Turkish carrier AtlasGlobal will halt operations until mid-December owing to financial troubles. The airline says it will "temporarily" cease flights from 26 November to 21 December as it deals with cash flow problems amid tough economic conditions. "We have entered a new phase of restructuring in order to provide you a unique flight experience," the carrier states. During the Routes Europe conference in October, commercial chief Nevzat Arsan said that the carrier had a "very difficult time" in 2018 amid depreciation of the Turkish lira and general economic instability in the country. He added that political and social instability in Iran, Iraq and Syria were impacting the airline “significantly”.

Source: FlightGlobal

Russian investigators believe the captain of a Flydubai Boeing 737-800 that crashed during a second go-around at Rostov-on-Don was psychologically unprepared for the manoeuvre and possibly suffering fatigue following a long hold. The aircraft had been arriving from Dubai late at night on 19 March 2016 and had aborted one approach – despite being stable with the runway in sight – owing to a windshear warning. Over 1h 40min passed before its crew requested descent for a second landing attempt. This attempt was also aborted – at 03:40, nearly 2h after the first – when a wind gust on the approach at about 1,000ft caused a sharp increase in airspeed from 153kt to 176kt. Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee says the captain's mindset was fixed on conducting a landing at Rostov, following the previous forced go-around and through concern over exceeding duty time for the return flight. As a result, it says, he had a "lack of psychological readiness" for a second go-around. This led to a delay in the captain's mental state adapting from carrying out a landing to carrying out a go-around. The inquiry adds that the crew's actions lacked co-ordination, with the lightly-loaded aircraft subjected to maximum thrust, consequently resulting in "substantial excessive nose-up moment" and "significant" pushing on the control column, up to 225N for more than 40s, to counteract it. As the aircraft climbed away the captain did not set and maintain the proper climb profile and demonstrated "insufficient knowledge and skill" with the manual stabiliser trim, activating it for an unusually long period of time – around 12s – as the aircraft entered low cloud. "The piloting – especially the precise piloting – of an out-of-trim aircraft is always complicated and implies the increase of the pilot’s workload, including the psycho-emotional component," says the inquiry. Excessive application of the stabiliser trim generated negative g-forces as the jet transitioned into a dive. This sudden onset of negative g-force can result in a startle effect, with pilots incapacitated and spatially disoriented and their vision or breathing potentially affected by unsecured objects, mud and dust being thrown up from the cockpit. The captain's psychological incapacitation and disorientation, says the inquiry, prevented his responding to prompts from the first officer – who, in turn, did not recognise the signs of the captain's deteriorating mental state in time to take decisive actions.


Source: FlightGlobal

Finnair is being forced to cancel two-thirds of its flight owing to disruption from a labour dispute involving the country's postal service. Although the Finnish flag-carrier is not part of the dispute, the aviation labour union IAU is conducting a support strike on 25 November. This support strike will have "major impacts" on Finnair flight operations, the airline says, with vital services at Helsinki-Vantaa airport – such as ramp handling, fuelling, catering and maintenance – being affected. Finnair says it cancelled 26 services on 24 November, ahead of the industrial action, and expects to cancel nearly 260 others on 25 November – about two-thirds of the 377 planned. The cancelled flights include both short-haul European links and a number of long-haul services, including those to San Francisco, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok. Finnair chief operating officer Jaakko Schildt says the knock-on effect of the postal strike is affecting 20,000 of the airline's customers. "We are doing our best to mitigate the impacts to them," he says. "We are working to find suitable re-routings for customers impacted by this, but re-routing such a large number of customers unfortunately takes some time." IAU says its members will "cease all work" during the stoppage, but says the action will end when they return to their shifts on 26 November.

Source: FlightGlobal