A Nigerian man serving life sentences for trying to set off a bomb in his underwear on a plane on Christmas Day 2009 is suing the US Justice Department for denying his free speech and religious rights. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab received multiple life sentences after the attempted attack on the Amsterdam to Detroit flight, which he called part of his "religious duty" as a Muslim to wage jihad against the United States. In a lawsuit filed in a Colorado federal court, he said authorities in the federal maximum security prison where he is being held were violating his constitutional rights by not allowing him to communicate with the outside world or practice his religion as a Muslim, court documents showed. Abdulmutallab, 30, was being held in long-term solitary confinement, the lawsuit said. It accused staff at the US Penitentiary-Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado of repeatedly force feeding him during a hunger strike using "excessively and unnecessarily painful" methods. Abdulmutallab also asserted the Justice Department went too far in restricting his communication, including not allowing him to talk to his nieces and nephews since his solitary confinement was based on a special administrative measures imposed on national security grounds. White supremacist inmates were also permitted to harass him during prayer times, according to the lawsuit.<br/>
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The Air Force plan announced Friday to recall 1,000 pilots from retirement could hurt smaller airlines in the competition to hire trained crews to fly their planes. "We anticipate that the Secretary of Defense will delegate the authority to the Secretary of the Air Force to recall up to 1,000 retired pilots for up to 3 years," the Pentagon said. Airlines have warned for years about a looming pilot shortage, with the threat that smaller communities could lose regular airline service. But the debate is contentious because pilot unions contend that if regional airlines offered better pay, more candidates would embark on the costly training to join the industry. "I think that it makes sense from the Air Force perspective to look at retired pilots for the needs of the military," said John Cox, a former airline pilot who is now a consultant as president of Safety Operating Systems. "There is a pilot shortage, so it's going to have some effect," Cox added. "But the major airlines are still filling their classes. It's the regionals that are struggling a little bit, and some of the business aviation slots are proving difficult to fill." Boeing projected in July that airlines will need 637,000 new pilots over the next 20 years, including 117,000 in North America, for the anticipated growth in passengers.<br/>
Typhoon Lan, a powerful storm that drenched most of Japan with rain Sunday, weakened as it passed Tokyo, causing little disruption to commuters Monday morning. The typhoon was located about 75 kilometers (47 miles) northeast of Tokyo as of 7 a.m. local time and expected to move off Japan’s Pacific coast by noon, according to projections by the Japan Meteorological Agency. Toyota Motor Corp. canceled shifts at its auto plants due to the approaching storm while the nation’s biggest carriers ANA and Japan Airlines have pulled hundreds of domestic flights, affecting more than 20,000 passengers. Authorities warned of landslides, flooding and the potential for rivers to burst their banks due to heavy rain. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on local authorities to prepare for evacuations, and for the nation’s Self Defense Forces to be on standby to assist.<br/>
The United Arab Emirates’ aviation regulator, the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), will implement the world’s first airspace structure to be completely based on Performance Based Navigation (PBN) with a navigation specification of RNAV-1. PBN is navigation that uses Global Navigation Satellite Systems and computerized onboard systems. This offers considerable advantages over traditional ATC systems based largely on fixed, ground-based beacons guiding aircraft along airways via waypoints. The GCAA describes the new arrangement as one of the world’s most advanced air traffic management systems; it is scheduled to come into operation Dec. 7. The aim is to improve the efficiency of the UAE Flight Information Region (FIR), which has become increasingly congested because of the growing amounts of traffic flowing through Dubai International and Abu Dhabi International airports. <br/>
Airbus’s coup in buying a $6b Canadian jetliner project for a dollar stunned investors and took the spotlight off a growing ethics row last week, but internal disarray has raised questions over how smoothly it can implement the deal. The planemaker secured the deal for Bombardier’s CSeries program by pledging to throw its marketing might behind the loss-making jets, just as the Airbus sales machine reels from falling sales and internal and external corruption investigations. CE Tom Enders has urged staff to keep calm in the face of French reports describing payments to intermediaries and growing concern over fallout from the investigations. But the mood at the group’s Toulouse offices remains grim. “Bombardier asked for an ambulance and Airbus sent a hearse,” said one person with close ties to the company. French media attention on the growing scandal helped to camouflage talks to buy the CSeries. Rumors circulated in late August that Enders and a colleague were visiting Paris to meet investigators. In fact, they were holding the first of several secret dinner meetings with Bombardier. But the same affair, which first came to light in 2016, has begun to cloud sales momentum. In the first nine months of the year Airbus accounted for only 35% of global jet sales in its head-to-head battle with US rival Boeing. The Airbus sales operation is demoralized and in disarray, multiple aerospace and airline industry sources said, with some blaming Enders for turning the company against itself.<br/>