Airplane Safety

When the managing director of a small, trouble-prone Iranian airline won official permission in March to lease a couple of aging Russian-made airplanes, the country's small circle of aviation professionals gossiped about the strings he must have pulled to get the government's approval. And when one of the planes burst aflame on the runway in late July, killing the executive, Mehdi Dadpei, his son and 14 others, few in the industry were surprised. "Aria was famous for not adhering to safety standards for years," said an Iranian aviation industry insider, who spoke extensively to The Times on condition of anonymity.

Residents of Clarence Center spent Sunday grappling with the randomness and destruction of the plane crash that jolted their quiet community, even as new details emerged indicating that Continental Connection Flight 3407 was flying on autopilot in icy conditions as it made its descent into Buffalo last week.

American Airlines failed to catch repeated errors by mechanics before a September 2007 flight that made an emergency landing after one of its engines caught fire during departure. The 143 people aboard the flight from St. Louis weren't hurt, but the incident could have been catastrophic because of additional mistakes by the flight crew, members of the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.

An alarm that would warn pilots earlier of dangerously slow aircraft speed could have helped prevent a plane crash that killed 50 people in February, safety officials told an investigative panel Thursday. National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman raised the idea on the third and final day of a hearing into the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407, which went down near Buffalo, N.Y., killing all 49 people aboard and one person on the ground.

Federal and local officials will unveil a new warning system today that is designed to stop runway incursions that for years have endangered planes taxiing to and from terminals at Los Angeles International Airport. The $7-million system relies on radar that is connected to status lights along a runway and eight taxiways deemed to have the highest risk for aircraft accidents.

State lawmakers passed measures Thursday to protect foreign-speaking business patrons and make life tough for waterfowl that imperil airline travelers. Worried that geese and jets don't mix, the Senate approved a bill that would give airports greater authority to avoid run-ins with game wardens if they need to kill birds that could interfere with jets. Meanwhile, the Assembly approved a measure that would prohibit restaurants and other establishments from refusing to serve patrons because they're speaking a different language.

The sight of airline cabin crews trying to mollify enraged passengers has become all too common. But a recent Air India flight added a twist when crew members mid-flight started punching each other in front of startled passengers. Accounts of what happened differ now that everyone's back on the ground. Exactly who started the brawl and why got a bit lost in the clouds, though one flight attendant has accused a crew member of trying to molest her. What no one disputes is that with New Delhi-bound Flight IC-844 cruising at 30,000 feet over Pakistan around 4 a.m. Saturday, the cockpit and cabin crews broke into fisticuffs.

White-knuckle airline passengers who are already shaken by news that two Northwest Airline pilots are under investigation for overshooting a Minneapolis airport after possibly nodding off, won't want to hear this: Some pilots say cockpit catnaps happen. "Pilots on occasion do take controlled naps," said Barry Schiff, an aviation safety consultant and retired TWA pilot. "So this is not without precedent." Although the Federal Aviation Administration prohibits pilots from catching a few z's in the cockpit, several airline pilots say they are surprised such napping mishaps haven't happened more often, considering longer work schedules for pilots and advances in aviation that make planes easier to fly. The issue of cockpit siestas came under scrutiny this week after the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board announced they were looking into why Northwest Flight 188, from San Diego to Minneapolis, overshot its airport by 150 miles before turning around.

The first officer of the Northwest Airlines jet that missed its destination by 150 miles said he and the captain were not sleeping or arguing in the cockpit, but he wouldn't explain their lapse in response and the detour. "It was not a serious event, from a safety issue," pilot Richard Cole said late Friday at home in Salem, Ore. "I would tell you more, but I've already told you way too much." Air traffic controllers and pilots had tried for more than an hour Wednesday night to contact the Twin Cities-bound flight.

NASA on Monday released partial results of a massive air safety survey of airline pilots who repeatedly complained about fatigue, problems with air traffic controllers, airport security and the layouts of runways and taxiways. Reacting to criticism about its initial decision to withhold the database for fear of harming the airlines' bottom lines, NASA released a heavily redacted version of the survey on its website Monday afternoon.