Tag Archives: Plane

Ukraine: Black box transcript confirms illegal interference with jet downed in Iran in January

KYIV (Reuters) – The transcript from the black boxes from a Ukrainian jet accidentally shot down by Iran on Jan. 8 confirm the fact of illegal interference with the plane, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Yevhenii Yenin said Kyiv was expecting an Iranian delegation to visit Ukraine next week for talks.

The Canadian Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday an international team examining the black boxes from the jet had completed a preliminary analysis of the data in France.

“Grateful to all partners who helped bring this moment closer. Black boxes from #PS752 were read out and deciphered successfully. The transcript confirmed the fact of illegal interference with the plane,” Yenin wrote on Twitter.

Iranian forces say they downed the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 jet after mistaking it for a missile at a time of high tensions with the United States. All 176 people on board were killed.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said this month that it was too soon to blame human error for the shooting down of the airliner and that many questions remained unanswered.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in February that Kyiv was not satisfied with the amount of compensation Iran had offered.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Ukraine: it’s too early to blame human error for downing of passenger plane in Iran

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Tuesday it was soon to blame human error for the shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger airliner near Tehran in January, challenging the findings of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO).

The CAO said in an interim report that the plane was accidentally downed, killing 176 people on board, because of a misalignment of a radar system and lack of communication between the air defense operator and his commanders.

But Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told an online briefing that many questions remained unanswered.

“I want to clearly emphasize: it is early to say that the plane was shot down as a result of human error, as the Iranian side claims,” he said. “We have many questions, and we need a large number of authoritative, unbiased, objective answers about what happened.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards shot down the Ukraine International Airlines flight with a ground-to-air missile on Jan. 8 shortly after the plane took off from Tehran. Iran later called it a “disastrous mistake” by forces who were on high alert during a confrontation with the United States.

Tehran last month said it would send the black box flight recorders from the downed airliner to France for analysis and that experts from the United States, Canada, France, Britain and Ukraine would take part in the decoding.

Kuleba said an Iranian delegation was due to arrive in Kiev later this month to discuss compensation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in February Kiev was not satisfied with the size of compensation Iran had offered.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Emirates plane quarantined in New York with sick passengers: airline

The emergency services are seen, after the passengers were taken ill on a flight from New York to Dubai, on JFK Airport, New York, U.S., September 05, 2018 in this still image obtained from from social media. Larry Coben/via REUTERS

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An Emirates airline flight from Dubai was quarantined at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport on Wednesday morning after passengers became ill during the flight, the airline and New York news media said.

Emirates flight 203, a double-deck Airbus A388 carrying about 500 passengers, landed shortly after 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT), according to an airlines spokeswoman.

The emergency services are seen, after the passengers were taken ill on a flight from New York to Dubai, on JFK Airport, New York, U.S., September 05, 2018 in this still image obtained from from social media. Larry Coben/via REUTERS

The emergency services are seen, after the passengers were taken ill on a flight from New York to Dubai, on JFK Airport, New York, U.S., September 05, 2018 in this still image obtained from from social media. Larry Coben/via REUTERS

The spokeswoman said 10 passengers fell ill on the flight from Dubai to New York. New York media outlets had earlier put the number at about 100 passengers.

“Emirates can confirm that about 10 passengers on board flight EK203 from Dubai to New York were taken ill,” the spokeswoman said. “On arrival at JFK, as a precaution, they were immediately checked by local health authorities and those needing medical attention will be attended to.” She said all other passengers would be allowed to leave the plane shortly.

Officials from the Port Authority Police Department and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were on scene, according to news station WNBC, but did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The mayor’s office also did not respond to requests for comment.

Larry Cohen, who identified himself as one of the passengers aboard the plane, uploaded photos on Twitter showing dozens of police and emergency vehicles waiting outside the plane on the tarmac.

“All we have been told is that there are some sick passengers and that we need to remain on board,” Cohen told Reuters via Twitter messaging.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus and Alexander Cornwell in Dubai; editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)

United Passenger jet lands in Hawaii after engine covering rips apart

The plane with engine problems is seen on the tarmac in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Peter Lemme/via REUTERS

(Reuters) – Passengers aboard a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Honolulu had a scary trip over the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, after the casing around one of the engines ripped apart, officials said.

The plane with engine problems is seen on the tarmac in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Mariah Amerine/via REUTERS

The plane with engine problems is seen on the tarmac in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Mariah Amerine/via REUTERS

United flight 1175, with more than 370 people on board including crew members, landed without incident at Honolulu International Airport, United Airlines Inc spokesman Charles Hobart said in an email.

Passengers brace during the plane landing in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this still image taken from a social media video. Mariah Amerine/via REUTERS

Passengers brace during the plane landing in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this still image taken from a social media video. Mariah Amerine/via REUTERS

“Scariest flight of my life,” Maria Falaschi, a marketing consultant from San Francisco, wrote on Twitter. She posted photos on the social media website of the aircraft’s engine with its covering, also known as the cowling, missing.

