FAA and Regs

A woman who belted a Delta flight attendant in defense of her anti-mask, anti-seatbelt male traveling companion is finding out just how tough the FAA’s new passenger behavior crackdown can be. The FAA announced on Friday it’s proposing a $27,500 civil penalty against the woman, who went after the FA on a plane that should […]

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 […]

Reuters is reporting that Boeing will spend hundreds of millions of dollars or more to inspect and repair Boeing 787s that are suspected to have manufacturing flaws in the fuselage skins. Boeing stopped delivering Dreamliners in October and didn’t fix the manufacturing process until February, according to the unnamed sources used for the report. It’s […]

After a two-week investigation, the FAA has apparently decided that all is well with the SpaceX Starship interplanetary rocket test program even though its last two rockets blew to smithereens while attempting to land at the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, test facility. “The SN9 vehicle failed within the bounds of the FAA safety analysis,” the […]

The FAA will issue an emergency AD for requiring stepped up inspections of the fan blades on Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines following the uncontained failure of an engine on a United Airlines Boeing 777 near Denver on Saturday. FAA Administrator Steve Dickson issued a statement saying the engines have a unique hollow fan blade […]

Piper Cherokee owners who proactively checked the potentially problematic spars on their aircraft may not be in compliance with the AD that was finally approved last month. The FAA has asked aviation groups to spread the word that owners of affected PA-28s and PA-32s who had their spars checked before the AD became final on […]

The FAA has announced it will investigate last week’s spectacular crash landing of SpaceX’s SN9 Starship prototype in Texas. The silo-like rocket performed flawlessly through launch to 50,000 feet, where it hovered briefly before doing its “belly flop” maneuver to descend. One of the engines needed to brake the rocket in its final descent didn’t […]

As President Joe Biden enjoys a weekend at home in Wilmington, Delaware, general aviation is continuing to operate, even within the high-security 12-NM ring of the 30-NM TFR that follows him when he travels. AOPA is reporting that the TFR in place until Monday is a big improvement over the draft version rolled out in […]

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 […]

The Aviation Safety Reporting System has been inundated with hundreds of reports from pilots, flight attendants and support personnel on flight safety issues directly related to COVID-19. NASA runs the program as a consequence-free method for aviation personnel to describe safety miscues that didn’t result in incidents. Acting on a request, NASA culled out all […]