CBS) ― An American Airlines jet overshot the runway at O'Hare International Airport Monday afternoon, and the Fire Department was sent to the scene.
American Airlines said the affected plane was Flight 268, which was headed from Seattle to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. It was diverted to Chicago for an unknown reason, and city Aviation Department officials said the plane was experiencing "electrical problems."
After landing, the plane was poised at an angle about halfway off the runway.
Passengers on the 757 plane were to exit using air stairs and be brought to the terminal on buses, American Airlines spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan said. Chutes were not deployed.
The Fire Department was on the scene assessing patients. Dispatch reports indicated that the plane blew a tire and as of 2 p.m., no injuries had been reported.
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/american.airlines.emergency.2.823016.html
(Excerpt) Read more at cbs2chicago.com ...
Tomkow you hear of this????
Tomkow you hear of this????
Ping.
WA Ping
Was it a Boeing Aircraft or an AIRBUUST SPECIAL?
Ping
Boeing 757.
Looks like they declared the emergency out over Lake Michigan and got a direct route to O’Hare. I live near O’Hare and heard my local firehouse go screaming out, so I fired up my scanner and quickly found out where they were heading. They brought the flight directly in on runway 22R. The pilot sounded a bit tense in his conversation with the tower. They had at least a dozen pieces of fire equipment on scene or en route when the plane landed, which is the usual response.
Everyone came off the plane via the stair truck, was bused to the terminal and are waiting for the flight to continue.
American still shows the flight as “In Transit”.
Here is the flight path:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL268
Thank you for the update so much.
Thanks so much for all the info on this flight that ended well.
GOD Blessed All Today and the Wonderful Pilots! AMEN!
Speculation:
One or two more A$$ HAT cell phone users, and the flight controls went offset. The pilot is to be commended, landing the aircraft with fuzzy responsive controls, landing long and putting her down hard ( blown tire.)
Kudos to the pilot!
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Everybody knows how difficult listening to the radio or watching TV becomes when someone is using the vacuum cleaner in the next room. The vacuum cleaner causes significant interference with the radio signal. I used to live in a house in Kensington, CA, with an electric garage door opener, activated from the road by a small radio device carried in my car. The door would occasionally open by itself, early in the morning, on some rainy days when SFO was using RWY 19 for arrivals, and the flight path came more-or-less overhead. Now, there’s an anecdote. I don’t know it was aircraft transmissions; I don’t know it wasn’t a passing taxicab whose driver was talking to base; I don’t even know it wasn’t a fault in the door opening mechanism. We may presume that the system was not very well shielded from electromagnetic interference, and it is certainly not certified to the same rigorous standards as avionics (`aviation electronics’).
Nevertheless, there are similar worries in aviation at the moment. Passengers use electronic devices on board aircraft, including some such as cellular phones that they shouldn’t in any case be attempting to use, and pilots have reported anomalies with their navigation equipment that seem to correlate with use of personal electronics in the cabin. An overview of the technical issues may be found in (Hel96).
There have been to my knowledge no reports so far of interference with electronic flight control on the Airbus A320/330/340 series or the Boeing B777. These systems are shielded very well against electronic signals, because they have to fly through radar beams and other electromagnetic fields that may be occasionally very strong. There is nevertheless some experience with electromagnetic interference with electronic flight controls. Five crashes of Blackhawk helicopters shortly after their introduction into service in the late 1980’s were found to be due to electromagnetic interference from very strong radar and radio transmitters with the electronic flight control systems (1). So concern about this phenomenon is not purely the result of speculation. It has actually happened, and it is appropriate to be concerned about the possibility of similar phenomena in transport aircraft.
Bruce Nordwall (Nor96), writing in Aviation Week and Space Technology in September 1996, reported on the topic of an RTCA report to the FAA Administrator. At the request of the FAA, RTCA Special Committee 177 was formed in 1992 to look into the possibility of interference with aircraft systems from electronic devices operated by passengers during flight. Such devices include laptop computers, Gameboys and, more insidiously, portable personal telephones employing cellular technology.
Nordwall reported the RTCA advisory group to be worried that no group was testing or systematically tracking the potential effect of passenger electronics on avionics. The group was also concerned that the flying public is not being educated about the potential hazard, and that the airlines must largely figure out how to deal with the issue themselves. Most airlines in the US already prohibit use of passenger electronics of any sort below 10,000ft altitude. There is most concern for the future; that rapid increases in the technology of personal communications may allow passengers to bring aboard with them, and inadvertently or surreptitiously use, devices such as personal satellite phones that may be capable of significant levels of electromagnetic radiation. The RTCA report recommends developing and installing devices in aircraft cabins that could detect and locate potentially harmful radiation coming from within the aircraft. John Sheehan, the chairperson of RTCA SC-177, kindly provided the Executive Summary of SC-177’s report, RTCA DO-233 (RTCA96). The Summary is included here as Appendix A.
