Flying in the Time of Cicadas

Over the weekend the crew of a Challenger 350 at John C. Tune Airport (KJWN) in Nashville, Tennessee, was having difficulty starting its engines. "We put a borescope down the APU and found it full of cicadas. They blocked the airflow." Cicadas are not terribly selective, and they were apparently attracted to the noise and heat of the APU and piled into the inlet, blocking the airflow. When the technicians evaluated the problem, they were attacked by the swarm. (www.flyingmag.com) Más...

FAA bill would force the agency to craft 'real world' rules for airplane evacuations

If an airplane has to be evacuated, the Federal Aviation Administration says all passengers must be capable of getting out within 90 seconds. But critics say the agency's testing standards have not kept pace with the shrinking size of airplane seats — which means more people jammed into the cabin — or the changing composition of the flying public. U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth argues the FAA's current tests fail to take real world conditions into consideration. (www.npr.org) Más...