Boeing 787 First Taxi Tests, ZA001 has conducted its first taxi tests around the Paine Field, today on July 7th, 2009. It's the first time the Boeing 787 has moved on a runway under its own power. Test pilots were taking the B787 for a low-speed taxi test around Paine Field's runway and taxi lanes. They were checking the steering and braking system.

The 787 may still be weeks to months away from taking its maiden flight, however Boeing can still proceed with these taxi tests on N787BA. The fleet of 787's remains grounded until Boeing finishes reinforcing small areas near the connection of the wings and fuselage before conducting the first test flight.

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This is the video of Michael Jackson's final concert rehearsal at the Staples Center on Tuesday June 23, 2009 in Los Angeles just two days before Michael Jackson's death on June 25, 2009. Michael Jackson was on stage rehearsing for what was meant to be his comeback tour named THIS IS IT!.

This concert looks like it would have been amazing. Well miss you, Michael!

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A Yemenia Airlines Airbus A310-300 jet carrying 153 people crashed in the Indian Ocean 12 miles from the airport on Tuesday June, 29, 2009 as it came in for a landing on the island nation of Comoros.
A 14-year-old girl was found alive in the sea, Comoros Communications Minister Abdourahim Said Bakar said. Earlier reports had said the rescued child was five.
The Paris airports authority said 66 French nationals were aboard the plane, which was flying the final leg of a trip from Paris and Marseille to Comoros via Yemen.
A Yemeni aviation official said there were also nationals from Canada, Comoros, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, the Philippines and Yemen on the plane.
It is the second Airbus to plunge into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1. A preliminary report on that crash is due on Thursday.
The Paris-Marseille-Yemen leg of the Yemenia flight was flown by an Airbus A330. In Sanaa, those passengers who were flying on to the Comoros changed onto a second Yemenia plane, the A310 that crashed.

FAULTS DETECTED
French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said faults had been detected during inspections in France in 2007 on the Yemenia A310, and that it had not flown to France since.
"The A310 in question was inspected in 2007 by the DGAC (French transport authorities) and they noticed a certain number of faults," he told the I-tele television channel.
"The company was not on the black list but was subject to stricter checks on our part, and was due to be interviewed shortly by the European Union's safety committee."
"The question we are asking ... is whether you can collect people in a normal way on French territory and then put them in a plane that does not ensure their security. We do not want this to happen again," he said.
Yemen's transport minister said the plane was thoroughly checked in May under Airbus supervision.
"It was a comprehensive inspection carried out in Yemen ... with experts from Airbus," Khaled Ibrahim al-Wazeer told Reuters from Sanaa. "It was in line with international standards."
The EU suspended permission for Yemenia to maintain EU-registered planes in February after it failed a set of audit inspections, the EU's aviation safety agency told Reuters in Brussels.
The move would not have affected the doomed Airbus A310 plane since it was registered in Yemen. But it provides further evidence of European concerns over the airline's operations after the EU Commission said the plane which crashed had sparked an EU inquiry two years ago.
The EU's Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said it would contact Yemenia and planned to propose a global blacklist of airlines deemed unsafe.
Yemenia is 51 percent owned by Yemen and 49 percent by Saudi Arabia. Its fleet includes two Airbus 330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s, according to its website.
French television showed pictures of friends and relatives of the passengers weeping at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, many of them railing at the airline.
Families arriving at the airport in Marseille, where there is a large Comoran community, were met by Comoros consul Stephane Salord.
"The Comorans save up for several months in the year to go to Comoros with their families. In this plane there were entire families, parents, children, elders who were with them."

AIRBUS INVESTIGATORS
Ibrahim Abdourazak, an official at a crisis center in Comoros, told Reuters the 14-year-old girl was from a village in the center of the Indian Ocean archipelago.
Earlier, a doctor in the Comoros had told Reuters a five-year old child had been plucked alive from the sea and taken to a medical center.
Airbus said it was dispatching a team of investigators to the Comoros. It said the aircraft was built in 1990 and had been used by Yemenia since 1999. Its engines were built by Pratt and Whitney, a unit of United Technologies.
A Yemenia official said there were 142 passengers including three infants, and 11 crew. The plane was flying to Moroni, capital of Grande Comore, the main island of the archipelago.
"The weather conditions were rough; strong wind and high seas. The wind speed recorded on land at the airport was 61 kph (38 mph). There could be other factors," Mohammad al-Sumairi, deputy general manager for Yemenia operations, told Reuters.
The French military sent army and civilian medical teams, boats and divers to the crash site aboard the plane from the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. Comoros authorities sent small speedboats.
France and the Comoros have enjoyed close ties since the islands' independence in 1975. France estimates 200,000 people from Comoros live in mainland France, and remittances from France are an important part of the islands' economy.
For a map showing the flight path of the airliner, go to:
http:/graphics.thomsonreuters. com/RNGS/JUN/CRASH.jpg

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June 19, 2009 a construction vehicle drove onto Runway 15R at Logan International Airport as a US Airways A320 jet was taking off, missing a collision with the jet mere two seconds in what FAA terms "a very serious incident."

The truck driver, who worked for HNTB Inc., is suspended from driving anywhere on the airport grounds.

Can you imagine what could happen in two seconds? Thank God!

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A Continental Airlines flight 61 landed at Newark International Airport this afternoon after its Captain Craig Lenell died this morning on June 18, 2009 while on board.

