A govt report to be released in coming days says Southwest Airlines failed to prioritise safety and the airline’s regulator, the FAA, hasn’t done enough about it. Southwest pilots flew more than 17m passengers on planes with unconfirmed maintenance records over roughly 2 years, and in 2019 smashed both wingtips of a jet on a runway while repeatedly trying to land amid gale-force winds. The lapses are highlighted in a draft audit by the agency’s inspector general that also criticises the FAA’s oversight of the carrier as lax, ineffective and inconsistent. The document indicates no agency enforcement action resulted from those safety slip-ups or certain other alleged hazards. In some cases, the report alleges, the FAA’s overall approach served to “justify continued noncompliance with safety regulations.” <br/>
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SpiceJet suffered a data breach involving the details of more than a million of its passengers, a security researcher says. The security researcher, who described their actions as “ethical hacking”, gained access to one of SpiceJet’s systems by brute-forcing the system’s easily guessable password. An unencrypted database backup file on that system contained private information of more than 1.2m passengers of the carrier last month. Each record included details such as name of the passenger, their phone number, email address and their date of birth, the researcher said. The researcher alerted SpiceJet about the database, but said they never received a meaningful response. The researcher later alerted CERT-In, a govt-run agency in India that handles cybersecurity threats in the nation. <br/>
Heathrow Airport's CE has become the latest heavyweight corporate figure to intervene in the row over Flybe's future, demanding urgent govt action to preserve "lifeline routes" from Britain's busiest airport. Sky News has seen a letter sent by John Holland-Kaye to Paul Maynard, a transport minister, in which he calls for the ring-fencing of so-called Public Service Obligation routes for flights to and from Heathrow. Holland-Kaye's call came days after it emerged that Flybe had decided to reallocate its Heathrow-to-Newquay route to Gatwick Airport instead, freeing up the lucrative Heathrow slots to use for more commercially attractive flights. The intervention of Holland-Kaye underlines the fraught nature of the debate about govt support for Flybe. <br/>
More than 170 passengers on a flight from Melbourne to the Gold Coast are on high alert after 2 people on the plane were diagnosed with coronavirus, as the third Victorian diagnosis emerged. Tigerair is contacting all 171 other passengers who were on flight TT566 from Melbourne Jan 27. "Based on medical advice we have received, the risk of contracting coronavirus is low for passengers who travelled on this aircraft in subsequent days," a Tigerair spokeswoman said. "However, we have taken the precautionary measure of cleaning this aircraft today." A 44-year-old passenger on the plane, who is a Chinese national and has tested positive to the disease, is being treated at Gold Coast University Hospital. He was travelling with 8 people, including children, when he began to feel unwell on the flight. <br/>
US firm Wright Electric is aiming to conduct ground tests next year, and flight tests in 3 years’ time, of a motor intended to provide propulsion for an electric airliner. The company is constructing a 1.5MW electric motor and a 3kV inverter – a system to convert direct to alternating current – which will be the basis of the proposed aircraft’s powerplant. EasyJet is a partner on the programme to develop the 186-seat electric aircraft, known as Wright 1, and says the motor and fan were previewed at an event in New York Jan 30. EasyJet says the flight testing of the motor is intended to take place in 2023. The aircraft, for which aerodynamics testing will run parallel to the powerplant design, is planned to enter service in 2030. <br/>