894 A I R T R A N S P O R T

DC-10 I N C I D E N T AN American Airlines DC-10-10 suffered an explosive cabin decompression on June 13, following a rear cargo-door failure on a flight from Detroit to Buffalo. The explo­sion took place at 12,000ft when the. aircraft was lOmin out from Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

Initial indications are that a coffin broke loose inside the rear freight hold and smashed through the door (see drawing). An emergency landing followed, and 11 passen­gers were slightly injured while escaping from the airliner, which returned to Detroit.

The cabin floor buckled downwards in the extreme aft lounge area as a result of the explosive pressure variation; the control system was also apparently damaged.

The pilot landed with inoperative wheel brakes and a damaged rudder circuit. The DC-10 was put down with one set of main wheels on the runway and the other on the grass to slow it down. The aircraft skidded on landing, but came to rest about 1,000ft from a main road. FBI agents and Michigan State police examined the aircraft, which was first thought to have been damaged by a bomb.

It was quickly established, however, that the metal coffin had fallen from the door; the coffin and body were found across the Canadian border in Ontario.

F I R S T G E N E R A L A I R Y A K - 4 0 s THE Hamburg-based West German regional airline, General Air, has just taken delivery of its first two Yak-40s. All five of the Soviet trijets which the airline has on order should be on hand by the end of August.

General Air's joint managing director, Dr Koch, told Flight last week that five flight crews have already been trained on the aircraft and that five more are now in the Soviet Union undergoing instruction. General Air ground crews have taken two'-month courses on the aircraft in the Soviet Union and some Russian personnel are working on it in West Germany.

The Yak-40 will be used primarily to link smaller air­fields with main terminals on General Air's domestic network. The first aircraft will soon go into service on a Hamburg-Kassel-Munich round trip to be flown twice a day. At noon each day the aircraft will also fly a service to the island of Westerland from Hamburg. The second

FLIGHT International, 22 June 1972

aircraft is scheduled to fly the Liibeck-Kassel-Frankfurt return, service twice daily.

The US Civil Aeronautics Board has appointed Raymond Kurlander to the post of comptroller, succeeding Oscar Disler, who has retired.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has announced the resignation of its deputy administrator, Kenneth M. Smith, to join E-Systems Inc as executive vice-president.

LOT Polish Airlines has been recommended by a CAB examiner for authority to operate scheduled and charter services to the USA.

Subsidy fixed The Civil Aeronautics Board has approved a total annual subsidy of $65-4 million for eight US local-service carriers (nine until the Allegheny takeover of Mohawk in April). The new level of subsidy is effective from July 1.

International Aviation Services of Gatwick has obtained a contract for 165 Britannia flights during a 12-month period between Khartoum and Cairo, freighting beef. The Gatwick-based company is associated with African Inter­national, which leases a Britannia from it.

380 in a DC-10 The FAA has cleared the DC-10 to carry up to 380 passengers, following successful trials in which 380 passengers and 11 crew members evacuated a DC-10 in 74sec. FAA regulations specify that all occupants must be able to get out of an airliner within 90sec. The previous approved maximum capacity for a DC-10 was 345 passengers.

The US Civil Aeronautics Board has approved the $250,000 reward fund for information on hijacking, sabotage and similar crimes which was agreed recently by five leading airlines. The fund, for information leading to conviction, will be administered by the US Air Transport Association. ATA plans to publicise rewards available from the fund in respect of specific incidents.

The Link-Miles DC-10 simulator, delivered to National Airlines in Miami during April, has now received FAA approval for initial crew training. By July full approval will be sought, after the visual system has been added and DC-10 certificated flight data has been fed into the simulator's computer. Link-Miles is building two other DC-10 simulators—one for Northwest and one for Alitalia.

A coffin probably damaged the aft freight door, below, of an American DC-10 on June 13, causing an explosive decompression which led to an emergency landing (see news item on this page). The door which failed and the area of cabin floor which buckled downwards are shown, left, in this "Flight" drawing