Turkish carrier AtlasGlobal is preparing to restore services, after re-opening its reservations system after nearly a month-long suspension. AtlasGlobal temporarily halted services on 26 November after admitting to financial difficulties. But it states that the booking engine has been re-opened and that it will restore flights from the morning of 21 December. Tickets for flights during the period of suspension were “put on hold”, says the carrier, and it is inviting passengers to contact the airline or travel agencies to make changes. AtlasGlobal has not indicated the reason for its ability to resume services. It has not disclosed whether, or from what source, it has received any financial assistance.

Source: Ciriium

A Qantas Airbus A330-200 returned to Sydney shortly after it took off, after one of the three hydraulic systems on board suffered a leak. The airline says in a statement that it is now cooperating with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) in investigations into the incident, which left at least two passengers injured. It is also in communication with Airbus about the incident, and will launch its own investigations. The aircraft, registered VH-EBC, was bound for Perth from Sydney, operating flight QF575.Qantas says the flight crew noticed an alert for the hydraulic system 20 minutes after take-off and elected to return to Sydney. It stressed that “no emergency was declared”. “Once the aircraft was back on the gate there were reports of a thick haze in the cabin, likely caused by hydraulic fluid entering the air conditioning unit,” says the Oneworld carrier, adding that there was no fire, even as some passengers may have thought it to be smoke. Passengers were evacuated from emergency slides and via aerobridge into the the airport terminal. Of the 221 passengers and 12 crew members on board, Qantas says two passengers were taken to hospital “for injuries sustained from using the slides”. A third was also taken to hospital “as a precaution”. Media reports from Australia state some passengers noticing a burning smell from the aircraft, and that it took a while for the aircraft to be parked at an airport gate.

Source: Cirium

Testing of the re-engined Embraer E2 family has revealed an electrical system anomaly which has spurred Brazilian regulators to order an urgent revision of smoke procedures in the flight manual. The emergency directive from Brazil’s civil aviation regulator ANAC focuses on the 190-E2 and 195-E2 variants of the regional twinjet. It states that the aircraft systems were being subjected to failure propagation tests including a deliberate loss of the number 2 essential DC electrical bus. ANAC says that, during the test, the smoke-detection system of the forward and aft electronics bays erroneously transmitted smoke warnings through the instrument panel’s crew alerting system. Procedures in the flight manual require the crew to respond by turning off the number 1 and number 3 busses. This would result in the loss of all essential DC electrical buses, causing a loss of power to the aircraft’s critical systems. ANAC says this impact on flight safety requires modification, within five days, of the flight manual procedure for addressing smoke warnings from the electronics bay. This procedure requires checking whether the crew alerting system is displaying a message warning that the number 2 bus is off, and conducting specific actions depending on the status of this alert.

Source: Cirium