Despite the tragic loss of 176 people onboard the Ukrainian International Airlines flight shot down over Tehran on January 8, no one should applaud the promise made in a Tweet from Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, to prosecute those responsible for the attack on a civilian airliner. And let’s not get too excited either about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s call for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. Retribution sounds satisfying in the heat of the moment, but it will not make another attack less likely in the future and that should trouble everyone who flies. Since the news first broke that the Ukrainian International 737 crashed… Read More…

#BREAKING: It is now known that the Flight PS752 of #Ukraine International Airlines exploded mid-air before impacting ground in #Shahriar, near #Tehran, #Iran. Cause of the explosion of this Boeing 737-8KV with UR-PSR register is unknown.This video shows it moments before crash? pic.twitter.com/b1n6TVBccD — Babak Taghvaee (@BabakTaghvaee) January 8, 2020 Iran plans to include the United States, Boeing and the joint American/French CFM Engines in its probe into Wednesday’s crash of a Ukranian International Airlines Boeing 737 that killed 170+ people. In a rapidly filed report (in Persian) with the International Civil Aviation Organization, the Iranian government indicated it would follow the United Nation’s internationally… Read More…

Boeing’s decision to keep from investigators text messages from 2016 in which a 737 Max test pilot, Mark Forkner, worried that there were egregious problems with the airplane’s flight control system prompted the Administrator of the Federal Aviation  Administration two weeks ago to demand answers from Boeing. In a letter to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, Steve Dickson wrote that he expected an immediate explanation. Likely, members of the Senate Commerce Committee will make a similar demand of Muilenburg when he testifies on Tuesday. To be clear, however, this is not the first time that Boeing purposefully withheld information that would have been useful to investigators…. Read More…

Full disclosure, I own and have read nearly every book ever written by William Langewiesche. He is a gifted writer with a stunning intellect and this is just an aside, he’s quite the looker. I have interviewed him twice but with his latest article in The New York Times Magazine, I think my crush is over. In a lengthy piece just published, Langewiesche weaves the known facts of the two 737 Max disasters into a jumble of opinion, pilot-bashing and Western superiority. Ostensibly, he is informing Times readers that not all pilots are Chuck Yeager and to justify the headline of the article, when it… Read More…

With the help of the pilot who is arguably the most popular aviator since Charles Lindbergh, a California Congressman is proposing legislation that strengthens the power of the nation’s air investigators in dealing with the Federal Aviation Administration. But some are worried about inserting politics into aviation safety. At a news conference on Thursday, Cong. Mark DeSaulnier and Capt. Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger the now-retired US Airways pilot of Miracle on the Hudson fame, announced a need to correct flaws in the nation’s safety system. Referring to the uniformed airline pilots who shared the stage, Capt. Sully said of their job, “These gents and their colleagues… Read More…

Substantial allegations against Steve Dickson, the nominee to head up the Federal Aviation Administration have been made by two pilots who worked for him. These suggest the former senior v.p. of Delta flight operations may be the wrong choice to head up a government safety agency with monumental tasks before it. Already the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee has slowed the confirmation process to investigate Dickson more thoroughly. A number of news outlets have reported the charge that Karlene Petitt, a Boeing 777 pilot with two decades of commercial flying experience and a Ph.D. from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, was grounded after reporting safety… Read More…

  The pilots of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 encountered troubles with their brand new Boeing 737 Max shortly after the jet’s wheels left the pavement in Addis Ababa, early in the morning of March 10th. The sensor registering the angle at which the airplane sliced through the sky sent erroneous information into the plane’s system and the stick shaker in front of captain Yared Getachew (seen left in photo above) “activated and remained active until near the end of the flight,” the Ethiopian investigators have determined. Reading through the 25-page preliminary report the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) of Ethiopia released today, a cascade of… Read More…

President Trump did what America’s Federal Aviation Administration would not do and grounded the Boeing 737 Max. This will bring American Airlines 24 Maxs and Southwest’s 34 and 14 United 737 Max 9s to a halt for an indeterminate time. Both the Max 8 and the Max 9 use the same MCAS system that is being examined for its possible role in the fatal crash of Lion Air 610 in October. It may also a  possible contributor in the Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday that killed 157 including Capt. Yared Getachew and first officer Ahmed Nur Mohammod Nur seen here on a photo from his… Read More…

How difficult would it be to find a basketball in an area of the ocean slightly larger than the city of Dallas? That was the job facing the U.S. Coast Guard 7th District Southeast over the weekend. Cutters, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft spent 21 hours unsuccessfully searching for 68-year old Robert Hopkins, a pilot for a Florida air cargo company who ditched in the Atlantic on Friday afternoon, about 13 miles off the coast of Miami. After failing to find Capt. Hopkins by midday on Saturday, the search was called off as Hopkins was presumed dead. The flight’s first officer, 28-year old Rolland Silva was recovered by a Coast… Read More…

The death of Southwest Airlines passenger Jennifer Riordan was as horrific as it was surprising. The 43-year-old executive from Albuquerque was partially sucked out of the window of a Boeing 737 on a flight to Dallas in April when one of the plane’s engines came apart and pieces penetrated the passenger cabin. On Wednesday, at a hearing before the National Transportation Safety Board which is investigating the accident, a representative for the Federal Aviation Administration admitted that the way the engine came apart, damaging the airplane and triggering the decompression that pulled Riordan through a broken window, should not have happened under engine certification requirements…. Read More…