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Air New Zealand Postponing Biofuel Flight to Early January
1 December 2008
In the aftermath of last week’s crash of a Air New Zealand-owned Airbus A320, and the loss of four Air New Zealand employees who were on board, the airline is postponing its biofuel test flight which was due to take place on Wednesday 3 December, and also the pre-flight briefing on Tuesday 2 December, to early January 2009. (Earlier post.)
The company said that its full efforts and resources will be focused over the coming days on providing support to the family members of the missing New Zealanders and to its people, and assisting in the investigation of the A320 accident in France.
Air New Zealand will advise of the new date for the biofuel test flight later in the week.
That lost aircraft was owned by Air New Zealand and had been on lease to XL Airways of Germany for the past two years. The aircraft was being flown by XL Airways to Frankfurt where it was due to be handed back to Air New Zealand for a ferry flight back to New Zealand. The missing Air New Zealand staff were on board the aircraft as observers during a pre-acceptance flight before its return to Air New Zealand.
December 1, 2008 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
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Posted by: Henry Gibson | December 01, 2008 at 01:57 AM
The crashed aircraft had just been repainted in Air New Zealand livery. If it were not noticed that the air-data sensors had been painted over, or otherwise rendered inoperable it could be disastrous and may be the cause of this crash. The A320 is a fly-by-wire plane (one of the first such models in commercial service). There is a flight-envelope protection system, to prevent pilots from exceeding various limits, such as stalling the plane by flying too slowly. However if all the air probes are clogged, all of the computers may think the plane is stalled, when it's not, perhaps preventing the pilots from getting out of a shallow dive. At this point the CVR (Cockpit Voice Recorder) has been recovered but the FDR (Flight Data Recroder) has not. See http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/NewPaintProbedInA320Crash_199315-1.html
Posted by: Floatplane | December 01, 2008 at 05:44 PM
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The crash is a tragedy for many people.