Regulatory & Other Items

Concussion and sports injury has been a major news story this past year — and deservedly, so. Each week we hear about professional athletes as well as young grammar and high school athletes sustaining life-changing brain injuries due to hits on the field. We witness...

A lightning strike on a glider has implications for Boeing’s new B787, which made its first flight last month. The two occupants of the glider were able to bail out and parachute safely when their composite airframe was shattered by the lightning strike; no such...

The Chicago City Council passed a new city ordinance on January 13, 2011 addressing sports concussions. Athletes showing signs of concussion will be prohibited from returning to play and/or practice until they are cleared by a licensed health care provider. The rule...

What does an electric current bolt of 20,000 amps hitting a jetliner look like? A photograph of a lighting strike on an Emirates A380 illustrates the dramatic appearance. A video taken by Chris Dawson near London’s Heathrow Airport shows lightning striking the giant,...

In about a month, an airplane fitted with a new infrared detector will take to the skies over Europe to determine if airborne volcanic ash can be tracked and avoided. If the tests are successful, the detectors could – and this is an important caveat – could be...

Pilots are so accustomed to relying on cockpit automation that their basic airmanship skills to fly manually are eroded. The result? When automation fails, pilots cope with the situation either with misguided and distracting attempts to restore the automation or with...

The final descent and landing is, statistically, the most dangerous segment of an airline flight. In recent years, the number of such plane accidents have been high, accounting for hundreds of passenger and aircrew deaths. Bad weather is often a contributing factor,...

For a highly pertinent example of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) not following-up on its own research, look no further than its requirements for life preservers. I use life preservers as my prime example because, unlike avionics and other esoteric...

Instead of a journey to Mexico City lasting an hour or more, Aeromexico Flight 2431 was in the air for less than a minute after rolling down the runway at General Guadalupe Victoria International Airport at Durango. The airplane rotated to climb and then settled hard...