The House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Thursday said it will question U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at a Sept. 20 oversight hearing. The committee said the hearing will cover the lack of a confirmed head of the Federal Aviation Administration, implementation of a 2021 $1t infrastructure law, supply chain and energy issues as well as electric vehicle infrastructure policies. The White House has nominated a former deputy FAA administrator, Michael Whitaker, to head the agency but no hearing has been scheduled. The FAA has been without a Senate-confirmed administrator since April 2022. Congress is likely this month to pass a short-term extension of the FAA's authority to operate beyond Sept. 30. A bill that would raise the mandatory commercial pilot retirement age to 67 from 65 and make other aviation reforms has stalled due to disagreements on whether to revise pilot training rules. Another House panel last week said it was investigating the Transportation Department's response to a series of aviation and rail safety issues. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee in a letter to Buttigieg said the committee was investigating the department's response to near-miss aviation incidents and train derailments. USDOT declined to comment. The letter cited unresolved safety recommendations made by the department's Office of Inspector General.<br/>
general
Mexico recovered the highest level of aviation safety rating from the US Federal Aviation Administration, more than two years after losing its Category 1. “The FAA provided expertise and resources via technical assistance agreements to Mexico’s Agencia Federal de Aviacion Civil (AFAC) to resolve the safety issues that led to the downgrade,” the FAA said in a statement Thursday. “The agency sent a team of aviation safety experts multiple times over the last two years to assist with the work.” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg informed Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Minister Alicia Barcena that the country had its status reinstated last week. With the upgrade, Mexico can now add new routes to the US, and US airlines can resume marketing and selling tickets with their names and designator codes on Mexican-operated flights, according to the statement. The FAA downgraded Mexico’s rating to Category 2 in May 2021 after finding the country did not meet safety standards. The country was also downgraded by FAA in 2010, but was reinstated within several months. “It’s ironic that the return to Category 1 status happened almost at the same time as the new slot restrictions at AICM,” said aviation consultant Fabricio Cojuc. “But we can expect a sizeable increase of flights to the US from AICM.”<br/>
A private jet with eight people aboard skidded off the runway at the airport in India's financial capital Mumbai on Thursday, temporarily delaying inbound and outbound flights, an airport authority spokesperson said. Three of those on board were injured, said Indian news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake. The jet, which had two crew members, was a VSR Ventures-owned Learjet 45 aircraft that was arriving in Mumbai from Visakhapatnam. The cause of the incident was not immediately clear. The incident caused delays to arriving and departing flights at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport before the runway was reopened for operations following safety checks, the spokesperson said.<br/>
Flights have been cancelled, delayed and rerouted at Gatwick due to short-notice staff absences in the air traffic control team, the airport has said. The transport hub in West Sussex has apologised to those affected by the temporary air traffic control restrictions enforced on Thursday evening which led to 22 flights being cancelled. Passengers wrote on social media that their flights had been diverted to other UK airports including Bournemouth, London Stansted and Heathrow. The staff absences are from Nats, formerly National Air Traffic Services, which provide en route air traffic control services to flights. A London Gatwick spokesperson said: “Due to a short-notice staff absence in the air traffic control tower, temporary air traffic control restrictions have been put in place this evening. This will cause some delays. London Gatwick would like to apologise to any passengers who have been impacted by these restrictions. Please contact your airline for more information. “Nats are a world-class provider of air traffic services and London Gatwick’s senior management recognises how hard the airport’s air traffic controllers are working to keep the operation moving. We are working closely with Nats to build resilience in the airport’s control tower to ensure disruption is kept to a minimum.” The airport later added: “The situation is improving with an additional air traffic controller now in place. The air traffic control restrictions are reducing as a consequence and more aircraft are able to arrive and depart.” New air traffic controllers are understood to have been recruited since last summer and others are due to start after completing their training in line with the agreed plan when Nats took over the contract last October.<br/>
Aerospace giant RTX Corp on Monday told airlines hundreds of their Airbus jets would be grounded at any one time in coming years to check for a rare manufacturing flaw, souring the mood in an industry that was only just experiencing some relief from supply chain pressures. It is the latest manufacturing defect to hit planemaking this year, after separate quality issues with another big supplier Spirit AeroSystems. RTX unit Pratt and Whitney's popular Geared Turbofan (GTF) engines were designed for better fuel efficiency and fewer emissions. The engines have become popular and now compete with the LEAP engines produced by CFM International to power the Airbus A320neo. But concerns over its performance have swirled in recent months after engines faced problem with durability in hot and dusty climates, requiring more frequent maintenance. In July, RTX disclosed it had found microscopic containments in powdered metal, used to manufacture high-pressure turbine discs that are part of engine's core, and presence of which could lead to cracks in the engine. sRTX said at that time that 200 engines would require "accelerated inspection" with 60 days to fix each engine with a contamination issue. However, on Monday RTX widened the scope of inspections, to pull around 600 to 700 engines off their Airbus jets and projected repair work to last up to 300 days per engine.<br/>
Airbus executives are increasingly optimistic the company can bring a hydrogen-powered aircraft to market in the mid-2030s and plan within several years to settle on the best propulsion architecture for such an aircraft. “The bottlenecks are no longer in the technology of the plane,” Airbus CE Guillaume Faury said on 12 September during an aerospace event in Washington, DC. “We strongly believe that we will be ready by 2035 with a hydrogen plane. The technology will be ready.” Airbus in 2020 revealed three hydrogen-powered aircraft concepts as part of its ZEROe programme, and said it aimed to bring one to market by 2035. The European manufacturer is among several industry players that think hydrogen-powered aircraft could be viable in the coming years. Hydrogen emits only water when burned or used to produce electricity, giving it promise as a means by which the aviation industry can cut carbon emissions. Due to notable challenges, however, other players like Boeing doubt such designs will be ready in the near term. Also speaking on 12 September, Airbus Americas CEO Jeffrey Knittel says several years of evaluation has left Airbus more sure of the technology. “We’re going to make a decision on whether it’s a fuel cell or a [direct-burn propulsion system]” in 2026 or 2027, Knittel says. “We will make a decision on production at that point in time.” The executives stress that, optimism aside, Airbus has not committed to developing a hydrogen-powered passenger airliner, saying the decision depends on factors partly or largely outside the company’s control. Those factors include unsettled regulatory and certification standards, the need for hydrogen transportation and storage infrastructure, and the availability – at the “right price” – of so-called green hydrogen, Faury says. Green hydrogen is generally defined as being produced using renewable energy. “That’s going to be where the challenge lies,” Faury says of those factors. Knittel says any initial hydrogen-powered aircraft would likely be on the “smaller” side, and that “long range” is among the toughest “challenges” associated with hydrogen propulsion. Hydrogen has less energy density than jet fuel, with four times the volume per energy unit. That means a hydrogen aircraft would need to carry more fuel than a conventionally powered aircraft to have the same range.<br/>