New Costa Condordia Images Show Scene Of Tragedy

by Chris Owen on




Eleven months after the cruise ship Costa Concordia grounded off the coast of Italy, the ship remains on its side. “60 Minutes” sent a camera crew in that brought out never-before-seen images of the surreal site on this “60 Minutes Overtime” web exclusive.

“You’ve got this giant thing that’s three football fields long sitting on a slanted mountainside underwater,” says “60 Minutes” producer Rich Bonin, whose story on the Costa Concordia salvage project aired on the broadcast this week on the “CBS News” website. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

“CBS News” photographers used a number of unusual photographic techniques to get the shots including a hovering drone flying miniature cameras above the ship, cameras as close to the hulking wreck as possible.

[Video Credit- CBS News]

Breaking: United grounds all Boeing 757 aircraft

by Grant Martin on

If you were scheduled on a United 757 earlier today and are wondering why it was canceled, we now know why. According to the Wall St. Journal, the airline is in the process of grounding its entire fleet in order to perform maintenance checks to air data computers that were modified earlier this year.

According to Gadling’s resident pilot Kent Wien:

There are two air data computers on every 757 and they’re used to take inputs from pitot tubes, static ports and temperature probes to determine the speed, rate of climb and altitude of the airplane. Any difference in the captain and the co-pilot’s side requires a quick determination as to which side is giving the correct data. In 1996 a 757 experienced a blocked pitot tube that caused it to crash off the coast of the Dominican Republic. While not the same problem as an ADC failure, the failures would look very similar to the pilots.

In this specific case, checks have acturally already been completed on the 96 767s; this round of study is in order to comply with Federal Aviation Administration requirements that were not followed at that time. Continental‘s 62 aircraft are not affected.

Each check takes less than two hours so the groundings should be brief. But operation on the aircraft will be disrupted for the rest of today and into tomorrow’s schedules.

Contacted for comment, United Airlines’ Charles Hobart confirmed:

We have about 25 cancellations. The maintenance checks are ongoing and will continue until completed. We expect minimal further disruption tomorrow.