AERO members and non-members please join us on Tuesday, February 5th, at 4:00PM – 5:00PM for an AERO sponsored Industry Panel at the Ritz Carlton, Tysons Corner, McLean, VA.    Attendance is free.  Panelists and topics are being finalized and will be announced shortly.  Salon 3 – 5th Floor

This event is a precursor to the LeClair Ryan 2019 Aviation Symposium which starts with a welcome reception at 6:00PM.

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Coordinating Through Chaos: Examining How the Aviation Community Responds to Acts of Mass Violence at Airports

Please join the Aviation Emergency Response Organization (AERO) for their first webinar, where industry leaders will focus on the lessons learned from recent acts of mass violence at airports and the resulting challenges of bringing together an airport community to create a coordinated response.

The unique circumstances surrounding an act of mass violence within a public space, such as an airport, increase the complexity of the response. Unlike aviation accidents with well-choreographed plans managed by air carriers, an act of violence requires several entities and jurisdictions to come together to manage the crisis. That response includes medical treatment of the injured, evacuation of potentially thousands of airport patrons and employees, and the management of critical resources to ensure public safety.

This webinar will cover considerations for airport employees, air carriers, and vendors, with discussion of the following topics:

• Command and control
• Crisis response
• Information sharing
• Humanitarian and victim care

And much more…

When: 4/4/2018
Time: 12:00 – 1:30 p.m. ET
Cost: Complimentary

Register here.

Event number: 634 643 693
Event password: 0404Aero

If you have any questions or comments, please contact Kristina Repko at kristina.repko@leclairryan.com.

The post You’re Invited to AERO’s First Webinar appeared first on Become a Member.

Venue

The Ritz Carlton

1700 Tysons Boulevard

McLean, VA  22102

Tuesday, February 7, 2017
4:00 – 5:30 pm

Salon 3

Before the Welcome Cocktail Party on February 7, there will be a general meeting of the Aviation Emergency Response Organization (AERO), the association of emergency response professionals from across the aviation industry, including airlines of all sizes, cargo operators, charter and fractional operators, airports, insurers, consultants and others. The meeting will provide an opportunity for members to connect and non-members to learn about and join AERO.

Also at the AERO meeting, you’ll hear from Christine Negroni, author of The Crash Detectives: Investigating the Word’s Most Mysterious Air Disasters.

If you are planning on attending The 2017 Aviation Symposium after the AERO meeting, please click this link and RSVP for the Symposium.

The post appeared first on Become a Member.

September 2, 2016

To: All AERO Members and Prospective Members:

This newsletter is being sent to provide some background information, status of AERO and perspective on what is to come.

In July, the first meeting of AERO was held at Dentons’ Washington office, one of the sponsors of AERO. The purpose of the meeting was to announce the formation of an Aviation Emergency Response (centric) Organization, which will be called AERO.

The meeting was well attended with around 150 people either present or on the phone. The companies represented were a good cross-section of all of the areas of aviation that are envisioned with the creation of AERO.

The impetus for the formation of this non-profit organization is to provide a forum for all companies involved in aviation emergency planning/response and family assistance. AERO provides an opportunity to exchange ideas, best practices and further enhance emergency planning by drawing from each others’ experience and insights.

While commercial airlines may be involved in alliances or code share agreements, AERO provides a unique opportunity to combine commercial airlines, business aviation operators, airport, and ground handlers with insurers and experienced consultants for collaboration and support of one another, expanding the discussion to all those involved in planning and responding to an aircraft emergency.

Many commercial airlines were members of International Air Transport Association (IATA) until recently when that organization discontinued support for the Emergency Response Working Group. This provides further evidence that forming AERO is timely.

There is a meeting scheduled to be held September 21 and 22 in Sydney Australia. This Forum in Sydney will provide an opportunity to announce AERO in the Asia-Pacific geographic region.

The participants at the Annual IATA meeting selected the Sydney meeting location and date in the spring. Since many were planning on attending and a lot of work had been done on meeting preparation, it seemed natural to continue with that location even though the IATA working group has ceased to exist.

