Delta makes changes prompted by overflight incident
In light of the incident in which a Northwest/Delta flight overshot Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, Delta Airlines told the government that “it is making software and avionics changes.”
As part of a filing with federal investigators that became public this week, the airline said it is upgrading software to enable its dispatchers in the future to use special sound alerts to attract the attention of pilots aboard certain Airbus aircraft.
The pilots aboard Northwest Flight 188, an Airbus A320 headed for Minneapolis, lost radio contact with controllers for 77 minutes, cruised past their destination at 37,000 feet on autopilot and didn’t realize their mistake until a flight attendant contacted them on the intercom. Northwest dispatchers sent more than half a dozen silent text messages that showed up on the plane’s cockpit displays, but they failed to alert the pilots about the lapse in communication.
Boeing’s new 747-8 takes flight near Seattle
After being delayed twice, the 747-8 freighter took off on its first test flight on Monday.
The takeoff Monday started what was scheduled to be a three- to four-hour test flight near Boeing’s factories around Seattle, Washington.
Boeing twice delayed the first flight of the 747-8 last year, most recently moving a planned fourth-quarter flight to early 2010 and first delivery to the fourth quarter of 2010.
From high above, near catastrophe
A piece of a 747 cargo plane broke off and fell in a Miami parking lot on Friday without hitting anyone or anything.
The roughly 18-foot, 150-pound hunk of fiberglass ended up in an empty section of the parking lot near Dillard’s at Miami International Mall, 1455 NW 107th Ave. in Doral
The piece fell from an Atlas Air Cargo 747 that had taken off in Santiago, Chile, and landed safely at MIA shortly after dropping the part at 11:30 a.m.
(Photo: Drewski2112/Flickr Creative Commons)
