MH370 didn’t crash? Probe may review landing theory what about AirAsia Flight QZ8501
to many agency's handle the air travel business by this travelers has to bear the burden, it is good simplify multi processing to speed up and reduce the fare.
The skyrocketing airfares in the winter holiday season despite the falling fuel prices seems to have roiled the aviation ministry and pushed it to do what it does best. Roll out plans to put a cap on airline fares and clamp down on wild fluctuations in airfares. Obviously this is to prevent the airlines from taking advantage of the surge in demand and making windfall gains, especially since the number of available flights have been substantially reduced with one major airline turning turtle and another moving close to it.
But if you talk to any airline executives about windfall gains they will only laugh in your face. For airlines in India has been down in the dumps for many years now. In fact the government’s own estimates indicate that the combined loses of the airlines in India was a substantial Rs 5,964 crore in 2013-14 of which Rs 2,016 crore was by the public sector airlines. And accumulated losses in the last few years is said to be in tens of thousands of crores.
So the real question is why the airlines are making such large losses despite the skyrocketing seasonal fares. The reasons are many. The most important is the high taxes on aviation fuel, a major cost to airline companies. Then there are other factors like high airport charges in major hubs like Delhi and Mumbai due to the large revenues that are siphoned off to government coffers.
Moreover there are other restrictions on airlines companies which prevent them from fully utilising commercial opportunities like flying out to international destinations. Similarly the absence of adequate maintenance facilities force many airlines to outsource maintenance work abroad adding to the costs. Moreover the lack of adequate safety standards in the India aviation sector has forced the United States to downgrade the country, ensured higher surveillance of Indian airline companies and even put restrictions on expansion of services.
And airline companies have added add to these woes. The most damaging is the tendency to cut fares far below operation costs either to protect or improve market shares or more often to mobilise funds to keep the floundering airline alive. This triggers of a vicious race to the bottom which only adds to the red ink in their account books. Moreover the deteriorating finances of airline companies has made leasing in of new aircraft a more formidable barrier and disabled the ability of the airline companies to add new aircraft to meet any seasonal surge in demand.
However, rather than address these core issues the aviation ministry seems to be more eager to enforce a blanket cap on fares. A more market friendly approach would have focussed on ensuring inputs at more competitive prices. Greater freedom to operate on national and international routes would have also provided airlines more opportunities to redeploy aircraft to meet seasonal surges in demand in different markets.
Curbs on airlines are particularly regressive because it is one industry that has consistently failed to generate the minimum returns even in the best of times. A cross industry comparison show that airlines have the lowest returns on invested capital. And this seems to hold both across geographies and airline models including low cost carriers. This is a dismal scenario especially in the Indian case where the airline services still operate very much below their potential with the large bulk of the business generated in a few cities.
A major reason for the inability of airlines to generate adequate returns is the nature of the markets. The growing competition in the short haul routes where fast trains and luxury busses have emerged as strong rivals. Then their supply side factors too. Aircraft manufacturers are powerful oligopolies which can dictate prices. Strong labour unions especially among the skilled high cost personal add to the costs. Adding to the problems are the airports which are monopolies and aircraft services providers which are concentrated with a few firms. The absence of no frills airports which would have helped low cost carriers worsens the situation.
So rather than put a cap on airline fares the needs of consumers would be best met by ensuring conditions that help push down operational costs of airlines by ensuring better infrastructure and more competition.
God will say, to help Malaysia, stop corruption, stop cronyism, stop rascism, stop discrimination, be just, be kind, be righteous, love one another strange stories all around,just in one year, 3 planes gone, the worst flooding since the history still hitting here and there.......Malaysians, it is high time for everyone to come together and pray to one and only true God....all this is no longer ordinarily
This has been a terribe year for Malaysia in all respects. One plane has gone missing without a trace. Another was shot down half a world away. And now another one seemed to have crashed. Never mind it's Airasia Indonesia. The parent company resides in Malaysia. Three major aviation disasters for a single country. Never heard of before. And to top it off, unprecedented flooding in several states has displaced almost 170,000 people. Government revenues are shrinking. The Ringgit is crashing too. National unity and morale is at an all-time low. And the year is not over yet. Bad Karma? I dont care what it is. It's just not working out for Malaysia.
The White House said it was monitoring the situation surrounding an AirAsia plane that disappeared traveling from Indonesia to Singapore and that President Barack Obama was briefed on the matter.
The probe into the mysterious disappearance of the Malaysian jet is now looking at the possibility that the plane may have landed somewhere as no debris has been found so far, a media report has said.
A report in the New Strait Times quoting sources within the international team probing the disappearance said that among the areas it was revisiting was the possibility that the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had landed elsewhere, instead of ending up in the southern Indian Ocean.
"We may have to regroup soon to look into this possibility if no positive results come back in the next few days ... but at the same time, the search mission in the Indian Ocean must go on," the source said.
"The thought of it landing somewhere else is not impossible, as we have not found a single debris that could be linked to MH370. However, the possibility of a specific country hiding the plane when more than 20 nations are searching for it, seems absurd," the sources said. Another possibility was that the flight had crashed landed in a remote location, the source said. Members of the International Investigation Team who have been making efforts since day one are now looking at the likelihood of starting from scratch, the report said.
The Airbus A320-200 with 162 people on board left Juanda international airport in Surabaya in east Java at 5.20am on Sunday and had been expected to arrive in Singapore at 8.30am (0030 GMT).
