NYPD Helicopter Crash

Recently, an NYPD pilot reportedly made a mistake while at the controls of a police helicopter during a training exercise and crashed — causing more than $700,000 in damage, stated The New York Post on Tuesday.

The police lieutenant was piloting the chopper at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn on April 3rd when “something went wrong” while he tried to simulate an autorotation 200 feet in the air, sources said.

He first put the engine in “idle” as required when he reached the rotation altitude, sources said. But then instead of causing an engine “flare’’ by increasing the throttle to 100 percent and creating the rotation, he lost control of the aircraft, sources said.

In related news, in 2014, an air traffic control recording confirmed that a New York Police Department helicopter flew at a drone hovering near the George Washington Bridge.  Also, police never appeared to worry about a crash with the drone.

Two men associated with the drone were later charged with felony reckless endangerment in that situation, even though the helicopter flew at the drone and not the other way around.

Below is a recording of the audio transmission from that incident.

More info:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/police-recording-confirms-nypd-flew-at-a-drone-never-feared-crash

Can Technology Steer A Plane Away From A Plane Crash?

CNN

What if there were a way to allow someone not on an airplane to take control and steer the plane away from a disaster? Is there a way for the autopilot on a plane to detect how close it is to the ground and auto-correct itself?

Strange Situation At NSA

Officers opened fire after two men allegedly dressed as women refused to stop a stolen vehicle Monday at the National Security Agency gate at Fort Meade in Maryland. The stolen vehicle smashed into a police vehicle blocking the road, officials said.

One of the men died, and the other man and an officer were hurt.

Officials claimed that there were plenty of chances for the incident to end nonviolently.

The NSA released a statement Monday afternoon saying the driver of the sport utility vehicle disobeyed instructions from an NSA police officer and failed to stop shortly before 9 a.m.

Investigators are looking into whether the men were under the influence of drugs following a night of partying, a federal law enforcement official said.

A man reported his car stolen from a hotel not far away from NSA Headquarters and said he had been with two men who had taken his car. Cocaine was found in the vehicle. The Howard County Police Department confirms that a Ford Escape reported stolen in Howard County, Maryland, is the vehicle involved in the incident.

The FBI said they did not think terrorism was related to the incident.

MSNBC

More here

How The Germanwings Pilot Got Locked Out Of The Cockpit

euronews

Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, reinforced security has included the cockpit – with features that are often redundant.

New information about the Germanwings flight suggest that an unbreakable door, button code locking, and ignored procedures allowed the co-pilot to crash the airplane.

Germanwings owner Lufthansa does not require a cabin crew member to enter the cockpit if one of the pilots steps out.

Cockpit locks are designed to be controlled from the inside, electronically. An outsider can get in if they know the code, but there is an “override” button that can keep them out anyway, if the pilot holds it down.

Some critics say keypad entry could endanger cabin crew if they are pressured to reveal the code.

Below, CNN goes inside an A320 flight simulator to see how someone could be locked out of the cockpit.

(Updated article)

German School / Town Mourns Students And Teachers Who Died In Air Crash

euronews

16 teenagers and two teachers from The Joseph König Secondary School in Haltern am See, north of Dusseldorf, were on the Germanwings flight which never arrived from Barcelona.

Footage Of Black Hawk Helicopter Wreckage In Florida

AP

Seven Marines and four soldiers are presumed dead after a helicopter crashed off a Florida Beach early Wednesday morning, on March 11th, states AP.   A thick fog had reduced visibility in the area when the helicopter was on a training mission.

According to Stars and Stripes publication, human remains have washed ashore along the Florida coastline after the helicopter vanished during a training mission Tuesday night, according to the military.

Local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and military members from Eglin Air Force base outside Pensacola, where the flight originated, have been searching for debris since the helicopter was reported missing, said Sara Vidoni, an Air Force spokeswoman at the base.

“Fog impeded the search mission this morning, but it is beginning to dissipate,” she said, adding that the search efforts had been limited to boats and teams walking the shore because of the fog.

The Marines were from the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, known as MARSOC, said Capt. Barry Morris, a MARSOC spokesman at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. According to Stars and Stripes, the soldiers were from a Hammond, La.-based National Guard unit, The Associated Press reported.

CNN states, “The helicopter was first reported missing at about 8:30 p.m. (9:30 p.m. ET) Tuesday. Hours later, searchers found debris around Okaloosa Island near Eglin Air Force Base, base spokesman Andy Bourland said.”

