Aviation

Despite the chief engineer of Boeing telling the press that he is “100 percent convinced that the airplane is safe to fly,” the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered a comprehensive review of what the aircraft maker touted as most technologically advanced plane. Two latest incidents regarding Boeing’s newest airplane called the Dreamliner led the FAA to call for a review of the aircraft’s design, manufacture and assembly of the plane. FAA officials are expected…

Today’s front-page story of USA Today (1/9/2013) focuses on the ongoing failures of the Boeing Dreamliner aircraft that was touted as the next generation aircraft. Several mishaps and problems have caused experts, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), to investigate the Boeing 787. The latest two incidents came earlier this week when a fuel tank leaked Tuesday on a 787 Japan Airlines Dreamliner while on the ground at…

With the federally mandated retirement age looming for many pilots, some experts are predicting that the United States may be facing a pilot shortage soon. Thousands of new rules for pilots regarding training and rest are kicking in this year, so some say the shortage of pilots may be coming as early as 2013. One of the new rules requires co-pilots to have as many flight hours as captains in the cockpit. With the mandatory…

By Pallasch, Abdon M. On Halloween in 1994, 30-mile-an-hour winds whipped rain horizontally into people’s faces. Umbrellas blew inside out. The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers struggled to play football at Soldier Field. Nine-thousand feet above northwest Indiana, American Eagle Flight 4184 from Indianapolis circled, waiting to land at O’Hare International Airport. The winds were lighter up there, but twice the co-pilot warned the pilot that freezing drizzle was coating the wings with ice….

A Barrington man whose wife and only child were killed in the 1989 Sioux City, Iowa, plane crash settled his Cook County lawsuit Thursday morning for $15 million and obtained one defendant’s acknowledgment of fault for its role in the accident. Plaintiff lawyer Robert A. Clifford and his client, Terry Brown, refused to settle his wrongful-death suit until General Electric Co., the designer of the plane’s engine that exploded, acknowledged fault for the crash of…