This Date in Aviation History: March 6 - March 8

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 03/08/2019 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

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Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting of you caught up on milestones, important historical events and people in aviation from March 6 through March 8.

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March 8, 2014 – The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. With the arrival of the airplane, and later the commercial airliner, passengers were able to travel to far flung corners of the globe, and geographical barriers such as mountain ranges and oceans no longer barred passage for travelers. But flying over some of the more remote parts of the world is not without risk. In the earliest days of flight, it was not uncommon for an intrepid pilot trying to find the shortest route over a mountain or trying to cross open water never arrived at his destination and was never heard from again. Hundreds of aircraft !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to this day, with no trace of either bodies or wreckage. Back in the days before satellites and cell phones, disappearances such as these were easily understood. But in our modern world of hyper-connectivity, it seems almost unfathomable that a huge airliner full of passengers could go missing without a trace or without explanation. But that is exactly what happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

MH370 was regularly scheduled Boeing 777 (9M-MRO) service from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing China. On board the flight were 12 Malaysian crew members and 277 passengers hailing from 14 different nations. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, an experienced pilot with over 18,000 hours of flying time, was in command, with First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid at his side. The scheduled flight time to Beijing was 5.5 hours, and the 777 carried enough fuel for 7.5 hours of flight, enough to safely divert should any troubles arise. MH370 took off on schedule at 00:42 local time and reached its planned cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. Thirty-eight minutes after takeoff, Captain Shah acknowledged instructions from the ground to contact Vietnamese air traffic controllers. It was the last time anybody was heard from onboard MH370.

Two minutes later the Shah’s final transmission, the transponder stopped sending signals to the ground, and the aircraft, tracked by ground radar, changed course and headed westward, back across Malaysia, and then out over the Adaman Sea. Military radar tracked the airliner as it headed toward the Nicobar Islands before all primary radar contact was lost. Though MH370 no longer showed up on radar scopes, that didn’t necessarily mean that the airliner was completely undetectable. Though the transponder, which identifies an aircraft and its altitude, had been turned off, the aircraft communications addressing and reporting system, or !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , continued making attempts to contact the ground. This system automatically sends various types of messages, such as when an aircraft takes off or lands, when the doors are opened, or when events happen with the engines. Though the ACARS had been turned off, the satellite data unit, or !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , continued to make attempts to contact the ground. While these attempts at contact didn’t provide specific positional information, they did allow searchers to determine the distance from the satellite, and thus calculate a likely path for the aircraft. One path was over land, while the other traced a course out over the southern Indian Ocean. These signals finally stopped 7.5 hours after takeoff, presumably when MH370 ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean.

The search for the airliner initially focused on its last known location, but soon shifted to the waters west of Australia. In the most expensive search and rescue operation in history, 1.8 million square miles of the Indian Ocean were searched along the suspected flight path of MH370, yet not a single piece of debris was found, let alone any sizable wreckage. The flight data recorders had long since stopped sending locator signals, and any wreckage that sank could be as much as 15,000 feet under water. More than two years later, some pieces of wreckage, including a wing flap that was positively identified as belonging to MH370, washed up on beaches in the western Indian Ocean. But the bulk of the aircraft has yet to be found, despite another search mission that was started in January 2018.

With no wreckage to scrutinize and no flight data to analyze, investigators are left with only assumptions as to what happened to the flight. Two Iranian passengers, who were flying on one-way tickets using stolen passports, were later deemed to be refugees and not considered as possible terrorists. MH370 was also carrying a load of potentially dangerous lithium-ion batteries, but those were shown to have been packaged and loaded according to strict safety guidelines. Scrutiny then turned to Captain Shah. Though he did not show any motive for purposefully flying the plane into the ocean, American investigators did discover simulated flight paths that matched those of MH370's doomed flight on Shah’s home computer.

The southern Indian Ocean is a very, very big place (Google Earth)

Even if the wreckage is eventually found, it still may not provide the final answers to what caused the airliner to fly so far off course and continue until its fuel was exhausted. Did the pilot purposefully reprogram the autopilot? Did a catastrophic event cause all on board to lose consciousness while the aircraft continued on its own? We may never know. New systems, such as the Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) developed by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), along with emerging data gathering technology called !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which uses data provided by existing !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! equipment, will soon be able to update an aircraft’s position anywhere on the globe every minute. But until those new systems become operational, Malaysian Flight 370 will serve as a reminder that, no matter how small the world has become, it remains a vast place, and that no matter how connected we are, it is still possible to become utterly lost.

