Tag Archives for FAA.
In an aircraft fire, passengers have just 90 seconds to escape—and grabbing a carry-on or stopping for a selfie could be what dooms everyone behind them. The FAA wants safety videos updated to address passenger bags but that’s unlikely to help.
Pilots are forced into mandatory retirement at age 65 in the United States, regardless of their health or ability. This is appalling, and it’s time to change this rule.
The FAA’s move, announced without fanfare when it was granted earlier in May, allows Boeing to return to performing critical certification tasks on behalf of the agency. The ODA program delegates regulatory responsibilities to manufacturers, streamlining oversight while preserving accountability through FAA supervision. Boeing engineers, known as authorized representatives, can approve design and production changes under FAA authority.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – who has supported an unqualified nominee to run the FAA and blocked air traffic control staffing fixes – is taking on the Trump administration’s nominee to run the FAA. Bryan Bedford, the CEO of Republic Airways, has a long and distinguished career in aviation management – but he sought to have the FAA declared structured pilot training equivalent to mindless hours and this is anathema to the big pilot union.
The union, ALPA, wants “assurances that [Bedford] will maintain the current requirements” and is expressing “concerns” about his nomination. They’re trying to position themselves within a Trumpian MAGA framework, explaining their separate efforts to fight greater automation in cockpits by “foreign airlines and manufacturers” is at odds with an “America First” agenda.
Boeing has had production issues, and deliveries of their Boeing 787-9s to American have been delayed. But American couldn’t have flown these planes even if Boeing could have delivered them. That’s because the business class suites hadn’t been signed off on by the FAA, on something of a technicality. Again.
The FAA has renamed the Gulf of Mexico the ‘Gulf of America.’ The agency’s data and charts will show this name change, along with a change fom Denali to Mount McKinley.
When last week’s air disaster happened in D.C., the spotlight was thrown quickly on air traffic control – even without having any inkling that controller error contribution to the collision. That’s because there’s been a lot of attention paid recently to diversity efforts at the FAA, and because the President has railed against those sorts of efforts.
There’s a lot of misinformation about what happened. Here’s the basic truth, and how much it matters today.
After last night’s horrific collision of an American Eagle jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, there’s been a rush to pushing pet agendas. We don’t have a sufficient understanding of the causes of the incident yet to jump on a pet horse. Be very skeptical of anyone pushing solutions of laying blame at this stages.
Airports in the U.S. are largely government-owned, which isn’t how this works in much of the world. They rely heavily on federal funding, especially grants that come heavily-laden with conditions. That includes what’s come to be known as DEI but that’s actually explicit racial (and gender) quotas in contracting.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
