general

The FAA to hire 2,000 air traffic controller trainees this year and maintain strict oversight of Boeing , the agency's acting administrator said in written testimony to be given to a U.S. Senate panel on Thursday. The agency will also establish a panel to "identify additional hazard areas involving helicopter and fixed-wing interactions," acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau said in written testimony obtained by Reuters. The FAA is about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels and has about 10% fewer controllers than it did in 2012. Creation of the safety risk management panel follows a fatal January 29 collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines regional passenger jet killed 67 people near Reagan Washington National Airport. The FAA has imposed permanent restrictions on passenger flights when helicopters must transit near the airport. It is also reviewing traffic at other major airports after the National Transportation Safety Board made urgent recommendations this month. Rocheleau said he is focused on improving aviation safety. "We have to identify trends, we have to get smarter about how we use data, and when we put corrective actions in place, we must execute them," his testimony says. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy plans to ask Congress for tens of billions of dollars to boost aging FAA technology and facilities and increase air traffic controller hiring. A nagging shortage of controllers has delayed flights and, at many facilities, controllers are working mandatory overtime and six-day weeks. Rocheleau said the FAA maintains rigorous oversight of Boeing that "extends to ongoing monitoring of Boeing's manufacturing practices, maintenance procedures, and software updates." Duffy said this month that Boeing had lost the public's trust.<br/>

Someone should have spotted the alarming number of near misses in the skies over the nation’s capital before the fatal midair collision that killed 67 people in January, and reviewing the data now could prevent future crashes, according to the head of the agency investigating the crash. NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy emphasized to Congress Wednesday that the Federal Aviation Administration had data going back to 2011 showing that collision alarms were sounding inside cockpits at least once a month because of how close the planes were getting to helicopters. But the FAA didn’t act, she said. “All this data is being collected by FAA from operators, from others, from voluntary reporting systems. Where is that data going to trend potential accidents and incidents in the future?” Homendy said during a hearing on her agency’s budget. “The next accident is in the data right now. And what are we doing to figure out what that is?” The Senate is planning another hearing Thursday to delve deeper into what the NTSB has found so far about the Jan. 29 midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Washington, D.C., Ronald Reagan National Airport. Homendy and the leaders of the FAA and Army’s aviation division will all testify.<br/>

A body representing more than 90 airlines using Heathrow Airport has said there could be a case for legal action if a settlement is not reached over costs incurred by the airport’s Friday closure. Flight operations at Europe’s biggest airport were thrown into turmoil on Friday, 21 March, as a giant blaze ripped through an electric substation near Heathrow, forcing the airport to close for more than 15 hours. Over 1,300 flights were disrupted by the fire, ruining the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers due to fly. Despite initially telling passengers the airport would be closed all day, Heathrow announced later that some long-haul flights would resume in the evening. The airport was fully operational the next day, the closure had a huge knock-on effect and at least 100 of the 600 flights which would typically have been expected on Saturday were cancelled. Nigel Wicking, the CE of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee (AOC), which represents more than 90 airlines including British Airways and Virgin Atlantic said there could be a case for legal action over costs incurred when the airport closed if not settled adequately. Speaking to Sky News, Wicking said that he hoped an agreement over the costs from the closure could be “amicably settled at some point in time”. However, he admitted that "if we don't get good enough recourse and repayment in terms of the costs, then yes, there might be a case for legal action". "I would hope not. But in some of these situations that's the only course once you've gone through everything else", he added.<br/>

A gleaming new data center sits less than half a mile from the electric substation where a fire plunged Heathrow Airport into darkness last week. The data center’s own power was also cut that day. But no one who relied on it would have noticed, thanks to a bank of batteries and backup generators designed to kick in instantly. Meanwhile it took officials at Europe’s busiest airport close to 18 hours to bring its terminals and runways back into operation, causing global travel delays and underscoring the vulnerability of Britain’s infrastructure. It is a striking contrast that energy experts say can be explained largely by one word: Money. “The data center industry is relatively young. They are more attuned to the cost of a catastrophic failure,” said Simon Gallagher, the managing director at UK Networks Services, which advises clients on the resilience of their electricity networks. He said most of the world’s airports — including Heathrow — have not been willing to make the big investments necessary to build total backup systems. Even at an airport the size of Heathrow, which officials have described as equivalent in power use to a small city, it is possible to create backup systems robust enough to maintain normal operations during a catastrophic power failure, Gallagher and other engineering experts said. But it could cost as much as $100m and would likely take years to put in place. So far, most airports have chosen not to make the investment. “It comes down to a cost-benefit analysis,” Gallagher said. “At the minute, there seems to be an assumption that it would cost too much.” Heathrow officials were quick to point out after Friday’s incident that the airport has backup power in place for its most critical systems: runway lights and the tower’s traffic control safety systems. If a plane had needed to land that day, it could have done so safely. But the airport had no way to power the rest of the sprawling and complicated facility: the vast terminals, filled with shops and restaurants, moving walkways and escalators. Cut from the grid, there was no power to move bags to the claim area, or for ticket counters or bathrooms.<br/>

