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Threats In The Air An American Airlines pilot departing from Los Angeles International Airport told air traffic controllers that a missile had been fired at his aircraft and missed, a local ABC News affiliate reported last week. The pilot said he saw a smoke trail pass by the cockpit as the airplane climbed out over […]

Judge Beatty has made a few remarks that raised eyebrows, even before the trial started, and the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents Delta’s pilots, tried to get her to recuse herself from the case. She reportedly said it was “really weird” that anyone had agreed to pay such “hideously high” pilot salaries in the […]

Bankruptcy Plea Aims To Save Carrier Delta Air Lines is in deep financial trouble, everyone agrees – the company has already lost over $2.6 billion this year — but whether that trouble is due to market forces beyond the airline’s control or bad decisions by management is now being worked out in federal bankruptcy court […]

FAA spokesman Greg Martin told AVweb yesterday that while “progress is a subjective term,” there has been virtually no movement on the substantive issues of the contract, in particular salaries and work rules. He said it is the FAA’s goal to reach a voluntary agreement, which would be in everyone’s best interest. But by calling […]

NATCA spokesman Doug Church told AVweb on Tuesday that the FAA action amounts to “a grandiose publicity stunt.” Four and a half months is not much time to spend on a such a big, complex contract, he said – the last contract took over a year to negotiate — and NATCA had already scheduled talks […]

Agency Requests Intervention From Mediator On Monday, FAA Administrator Marion Blakey said contract talks have stalled with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), and called for federal mediation to help the two sides reach an agreement. NATCA’s current proposal “does not recognize the hard realities of an industry that is in financial trouble, real […]

And while no one has so much as broken a nail because of the nose gear issue, hundreds have been killed because of exploding fuel tanks and, according to the FAA’s proposed AD, more such calamities are “virtually certain to occur.” The agency has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that will not require […]

Inspections, Parts Replacements Ordered Two months after the made-for-television landing of a JetBlue A320 with the nose gear cocked 90 degrees to the runway centerline (most prior incidents didn’t make TV news), the FAA has issued an Airworthiness Directive (AD) that requires inspection of the nose gear on about 200 U.S.-registered planes and will likely […]

While the focus appears to be on maintenance outsourcing, FAA officials privately admit that their greatest fear of an accident has nothing to do with a mechanical failure. Sources have told AVweb in the past that they consider the greatest risk for another airliner disaster to be on the ground and not in the air. […]

In her letter, Blakey said the FAA has moved away from a “checklist” approach to safety programs to a risk-based system in which inspectors can spot safety trends and then direct carriers to adjust their in-house safety programs to solve problems before they result in a crash. Blakey also appears to dispute Mead’s suggestion that […]