Navigation systems are particularly vulnerable for two reasons:
they have parts devised to detect and act on signals coming from `outside’;
radio-based systems are particularly susceptible to low levels of interference.
Aircraft control systems are located entirely within the aircraft and are shielded from absolutely any signals not coming from one of their own devices; they are also not radio-based, but are based entirely on electrical signals conducted through wires as are most computer networks (in the future, maybe also light signals conducted through glass-fibre cables). Navigation avionics, on the other hand, must have some designed sensitivity to environmental radio signals in order to perform their function. Nordwall says
THe antennas of radio-based avionics may be affected by [electromagnetic] field intensities of only microvolts per meter. But being outside the aircraft, the antennas get some protective attenuation from the fuselage of radiation originating inside the aircraft. Non-radio systems generally have higher signal levels, and so are less susceptible to low levels of interference.
The hull of a metal aircraft forms an effective electromagnetic boundary between the outside and the inside of an aircraft. Electromagnetic signals find it hard to get in, or to get out. That is why the navigation and radio antennae on an aircraft need to be placed outside the aircraft hull. But while outside they must be sensitive, the navigation electronics inside the hull can be in principle just as well and securely shielded as control avionics, because there is no reason at all for navigation systems to be sensitive to electromagnetic signals coming from inside the aircraft — indeed, very good reasons for these systems to be very insensitive, namely, that there is lots of other electronics working there as well.
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http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/Research/Rvs/Article/EMI.html
This article is nice... except for the fact that the flight controls on a 757 are all electrohydraulic, not electronic, and therefore are not susceptible to such interference issues.
Nice try, but no points.
This article is nice... except for the fact that the flight controls on a 757 are all electrohydraulic, not electronic, and therefore are not susceptible to such interference issues.
Nice try, but no points.
I just have to relate my first ever flight experience. This past summer, I took my very first flight. We were to take off from Nashville to Milwaukee at 9:22 AM. Of course the plane was late. When we finally boarded about 10:15 AM, another delay. They said they were experiencing electrical problems. They said they could just disconnect the thing that was giving the problem but it was the law that they had to wait for a liscensed mechanic to do it. That made me a little nervous. But anyway they took us off the plane and about an hour later put us back on the same plane. They said the problem wasn’t fixed but it shouldn’t give us any problems. Anyway after we landed in Milwaukee, (by then we had already missed our flight to Minneapolis) several officials came out of the terminal immediately and tied red flags on the plane. Now this electrical problem in Chicago. Yikes!
Not really. The unsheilded nav system and other electronic avionics sensors have automatic overides on some aspects of the control system, for example when the aircraft is on auto pilot tied in with the navigational control system, as is often the case during mid flight time. Interference with the nav system by cell phones in the 800 Mghtz range could skew the A/C controls by failing to completely disengage when prompted, making the A/C difficult to fly with the auto pilot failing to shut off completely.
I know it is speculation but not outside the realm of possibility. I look forward to reading the incident report.
Not really. The unsheilded nav system and other electronic avionics sensors have automatic overides on some aspects of the control system, for example when the aircraft is on auto pilot tied in with the navigational control system, as is often the case during mid flight time. Interference with the nav system by cell phones in the 800 Mghtz range could skew the A/C controls by failing to completely disengage when prompted, making the A/C difficult to fly with the auto pilot failing to shut off completely.
I know it is speculation but not outside the realm of possibility. I look forward to reading the incident report.
Um, not quite. A 757 is quite primitive in terms of what the onboard avionics can or can’t do.
Oops! ( sorry for repost)
Why keep us all in suspence then? The pilot reported electrical problems, what then is your speculation about the 757's primitive system. If an electrical problem made the A/C difficult to fly, then what might it have been?
At a guess from the former 757 pilot I’m IM’ing, possibly one or more of the generators went off line. He also says that it’s possible that it was just the ancient electronics packing it in. He flies for American and recently transitioned to the 777; says that it’s not at all unusual for those aged planes to have problems with their avionics.
Also says that the 757’s avionics are too stupid to have suffered interference from cell phones...
