The US FAA Tuesday evening issued an order prohibiting US air operators from flying below 26,000 feet in Venezuela’s airspace until further notice, citing “increasing political instability and tensions”. The FAA notice said any air operators currently in Venezuela, which would include private jets, should depart within 48 hours. Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Tuesday made his strongest call yet to the military to help him oust President Nicolas Maduro but there were no concrete signs of defection from the armed forces leadership. American Airlines Group in March said it was indefinitely suspending its flights to Venezuela, as the country continued to struggle with political turmoil and unrest. OPSGROUP, which provides safety guidance to air operators, said options for those choosing to avoid Venezuelan airspace would include routes west via Colombia, or east via Guyana. “The (FAA) order comes on a day of an information battle waged between Maduro and Guaido, and although the coup status is uncertain, one thing is clear: taking your aircraft to Venezuela is not a good idea,” OPSGROUP said on its website.<br/>
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The device linked to the Boeing 737 Max software that has been scrutinized after two deadly crashes was previously flagged in more than 200 incident reports submitted to the FAA, but Boeing did not flight test a scenario in which it malfunctioned, CNN has learned. The angle-of-attack (AOA) sensor, as it's known, sends data to a 737 Max software system that pushes the nose of the aircraft down if it senses an imminent stall. That software, triggered by erroneous data from AOA sensors, is believed to have played a role in crashes of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines jets. Former Boeing engineers and aviation analysts interviewed by CNN have criticized Boeing's original software design for relying on data from a single AOA sensor, claiming that those devices are vulnerable to defects. FAA data analyzed by CNN supports that assessment. The FAA has received at least 216 reports of AOA sensors failing or having to be repaired, replaced or adjusted since 2004, according to data from the FAA's Service Difficulty Reporting website. Those reports, about one-fifth of which involve Boeing planes, include incidents in which AOA sensors were frozen, improperly installed, struck by lightning or even hit by flying birds. In some cases, faulty sensors led to stall warnings, forcing pilots to abort takeoffs or perform emergency landings.<br/>
Boeing said an alert for angle-of-attack (AOA) sensors on its 737 MAX jets was “not activated as intended” for some customers, responding to reports it failed to tell Southwest and the US regulator that the optional feature was deactivated before a crash in Indonesia in October. Erroneous AOA sensor readings that led to aggressive nose-down inputs by a computer have been linked to deadly 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, according to preliminary reports from investigators. Boeing offered customers two optional paid features relating to AOA. The first was an AOA DISAGREE alert when the two sensors disagreed and the second was an indicator giving pilots a gauge of the actual angle. Southwest, the largest 737 MAX customer, in November told Reuters the alert was installed and it planned to add the indicator as well following the Lion Air crash in Indonesia. The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported that unbeknown to Southwest and the US FAA, the alerts were not activated on the carrier’s 737 MAX jets. “After the Lion Air event, Southwest was notified by Boeing that the AOA disagree lights were inoperable without the optional AOA indicators on the MAX aircraft,” a Southwest spokesman said Tuesday. Boeing said on Monday that the disagree alert had been intended to be a standalone feature on the 737 MAX, but it was “not operable on all airplanes because the feature was not activated as intended”.<br/>