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Tens of thousands of planes take off, land and perform touch-and-goes at the Marana Regional Airport in southern Arizona every year. Without an air traffic control tower, it's a calculated dance that requires communication by pilots. Two small planes collided in midair over one of the runways on the outskirts of Tucson last week. One hit the ground and caught fire, sending up a plume of black smoke. The remains of two people were found in the charred wreckage. The other plane was able to land, with those occupants uninjured. The collision was the latest aviation mishap to draw attention in recent weeks. The circumstances vary widely with each case, however, and experts who study aviation accidents say they don't see any connection between them. Chatter over the airwaves has provided some clues about what happened in Arizona. A chief flight instructor who was in the air with a student that day heard the commotion over the radio: One plane was attempting a touch-and-go when another ..
The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails on Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement. The impacted workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told AP. The air traffic controller was not authorised to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity. A Transportation Department official told AP late on Monday that no air traffic controllers were affected by the cuts, and that the agency has "retained employees who perform critical safety functions". In a follow-up query the agency said they would have to look into whether the radar, landing and ...
A year after a panel blew out of a Boeing 737 Max during flight, the nation's top aviation regulator says the company needs "a fundamental cultural shift to put safety and quality above profits. Mike Whitaker, chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, said in an online post Friday that his agency also has more work to do in its oversight of Boeing. Whitaker, who plans to step down in two weeks to let President-elect Donald Trump pick his own FAA administrator, looked back on his decision last January to ground all 737 Max jets with similar panels called door plugs. Later, the FAA put more inspectors in Boeing factories, limited production of new 737s, and required Boeing to come up with a plan to fix manufacturing problems. Boeing is working to make progress executing its comprehensive plan in the areas of safety, quality improvement and effective employee engagement and training, Whitaker said. But this is not a one-year project. What's needed is a fundamental cultural shift at
The top US aviation regulator said on Thursday that the Federal Aviation Administration should have been more aware of manufacturing problems inside Boeing before a panel blew off a 737 Max during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. FAA's approach was too hands-off too focused on paperwork audits and not focused enough on inspections, FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker told a Senate committee. Whitaker said that since the January 5 blowout on the Alaska jetliner, the FAA has changed to more active, comprehensive oversight of Boeing. That includes, as he has said before, putting more inspectors in factories at Boeing and its chief supplier on the Max, Spirit AeroSystems. Whitaker made the comments while his agency, the Justice Department and the National Transportation Safety Board continue investigations into the giant aircraft manufacturer. The FAA has limited Boeing's production of 737 Max jets to 38 per month, but the company is building far fewer than that while it tries to fix
With Boeing facing multiple government investigations, the company needs to make a serious transformation around its safety and manufacturing quality, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday. The comments came one day after Buttigieg said the aircraft builder is under enormous scrutiny by his department since a panel blew off a Boeing 737 Max jetliner in midflight. Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into the Jan. 5 blowout on an Alaska Airlines jet. That followed the company's admission that it couldn't find records that the National Transportation Safety Board sought for work done on the panel at a Boeing factory. The Federal Aviation Administration, part of Buttigieg's department, is also investigating Boeing. Obviously we respect the independence of DOJ (the Department of Justice) and NTSB (the National Transportation Safety Board) doing their own work, Buttigieg told reporters Monday, "