Matt Ziemkiewicz reflected in an email last night how Fr. Mike was such an incredible support to his family after the loss of his sister, Jill, on TWA 800. And, he just discovered this excerpted homily Fr. Mike gave on the day before the terrorist attacks. Of course...
Late yesterday, by a vote of 93-0, the Senate (finally) passed the FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act. The FAA has been authorized by short-term extensions since 2007, it took a lot to get to this point. Just this year: FAA is now under...
Ethiopian Air Flight 409 Sadly, last evening, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 caught fire (from early reports) and crashed shortly after takeoff from Beirut, Lebanon. Airsafe.com has a good summary, as of Monday afternoon. It appears as though none of the passengers...
I wanted to acknowledge four recent accidents that have communities around the country mourning. Smaller plane crashes seldom get wider news coverage, but our thoughts go out to those families, friends of the victims. Please reach out if you need assistance. ...
Today and tomorrow on the Hill, there will be a few committee hearings so that legislators can better understand what went wrong leading up to the attempted bombing of NW253 on Christmas. They are (from GovExec): Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs...
President Obama has given his remarks on the preliminary evaluation by security and intelligence officials of what allowed a suspected threatening person onto a flight on Christmas Day (from Wired.com). A six-count indictment was issued against suspect, Umar Farouk...
In the week following the attempted bombing of Flight 253, we've already seen several stages in the government response to the incident. And, yes, I use the word "government" broadly, since we are talking about agencies, the executive and legislative branches. And,...
As we all now know, a young Nigerian man (also of Yemeni descent), on Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas, brought explosives on board with intent to do greater damage than was actually done. And oh, has it revealed holes in the U.S. and...
Northwest Airlines Flight 188 What a strange story this has become, since all of the early speculation proved incorrect. The pilots were not discussing or napping, rather distracted by personal laptop use (which violated company policy). The NTSB has published their...
This week, I had the opportunity to attend a screening in the GE Aviation Lecture series at the National Air and Space Museum. Miles O'Brien and Patty Wagstaff were presenting a film they made about ongoing pilot training at the Kenyan Wildlife Service. It was...