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Short Takeoff

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March 6, 2003 – The first flight of the AgustaWestland AW609, a twin-engine !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! aircraft being developed for the civilian market. Similar to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the AW609 is capable of vertical takeoff and landing, with transition to forward flight provided by turboprop engines mounted in swiveling nacelles on the end of the wings. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! plans to market the AW609 to VIP customers and the offshore oil and gas industry. Development was slowed after the crash of the second prototype in October 2015 which killed two test pilots. For still unknown reasons, the aircraft broke up in midair during high speed testing. Certification of the AW609 is currently scheduled for the end of 2019, and AgustaWestland is considering a site in the US for production.

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March 6, 2003 – The launch of Hooters Air. Hooters Air was founded by Robert Brooks, the owner of Hooters of America, a restaurant perhaps better known for the revealing attire worn by its waitresses than for its food. Brooks acquired !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 2002, and rebranded the jets in Hooters Air livery. The airline focused on the golfing set, hoping to drum up business with passengers, particularly men, who wanted to take flyaway golf trips. Each flight was staffed by two Hooters waitresses in standard Hooters attire in addition to a required complement of flight attendants who wore traditional uniforms. Faced with increased fuel costs following Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, Hooters Air ceased operations on April 17, 2006 after an estimated cost of $40 million was spent on the venture.

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March 7, 1975 – The first flight of the Yakovlev Yak-42, a medium-range trijet airliner and the first Soviet airliner to be powered by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines. Developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the world’s first commuter trijet, the Yak-42 was primarily intended as a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , as well as other older turboprop-powered airliners. The airliner is powered by three !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! high bypass turbofans, has a cursing speed of 460 mph with a maximum range of 2,458 miles, and can accommodate up to 120 passengers. The Yak-24 entered service with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in December 1980 and remains in service, flying primarily on routes out of Moscow, with international service to Helsinki and Prague. The Yak-42 was produced from 1979-2003, and a total of 140 were built.

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(US Navy)

March 7, 1964 – The first flight of the Hawker Siddeley Kestrel. The Kestrel was the second experimental aircraft, following the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , that explored !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (V/STOL) and ultimately led to the development of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Development of both the P.1227 and Kestrel began in 1957 following the introduction of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! vectored-thrust engine. The Kestrel (FGA.1) was an improved version of the P.1227, with fully swept wings, larger tail, and enlarged fuselage to accommodate the larger !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engine. Nine Kestrels were built and flown by the Tripartite Evaluation Squadron comprised of pilots from England, Germany and the United States (where it was known as the XV-6A), and it served as the prototype for pre-production Harriers.

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(US Coast Guard)

March 7, 1945 – The first flight of the Piasecki HRP Rescuer, a tandem rotor helicopter designed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who was a pioneer in the development of tandem rotor helicopters. To keep the two rotors from colliding, the rear of the fuselage curved upward, giving the Rescuer the nickname “Flying Banana.” It featured a tricycle landing gear, and the fuselage was built of steel tubing covered with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fabric. The Rescuer was the first US military helicopter with the capacity for a significant number of passengers, and it served the US Navy, US Marine Corps, and US Coast Guard as a transport and cargo helicopter and for air-sea rescue. Piasecki built 28 Rescuers, and it was later developed into the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which served extensively in Korea and Vietnam.

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(US Army)

March 8, 1954 – The first flight of the Sikorsky H-34. A development of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the H-34 was originally designed by Sikorsky as an anti-submarine (ASW) platform for the US Navy. The H-34 was powered by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engine in the nose that drove the main rotor by a drive shaft that passed up through the cockpit which gave it a maximum speed of 173 mph and capability to carry up to 18 troops or 8 stretchers. The Army chose not to fly the H-34 in Vietnam, but the Marine Corps converted theirs into the first helicopter gunships by adding machine guns and rocket pods. The H-34 served the US until the mid-1960s, but also flew for numerous export countries around the world, as well as in a civilian version called the S-58. A total of 2,108 H-34/S-58s were built.