Hobart said he could not immediately say whether or not the engine on the Boeing 777 continued to function after the cowling came off.

The pilots of United flight 1175 declared an emergency due to a vibration in the right engine before the plane landed safely, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesman Ian Gregor said in an email. The FAA will investigate the incident.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles)

Small plane with six aboard vanishes over Lake Erie in Ohio

By Kim Palmer

CLEVELAND (Reuters) – Rescue crews searched Lake Erie on Friday for signs of a twin-engine plane carrying six people that went missing on Thursday night soon after taking off from an Ohio airport, officials said.

The 11-seat aircraft dropped off radar just before 11 p.m. local time after leaving Burke Lakefront Airport on the shore of Lake Erie north of downtown Cleveland, U.S. Coast Guard Chief of Response Michael Mullen told a news conference on Friday.

The Cessna Citation 525, bound for Ohio State University Airport, disappeared after flying about two miles over the lake, Mullen said.

John Fleming, 46, the chief executive of Columbus-based beverage distributor Superior Beverage Group, is believed to have been piloting the plane, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

Also on board were Fleming’s wife, their two teenage sons and two of their neighbors, the newspaper reported, citing an interview with Fleming’s father, John W. Fleming.

The group was returning to Columbus after attending the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game against the Boston Celtics, the Dispatch reported.

ROUGH GOING

Mullen said a watercraft search for survivors had been halted on Thursday night due to 12 to 14 foot seas, but it resumed on Friday morning.

Lake Erie is the fourth-largest by surface area of North America’s five Great Lakes, and also the most shallow. It is 210 feet at its deepest point, which makes for rough and unpredictable waters.

“The seas have subsided a little bit,” Mullen said. “We also have better daylight at this particular time and better visibility.”

Coast guard crews searched with boats, a helicopter and fixed-wing plane over a section of Lake Erie that is about 50 feet deep, Mullen said, adding that there were no signs of debris.

He said there was no evidence of an emergency call before communications with the aircraft stopped. He declined to identify the people on board.

The water temperature was around 35 degrees F, according to the National Weather Service.

Asked about the chances of survival considering the water temperature and high seas, Mullen said “it comes down to a person’s will to survive.”

(Reporting by Kim Palmer; Additional reporting by Laila Kearney in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Toni Reinhold)

Russia Promises Revenge on Bombing of Plane

The explosion of a Russian jetliner that took off from Sinai was the result of a terrorist attack according to Russia’s chief intelligence officer, Alexander Bortnikov.  The mid-air explosion of  the Russian jetliner over the Sinai desert last month  killed all 224 people on board .“Traces of foreign explosives” were found on debris from the Airbus plane, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov told Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin vowed to step up his country’s military campaign against Islamist militants in Syria

According to Reuters, Putin ordered the Russian navy in the eastern Mediterranean to coordinate its actions on the sea and in the air with the French navy, after the Kremlin used long-range bombers and cruise missiles in Syria and announced it would expand its strike force by 37 planes.

During a Kremlin meeting broadcasted on Tuesday, Putin addressed the Russian people.  

“The murder of our people in Sinai is among the bloodiest crimes in terms of victims. We will not wipe away the tears from our soul and hearts. This will stay with us forever but will not stop us finding and punishing the criminals.”

Putin then promised, “We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them. Our air force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued. It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that retribution is inevitable.”

The FSB security service announced a bounty of $50 million to find those responsible and said that award would be paid out for information that helps detain persons who blew up the Russian plane in Egypt.

According to several news reports, Egyptian authorities have detained two employees of Sharm al-Sheikh airport, where the downed plane originated, for questioning, two security officials and an airport employee said on Tuesday.

Most of the A321 passengers on the doomed plane were Russian tourists flying home from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Germanwings Airliner Crashed On Purpose Killing 150

Investigators have found that the co-pilot deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525 into the French Alps.

The “black box” voice recordings have shown investigators that Andreas Lubitz, 28, was in total control of the plane and spent eight minutes descending the plane into a mountain.

“He voluntarily … allowed the loss of altitude of the plane, which he had no reason to do. He had … no reason to stop the pilot-in-command from coming back into the cockpit. He had no reason to refuse to answer to the air controller who was alerting him on the loss of altitude,” Marseille prosecutor Brice Robin said to reporters.

Robin said that most of the passengers had no idea what was happening until the very end.  The plane was descending at a speed where the entire craft was pulverized by the impact and death would have been instantaneous for everyone on board.

“Only towards the end do you hear screams,” he said. “And bear in mind that death would have been instantaneous … the aircraft was literally smashed to bits.”

Police are searching the home of the co-pilot looking for any clues as to his motive for crashing the plane.