Accidents/NTSB

The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation (MCAS) system at the center of investigations into two fatal crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 was misunderstood and mischaracterized in a flawed certification process as Boeing and the FAA rushed to bring the new jet to market, a Seattle Times investigation published Sunday alleges. Citing named and unnamed sources, […]

Flight 1549 Capt. Chesley Sullenberger has weighed in on the MAX 8 discussion but from a crew training and experience perspective. The pilot who deadsticked an A320 into the Hudson River after a dual engine failure 10 years ago with the help of First Officer Jeff Skiles said in a Facebook post on Saturday that […]

Boeing 737 MAX Grounding I strongly suspect that many (if not a majority) of airlines do not include enough aircraft handling simulator training on their conversion courses, especially on difference courses. For example, converting from the B737-800 to the 737 MAX should include simulator training specifically aimed at how to deal with a malfunctioning MCAS, […]

Investigators probing the wreck of Ethiopian Airlines Fight 302 have reportedly recovered the airplane’s trim jackscrew and found it set to a nose-down position. This is similar to the jackscrew position found in the Lion Air crash last October and may be the additional evidence that convinced the FAA to ground the Boeing 737 MAX […]

The FAA has uncovered new information from the wreckage of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 “concerning the aircraft’s configuration just after takeoff that, taken together with newly refined data from satellite-based tracking of the aircraft’s flight path, indicates some similarities between the ET302 and [Lion Air] JT610 accidents,” according to the emergency order issued by the […]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that the fatal crash of a Learjet 35A near New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport (TEB) on May 15, 2017, was caused by the pilot’s “attempt to salvage an unstabilized visual approach.” According to the NTSB, the aircraft stalled while conducting a circle-to-land maneuver and crashed into a commercial […]

From the moment the Commerce Department got its governmental mitts on pilot licensing in 1926, politics and aviation have been inextricably entwined. But rarely is that on such naked display as it was Wednesday when the FAA announced that it was joining much of the rest of the world in grounding Boeing’s 737 MAX after […]

President Donald Trump has announced the issuance of an emergency order grounding all flights of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in the U.S. as of Wednesday afternoon as a result of the crashes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on Sunday and Lion Air Flight 610 last October. The president said he has spoken with Secretary of […]

Amid a rising chorus of calls for the FAA to ground the Boeing 737 MAX 8 after this weekend’s crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, Boeing announced that software updates are being readied ahead of an expected Airworthiness Directive “no later than April.” Meanwhile, two U.S. Senators have demanded the FAA ground the airplane. The […]

I suspect if you walked around the back of 800 Independence Ave. in Washington, you’d find a tanker truck of Maalox with two-inch lines running into the C-suites upstairs. The political pressure on the top echelon must be like nothing else we’ve seen in quite a while. While the rest of the world rushes to […]