The 60-year-old Newark-based pilot, who worked for Continental for 32 years, is believed to have died of natural causes, said Kelly Cripe, a spokeswoman for the Houston-based airline.

A co-pilot and a relief pilot aboard safely landed the Boeing 777 aircraft at Newark, which was scheduled to be the plane's final destination, just before noon.

Carrying 247 passengers, Flight 61 departed from Brussels, Belgium at 9:45 this morning.

Passengers say that they were not informed about the pilot's death. "We were just told there was a major medical issue aboard the flight," said one passenger. "I wasn't scared at all. No fear, no panic, everybody was fine."

"No, we were not aware of that," said another. "They called the doctor in the middle of the flight. That was it. We sat in first class so we did see the doctor go to the front, but that's all we saw."

According to Continental, the 60-year-old pilot died of natural causes. He was based out of Newark and had 32 years of service with the airline.

A cardiologist on board who responded to an announcement asking for doctors said he believes a heart attack killed the pilot. He said he and the crew tried to revive the pilot using a defibrillator, but there was "no chance at all" of saving him."

"When I came in, it was just too late," said Dr. Julien Struyven, a doctor on board that tended to the pilot. "We did try to defibrillate him, but it was no use anymore."

The airport gave priority landing to the flight, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

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A US cameraman has survived a brush with death after a DeHavilland Beaver seaplane narrowly avoided him before crashing.

Dustin Koehler was filming the attempted take-off at Lake Hood, Alaska, when the plane struggled to become airborne.

The footage, which was shot on June 7 and uploaded on the internet late last week, shows the DeHavilland Beaver plane veering to the right before narrowly missing Mr Koehler, who falls to the ground to avoid impact.

"Holy crap," the cameraman can be heard saying as the aircraft ploughs into the bank after appearing to clip a steel fence.

Even more amazing was the fact that every occupant of the packed plane — including the pilot, his wife, two children and two dogs — all managed to walk away without injury.

The pilot indicated that just after lift off, a gust of wind just pushed him over the side, that's why his plane couldn't get airborne.

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Here is some clips Brazilian Air Force Rescuing efforts and the small debris they found beside the tail.

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This animation depicts the flight path of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 in Weehawken, New Jersey, on January 15, 2009. The animation begins after the airplanes takeoff from La Guardia Airport at 3:26:50 PM EST and ends with the water landing in the Hudson River. Flight data recorder and radar flight path information is displayed on a satellite photo illustration of the area. Near the end of the flight, the animation transitions to surveillance video from Pier 88, which captured the landing. Selected comments from the cockpit voice recorder transcript are displayed as text. The animation audio consists of portions of the recorded air traffic control communications.

The airplanes speed, altitude, and local time are displayed in the lower portion of the screen. Courtesy: NTSB Hearing.

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Search crews recovered the vertical stabilizer from the tail section of an Air France jetliner that went down in the Atlantic. Also, eight more bodies also were found today as of June 14, 2009, bringing the total recovered to 50 since Air France Flight 447 disappeared with 228 people on board on Jun 1st.

The discoveries of debris and the bodies are all helping searchers narrow their hunt for the jet's black boxes, perhaps investigators' best hope of learning what happened to the flight.

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In April, a deadly aircraft incident involving about 300 passengers was prevented seconds before a collision could take place, Russia's Federal Air Navigation Service (Rosavianavigatsia) revealed on Wednesday 13 May 2009.

The near-catastrophic encounter occurred between a Tu-154 bound for Samara and a Boeing 767 en route to Vladivostok happened near Moscow on April 24.

Each and every day, over a million passengers worldwide put their lives in the hands of people they may never meet people whose split-second decisions can save their lives and certainly an ATC revealed that to world again by his heroic effort.

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The Brazilian Air Force said that debris picked up Thursday near where officials believe Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean was not from the plane.

On the other hand, Officials saying malfunctioning sensor may have fed incorrect data to cockpit on an Air France Flight 447- Airbus A330-200 jet that crashed over the Atlantic Ocean carrying 228 people aboard on June 1, 2009 on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

Search and rescue attempts continue across a wide stretch of the Atlantic Ocean.

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An Air France Flight 447- Airbus A330-200 jet crashed over the Atlantic Ocean carrying 228 people aboard on June 1, 2009 on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. It flew into thunderstorms and disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean.
It is believed to have hit severe turbulence near the equator and at the altitude it was flying, it's possible that the Air France plane flew directly into the most charged part of the storm — the top.
The plane indicated it was flying normally more than three hours later as it left Brazil radar contact, beyond the Fernando de Noronha archipelago, at 10:48 local time. It was flying at 35,000 feet and traveling at 522 mph. Signal indicated electrical problems about a half-hour later, the plane "crossed through a thunderous zone with strong turbulence. It sent an automatic message 14 minutes later reporting electrical failure and a loss of cabin pressure.
The area where the plane could have gone down was vast, in the middle of very deep Atlantic Ocean waters between Brazil and the coast of Africa.
It is the deadliest commercial airline disaster since 2001, and it is the first major accident with the Airbus A330 aircraft.
The two biggest groups of nationalities aboard were Brazilian and French, with 58 and 61 people aboard, respectively. Among the other passengers on the flight were two Americans, five British, 26 Germans and nine Chinese. Air France Flight 447, a four-year-old Airbus A330, left Rio on Sunday night with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board.
Air France officials says "it is possible" the plane was hit by lightning, but how a lightning can bring the plane down? Search and rescue attempts continue across a wide stretch of the Atlantic Ocean.

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