FAA and Regs

The FAA has cancelled all employee furloughs, and the National Airspace System should be back to normal operation. The action on Saturday followed legislation rushed through Congress to allow the agency the flexibility to use judgment over where the $637 million in sequester cuts it must make will come from. Congress acted under mounting pressure […]

Ethiopian Airlines became the first to launch a revenue flight with the Boeing 787 since early January with a flight from Kampala to Nairobi, Kenya. “We would like to thank Ethiopian Airlines for the patience, support and leadership shown throughout the period that the 787 Dreamliner has been grounded,” Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Ray Conner […]

Congress Friday approved legislation that could put an end to furloughs of air traffic controllers and other FAA personnel that have correlated with a spike in commercial flight delays, but the bill may do even more. The legislation would allow the FAA to transfer up to $253 million from other programs to fully staff controller […]

Amid speculation as to whether a spike in airline delays concurrent with recent FAA furloughs have been created as a tool for political leverage or are an inevitable result of sequester cuts, the White House Wednesday hinted that changes may soon come to FAA spending restrictions. White House press secretary Jay Carney Wednesday told reporters […]

About 300 contract workers, most of whom provide training for air traffic controllers at the FAA’s Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City, have been laid off due to federal budget cuts. The workers are employed by Raytheon and subcontractor ISG, according to local news reports. “This is something that is happening because of the […]

Despite efforts on several fronts to stop or at least postpone the FAA’s furloughs of air traffic controllers, which are mandated by the federal budget sequester, the staffing cuts began on Sunday. By midafternoon on Monday, delays up to three hours had been reported at major airports in New York, Los Angeles, and Baltimore, but […]

The U.S.’s largest pilots union is warning its members that “irregular operations” (IROPS) could become the new normal as the FAA pushes ahead with its plan to furlough employees, including air traffic controllers, for a day every other week. The Airline Pilots Association International (ALPA), which filed suit against the FAA Friday, along with industry […]

Friday, the FAA approved a redesigned battery system for the 787 Dreamliner created by Boeing to protect the aircraft from potential battery fires, meaning the airliners may soon return to service. The 50 jets in service have been grounded since January, when two 787s suffered fires. Boeing must now issue a service bulletin that details […]

It appears the FAA is backtracking on an earlier directive that forbade at least some of its FAA Safety Team (FAAST) representatives from talking about pending tower closures. On Wednesday the FAAST Safety Team issued a general note of advice about operating at non-towered airports (the FAAST Team doesn’t like the term “uncontrolled”) and touched […]

The FAA has expanded the list of medical conditions that can be evaluated by an aviation medical examiner instead of requiring a special issuance and an FAA review, EAA reported last week. Under a new FAA policy, applicants with arthritis, glaucoma, hypertension, pre-diabetes and several other common conditions are eligible for the simplified process. Further […]