Looking forward:

• AERO annual meeting will be held in February 2017 in conjunction with The Aviation Symposium at The Ritz Carlton, McLean, VA
• The location of the 2^nd AERO meeting location and date in 2017 will be determined in conjunction with the sponsors
• There will be 16 members of the AERO Board of Directors, from segments of the industry, reflecting the membership of AERO, both geographically and diversity.
• The proposed AERO committee structure will include:
  • Airline
  • Airport
  • Insurers
  • Attorneys
  • Communications
  • Programs

In the next newsletter, we’ll provide more information on the meeting in February and an update from the Sydney Forum.

The AERO website is still being populated with information as it is developed. You may keep informed trough the website

http://www.aviationemergency.org/.

Eventually, there will be a members’ only section. For now, all information is public.   You may also submit a question or feedback by email to Barbara.butler@aviationemergency.org, directly.

We hope you will consider becoming a member of AERO. Dues information is available on the website.

Thank you to the sponsors of AERO:

• Dentons
• JLT Specialty Insurance
• QBE Holdings
• Wyvern Consulting

We look forward to working with you to establish AERO as a world-class emergency response and planning organization.

Best regards,

Deborah Thompson

Chair

Board of Directors

deborah@deborahthompsoninc.com

The post AERO Newsletter appeared first on Become a Member.

On July 19, AERO held its first organization meeting. Hosted by Mark Dombroff, Counsel to AERO, the meeting was the day before the “Chicago Meeting” at the NTSB on July 20. There were over 150 attendees at the AERO meeting, including 30 who dialed in from locations all over the world .

Among others, the following airlines attended.

Air Canada

Alaska Airlines, Inc.

American Airlines, Inc.

Cape Air Airlines

Compass Airlines

Copa Airlines

Delta Air Lines

Endeavor Air, Inc.

ExpressJet Airlines, Inc.

Hainan Airlines

Hawaiian Airlines

JetBlue Airway

Latam Airlines

Omam Air

Philippine Airlines

Qatar Airways

Republic Airways

Skywest Airlines

Southwest Airlines

Spirit Airlines

Sun Country Airlines

Swiss International Air Lines

United Airlines

Virgin America

Virgin Australia

Norwegian Air Shuttle

In addition, The Honorable Robert Sumwalt, Member NTSB; David Tochen, General Counsel NTSB; Paul Sledzik, NTSB and Elias Kontanis, NTSB were all in attendance.

A complete agenda for the meeting is available by clicking here.

There was a high level of enthusiasm and excitement from everyone in attendance as the future plans of AERO were discussed.  Everyone present was invited to sign up for one of the committees.  In addition, the Board indicated that it was going to be increased in size and composition to not only provide a broader industry perspective, but to reflect a more global composition.  Founding Board members invited others who might be interested in joining the expanded Board to contact them.

The next AERO meeting, hosted by Virgin Australia, will be in Sydney Australia, on September 20-21, 2016. For information click here.

Following the meeting, their was a wine and cheese reception, sponsored by AERO’s Founding Sponsors, JLT Aviation, QBE Aviation and Wyvern. Thank you to our sponsors!!

The Founding Board, following the reception, got together for dinner to talk about AERO and the future.

Speaking of the future, see you in Sydney! More information will be forthcoming.

The post New from Aero . . . . appeared first on Become a Member.

Been there!  Seen that!

In the hours and days following the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370, speculation was rampant.  The “talking heads” on Fox and CNN felt they had a license, maybe even a mandate, to speculate.  Few and far between were genuine experts and, even fewer and farther between, were  talking heads who were genuine experts and who refused to engage in speculation.

Plane-ly Spoken went back and looked at the posts in the days and weeks following March 8, 2014, the day MH 370 went missing.  The similarities are striking.

At the risk of being accused of repeating ourselves, we re-print our post from March 25, 2014.  Substitute EgyptAir for Malaysia Airlines, dates, airplane model and a few other things, and what can we say, but “Welcome to back to the future!”

The post EgyptAir 804/MH Flight 370 Déjà vu… All Over Again appeared first on Become a Member.

It’s a neat airplane.  It lands on water!  Its wings fold!  It’s composite! It even has a parachute!