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(Das Bundesarchiv)

March 8, 1917 – The death of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. Count Zeppelin was born on July 8, 1838 in modern-day Baden Würtemberg and served as a general in the army of Würtemberg before turning his interest to aviation. During the American Civil War, Zeppelin traveled to the United States and observed the use of observation balloons in battle, then returned to Europe to develop first dirigibles and rigid airships. His first airship, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , took its maiden flight in July 1900, and he followed it with ever larger airships that would eventually be capable of transatlantic flight. Zeppelins were used in combat during WWI and for intercontinental air travel during the interwar period, but their heyday ended in 1937 with the crash of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   (LZ 129) and the advent of transatlantic airliners.

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(US Library of Congress)

March 8, 1910 – Raymonde de Laroche becomes the world’s first woman to earn a pilot license. Born in 1882, de Laroche decided to become a pilot after seeing !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flying demonstration in 1908. The following year she convinced her friend and airplane manufacturer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to teach her to fly. Since Voisin’s aircraft had only one seat, her first flight was a solo covering some 300 yards and, one year later, de Laroche received license #36 from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . She made numerous flying demonstrations around Europe and Egypt and, despite serious injuries she sustained in a crash, she returned to the air and was awarded the Aero-Club of France’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for a four-hour nonstop flight. She also set two altitude records for women pilots in 1919. De Laroche died on July 18, 1919 in a crash that also killed her co-pilot.

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(Author unknown)

March 8, 1909 – The birth of Beatrice “Tilly” Shilling, a British aeronautical engineer, motorcycle racer, and auto racer. Shilling is best known for her invention of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , known to pilots as “Miss Shilling’s Orifice,” which helped eliminate the problem of engine flooding in the early !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines used on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Following the war, Shilling worked on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! missile and investigated the effects of wet runways on aircraft braking. As a racer, she was awarded the Gold Star for lapping the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! circuit at an average of 106 mph on her !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! M30 motorcycle, and refused to marry her fiancé until he matched the feat and earned a Gold Star of his own. Shilling died on November 18, 1990 at age 81.

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Connecting Flights

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If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. And if you missed any of the past articles, you can find them all at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . You can also find more stories about aviation, aviators and airplane oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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OPPOsaurus WRX > ttyymmnn 03/08/2019 at 12:41

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i’m sure there are reasons but I’m surprised there are not more tilt rotor (or tilt jet engine) type aircraft . Imagine the difference in airports if we didn’ t need the giant runways like we do now and everything was more of a heliport .

Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. > OPPOsaurus WRX 03/08/2019 at 12:47

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There is a massive difference in the amount of thrust needed to propel a vehicle forward vs upwards. A 787-10 has a thrust of 76,000LBs, which is excellent for a plane of it’s type which can weight as much as 560 ,000LBs. But to make it go vertical, you would still need to attach another six engines with no other downsides, including weight,  and operate them at peak thrust.

ttyymmnn > OPPOsaurus WRX 03/08/2019 at 12:57

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Demon-Xanth points out why it would be impractical on a large scale, but I imagine we’ll start seeing more of these in the civilian market, similar to small to medium sized biz jets. The Army is also working on their own tilt rotor to replace or comple ment helicopters, the Bell V-280 Valor . Unlike the Oprey, though, only the propellers rotate, rather than the entire engine nacelle.

OPPOsaurus WRX > Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. 03/08/2019 at 13:06

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sounds like a plan.  I want a flying prototype on my desk by then end of the day

Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. > OPPOsaurus WRX 03/08/2019 at 13:09

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facw > ttyymmnn 03/08/2019 at 13:11

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One thing that’s irritating about the MH 370 situation is that even if they recovered the black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder might not have recorded anything interesting, because the capacity was only a few hours. Given how little space voice data takes up, it seems absurd not to be able to capture the entire flight. Even consumer grade storage is not tough enough for the purpose, it could still be included very inexpensively as secondary nice to have. It should be noted that video from consumer devices has been recovered from multiple disasters, so there’s reason to believe that even a microSD card in the tough, fireproof, and waterproof housing of a black box would likely be recoverable (they are so small and cheap you could mirror them, to give you even more chance).

