NewsFaulty Brakes May Be To Blame In Russian Plane Crash
Faulty brakes may be to blame for the Red Wings airliner sliding off the runway and crashing onto a highway near Moscow, killing five people, a member of the crash investigation team said. Investigators said they were examining the black boxes to try to determine the cause of Saturday's crash, which cracked the wings off the Tupolev-204 plane and split the fuselage into three pieces. If they find bad brakes were at fault, it would match a warning issued to the state-owned Tupolev by Russia's aviation authority to fix problems with the brakes that may have caused a Tu-204 with 70 people onboard to go off a Siberian runway on December 21.
LinkAmerican Air Pilots Approve MOU On Merger
Union leaders who represent American Airlines' pilots approved a tentative agreement on Saturday for how the airline could merge with US Airways. The board of the Allied Pilots Association (APA) said it voted 11-5 to approve a memorandum of understanding that, with approval of other parties, "would serve as a framework for an agreement" if the airlines merge.
LinkUS Clears Way For Wider In-Flight InternetThe US Federal Communications Commission has cleared the way for wider adoption of in-flight Internet services, aiming to cut by 50 percent the time needed for regulatory approval. Newly adopted rules should boost competition in this part of the US mobile telecommunications market and promote "the widespread availability of Internet access to aircraft passengers," the FCC said in a statement.
LinkQatar Air Files Claim Over New Airport
Qatar Airways said it was filing a USD$600 million legal claim against a contractor for a delay in opening a new airport in Doha. Lindner Depa Interiors, a German-Dubai joint venture, holds a USD$250 million contract to build 19 airport lounges by the middle of 2012, Qatar Airways said in a statement on Saturday. In a statement later in the day, LDI said it had not received a legal claim from Qatar Airways and described the carrier's allegations as "false and misleading".
LinkNew Saudi Airline Licenses May Take 6 MonthsForeign airlines may need about three to six months to obtain operating licenses letting them enter Saudi Arabia's domestic aviation market, a spokesman for the General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA) said. GACA announced on Friday that Qatar Airways and Bahrain's national carrier Gulf Air had become the first foreign airlines to obtain carrier licenses under which they would be able to operate local and international flights in the kingdom.
Link2012 safest year ever for IATA airlines IATA member airlines had their safest year in history in 2012, with no hull-loss accidents on Western-built jets. It was the third consecutive year that the airline industry has scored a record safety performance. Briefing journalists earlier in December, when it had safety statistics for the year up to Nov. 30, IATA senior VP safety, operations & infrastructure Gűnther Matschnigg said it was “remarkable” achievement, with one accident per 5.3 million flights across the entire industry. “As of the end of November, if you were to take a flight every day, odds are, you would fly 14,000 years without being in an accident,” he said.
LinkTSA testing faster passenger screening programTo ease delays at airport security checkpoints, the Transportation Security Administration has launched a pilot program that lets average travelers speed to their planes without having to remove shoes, belts and coats or take laptops and liquids out of carry-on bags. But there are a couple of drawbacks: You first have to get the OK from an explosive-sniffing dog and a TSA agent who is specially trained to detect suspicious behavior.
LinkU.S. to Study Staffing at Air-Traffic Control FacilitiesThe U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general will study how the Federal Aviation Administration is staffing air-traffic facilities, some of which deploy more controllers than required by agency guidelines. The number of U.S. controllers has increased slightly as flight operations have declined 23 percent since 2000, “raising questions about the efficiency of the FAA’s current workforce,” Jeffrey Guzzetti, an assistant inspector general, said in a memorandum distributed by e-mail.
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