7 Stories That SHOOK Aviation In January!

0:00 today I have something a little bit different for you this channel is called Mentor now and I split it away from mentor pilot for a reason you see I wanted to cover more current topics impacting the aviation industry and you the traveling public and we have but sometimes we find new stories that doesn't really need a fulllength video or that could be well maybe still Brewing so this is a quick breakdown of January's breaking news Brewing stories and other developments that impact the world of Aviation and maybe what I think of them stay tuned for our first story we go to obviously Boeing where we actually have

0:46 some positive news for a change involving the trip 7 X Program the x is an enlarged rewing and re-engine tri 7 whose purpose is to replace not only the older Tri 7 generation but also the 747 400 now as I have explained in many of my previous videos this program has fallen massively behind during the last few years it should have ended service in 2020 giving it a development time of 7 years which would still have been two more years than the original Tri 7 took to enter service back in the 1990s but today Boeing's customers hope to put the first Tri 7x into service in the second half of 2026 that would mean mean a 13-year long development cycle which is an incredibly

1:33 long time for what's essentially a comprehensive update of an already existing design now early in July last year boen got some really good Tri 7x news the aircraft finally started flying with FAA Personnel on board in a process called a type inspection authorization or Tia which is a key milestone in that aircraft certification but just five weeks weeks into those trials in mid August that process suddenly stopped when boing discovered a very serious problem you see after a 5 and 1 half hour test flight ground Personnel found that one of the aircraft enormous ge9x engines had a fractured trust link that

2:19 component is a key part of the engine's attachment to the aircraft since it carries the trust loads from the fan to the pylon each engine has two of these trust links and it is boing who makes them not General Electric which is the engine's manufacturer those test flights were taking place in Hawaii so Boeing therefore had to make temporary fixes to get that aircraft home which they did about 3 weeks later in September now boing had three more Tri 7x test aircraft but the FAA flights couldn't continue with those Jets either because boing quickly discovered cracks in the trust Links of those aircraft as well so this all means that all four of those Jets remain grounded until finally on the 16th of January this year the same

3:04 test aircraft that was found damaged in Hawaii last August lifted off from boing field and completed a flight test of just over 2 hours then on the 19th of January the same aircraft flew again this time for 2 hours and 38 minutes and as far as we know without any further issues now obviously these first flights didn't have any FAA Personnel on board to continue their work but the fact that the flights took place at all shows that Boeing finally has a working fix for the aircraft 12 months ago boing had a really terrible start of 2024 with a door plug blowout of a 727 Max 9 but with these news it means that this year has started much much better for them and I really hope that it continues like

3:50 that for our next big story we go to China earlier in January I released a video about China's aviation industry but in that one I was focusing ing mainly on the country's thirdd major commercial aircraft project which is a wide body called the c929 this is an aircraft that China originally planned to develop together with Russia and it was originally then called the cr929 now there are quite a few hurdles facing that aircraft which I covered in that video but just after that video was released more news came out of China showing that they are now really ramping up their efforts to increase production of their newest narrow body the c919 this is yet about the size and

4:35 shape of the Airbus A320 and it entered service back in 2023 after a lengthy testing delay according to our sources comak the aircraft's manufacturer are now planning to increase the production capacity for this aircraft up to 50 per year even though that increase won't come immediately comak currently plans to produce 30 of these jets in 2025 but some analysts expect them to maybe be able to make around 27 longer term kac's targets dating back to 2023 were to reach a production capacity of 150 aircraft per year by 2028 or so so they now seem to be making some progress against that goal now from some context here Airbus is currently producing between 50 and 60 single a aircraft per

5:22 month not per year and their goal is to push that number up to 75 by the year 2027 but it is important to remember here that comac's orders for the c919 come mainly from Chinese operators so they don't really need the kind of production rates that Airbus or Boeing have but comak and China's leadership seem to be quite Keen to expand that customer list beyond the country's own borders an existing brune based startup customer Gallop air seemed to have Chinese owners but comak is also aggressively promoting the aircraft in countries like Vietnam so we will have to kind of wait and see where that leads now the problem for the Chinese is that the c919 is currently only certified in China they do have a smaller Regional

6:09 Jet the c909 which is previously known as the arj21 which is also certified in Indonesia but that's about it because of this comac has recently been pursuing European certification especially for the c919 in order to make it easier to score International sales but reent developments could make that more difficult on the 6th of January the United State added comac to the list of companies that work with China's military and while this didn't add any direct sanctions to the company it could discourage international buyers and suppliers from working closer with them to be clear this move is completely separate from any future tariffs comak

6:55 currently sources quite a lot of systems and components for its aircraft from foreign suppliers which could expose it to Future tariffs from the United States and in the past several people have been arrested and accused of spying on behalf of China's aviation industry so these International tensions aren't exactly new and while we're speaking of Espionage the sponsor who made this extra video possible is in cogni that's a company whose sole purpose is to stop your personal data from being sold over the web the reason you keep getting spam emails and Robo calls is because these Shady deals are currently going on behind your back but incog can help you put a stop to that by basically doing all of the heavy lifting for you so if

7:41 that sounds interesting incog is offering you my viewers an awesome 60% discount if you go to incognito.com Pilot and use the Code Pilot I use them myself and they have worked great for me and if you choose to sign up for them as well it will also support the work that we are doing thank you incog now let's continue commercial Aviation and the world of rocket launchers usually stay way out of each other's way for obvious reasons but that took a bit more effort than usual on the 16th of January this year when a SpaceX Starship suffered a rapid unscheduled disassembly about 8 minutes of the launch from spacex's Texas site according to Elon Musk there was a leak of fuel or oxygen into the

