Aerospace Diary

Neelam Mathews July 16, 2013 Investigators of Britain's Air Accident Investigations Branch (AAIB), and FAA  are looking into whether a fire on  the Ethiopian 787 at LHR l ast week was caused by the battery of an emergency locator transmitter  built by Honeywell International. Powered by a non-rechargeable lithium-manganese battery, the ELT is located in the aft fuselage section. Airlines were told in 2009 by the FAA to replace a Honeywell transmitter that had failed in tests. Honeywell is believed to be checking whether the transmitter on the Ethiopian Airlines was the same model as the one named by FAA.

EXCLUSIVE Neelam Mathews May 1, 2011, Time: 4:22pm IST With over 24 hours having passed with no news of the helicopter of Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Dorjee Khandu that went missing over the densely forested hills near Tawang, questions are now being raised on the adequacy of maintenance of the electronic locator transmitter (ELT) of the Pawan Hans helicopter. The ELT gets activated on impact and transmits signals on an international distress signal that can be picked up by satellites. There are monitoring stations all around the world to pick up distress signals including two in India- Bangalore and Lucknow- and in nearby Thailand. The ELT is powered by batteries that can last upto two days. The ALT has to be serviced every month. Given the often lax attitude, the question being raised by some experts not willing to be quoted, now is, were the batteries replaced during maintenance or signed in the roster as serviced without being checked? “This is the third incident in just...