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Issuing a notice to US carrier over the weekend, the FAA warned against flying over the Russian-Ukrainian border due to flight safety risks. They noted “escalating regional tensions between Russia and Ukraine, which could potentially result in no-notice cross-border skirmishes, increased military activities and/or conflict”. US civilian flights around the Russian-Ukrainian border have been prohibited by the FAA since 2014. The FAA’s notice also said airlines must provide at least 72 hours notice to the agency of planned flights in the area. US air regulators and the FAA are concerned Russian and Ukrainian troops could down a civilian aircraft in...

One of the airline passengers who bit into a sandwich containing a one-inch needle earlier this week has now been put on antiretroviral drugs used for the treatment of HIV, and says the FBI is investigating the incidents aboard four Delta Air Lines flights as a criminal case. James Tonges said he was placed on the drug Truvada, which has recently been approved by the FDA, following the incident aboard a Delta flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis-St. Paul. Half a dozen sewing needles have now been found in sandwiches on four separate Delta flights, and Tonges, who was sitting in...

Australian aircraft engineers have called for Airbus A380 - the world's biggest passenger aircraft - to be grounded, after Singapore Airlines and Qantas found cracks in the wings of their super-jumbos. 'We can't continue to gamble with people's lives and allow those aircraft to fly around and hope that they make it until their four-yearly inspection,' said Steve Purvinas, secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association.

On its website, the TSA talks about the 20 layers of Security it has put in place to protect us from being blown from the sky by a guy with a bomb in his briefs: We use layers of security to ensure the security of the traveling public and the Nation's transportation system. Because of their visibility to the public, we are most associated with the airport checkpoints that our Transportation Security Officers operate. These checkpoints, however, constitute only one security layer of the many in place to protect aviation. Others include intelligence gathering and analysis, checking passenger manifests against...

Union anger over the Federal Aviation Administration's decision to revoke the licenses of two Northwest Airlines pilots threatens to disrupt voluntary safety-reporting programs used by many carriers, according to industry officials. FAA regulators Tuesday revoked the licenses of both pilots aboard Northwest Flight 188, which failed to respond to air-traffic controllers for about 90 minutes. The union isn't defending actions of the pilots, who asked to be protected under voluntary reporting rules. But officials of the Air Line Pilots Association claim regulators jumped the gun and disregarded voluntary procedures worked out over many years among regulators, airlines and unions. The...

The licenses of the two Northwest Airlines pilots involved in last week's "overflying" incident were revoked today by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a day after Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., called for a ban on using laptop computers in airline cockpits. The San Diego-to-Minneapolis flight overshot its destination by 150 miles because the pilots were apparently online in the cockpit (though they initially told investigators that they were distracted by a "conversation") and missed the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. They didn't realize their mistake until they had reached Eau Claire, Wis., at which point they turned around and flew back...

WASHINGTON – Aircraft design standards aren't tough enough for planes to withstand collisions with growing numbers of large birds, safety investigators examining an Oklahoma crash that killed five men said Tuesday. The Federal Aviation Administration requires the bodies of commercial aircraft to withstand a collision with a bird weighing 4 pounds or 8 pounds depending upon the section of the plane — standards that haven't been updated since the 1970s, investigators told the National Transportation Safety Board. An FAA advisory committee spent 10 years examining whether the standards should be updated and then disbanded without reaching a conclusion, investigators said....

WASHINGTON - The Federal Air Marshal Service is a "useless" agency staffed with under-worked officers who make few arrests, a Tennessee congressman is charging. U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Tenn., has taken to the House floor in recent days to ridicule the service as a "needless, useless agency" and argue that air marshals have "a cushy, easy job" that requires little more than sitting on a plane. He also contends that the number of air marshals charged with committing crimes exceeds the number of arrests the agents themselves have made. "I think they are doing almost no good at...

For the first time since the dawn of the jet age, two consecutive years have passed without a single airline passenger death on a U.S. carrier. No passengers died in crashes in 2007 and 2008, a period in which 1.5 billion people took scheduled airline flights. One major accident occurred during that time, last month's crash of a Continental Airlines jet in Denver. Going without a crash fatality for a full year has been rare. Only four years since 1958 have passed without a passenger fatality, the analysis found. That makes the two-year string even more impressive, aviation safety experts...

Safety concerns were raised as long ago as February about the Qantas aircraft that had to make an emergency landing after a 9ft hole opened up in its fuselage at 29,000 feet, it has emerged.

DEBRIS flew past passengers as air was sucked out of an ageing Melbourne-bound Qantas jumbo jet after a mid-air explosion ripped a gaping hole in its fuselage and plunged the plane into a 20,000ft emergency descent. Almost 350 mostly Australian travellers on QF30 from London heard an "almighty bang" yesterday morning and feared a mid-air collision as a rush of wind coursed through the cabin and oxygen masks fell from the ceiling of the Boeing 747-400. "There was a terrific boom, and bits of wood and debris just flew forward into first (class) and the oxygen masks dropped down," Melbourne...