"The president has been briefed on AirAsia Flight 8501 and White House officials will continue to monitor the situation," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said late on Saturday.
Malaysia-based AirAsia said the pilot of flight QZ8501 had requested "deviation" from the its flight plan because of bad weather, and that a search and rescue operation was underway.
Indonesia's air transportation director general Djoko Murjatmodjo told AFP the plane was carrying seven crew and 155 passengers -- 138 adults, 16 children and a baby.
Obama and his family are on vacation in his home state of Hawaii for the holidays.
Planes typically relay maintenance information in flight to their manufacturers or airlines. This data can also help track a lost plane like Air France Flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic in 2009.
In the case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the technology at issue is called ACARS, for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. The system sends different sorts of information between the plane and airlines and manufacturers on the ground. Depending on the sophistication of the information, the airline might receive the information itself or rely on the manufacturer to relay it for a fee.
John Hansman, director of the International Center for Air Transportation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, estimates 90% of U.S. planes have some version of the system because it saves airlines money.
At first, the precise monitoring of when brakes were engaged or when planes took off or landed helped airlines track personnel costs more accurately, Hansman said. Maintenance reports can show when an engine is running hotter than usual, which signals wear, he said.
"The reason why people do this is because if something breaks in flight, if maintenance gets the message they can actually be at the landing point with the replacement part and fix the airplane and turn it around quickly," Hansman said.
In general, the messages can be sent cheaply over land by VHF signal, like the Apollo astronauts used, Hansman said. Or they can be sent over water by satellite, which is a more expensive service to send messages, he said.
The sophistication of the service depends on what the airline would like to spend. For example, Boeing promotes a service called custom alerting and analysis, which is available for 777, 747 and 787 aircraft with high-speed Internet connections. It monitors fuel, flight controls, landing gear, hydraulic power and communications.
"The major carriers collect it themselves because they have the capability of processing it and deciphering it and so forth," said David Greenberg, who worked 27 years at Delta Air Lines and is now an airline consultant as president of Compass Group. "My understanding is that Malaysia doesn't subscribe to the Boeing program and that they collect the data for their own use."
While Malaysia Airlines and its manufacturers aren't saying what sort of service was used on Flight 370, the Airbus A330 in the Air France crash had sophisticated messaging that reported problems with airspeed and altitude that helped track down the missing plane.
"In Air France, that's how they knew where to look," Hansman said.
This missing AirAsia aircraft is an Airbus A320-200.
Severe weather is the reason pilots usually request a different route, but in this case the "winds were light, there were a few thin clouds, but that's about it," he said.
The crew of the Airbus A320-200 included two pilots, four flight attendants and one engineer, according to flight documents.
The captain, identified in those documents as Capt. Iriyanto, had a total of 6,100 flying hours. The first officer a total of 2,275 flying hours, said AirAsia, a low-cost regional airline, based in Sepang, Malaysia, near Kuala Lumpur.
The airline said the plane carried 155 passengers, including 138 adults, 16 children and an infant. Most of the passengers are Indonesian nationals, but the airline also identified one passenger from Singapore, one passenger from Malaysia, one passenger from France and three from South Korea.
Before AirAsia released its statement about the missing plane, officials changed the airline's Facebook and Twitter account logos from red to gray.Indonesian officials earlier had said the flight had 161 people aboard, potentially because the infant was not counted.
"The president has been briefed on AirAsia Flight 8501, and White House officials will continue to monitor the situation," White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters.
Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, personally tweeted his condolences: "Saddened to hear of missing flight #QZ8501. My thoughts are with the passengers and their families."
Murjatmodjo, the Indonesian official, said the plane is believed to have gone missing somewhere over the Java Sea between Tanjung Pandan on Belitung island and Pontianak, on Indonesia's part of Kalimantan island.
Media on Belitung island, about halfway between Surabaya and Singapore, are reporting that authorities have found the wreckage.The Airbus A320-200 with the registration number PK-AXC had its last scheduled maintenance Nov. 16, airline officials said. Search and rescue operations are under way.
The Singapore aviation authority said Jakarta ground control was informed it about the missing plane by about half an hour after contact was lost.
"Search and rescue operations have been activated by the Indonesian authorities," it said, adding that the Singapore air force and the navy also were activated with two C-130 planes.
At Surabaya airport, dozens of relatives sat in a room, many of them talking on mobile phones and crying. Some looked dazed.
Flightradar24, a flight tracking website, said the Airbus A320-200 was delivered in September 2008. It said the 6-year-old plane was flying at 32,000 feet, the regular cruising altitude for most jetliners, when the signal from the plane was lost.AirAsia, which has dominated cheap travel in the region for years, has never lost a plane before. AirAsia Malaysia owns 49% of the Indonesian subsidiary.
This is the third major air incident for Southeast Asia this year:
• On March 8, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a wide-bodied Boeing 777, went missing soon after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. It remains missing with 239 people in one of the biggest aviation mysteries.
• On July 17, another Malaysia Airlines flight, also a Boeing 777, was shot down over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine while on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. A total of 298 people on board were killed.
Waldock cautioned against drawing comparisons to the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370.
"I think we have to let this play out," he said. "Hopefully, the airplane will get found, and if that happens it will probably be in the next few hours. Until then, we have to reserve judgment."
Circumstances bode well for finding the plane since the intended flight time was less than two hours and the plane disappeared from a known position, he said.
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