Tag Archives for FAA.
President Biden’s nominee to head the FAA, Phil Washington, had a warrant served this morning in the criminal case involving his previous role at Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority.
A consumer group, Flyers Rights, is seeking to have the courts compel the FAA to impose minimum seat size standards. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard this argument today.
The only effect it could have is to outlaw the Frontier Airlines-Spirit Airlines business model and reduce price competition against American, United, Delta and Southwest.
Newly certified aircraft have to have upgraded alert systems for pilots. Issues with the Boeing 737 MAX MAX that led to the Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes are, in part, addressed by mandatory new alerts for pilots that will apply to all newly-certified aircraft types. But unless the FAA agrees to exempt the Boeing 737 MAX 10 from this requirement, which they can only do by the end of 2022, Boeing’s CEO says they’ll walk away from the plane project and all of the orders it represents.
The U.S. takes longer to build projects, and spends more to build similar projects, than other countries. A new example from the FAA is a great illustration of why. Here’s what the FAA has required from SpaceX to move forward with its Starship rocket program – and the government is actually bragging about it in a press release.
It’s all either a trumped up non-issue, or an aviation apocalypse, depending on whom you ask. The worry is that C-band 5G at the power and frequency that will be used in the U.S. could send confusing signals to radio altimeters in aircraft, leading to confusion over the altitude at which the plane is flying, and problems for other systems in some aircraft like Boeing 777s as well. What’s going on here?
At an internal company meeting, American Airlines CEO described airlines’ ‘hair on fire’ resulting from the FAA’s plan to impose flight restrictions as a result of the FCC allowing 5G C-band rollout.
Southwest Airlines blamed air traffic control and weather for cancelling a quarter of its flights over the weekend, while pilots were rumored to be calling in sick in heavy numbers to protest vaccine mandates. The cause of the cancellations was clearly only affecting weather and air traffic control surrounding Southwest planes because other airlines had no such problems, even at the same hubs.
The FAA, usually a staid agency, took to twitter to defend itself.
The federal government has seen unprecedented levels of passenger incidents on planes this year. About three quarters have related to the federal mask mandate. Yet no one seems to know what to do about it.
The FAA hasn’t solved the issue, so they’re punting to the airlines.
U.S. airlines may need to start weighing passengers in order to comply with FAA rules. For safety reasons, carriers need to calculate an aircraft’s weight and balance, and it has to be within allowable limits for the plane. However the assumptions they’ve been using for passengers are outdated. Americans are getting fatter, and the federal government wants airlines to find out how much fatter their passengers have gotten, at least for smaller aircraft.
After the January 6th riots at the U.S. Capitol, the FAA instituted a zero tolerance policy for inflight disturbances including failure to follow airline masking rules. These were temporary rules set to expire March 30, 2021. They have now been extended indefinitely, at least until the end of the mask mandate.
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 »