Frankly beyond having the audio for the full flight, it seems like it would be entirely possible to have video from the cockpit, cabin, and exterior, at very little cost.

ttyymmnn > facw 03/08/2019 at 13:14

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As I mentioned in the final paragraph, that looks likely to change in the next few years. I believe they are already moving away from the old wire recording devices to solid state tech, if that hasn’t happened already. Still, with flights routinely lasting for 14 hours or more, it seems absurd that any recording device wouldn’t have enough space to cover the entire flight. 

facw > ttyymmnn 03/08/2019 at 13:17

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Yeah, it needs an update. Frankly everything they put on the black boxes today could probably just be streamed via satellite at reasonable cost (compared to the operations of an airliner), but it also seems like they could definitely do more than they are doing today, and have it be worthwhile.

OPPOsaurus WRX > Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. 03/08/2019 at 13:31

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eh, might need more engines

user314 > ttyymmnn 03/08/2019 at 13:46

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N250TR was only 27 years old when it was retired and scrapped in ‘08. From those JT8D ’s I would have expected it to be at least a decade older. She flew for a bunch of airlines too, in three different countries:

Kestrels in the TES got a nice squadron roundel:

Two XV-6As, looking just as smart in NASA livery, are on display in Virginia:

ttyymmnn > user314 03/08/2019 at 13:49

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Thanks for all that!

WilliamsSW > user314 03/08/2019 at 14:09

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Believe it or not, Wikipedia says that the 737-200 was in production until 1988 - although I suspect the last US domestic deliveries were long before that.

I saw one in Montreal (Dorval) last summer - Air Inuit, and I think it was a Combi, too.

Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. > OPPOsaurus WRX 03/08/2019 at 14:10

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More....

....or LESS?

...and now a not-photoshop:

OPPOsaurus WRX > Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. 03/08/2019 at 14:12

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they both have less than your original design.  I love that second one though

user314 > WilliamsSW 03/08/2019 at 14:32

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I figured as much; it’s just odd seeing low-by pass TBFs in this day and age.

Cé hé sin > ttyymmnn 03/08/2019 at 14:56

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As a racer, she was awarded the Gold Star for lapping the Brooklands circuit at an average of 106 mph on her Norton M30 motorcycle, and refused to marry her fiancé until he matched the feat and earned a Gold Star of his own

I don’t think the late Ms Sh illing would have needed to be remembered, patronised and celebrated by today’s International Womens’ Day.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > user314 03/08/2019 at 14:57

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I just watched a video regarding why 737-200's are still in common use in Canada. A lot of airstrips in far northern Canada are gravel strips. The 737-200 could be fitted with a gravel kit, so operators who fly in to gravel fields still want the -200's. The gravel kit includes a deflector on the nose gear, and some wands that project in front of the inlets and use bleed air to break up the vortex that forms in front of jet engines and contributes to stuff getting sucked off the ground and into the engines.

This is bad when you’re on gravel:

Here you can see the deflector on the nose gear and the vortex dissipators on the engine intakes.

Cé hé sin > facw 03/08/2019 at 14:59

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I’m guessing the reasoning is that even if a flight lasted twelve hours or more, anything causing its demise i s likely to happen in the last minutes. Nobody considered an eventuality such as this of course.

facw > Cé hé sin 03/08/2019 at 15:01

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Certainly in the general case the time closer to the end of recording will be the most valuable. So back when these things first became available it of course made sense to prioritize that since you were limited by tapes. Today my understanding is they all use digital storage, and there’s really no reason they can’t have the whole flight.

WilliamsSW > user314 03/08/2019 at 15:09

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I think they’re effectively banned in the US (ex. military of course) , but not other countries.  And Canada may give airlines like Air Inuit an exception so that they can provide cost-effective service to the Arctic.

ttyymmnn > Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. 03/08/2019 at 15:23

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Wow, somebody actually went and built a flying Stipa-Caproni. Neat! That thing was so ridiculously stable in flight that it was actually hard to turn. Looks like that one might be a bit scaled down.

Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. > ttyymmnn 03/08/2019 at 15:28

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3/5 scale replica

ttyymmnn > Demon-Xanth knows how to operate a street. 03/08/2019 at 15:29

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Hmm. I’d say it’s more like 40% smaller.

;)

user314 > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 03/08/2019 at 16:25

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I had never really thought about that, but it makes perfect sense. Thanks!

You know how the lolcat onomatopoeia for eating is ‘NOM NOM NOM’? For airplanes it’s FOD FOD FOD ....