Aviation Law

A corporate pilot who was fired after refusing to fly a trip he deemed unsafe has been awarded $1.99 million in damages after suing his former employer. Ray Justinic worked for the flight operations subsidiary of a property management company with a large hotel on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin. He was asked to […]

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday that a no-fly list for violent airplane passengers should be considered. Buttigieg told CNN that a federal list should be “on the table” as the government grapples with a persistent increase in unruly behavior on airliners. “There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of treatment of flight crews […]

Congress appears poised to short-circuit the FAA’s plans for an elaborate rewrite of its commercial aviation definition that has resulted in frustrating paperwork exercises for some CFIs. The House has passed a bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that states in plain language that an instructor conducting training “shall not be deemed to […]

They’ve been threatened with huge fines, banished from flying on individual airlines and even warned about criminal prosecution but the post-pandemic epidemic of bad behavior by passengers on airliners was evident on a trip to Charlotte last week. Near the end of the ordeal, one of the flight attendants took the only measure they hadn’t […]

The FBI has joined the hunt for the operator of some kind of high-performance drone that flew “dangerously close” to a Customs and Border Protection helicopter over southern Arizona last Feb. 9. According to report from KOLD News, the Tucson CBS affiliate, the drone buzzed the CBP helicopter near Davis Monthan Air Force Base and […]

Utah has made a minimum of $100,000 in liability insurance mandatory for owners of general aviation aircraft after some crashes involving uninsured planes. The bill was passed as an amendment to existing legislation and requires minimum coverage of up to $50,000 for bodily injury per accident, up to $50,000 for property damage and no more […]

FAA Administrator Steve Dickson announced he’s extending the so-called “zero tolerance” policy for noncompliant passengers because the message clearly hasn’t been heard by some people. “The number of cases we’re seeing is still far too high, and it tells us urgent action continues to be required,” Dickson said in a statement. “The policy directs our […]

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has dissected the FAA’s freshly enunciated guidance on cost sharing by passengers in private aircraft and reported to Congress that there are a variety of opinions on that policy. The report, submitted last week, doesn’t reach any conclusions or make any recommendations. In fact, the title of the report (Stakeholders […]

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has gone to war with the FAA after the agency denied the company permission to launch its SN9 prototype deep space rocket as scheduled on Jan. 28. The agency issued a last-minute notice about five hours before the scheduled launch and said it was rescheduled until the following day. The delay […]

A Labor Department tribunal has awarded a Delta pilot $500,000 in a whistleblower case after determining the airline “weaponized” a bogus psychological assessment that grounded her for two years. Speaking for the panel, Administrative Law Judge Scott Morris further determined that the trip to the psychiatrist was retaliation for Karlene Pettit’s drafting a 43-page report […]