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UPDATE 9:41 AM PT -- The Maryland Transportation Authority tells TMZ ... officers responded to the incident late Tuesday afternoon upon receiving reports of the fight. Officers identified five involved individuals, one of whom suffered minor injuries. Meanwhile, a rep for Spirit tells us four employees of a third-party service they use have been suspended by that company pending an investigation into the brawl. Spirit says they do not directly employ the individuals. The airline adds violence of any kind is not tolerated, and they plan to take appropriate action following the completed investigation. A Spirit Airlines check-in counter spiraled...

841,998 views May 5, 2024 People now can't behave on planes. Crazy 15 minutes of nutcases on aircraft................

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker says Boeing is in the beginning stage of fixing safety issues.. The head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Thursday that Boeing has a "long road" ahead of it as the planemaker readies a plan aimed at assuring regulators it is adequately addressing safety concerns in its manufacturing. The FAA in February ordered Boeing to develop a comprehensive plan to correct quality-control issues after a door plug flew off a 737 MAX-9 mid-flight during an Alaska Airlines flight the month before. Boeing is slated to deliver that plan on May 30. ... FAA Administrator Mike...

Two Major FAA Developments May 23, 2024 Update! Two major occurrences recently took place concerning the FAA and we wanted to update you about these important developments. First, on May 16, 2024, FAA Inspector and whistleblower Bruce McGray filed a second addendum to his initial sworn declaration of safety violations and recommendations, originally submitted to the FAA in July 2022. This second addendum was delivered in writing to the FAA administrator Michael Whitaker, and to the Office of the Inspector General for the US Department of Transportation. In this addendum, Inspector McGray reminds the FAA that his duty as an...

As the seemingly unending fallout from the Boeing 737 MAX series unfolds, supplier Spirit AeroSystems has announced it will lay off around 450 workers. The decision was prompted by the Boeing 737 MAX production slowdown following a door plug blowing off an Alaska Airlines-operated 737 MAX in January. The effects of Boeing's production delays are already costing airlines and could impact airline growth for years. The Department of Justice is considering a fraud prosecution against Boeing for allegedly violating the terms of its 2021 deferred prosecution agreement related to two previous 737 MAX accidents. Spirit will lay off hundreds of...

Boeing violated a 2021 settlement that protected it from criminal charges tied to the fatal 737 Max crashes, opening the company up to potential U.S. prosecution, the Department of Justice said Tuesday. Federal prosecutors said in a court filing in Texas they are still determining “how it will proceed in this matter” and that Boeing will have 30 days to respond. In January 2021, Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a conspiracy charge with the Justice Department. After a roughly two-year probe, the DOJ accused the company of concealing information about its Max plane that had been involved...

An Air Force instructor pilot died early in the morning on May 14 from injuries sustained when the pilot’s T-6A Texan II training plane ejection seat activated during ground operations the day before, the 82nd Training Wing at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, announced in a press release. “An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway,” the wing wrote, adding that the pilot’s name is being withheld for 24 hours to notify his or her next of kin. The 82nd is the host unit at Sheppard, but the pilot was assigned to the 80th Flying Training Wing, the...

A Boeing whistleblower recently claimed he was chided for slowing production when he found defects in airplane parts. The former quality inspector, identified as Santiago Paredes, who previously worked for Spirit AeroSystems in Kansas, told the BBC that plane bodies were regularly shipped out of the factory with serious issues, the outlet reported Wednesday. Paredes claimed he used to find nearly 200 defects in the parts, and he tried to slow production to deal with the problems. He also alleged that leadership put him under pressure to not be so meticulous. “They always made a fuss about why I was...

Panicked passengers were forced to flee the burning wreckage of a Boeing 737 when it skidded off the runway in Senegal early Thursday, video showed. Eleven people were injured – four of them severely – when the Air Senegal flight headed from Bamako, Mali, crashed mid-lift off from Dakar’s Blaise Diagne airport shortly after 1 a.m. local time, the BBC reported. One of the 78 passengers was seen scrambling away from the Boeing 737-300 aircraft as it went up in flames, one clip from the scene showed. The plane – which Air Senegal chartered from the Senegalese carrier Transair –...

I don't know if this will qualify as "the other shoe dropping" in Boeing's ongoing problems, but the news certainly doesn't sound great. The Federal Aviation Administration announced yesterday that they were opening an investigation into the company after Boeing reported that workers at its South Carolina production plant had falsified inspection records on some of its new 787 Dreamliner planes. The Dreamliner has already fallen behind its original production schedule and this sort of investigation isn't likely to help them catch up. Also, the inspection records in question sound rather important, so people will probably need to go back...

