Planemaking boss Guillaume Faury was named as the next CE of Airbus Monday, ending months of uncertainty over the leadership of the aerospace group and underlining the dominance of its commercial jet arm. The 50-year-old Frenchman will replace German-born Tom Enders when he retires at the next shareholder meeting in April 2019. The announcement came after the board brought forward discussions on the handover amid a growing leadership vacuum in the wake of a series of management departures, internal and external graft probes and the pre-announced exit of Enders. It did so as the board grappled with the need to avoid appearing indecisive following months of uncertainty over the top job and a string of mid-level and senior departures. <br/>
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Airbus A380 operators are being instructed to introduce an additional fuel-quantity check after a discrepancy observed during pre-departure preparations. The fuel quantity indicated by on-board instruments had differed from the expected figure, calculated by combining the initial fuel with the uplifted fuel. Investigations found that an incorrect signal from a refuel isolation valve was behind the discrepancy, says EASA. It states that this situation might have resulted from contamination of the isolation valve position sensor, because the valve had been indicated as closed during refuelling when it was actually open. EASA warns that undetected fuel-measurement errors could result in a loss of fuel supply to the aircraft’s engines. Airbus has temporarily revised the aircraft’s flight manual to include an additional tolerance check. <br/>
President Trump signed a bill that will likely set minimum seat sizes for aircraft, after a 3-year journey by bipartisan lawmakers worried about timely evacuations with shrinking seats. Airplanes are required by law to be able to do a full evacuation in 90 seconds or less. But with the average seat size decreasing as airlines — both low-cost airlines and regular — look to make more money, many have doubted that timely evacuations are realistic. But while the law exists, real testing using live people representing travellers has not been done in the modern era of aviation. “We had a real live situation in Chicago and it took over 2 minutes for a plane to evacuate,” representative Steve Cohen, who authored the legislation that was included in the FAA Reauthorisation bill, said. <br/>