Cosmic Log
Are you planning to take your drone out for a spin this weekend? First, you’d better check the map, and a new list of requirements from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Some of the requirements are so new that the online tools required for compliance haven’t yet been rolled out, and that could put a temporary crimp in your flight plans — at least if you’re a stickler for the rules.
Two months after a pair of catastrophic crashes led to the grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX jets worldwide, the company says it has finished work on a software update aimed at heading off future safety issues with an automatic flight control system.
Boeing announced the completion of software development today, and said it’s working with the Federal Aviation Administration to finish the process of getting the plane certified for its return to flight.
The acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged during a congressional hearing today that his agency will tighten up its regulatory procedures as a result of the investigation into two fatal crashes of Boeing 737 MAX jets.
Acting Administrator Daniel Elwell said he was concerned to hear that Boeing waited more than a year before informing the FAA that a cockpit indicator known as the AOA Disagree alert didn’t work as designed, due to a software gap. The agency was told about the gap only after a Lion Air 737 MAX crashed in Indonesia last October, killing all 189 people on board.
“I’m concerned that it took a year, and we’re looking into that, and we’re going to fix that,” Elwell, a former airline pilot, told Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., during a hearing before the House Aviation Subcommittee. “It shouldn’t take a year for us to find out that that discovery was made.”
Alphabet’s Wing venture has stolen a march on Amazon’s plans for drone domination by winning air carrier certification from the Federal Aviation Administration.
“Air Carrier Certification means that we can begin a commercial service delivering goods from local businesses to homes in the United States,” Wing said today in a Medium post celebrating the milestone.
Wing was spun out last year from Alphabet’s X tech incubator (formerly known as Google X), and has been taking part in an FAA-backed pilot program to push the envelope for drone operations in Southwest Virginia.
The company has also conducted a test program in Australia that involved more than 3,000 drone deliveries to doorsteps, backyards and driveways. In all, Wing’s drones have flown more than 70,000 test flights, and is starting up delivery operations in Finland.
Wing said the data submitted to the FAA for certification showed that “a delivery by wing carries a lower risk to pedestrians than the same trip made by car.”
Were airline pilots adequately trained on a catastrophic scenario involving the automatic flight control system for Boeing’s 737 MAX airplanes? And did the Federal Aviation Administration cede too much of its responsibility to Boeing when the system was certified as safe?
Those are among the key questions that U.S. senators had for federal officials today during a pair of Capitol Hill hearings today.
Meanwhile, Boeing brought about 200 pilots and airline industry officials to Renton, Wash., the base of operations for the company’s 737 program, to learn more about the changes being made in the wake of two fatal MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. October’s Lion Air crash in Indonesia killed all 189 people aboard, while this month’s Ethiopian Airlines crash killed 157.
In the wake of two catastrophic crashes that may have had a common cause, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao today opened the way for an audit of the process that led the Federal Aviation Administration to certify Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 jets in 2017.
Because of the similarities between the two crashes, 737 MAX jets have been grounded worldwide. Boeing and the FAA are reportedly facing multiple investigations, including the audit announced today.
Chao formally requested the audit in a referral memo to the department’s Office of Inspector General.
The Federal Aviation Administration today ordered the temporary grounding of Boeing’s next-generation 737 MAX jets, due to “new evidence” collected at the site of Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash as well as data transmitted via satellite.
In its emergency order, the FAA said the evidence pointed to what appeared to be some similarities between the circumstances of the 737 MAX 8 crash in Ethiopia and the loss of a Lion Air 737 MAX 8 in Indonesia last October. Sunday’s crash killed all 157 people aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, while the October crash killed all 189 people aboard Lion Air Flight 610.
The similarities “warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause for the two incidents that needs to be better understood and addressed,” the FAA said.
Airlines that fly 737 MAX jets in defiance of the order could have their certificates revoked, the FAA said.
Two Virgin Galactic test pilots are now wearing the first commercial astronaut wings to be awarded since SpaceShipOne’s historic spaceflights in 2004.
Last December’s test flight, piloted by Mark “Forger” Stucky and Rick “CJ” Sturckow in the SpaceShipTwo Unity rocket plane, was nearly as historic. It rose to an altitude of 51.4 miles, exceeding the 50-mile benchmark that’s used by the U.S. military and the Federal Aviation Administration for conferring astronaut wings.
Stucky and Sturckow received their wings today during a ceremony at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Later in the day, the rocket motor that powered the pair past the milestone was officially turned over to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum for exhibit.
Fortem Technologies, a Utah-based venture that makes drones as well as radar detection systems, wants to be in on a drone-hunting test to be conducted during Sunday’s Super Bowl in Atlanta.
The test could turn into a high-tech matchup that parallels the football face-off between the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued draft regulations that would smooth the way for drones to fly at night and over groups of innocent bystanders.
Such operations are already technically allowed, but only with a waiver or an exemption. If the proposed regulations go into effect, drone flights at night and over people could become more routine.
Looser limits could also bring America closer to the day when companies such as Amazon and Walmart routinely deliver shipments via drone.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao highlighted the proposed regulations on Monday during remarks to the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., which proceeded despite the partial government shutdown.
Chao said the easing of limits on drone flights “will help communities reap the considerable economic benefits of this growing industry and help our country remain a global technology leader.”