The Icon A5 is advertised as being designed to “handle predictibly [and] like a well-mannered sports car.”

If you’ve seen the A5 at any of the industry shows at which it’s appeared, it is, undeniably, a cool airplane.  What you may know about, but probably haven’t seen, is the Aircraft Purchase Agreement and the Aircraft Operating Agreement, both of which A5 buyers are required to sign if they want to purchase the A5 [Link].

Among other provisions, the Agreements state:

• the buyer cannot sue ICON or, alternatively, pay an extra $10,000 to buy the airplane
• that the Agreements were “drafted jointly” to avoid any presumption that ambiguous provisions are interpreted against ICON, the actual drafter
• creates a “Managing Pilot,” who may be the “Owner”, an “Affiliate” or a “non-affiliate of Owner”
• obligates the “Managing Pilot” and the “Owner”, as a contractual matter, to undertake certain training and aircraft maintenance
• obligates the “owner” to indemnify ICON if an accident occurs due to a breach of a provision of the Operating Agreement
• mandates the aircraft will/may be equipped with a video and a data recorder, with the recorders owned by ICON and the data collected by/transmitted to ICON.

It’s pretty clear the owners of ICON are looking for a way to pro-actively avoid any liability exposure arising from the sale of their aircraft.  Reportedly, there has been something of a negative response from prospective purchasers to these terms and, once again, reportedly, the company is going back to re-visit the terms of these agreements.  The last chapter clearly isn’t written.

Decades ago, a well-known manufacturer decided to operate without products liability insurance.  The owner’s attitude was that if they had no insurance and an accident occurred, the plaintiff would sue others – avionics, engine or other manufacturers or maintenance facilities – and leave the air frame manufacturer alone.  That worked just fine until it didn’t, the result being a bankruptcy which lasted almost five years.

Plane-ly Spoken will watch the ICON “experiment” closely and keep you advised.

The post Icon to Customers: “We’ll Sell You Our Aircraft, But Only If You Promise Not To Sue Us!” appeared first on Become a Member.

No news is no news.  As of this moment, there have been reports that one of the pingers on one of the recorders of EgyptAir 804 has been heard.  So far however, no aircraft.

Even if the pingers have been heard, searchers still have to locate the recorders, which, reportedly, are located in water as deep as 10,000 feet.  Then they have to recover them.  The bottom line is that there’s still a lot to be accomplished before we, hopefully, know what happened to EgyptAir 804.

Meanwhile, the story has pretty much fallen off the front page and, doesn’t appear to qualify as “Breaking News,” even if we use the somewhat expansive definition of CNN.

Under ICAO Annex 13, Egypt is leading the investigation since they are the “state” of registry of the aircraft.  France is an accredited representative, as is the United States, the former because it was an Airbus aircraft, the latter because the engines were manufactured in the U.S.  The responsibility for determining probable cause and writing the report resides with Egypt.

The most notable interaction between U.S. and Egypt in the context of an aircraft accident came in the context of the 1999 crash of EgyptAir Flight 990.  In that investigation, to make a long story short, the NTSB concluded the cause of the crash and the death of all on-board was suicide by the relief co-pilot.  The Egyptian Government however, in a diametrically opposed result, concluded the cause was a defect in the aircraft.

If one reads the record, there is no question but that the NTSB, the world standard in accident investigation, got it 100 percent right.  It wasn’t even a close call.

One could argue there was a genuine basis for disagreement regarding the results of the investigation.  However, the reality is that the vehement disagreement of the Egyptian investigation with what was so clearly suicide, was, and likely continues to be, national pride and the simple refusal to acknowledge that suicide by a pilot for its national airline could be responsible for such a horrific act.

Well, here we are, not quite 20 years later and all we have is questions and speculation about EgyptAir 804.  Let’s hope that we don’t have a repeat of what occurred surrounding the investigation of EgyptAir 990 in 1999.  We have no reason to believe that such a thing would occur, but Plane-ly Spoken would not have ever believed it could have occurred about 20 years ago.  If it were to happen again, that would qualify as “Breaking News!”

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