Lithuanian prosecutors said on Wednesday they believe that human error was the likely cause of the crash of a DHL cargo airplane in Vilnius in November and have asked Spanish authorities to question the pilot as a suspect. The Boeing 737-400 cargo jet operated by Spain's Swiftair crashed as it came in to land at Lithuania's Vilnius airport in the early morning of Nov. 25 as it came in to land after a flight from Leipzig in Germany. The plane split into pieces on hitting the ground, slid over 100 metres and smashed into a house. One person on the aircraft was killed. "The main version in the plane crash investigation is human error," a statement from the Prosecutor General's Office said. It had asked Spain to question the pilot, a Spanish national, who is recovering from his injuries there, it said. "After analysing and summarising the interviews conducted in Lithuania, inspections of the scene, recordings of the aircraft's flight recorders and cockpit conversations, and other data obtained during the investigation, it was determined that the plane crash likely occurred due to a disabled hydraulic system responsible for deploying the flaps," the Prosecutor General's Office said.<br/>

South Africa’s second-largest political party is urging a stronger response from the country’s transport ministry over weaknesses in air traffic control operations, and demanding the release of a report detailing safety and reliability concerns. Transport minister Barbara Creecy recently ordered the “precautionary suspension” of Air Traffic and Navigation Services chief Nosipho Mdawe, and an investigation into fulfilment of duties. But this has not satisfied the Democratic Alliance – part of a 10-member coalition government following last year’s general election – which describes the suspension as “nothing but an attempt to save face, rather than a genuine commitment to systemic reform”. “Until the full report detailing all the flaws in ATNS is provided to Parliament, its oversight function is being severely undermined,” the party adds, insisting that Creecy cannot serve as “investigator, judge and jury”. Creecy ordered the suspension as she provided an update on efforts to “stabilise and rebuild” ATNS on 12 March, three months after establishing a committee to investigate the root cause of safety and service-delivery issues. The committee found “critical” staffing shortages within the air traffic services division, shortcomings in the reliability of communication, navigation and surveillance systems, and suspension of flight procedures over lapsed maintenance. Creecy says actions taken include accelerated recruitment of personnel and procurement for system upgrades. Updating of instrument flight procedures, which have caused delays at a number of airports, is a particularly urgent concern. Shortly before the committee was set up, Mdawe had admitted, at a stakeholder event in early December, that the procedures situation was causing “significant inconvenience”, and attributed it to several factors including “poaching” of procedure-design specialists and technical staff by other aviation companies.<br/>

The SAF industry is falling short of its 2030 targets with production not ramping up quickly enough, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found in a report published on Thursday. European airlines are this year expected to meet a mandate of 2% SAF use in their jet fuel, with that set to rise to 6% by 2030. But many have lamented the high cost of the fuel, which is typically three to five times more expensive than traditional jet fuel. The report found that airlines and airports are investing only 1% to 3% of revenue or budget allocation to SAF, with high production costs and fuel prices remaining the major challenges to adoption. "We are going in the positive direction, but clearly not at the speed we need," BCG Managing Director and Partner Pelayo Losada said of his findings in the co-authored report that surveyed more than 500 executives at about 200 aviation-related companies. "Despite continuing to scale the availability of sustainable aviation fuel, and we see that trend very clearly, there is a slowdown in the development of projects and even bigger gaps to some of the commitments that some of the companies have made," Losada said. Reuters reported last month that low consumption and a lack of policy guidance have led to delays of some SAF projects in China. While the global aviation industry is aiming to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and some countries have SAF mandates in place, the fuel accounted for only about 0.3% of global jet fuel production in 2024.<br/>

In separate presentations at Australia’s Avalon air show, Airbus and Boeing have underlined the importance of the aviation industry staying focused on the environment. Stephen Forshaw, chief representative of Airbus in Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, says that aviation has a pressing need to decarbonise, as only this will give it the “licence” to continue operating in the decades ahead, especially as consumers become more conscious about their carbon emissions.<br/>He also observes that 80% of Australia’s jet fuel was imported in 2024, compared with just 50% a decade ago. This creates an energy security issue. On how to resolve these issues, Forshaw says that Australia is extremely well placed to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) given the ready availability of feedstocks. In addition to providing energy security, a robust Australian SAF capability will also provide jobs and, most important, reduce the emissions associated with flying. Boeing used the show to make a presentation about Cascade 2.0, a publicly available climate impact model that lets users adjust a range of variables to help map out the industry’s decarbonisation journey. Demonstrating Cascade to reporters at Boeing’s stand, the company’s vice-president of environmental sustainability Ryan Faucett manipulated factors such as air traffic growth, fuel type, aircraft type, and operational efficiencies to help assess their long-term impact on reducing emissions. By way of demonstration, he laid out one hypothetical whereby sustainable aviation fuel, offsets, new aircraft types, and operations combined to vastly reduce emissions by 2050.<br/>