An interesting difference of opinion has emerged among U.S. Federal District Court Judges over whether government agencies have the last word on how they enforce their regulations. A Texas Federal Judge ruled on April 7th, that U.S. Food and Drug Administration improperly certified the abortion pill, Mifepristone and failed to heed the concerns of physicians and associations opposed to it. This post is not about abortion. It points out the curious relationship of that decision with a contrary one by Kansas Federal Judge Monti Belot in a Boeing manufacturing case. In 2014, Belot ruled that the Federal Aviation Administration was the final authority when it… Read More…

The first American airplane factory, a 1910 structure built for Orville and Wilbur Wright, caught fire early this morning in Dayton, Ohio throwing into doubt, long-sought plans to turn the buildings into a historical park under the management of the National Park Service. Firefighters battled the fire for 14 hours but aerial footage from WHIO television shows that the two adjoining brick buildings built by the Wrights along with three others built later, have been badly damaged. Sections of the roof over the Wright factory area appear to have collapsed. In November 1909, Orville Wright announced his Dayton plans to reporters telling them, “We propose… Read More…

October 24, 2022 – This post has been updated to include statements from Delta A Federal Judge in Texas stated the obvious late Friday when he ruled that the families of people killed on Boeing 737 Max aircraft were victims of crimes Boeing has acknowledged committing during the design of the airplane. In 2018 and 2019, 346 people died in two separate crashes; one in Indonesia and the other in Ethiopia which largely were the result of Boeing’s intentional actions. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, however, has taken the position that the government, not the families of the dead, was Boeing’s victim. This is more… Read More…

In the next 30 days, Delta Air Lines must notify 13-thousand pilots of its misbehavior,  in the case of the whistleblower pilot it punished for reporting safety violations. A psychiatrist hired by Delta declared first officer Karlene Petitt, bipolar in a diagnosis that left her grounded until it was disputed by a number of other psychiatrists. Without further delay, the details of the case should be emailed and posted at flight stations for 60 days, under the ruling by Administrative Law Judge Scott Morris. Several years earlier Judge Morris had warned Delta to settle with Petitt. You must decide if “you want all this laundry… Read More…

This post has been modified to reflect a wise reader’s observation that the age of plane is less relevant than the age and most recent maintenance of the PW4000 engines, which this person believes must be considerably younger. I do not have this information as Pratt & Whitney and United declined to answer questions. Passengers boarding United’s Sunday flight from Newark to Zurich had to be pleasantly surprised to discover the cabin was only half full.  That is unusual as airlines struggle to keep up with post-pandemic passenger demand. But the good news stopped before the Boeing 767-300 had even crossed the Atlantic, as the… Read More…

The request for an email interview arrived in my inbox from Namibia shortly after Christmas. The journalist wanted my thoughts about, what else, the Boeing 737 Max. The October 2018 and March 2019 crashes of two of Boeing’s newest jetliners and the subsequent grounding of the fleet for an unprecedented 9 months (and counting) is the aviation story of the decade. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, the ripples continue to radiate outward, making the Max debacle a story of global significance. Norway, Indonesia, Argentina, China, Mauritania, Iceland, Morocco, airlines in these and other nations have been impacted by decisions made at Boeing and… Read More…

With a stiff wind blowing from the east, Ingrid Lang of Kreizlingen, Switzerland steadied herself against the gate, her cell phone tightly clasped in her hand. She and her husband had pedaled their bikes from a campsite a few miles across the Spanish border just to be at the barricade on the south side of Gibraltar International Airport in time to see British Airways flight 493 depart for London. An aviation geek from childhood, Ingrid may have been the most enthusiastic bystander but she was far from the only one. Pedestrians, cyclists and drivers were also watching, having been brought to a temporary halt by… Read More…

Twenty-one-year-old airline pilot Tristan Mazzu thought she’d found her dream job when she was hired as a first officer at SkyWest Airlines in 2017. But the glamour of flying was elevated when she was selected by Olay to appear in an ad campaign celebrating women who take on challenges. Her inadvertent entry into the world of modeling, has turned Mazzu into a role model for girls. In the minute-long ad, Mazzu reflects on the instructor who questioned her potential, stereotypes that reinforce discrimination, voices of doubt in her own head and the raised eyebrows of others when they see her in her pilot’s uniform. She… Read More…

Breitling, the Swiss watch company that has taken heat for using scantily-clad women in advertisements and store displays, announced over the weekend that the practice will end. The company’s new chief executive, Georges Kern, told the German newspaper SonntagsZeitung that those themes are “no longer suitable and do not reflect values of today’s society.” Kern, whose college degree was in political science, knows the direction the wind is blowing. It was just one year ago at a Breitling store party in Manhattan that the company arranged for models to be in attendance, posing as pilots in caps, epaulets and stiletto heels but notably missing their pants. The year before, astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly and… Read More…

Masnoor in his studio in April 2014 One night in Spain, I took a walk down to the edge of the Mediterranean where a brilliant white moon seemed to turn the water into a sea of graphite. I had no camera and so I challenged myself to recreate the scene with words. In his 2012 trip across the Atlantic in a Pilatus PC 12, Malaysian painter Masnoor Ramli Mahmud was asked to do the opposite, tell the story of trans-oceanic flight in pictures.  The result is the one-man show, PATHFINDER#PC12, which will open in Kuala Lumpur on November 27th. Riza Johari while at ABC News… Read More…