Boeing cargo plane forced to land at Istanbul without front landing gear Incident involving Boeing 767 jet operated by FedEx comes amid intense scrutiny of troubled planemaker Jasper Jolly and agencies Wed 8 May 2024 08.22 EDT Share A Boeing cargo plane has been forced to land at Istanbul airport without its front landing gear, in the latest setback for the embattled planemaker. Nobody was hurt in the incident, in a flight operated by the delivery company FedEx, according to Turkey’s transport ministry. The Boeing 767 aircraft, flying from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on Wednesday, informed the traffic control...

Boeing 767 FedEx plane makes emergency landing without nose gear in Turkey Front landing gear of a Boeing 767 cargo plane landing in Istanbul malfunctioned. As a result the plane nosedived into the runway without any casualty

The Pivotal Helix is a single-seat eVTOL (electric Vertical Take-Off & Landing) PAV (Personal Aerial Vehicle) with a range of 20+ miles (with 20% reserve) and a cruise speed 55 knots (63 mph). You can order now for July 2024 delivery, and no license is required, though you can't take delivery until you have completed the training. Pivotal ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Personal flight is currently undergoing a renaissance thanks to the rapid advancement of so many requisite industrial technologies. The next phase of personal flight is poised to begin and the production version of this aircraft could well mark the occasion in...

Elon Musk is chiding Boeing on social media for employing "too many" non-technical managers amid a wave of ongoing layoffs at his own company, Tesla. Musk fired off his thoughts on X this week, responding to reporting on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which is set to make a launch attempt on Monday evening after years of delays and setbacks. In 2014, NASA granted Boeing $4.2 billion and Musk's SpaceX $2.6 billion to develop a commercial crew system that could transport astronauts to the International Space Station. Despite working with a little more than half of the money that Boeing received, SpaceX...

What makes this electric aircraft irresistible is that it literally makes flying accessible to most. It doesn't require a pilot's license in the US, and it's designed to be extremely easy to fly. It's also a one-seater, which makes it a rarity among eVTOLs (electric vertical takeoff and landing) and flying cars. As Patan describes it, piloting the Jetson One feels almost like driving a car but doing it up in the sky.

The aviation giant Boeing is facing a growing number of whistleblowers coming forward with safety concerns following the recent deaths of two previous whistleblowers, the New York Post reported. The first whistleblower, John Barnett, a 62-year-old former Boeing quality control manager, was found dead in March in an apparent suicide. Barnett had been in the midst of giving depositions, alleging Boeing retaliated against him for complaints about quality lapses. Barnett was found in his truck “suffering from a gunshot wound to the head.” A suicide note was reportedly found next to Boeing whistleblower John Barnett. However, his lawyers are questioning...

China’s first home-grown narrowbody passenger jet has passed a battery of “deep level” safety tests as part of a step that is expected to help the C919 find overseas markets as its rival Boeing wrestles with a list of mechanical woes. China Eastern Airlines Technology, a subsidiary of the group that owns C919 operator China Eastern Airlines, concluded four days of “A-inspection” tests on Monday at a hangar in Shanghai, the Civil Aviation Administration said on Tuesday. The aircraft is required to undergo safety checks after either every four months, 700 flight hours or 500 flight cycles – meaning the...

A small-scale jet engine compact enough to fit on a tabletop is helping to make the future of aviation more sustainable, according to NASA engineers currently involved in tests that could help pave the way toward new aircraft propulsion systems of the coming decades. The DGEN380 Aero-Propulsion Research Turbofan (DART) is less than 4.5 feet in length, making it half the size of engines on moderately sized aircraft, and NASA engineers are now using the miniature engine to help to reduce costs associated with using a full-sized jet engine for research and testing purposes. Currently, experiments with the small jet...

Some aviation experts argue the FAA’s focus on ‘diversity’ instead of ’merit' in hiring pilots and controllers is leading to serious safety concerns... As the U.S. Justice Department decides whether to pursue a criminal case against Boeing, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating dozens of airplane incidents since January, including one in which a Swiss Air jet almost collided with four other planes on the runway at JFK International Airport in New York City. The FAA has more than 100 aviation accidents and incidents since the beginning of 2024. These include airplane and helicopter crashes, equipment and mechanical malfunctions,...

<p>ANCHORAGE, Alaska—One of the two pilots of a vintage military plane that was delivering heating oil to a remote Alaska Native village reported a fire on board shortly before the aircraft crashed and burned outside Fairbanks, killing both of them and leaving debris over a wide area, a federal transportation official said Wednesday.</p>