 

Photos from Yahoo! News

(Updated post)

Md. Lawmakers Call For Crude Oil Train Shipment Risk Assessment, More Railroad Transparency

Maryland lawmakers concerned about increasingly common rail shipments of crude oil through Maryland are calling for the state to conduct a full assessment of the risks and for railroads to be more transparent about their operations, according to The Baltimore Sun.

CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern bring train shipments of crude oil into Maryland, including to a barge terminal in South Baltimore’s Fairfield area and through Cecil County on the way to refineries in Delaware.

Legislation filed last week in Annapolis, Md. would require the state’s health and environment departments to establish statewide accident prevention, emergency response and contingency plans in the case of a major railroad disaster involving crude oil. It also would require both railroads to disclose more information about their crude shipments to the public.

Recently, a recent derailment of a CSX crude oil train during a snowstorm in West Virginia burned one home to the ground, forced hundreds of others to be evacuated, shuttered water treatment plants and sparked concern about pollution to the nearby Kanawha River, according to The Baltimore Sun.

Under a federal law that took effect in May, railroads are required to disclose to local jurisdictions the volumes, routes and frequency of all Bakken crude-oil shipments that are more than 1 million gallons.  However, in the past, much of that information has been unavailable to the public in Maryland.

Crash On Ohio Turnpike Kills Pregnant Woman, Unborn Baby

A heavy snowstorm on Saturday is to blame for an Ohio Turnpike crash that killed a Michigan woman and her unborn child.

The Ohio Highway Patrol said Beverly Smith, 32, of Middleville, Mich., and the baby she was carrying died as a result of their injuries. Her husband, Eric Smith, 33, suffered serious but non-life threatening injuries, the patrol said.

Eight vehicles were involved in the crash, which blocked all of the westbound lanes of the turnpike. The crash involved five semi-trailers.

The woman was a passenger in a Ford F-150 that her husband was driving when the crash occurred, the patrol said. They were trapped for a long time in the vehicle, which ended up underneath a trailer. Once they were removed, the Smiths were taken to Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky, Ohio.

Six other people were injured, but they refused to be treated or taken to the hospital, police said.

Sandusky Register

Did The AirAsia Flight Explode In The Air Or Crash?

Conflicting reports are coming out of Indonesia as to whether the AirAsia passenger plane that crashed last month may have exploded before hitting the water.

Navy divers have now found and retrieved the black box flight data recorder from near the wrecked wing of the plane in the northern Java Sea.

An explosion is a likely scenario according to the operations coordinator at Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, who has pointed to a significant change in air pressure as a possible cause.

euronews

Still No Sign Of AirAsia Jet QZ8501

According to Yahoo Singapore, the second day of the international search operation produced scant (or no) evidence of the missing AirAsia flight QZ8501, which departed for Singapore from Surabaya’s Juanda International Airport on Sunday morning and dropped off the radar after about an hour of flight.

Flight search operations were suspended by about 6:45pm Indonesia time on December 29th, while some 30 ships from Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia continued searching the Java sea in the northern and eastern parts of Belitung island past dusk.

According to the Huffington Post, the Indonesian Transport Ministry’s air transportation director Joko Muryo Atmodjo said no distress signal had been sent from the plane, adding, “Therefore we cannot assume anything yet.”

“We are coordinating with [the] rescue team and looking for its position. We believe it is somewhere between Tanjung Pandan, a town on Belitung island, and Kalimantan,” he said.

A specialist from Singapore’s Ministry of Transport’s Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB)

Two more Singapore naval vessels, a landing ship tank and a Singaporean submarine support and rescue vessel, have been given the green light to set sail for the area by authorities.

15 planes from various nations have been searching for the airliner.

On board the missing AirAsia plane were a total of 162 people — 138 adults, 16 children and one infant, making up 155 passengers along with seven crew members (two pilots, four flight attendants and one engineer).

The last communication from the cockpit to air traffic control was a request by one of the pilots to increase altitude from 32,000 feet (9,754 meters) to 38,000 feet (11,582 meters) because of the rough weather.

The U.K. Daily Mail states that the pilot in command, Captain Iriyanto, had a substantial total of 6,100 flying hours and the first officer, Remi Emmanual Plesel, a total of 2,275 flying hours, said AirAsia.

AirAsia has established an Emergency Call Center for family or friends of those on board the aircraft, at: +62 212 927 0811 or 031- 869 0855 or 031- 298 6790 (Surabaya).

More:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2889771/Papa-come-home-Family-s-torment-missing-AirAsia-pilot-flew-F-16-fighter-jets-commercial-airline-captain.html#ixzz3NIiXYaca