I was working in Dispatch today when our ops guy called and told us about the runway 22R being shut down. It could have been a lot worse. ORD was groundstopped for ZAU internals only and 10 mins after the Ground stop cancelled, they cancelled the program as well..
Uh, no. The 757 has electro-mechanical flight controls. I was in the jumpseat coming back from SAT, while the Captain was showing off his new iPhone. We pulled up STL ATIS on his phone, and pulled up a radar pic as well. With redundant avionics and FMS, the profile is built into the FMS-every navaid in the world could be OTS, and you can still fly right to the numbers. Cell phone restrictions are in place due to GPS nav, despite the fact that it has never been proven they interfere with Navigation. If a cell phone could cause that much trouble, they would be banned from aviation..
I’m a pilot and an electrical engineer.....BTW, I also ran a avionics shop when I was in the Navy.
As Penn and Teller would say....Bravo Sierra
Cell phones use a much higher frequency then 800MHz and have for some time.
Boeing 777, best plane I’ve flown on. Sure beats the Airbus A340s. I haven’t been on a 787 yet but am looking forward to it.
May I ask on what parameters you rated the two types? Personally, I find the carriers' choice of seat arrangement - pitch and width, more important than the type itself.
But what do I know? I'm a fan of both A and B.
Update from last night’s local news here. They were the only ones reporting instrument failure:
http://video.nbc5.com/player/?id=679521
Thanks for the heads up. I’ve posted it on site.
I love the Triple, too, but I have always had a soft spot for the Airbus widebodies. Say what you want about the business practices, but they sure build them pretty..
The plane seems to have been wrestled to the ground though.I am very interested in how this happened. I travel a lot by air.
Thanks for your insight.
My pilot friend is unavailable, so I don’t know for certain. I do know that the 757 has one generator per engine. The 757 has three hydraulic systems, any one of which can provide “adequate” control by itself. It may take high effort on the part of the pilots to do so, but it’d still be controllable. Two of the systems are powered mechanically off the engines, one is run by electrical pumps. In case of a power shortage, the electrical pumps can be turned off to reduce the load.
I do know that if there was a problem with the autopilot or automatic flight controls, the pilots could have pulled the fuse/breaker or turned it off, so even if your pet theory of cell phone interference was correct, simply turning it off would have ended any influence the system had over the flight. After the Eastern Airlines Florida incident (IIRC), autopilot disconnect is something all commercial pilots train for.
At a guess, I’d say the generator on one of the engines cut out, the pumps dropped out to keep the rest of the aircraft’s electrics running, and the plane wasn’t a whole lot of fun to fly afterwards. No “OMG CELL PHONZ R EVIL” involved here.
Reference: http://www.757.org.uk/systems/sys7.html
Cell phones are supposed to adjust their transmit strength so they only talk to the nearest towers (in many areas, the nearest tower will be less than a mile away). A cell phone in an airplane will have a much longer effective transmit range and may consequently interfere with cellular phones on the ground.
I still remember the story of the DC10 which lost all hydraulic systems and yet still managed to land well enough to have quite a few survivors. That was some fine flying.
In all testing ever done with cell phones or any other kind of consumer electronics equipment, none of them have ever been proven to interfere with the operation of an airplane.
Not one.
It's a big "just in case" thing and government agencies who are too cheap/lazy to perform conclusive testing.
Handheld cell phones are limited to 3 watts, period. Even at max strength, that’s not a lot.
ping #12
IMHO, the reason we can’t use cell phones on planes is that the airlines haven’t figured out how to capture revenue from us. It would seem to me that the planes could capture and channel all cell traffic from within the plane (the planes are Faraday cages if I remember my high school science) to the ground. Short of a fare increase or surcharge on all riders, they can’t justify it.
FWIW, remember all the cell traffic from the doomed planes on 911. It works fine.
In 1989. The UAL flight lost all hydraulics, and the crew used the throttles for the two remaining engines to steer them in the direction of Sioux City, IA. What is little known is that there was an engineer from the aircraft manufacturer on board. He was in the cockpit, as well. That particular incident is part of our training manual..
Thank you for the link.
Too many planes with equipment that does not work and engines that fall off.
I rate them on seat width, leg room, the number of seats available (more seats, more chance of no one sitting next to you), ammenities such as viewing screen size, number of lavatories, etc. Generally the 777s have the most of each. However, an Emerites or Qatar A340 will win vs. the average 777 because of the larger seat arraingement and ammenities they use.
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