Small Jet Charter

The UPS Boeing 747-400 that crashed in Dubai Friday was only three years old and had less than 10,000 hours on it according to a news release issued by the company on Saturday. UPS identified the pilots killed in the crash as Capt. Doug Lampe, 48, of Louisville, KY and FO Matthew Bell, 38, of Sanford, FL. They were based in Anchorage. The aircraft. According to Dubai’s National newspaper, the pilot reported a fire on board and was trying to return to the airport. The aircraft had been airborne for 38 minutes before the crash. There is also speculation the pilot deliberately headed for an empty area of a military base where it crashed. There were no injuries on the ground. The cockpit voice recorder was recovered on Saturday but the flight data recorder has not been recovered.

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A flyer left by the DHS in an FBO at Hickory Regional Airport in North Carolina makes bullet points of suspicious behavior associated with illegal activities but ensnares some behavior pilots might consider routine. The flyer was left at the FBO about two weeks ago by federal agents and lists suspicious activities that include customers who: insist on paying in cash; are vague about their itinerary; fly in with a dirty undercarriage; use self-service fueling early in the morning or late at night; seek temporary hangarage for their aircraft; fly a “worn out” plane with a “very nice” GPS; or travel with “excessive” luggage. The posting listed special agents to contact “if you encounter such suspicious activity.” It also offered a reward of “up to $250,000″ for information “relating to the transportation or storage of contraband and/or criminal proceeds.” The list did also include some activities that might be considered suspicious by a larger group of pilots.

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Two years ago, a Spanair MD-82 crashed on takeoff at Madrid, killing 154 people and marking Spain’s worst air tragedy in 25 years; now, malicious code infecting a maintenance department computer has been implicated in the crash. To be clear, the code was not flown on the aircraft’s own systems and did not cause the crash. This specific crash could have been avoided regardless of the malware’s existence. But the discovery of malicious code introduced into an on-ground system operated by the airline’s maintenance department does suggests certain negative possibilities. One possible scenario is that the code slowed a program which, if properly maintained, would have flagged the aircraft for service and disallowed the takeoff because of a series of smaller problems already noted with the plane. That’s a lot of qualifiers. But the fact that the system was infected and didn’t flag the aircraft in this case closed one door on an opportunity to save the flight. It also suggests the urgency of proper computer maintenance throughout the entire airline system to assure safety of flight.

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