Police say a worker at Atlanta's airport died in an accident on the tarmac earlier this week. News outlets reported Friday that a bag-loading vehicle pinned the unidentified employee against an airplane Wednesday afternoon at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The victim later died at a hospital. Atlanta police said that no charges were expected at this point. Authorities did not release the victim's name. The victim was an employee with G2 Secure Staff LLC, which does contract work for United Airlines. In a statement, G2 said it was "devastated" by the incident. United Airlines offered condolences to the victim's family and says it is reviewing details of the incident.<br/>
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A fire alarm in New Zealand’s radar centre effectively shut down the country’s airspace, halting planes from taking off for a short time on Monday afternoon. Planes were stranded on the tarmac and landings were being “managed” by Airways NZ after the country’s navigation service provider confirmed “a fault with our main air traffic system”. "This means taking a conservative approach to managing New Zealand’s airspace. Therefore departures throughout New Zealand have been halted and arrivals are being managed,” a statement read. Radio New Zealand reported that passengers at airports in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch reported delays. AirWays NZ said an alarm went off at the building that houses the radar centre in Christchurch at about 1.30pm. “The fire brigade has now cleared the building as safe and the radar centre continues to operate,” a statement said. Normal service resumed at 2.27pm.<br/>
Boeing engineers working on the 737 MAX passenger plane’s flight-control system omitted safeguards included in an earlier version of the system used on a military tanker jet, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter. The engineers who created the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) flight-control system more than a decade ago for the military refueling plane designed the system to rely on inputs from multiple sensors and with limited power to move aircraft's nose, the Journal said. The newspaper cited one person familiar with the design saying this approach was taken in order to guard against the system acting erroneously or causing a pilot to lose control. In contrast, the version of MCAS on the 737 MAX passenger plane relied on input from just one of two sensors which measure the angle at which the plane’s nose is flying, the newspaper said. Boeing’s expected software fix for its 737 MAX planes will make its MCAS more like the one used on the tanker jet, the Journal said.<br/>
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg will testify before House lawmakers next month in what will be his first public hearing since two fatal crashes of the company’s popular 737 Max jets. Boeing and the FAA are facing several investigations and intense scrutiny over the development and approval of the 737 Max two years ago. The planes have been grounded since mid-March after two crashes within five months of one another that claimed 346 lives. The National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday criticised Boeing for assuming that pilots could handle a flurry of alerts when faced with an emergency, like during the two crashes. The NTSB issued a series of recommendations, including requiring Boeing to factor in the effect of multiple alerts on pilots’ ability to handle misfires on the aircraft. The hearing before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, which has held several other hearings on the troubled plane, is scheduled for Oct. 30. John Hamilton, Boeing’s chief engineer for its commercial airplanes business, and Jennifer Henderson, chief 737 pilot, will also appear before the committee. <br/>
The US FAA process for certifying new airplanes is not broken but needs to be improved, the chair of an international panel of air-safety regulators, tasked to review Boeing’s 737 Max, said Friday. Christopher Hart, chair of the multi-agency panel, said there was no need to question the agency’s overall way of certifying airplanes. “The US aviation system each day transports millions of people safely, so it’s not like we have to completely overhaul the entire system, it’s not broken. But these incidents have shown us that there are ways to improve the existing system,” Hart said. Some in Congress and in aviation have criticised the FAA’s longstanding practice of delegating certification tasks to manufacturers. Michael Perrone, who heads the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said at a House hearing in July that external entities designated by the FAA “are now performing more than 90 percent of FAA’s certification activities despite serious concerns that oversight is lacking.” Hart, former chairman of the NTSB and a licensed pilot, heads the Joint Authorities Technical Review, a panel including air-safety regulators from the United States, Canada, China, Indonesia, European Union and Brazil. Reuters reported on Sept. 17 the review’s recommendations will include citing regulations that need to be harmonized internationally and where communications can be improved at the FAA and among international regulators, citing a person briefed on the matter. Hart on Friday said the panel would release its recommendations to the FAA “shortly,” but declined to provide more details on the timeline. <br/>
