PHILADELPHIA – A US Airways Express airliner slid down a runway Sunday during an emergency landing without its nose landing gear. No injuries were reported.
The Philadelphia-bound deHavilland Dash-8 turboprop, operated by Piedmont Airlines, took off from Allentown at about 8:20 a.m. with 35 passengers and three crew members, according to officials of the airline and Philadelphia International Airport.
Before the scheduled landing at Philadelphia, the crew got an indication that the landing gear was not down and did a flyover to confirm that the nose wheels had not deployed, airport spokeswoman Victoria Lupica said.
Fire crews spread foam on the runway as a precaution before the landing at about 9:20 a.m.
The plane skidded down the runway on its nose, but there was no smoke or fire, Lupica said. Passengers were taken to the terminal by bus.
The cause was being investigated, said US Airways spokesman Morgan Durrant. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board also were investigating, Lupica said.
The airport had to be closed for about 25 minutes, Lupica said.
It reported some flights delayed more than two hours around midday while the plane remained on one of the four runways. That runway reopened in the early afternoon, and most flights were running on time, Lupica said.
LONDON – A British pilot who was suddenly blinded by a stroke during a solo flight was talked safely down by a military pilot, the Royal Air Force said Friday.
Jim O'Neill asked for help after he was went blind 40 minutes into a flight from Scotland to southeastern England last week. The BBC reported that O'Neill, flying a small Cessna aircraft, lost his sight 5,500 feet in the air.
"It was terrifying," O'Neill said. "Suddenly, I couldn't see the dials in front of me."
The air force said in a news release that O'Neill initially believed he'd been "dazzled" by bright sunlight, and made an emergency call for help. He then realized that something more serious was happening, and said, "I want to land, ASAP."
RAF Wing Commander Paul Gerrard was just finishing a training flight nearby and was drafted in to help the stricken pilot.
Gerrard located the plane, began flying close to it and radioed directions.
"For me, I was just glad to help a fellow aviator in distress," he said.
"Landing an aircraft literally blind needs someone to be right there to say 'Left a bit, right a bit, stop, down,'" Gerrard said. "On the crucial final approach, even with radar assistance, you need to take over visually. That's when having a fellow pilot there was so important.
Linda Nguyen, Canwest News Service
Published: Monday, November 03, 2008
An extensive search is underway for a Canadian man and two Americans missing since their plane disappeared in the Amazon jungle on Nov. 1.
The man, whose identity has not been released, was in the interior of Guyana, near Venezuela, to conduct a geophysical survey in the area.
He was an employee of Terraquest Ltd., a Markham, Ont.-based airborne geophysics company under contract to the Toronto-based uranium company U308 Corp.
Announcing Real Environment Xtreme™! A first of its kind product... a complete photo-realistic, hi-definition professional graphics package for Microsoft's Flight Simulator series created entirely from state-of-the-art photography. INCLUDES our NEW built-in Weather Engine and Flight Planner! The texture sets within Real Environment Xtreme™ coupled with the powerful NEW Weather Engine and Flight Planner provides for an exhilarating and realistic experience. Real Environment Xtreme™, code named REX, has taken almost two years of research & development to reach the level of detail that exists today.
Tilt Rotor is poised to revolutionize the way we fly. By combining the speed, altitude, and comfort of a turboprop with the vertical takeoff and landing capabilities of a helicopter, we can enjoy the best of both worlds.
No longer will airstrips and airports be necessary for high flying executive travel.
Highlights:
* Revolutionary Tilt Rotor aircraft with unique VTOL, VSTOL and hovering capabilities, developed specifically for this model.
* Unique ground-handling attributes allow for ease of manoeuvring around airports and within restricted spaces. The Tilt Rotor can be "parked" like a car!
* Six distinct aircraft variants with ten liveries
* Advanced FSX missions take advantage of this incredible machine's capablilities and test your flying skills and nerve!
* Video introduction to the aircraft, VSTOL and VTOL operations and a complete flight tutorial is included.
* Unique levels of interior detail including pilots, passenger and patient fully animated.
Compatible with Flight Simulator X and 2004, Tilt Rotor will be available this winter in Download and CD versions.
On October 27th, 2008 Carenado has released the very first NEXT GENERATION product for FSX. It is the C152II, a well known aircraft by most of the pilots because a vast majority of them learned to fly in one of this bird.
This aircraft was developed using:
• NURBS modeling techniques
• High resolution textures resulting in a photorealistic representation with very friendly FPS performance. All the textures have fine tune alpha calibrations of whites for the bloom lights.
• A polygon optimized procedure
All of this plus new FSX and DX10 features like cast shadows on VC, external dynamic cast shadows, normal mapping, specular mapping and bloom lights, resulting in a superior representation of this aircraft.
We achieved a new quality standard that was impossible to reach until now which we are absolutely convinced will delight our fans and customers
With this release, we enforce our compromise with our customers to give them high quality products which truly representations of the reality in terms of visual and behavior parameters.
More information at: http://www.carenado.com/ecommerce/buscador.php3?id_producto=56
Twenty one different super detailed models, sixty one different liveries (from twelve countries), and systems so accurate that parts of the project are actually used professionally to train real F-16 pilots. With a working radar that actually shows the target on the realistic HUD, navigation screens that show your flight plan on top of actual terrain.
More information and screenshots can be found here!
Courtesy of Freccie-Tricolore PMDG MD-11 Released FSX/FS9
Perhaps one of the most eagerly awaited add-ons by one of the communities most prolific commercial development team, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 has been released by PMDG Simulations . Born out of airline requirements for a "modern new DC-10" the MD-11 is a superb example of aircraft engineering from the era when modern computer processing power was beginning to bring truly new ideas, safety and capability to the cockpit of transport airplanes. Highly automated and employing innovative new approaches to the pilot/airplane interface, the MD-11 took the McDonnell Douglas wide body line into the future with fully automated flight modes, aircraft system status pages, failure consequence displays and clearly thought out pilot controls. Over four years of development, dedication, and skill have went into faithfully capturing the nuance, feel and character of this great airliner to a degree of detail never before seen in desktop simulation. During each step of the development process, every facet of the PMDG MD-11 is validated in the training simulator to ensure it has been modelled correctly, right down to the finest detail. Head directly to PMDG Simulations to grab yours...
BA Flight makes emergency landing... due to inflight entertainment system
A British Airways flight has made an emergency landing at a German airport after an electrical fault was detected in its in-flight entertainment system.
The Boeing 777 was travelling from London's Heathrow to Delhi when the pilot was alerted to the problem by a cockpit alarm.
He diverted the plane, carrying 222 passengers and 16 crew, to Schoenefeld airport, south-east of Berlin.
A British Airways spokesman said it had landed safely and no-one was hurt.
Flight BA 143 left Heathrow on Sunday morning but developed the fault in one of the television screens at the back of an economy class seat soon after take-off and was diverted as a precaution.
