Yesterday afternoon the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) held a press briefing to document its preliminary findings and describe its plans as it searches for a root cause of the battery fire aboard the JAL Boeing 787 in Boston and…
Lithium battery fires, while rare, do occur on aircraft. The FAA recorded 138 incidents between March 20, 1991 and October 9, 2012 at this link. Most of these are related to laptop computers and batteries in cargo compartments. The length…
The FAA just announced that it is grounding all Boeing 787s in the US, and urging international regulators to do the same after two recent incidents with Lithium-ion batteries. The last time the FAA grounded a fleet of aircraft was…
The airline scorecard is out again with the annual report from DOT on airline performance metrics – on-time flights, baggage handling, passenger bumping and customer complaints. On all of the metrics, the US airlines did slightly better in 2011 than…
The FAA has proposed new rules to enable Part 135 charter pilots to update navigational databases on aircraft without the need for a licensed mechanic to sign off on that procedure. While pilots of owner-flown aircraft under part 91 can…
Boeing just sent out the following PR: “Boeing completed all flight tests required for type certification of the 787-8 Dreamliner with Rolls-Royce engines this weekend….The final flight occurred Saturday onboard ZA102, the ninth 787 to be built.” With this news…