Australia has given clearance for Singapore Airlines’ SilkAir to store its six Boeing 737 Max aircraft in the country, as the global grounding of the jet continues following two deadly crashes within the past 12 months. SilkAir has provided flight plans and the first aircraft is expected to arrive in Alice Springs, central Australia, on Monday, according to Peter Gibson, a spokesman at the Australian government’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority. The aircraft will be flown by experienced Boeing pilots using a “flight profile which ensures there can be no activation of MCAS,” Gibson said in an email, referring to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System feature linked to the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people. The pilots have also received training in recovery actions in case an MCAS-related event occurs, Gibson said. CASA has worked closely with aviation regulators in Singapore and Indonesia to review and coordinate the ferry flights, he said. It is still unclear when the Max 737 will resume scheduled flights as investigations by various authorities around the world are ongoing. CASA said it is following flight profiles for ferrying the aircraft in the US, Canada and Europe. In one California facility, the cost of storage runs to about $2,000 a month for a plane, according to an industry veteran.<br/>
A typhoon will hit northern Taiwan later on Monday, meteorologists said, shutting financial markets and schools as airlines canceled dozens of flights amid warnings of floods and high winds on the island. Typhoon Mitag, categorized by Taiwan’s weather bureau as the second-strongest typhoon level, was expected to approach the coast of the northeastern county of Yilan with maximum winds of 162 kmh. The bureau issued wind and rain warnings for greater Taipei, the northern port city of Keelung, and other northern counties. It also put out a warning to seafarers around Taiwan. Dozens of flights and ferry services were canceled, while several highways across the island were shut amid fears of landslides and floods. The typhoon was expected to approach China’s eastern city of Shanghai on Tuesday, forecasts showed.<br/>
Transatlantic trade ties face renewed disruption this week when global arbiters are expected to grant the US a record award allowing it to hit European imports with billions of dollars of tariffs in a long-running aircraft subsidy dispute. The WTO has found that both European planemaker Airbus and its US rival Boeing received billions of dollars of illegal subsidies in a pair of cases that have run for 15 years. Both sides have threatened tariffs after the Geneva body found neither adhered fully to its findings. However, the United States has a head start, with the European Union having to wait until early in 2020 to hear what level of retaliation it can exact over Boeing. The WTO is expected this week to reveal the amount of EU goods the United States can target. People familiar with the case say the three-person tribunal is expected to award it around $7.5b, a record for the 24-year-old watchdog. Such retaliation rights are rarely granted by the WTO - most parties reach settlements - and in many cases complainants do not exercise their rights. The US though has indicated it will target EU goods to the fullest extent. The WTO award in the world’s largest corporate trade dispute could fuel already strained trade tensions, diplomats say. Airbus has said this would lead to a ‘lose-lose’ trade war. Some US airlines have urged the administration not to go ahead with the tariffs, saying they could lead to layoffs.<br/>
As Beijing's new, multibillion-dollar airport opened with great fanfare last Wednesday, a piece of China's history quietly closed its doors on the other side of the city. The country's very first airport, Nanyuan Airport, shut its doors for good on September 25, the same date that Beijing's new $11.5b Daxing Airport was opened by President Xi Jinping. The last flight, China United Airlines KN5830, left at just after 10 p.m., state media said. By Saturday, its doors were firmly shut and the car park mostly deserted. The few remaining dusty cars had a polite notice taped to their side window. "Hello! This airport has officially moved to Daxing International Airport on September 25 ... I want to thank you again for putting your trust in Nanyuan Airport," said the notice. Nanyuan first opened in 1910, 109 years ago, when China was still ruled by the Qing Dynasty. It has seen two world wars, China's civil war and finally the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. According to state-run China Daily, Nanyuan will become an aviation museum, while its practical functions will all be transferred to Daxing Airport. Even days after its closure, Beijing citizens were still flocking to the old terminal to pay their tributes to a slice of the city's history.<br/>