Air travelers in the United States, whose plans have already been disrupted by thousands of canceled flights recently, may face continued chaos in coming weeks as the Federal Aviation Administration and the airlines expand their scrutiny of passenger planes. The groundings at airlines like American, Alaska, Delta and Southwest resulted from a broader round of inspections, ordered by the FAA, to determine whether the airlines have complied with past directives to check airplane structures, wires, electronics and other components. A second wave of audits began on March 30 and will continue through June 30. Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the...

PHOENIX - A backpack caught fire Tuesday in the cargo area at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, leading to an evacuation, but authorities said the flames were likely caused by heat from a conveyor belt. The bag contained no explosives or other banned items, just leaking toiletries. Phoenix police Lt. Rick Gehlbach said the backpack likely began to smoke after it got jammed between two larger pieces of luggage on a conveyor belt. The impact probably caused toiletries containing alcohol to leak, and a combination of heat from the conveyor belt and its track rubbing against the backpack caused it...

This TSA Suspicious Incident #177, "...has many of the elements of pre-operational terrorist planning" according to TSA Office of Intelligence. It was leaked to me earlier today in my ongoing efforts to compile terrorist dry runs and probes on airplanes. A Federal Flight Deck Officer — i.e. armed pilot, flying in non-mission status on October 24, 2007, on a flight from Washington D.C. to Milwaukee, identified himself to flight crew in advance of take-off. When flight crew witnessed suspicious behavior by four passengers, they reported the information to the FFDO. The following unfolded...One of the subjects entered and exited the...

A group of Iraqi Pentagon contractors is suing American Airlines claiming racial discrimination for delaying its flight, but a police report shows that some of the men might have been intoxicated, behaved in a frightening and belligerent manner and scared one family off the plane. The captain of American Airlines Flight 590 from San Diego to Chicago delayed the Aug. 28 takeoff after crew members reported that they "did not feel safe..." The Iraqi men filed the lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, where they live... The captain did not alert the passengers...

DETROIT (AP) - Six Arabic-speaking men have sued American Airlines, saying they were publicly humiliated while being escorted from an aborted flight in San Diego. The six Michigan men filed an ethnic discrimination suit in Detroit federal court. They say airline employees grounded their August 28th flight from San Diego to Chicago and detained them, labeling them as security risks. The men were flying home after training Marines at Camp Pendleton when a passenger alerted guards after hearing them speaking Arabic. The men say they were detained while 100 other passengers got help finding hotel rooms. The airline says it...

All passengers on an American Airlines overnight flight to Chicago were ordered off a plane after complaints about a group of Arabic-speaking Iraqi men who were on their way home to Detroit. The incident forced passengers to stay overnight. The six Iraqi passengers had been training U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton and worked for Defense Training Systems, a unit of the Alaska-based International Logistics Services Corp., said Dave Stephens, the company's chief executive officer. "They did nothing wrong," Stephens said Wednesday. A company press release called it "an unfortunate situation for all flight passengers."

NAHA, Japan (Aug. 20) - Passengers used emergency slides to evacuate a China Airlines jet just minutes before the plane burst into a fireball Monday after arriving in Okinawa from Taiwan. All 165 people aboard escaped unhurt, including the pilot, who jumped from the cockpit at the last second. Transport Ministry official Akihiko Tamura told reporters that airport traffic controllers had received no report from the pilot indicating anything was wrong with the Boeing 737-800. "The fire started when the left engine exploded a minute after the aircraft entered the parking spot," Tamura said. The plane exploded into flames seconds...

ULY 23, 2007 -- Lawmakers and watchdogs are ringing the alarm on domestic carriers' use of foreign repair stations for aircraft maintenance and repairs. A U.S. Department of Transportation Inspector General report released last month said airlines increasingly are outsourcing aircraft maintenance, and gaps remain in Federal Aviation Administration supervision of some repair stations that they use. "We have emphasized that the issue is not where maintenance is performed, but that maintenance requires effective oversight," DOT Inspector General Calvin Scovel III said in the report. Based on a review of 19 U.S.-based carriers' maintenance vendor lists, the Inspector General found...

...we are awash in government studies, reports and other data which make clear that nearly six years after September 11, the government bureaucracies that are supposed to keep out terrorists are in many ways as incompetent and dysfunctional as they were before... A newly released report from the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about the government's handling of 13 suspicious passengers on a June 29, 2004, Northwest Airlines flight serves as a reminder of why so many Americans are rightly skeptical of Washington's ability to manage a mass-amnesty program... The report, which details what happened on...