Federal safety officials are warning people who work on airplanes to avoid damaging the kind of sensors that misfired before crashes involving two Boeing 737 Max jets. A FAA bulletin stresses the need to avoid damaging "angle of attack" or AOA sensors, which measure a plane's position relative to oncoming air. The FAA said in the Aug 14 bulletin that it's imperative that airlines and other plane operators know how critical the sensors are and the potential for damaging them during normal operations and maintenance. Faulty information from the sensors led an automated anti-stall system to repeatedly push down the noses of Max jets that crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia. <br/>
general
Delegations from the US and Japan signed an agreement Aug 21 that will add 2 dozen new daytime services between US destinations and Tokyo Haneda. The amended US-Japan Open Skies Agreement allocates 12 new slot pairs for US carriers and 12 for Japanese carriers. The deal’s signing comes after the US DoT Aug 9 awarded the available slots to 4carriers: American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Hawaiian Airlines and United Airlines. DoT said it expects the new services to begin “on or around March 29, 2020, with the beginning of the IATA Summer 2020 traffic season, and in time for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, so passengers will benefit from Haneda’s convenient access to downtown Tokyo.” <br/>