8:28 cavity above of the ship's Indian firewall which was too great for the gases to be vented out as they normally would be now one of the problems with the timing of that failure was that it put the spacecraft over the Turks and Kos Islands when it exploded and it appears that there were no Nots alerting air traffic control or pilots in that region about the launch and its possible trajectory now fortunately the falling debris were visible from pretty far away hundreds of miles in fact so a number of Pilots alerted their traffic control and then diverted or entered into a hold while the show was going on and a few of those aircraft also ended up declaring fuel emergencies before diverting now for the people actually

9:14 living on the Turks and Kos this spectacle was obviously even more worrying also including another dimension sound obviously the debris was supersonic as it entered the atmosphere meaning that the people below were hit by a barrow of several Sonic booms which reportedly felt like an earthquake to them fortunately there has been no reports of injuries but the event prompted discussions and an investigation from the FAA the Federal Aviation Administration who handles spacex's launches the agency will now require SpaceX to perform a mishap investigation into what happened to that vehicle and it has also effectively grounded Starship as we record this but beyond what happened to the Starship

10:00 itself this event obviously also raises some questions about the way that Hazard areas are identified during space launches in general do we need to rethink how space launches are made and what their impact on Aviation actually is let me know what you think in the comments below and while you're down there like And subscribe but also ask your most pressing questions because we will choose a few of those to answer in our new summary next month our next story involves the devastating fires in Los Angeles I have been fascinated by The Bravery and skills shown by all the firefighters and volunteers who have been putting their lives online here to help you know their neighbors and people around them and obviously I've also looked at those awesome firefighting aircraft now I'm

10:48 happy to see Neighbors coming together to help in situations like this Canada regularly sends its firebombing aircraft to help its Southern neighbors this time of year and Mexico also sent firefighters to help fight this particular Blaze but there are other things that makes me less happy to see I'm sure many of you saw the story of the Canadian CL 415 super scooper which was damaged and then grounded after hitting a small drone during a firefighting Mission now the fact that someone decides to fly a drone in the path of the aircraft presumably to just get some cool shot of them doing their work is in my view Beyond comp apprehension yeah I know that this was only a small drone of the size that

11:35 normally doesn't even need a license but to be clear here it was definitely flown illegally and it irritates me to no end it's not like these Pilots need more challenges during the missions you would think that it should be obvious why you can't fly drones in an area with low flying aircraft and helicopters are operating to try and fight these fires what if for for example one of those drones would have gone through the cockpit window for example now that's not me just making stuff off that's actually something that's happened with helicopters in the past with one drone hitting an occupant straight in the face it's also worth remembering here that drones are powered with lithium batteries now I don't know if the Drone in the pictures shown was recovered from

12:21 the ground or from inside of the plane's Wing where fuel tanks usually are but while its battery was clearly damaged in the Collision fortunately it doesn't look like it ignited which it easily could have so what I'm trying to say here is that there are so many ways that this could have gone a lot worse but what's more infuriating is that even after this happened police authorities in the LA area kept spotting flying drones over those fires by January the 13th 4 days after that Canadian firebombing plane was damaged they had detected 48 of them in total and they keep appearing now the plane in question was repaired 4 days later and was then thrown immediately back into the fight against the fires But Not only was that one

13:08 aircraft unavailable for that period all aerial firefighting had to stop for half an hour after this incident as the authorities tried to secure the airspace for them so that means that moves like this endanger the crew of the aircraft obviously but also the firefighters below and it only increases the devastation so do people really need the threat of a $75,000 fine and a oneyear prison sentence to understand this apparently anyway time for a gear change and a new topic airlines in the United States are getting sued for chronically late flights the US Department of Transport defines chronically delayed flights as flights performed at least 10 times per

13:54 month which are cancel or arrive at their destination more than 30 minutes late over 50% % of the time all in one single month now the idea here is to force Airlines to keep realistic schedules and notice that these chronic delays are defined using the arrival time not the departure time you see Airlines generally use flight durations longer than the actual expected flight time when they're setting up their schedules and they do this both to keep the expectations of the passengers in check and also to cover for small delays on departure now the do argues that when the airlines have had a few delays in a row on a specific flight well then they should readjust their published schedule in order to make it more realistic and

14:39 if they don't well then they are negligent or misleading and this could lead to people missing their connecting flights the first airline to get in the sights of the US Transportation Department for such delays was Jet Blue the department identified four specific flights with delays like this three departed from New York heading to a rile Durham Fort laale and Orlando and a fourth flight between Fort lale and Windor locks in Connecticut those flights all took place in 2022 and 2023 and the penalty for Jet Blue has been set to $2 million which is the first one of its kind for any airline in the country yet blue will pay half that amount as a fine and the other half will be paid directly to Future customers who are hit with similar

15:25 problems jetu has agreed to give vouchers worth $75 or more to passengers whose flights are canceled or delayed more than 3 hours and then a couple of weeks later similar moves were also announced against two more Airlines Southwest and Frontier but here we have some small twists with Frontier the Department of Transport has set a fine of $650,000 but the airline will only pay $325,000 the rest would be due if they misbehave again within the next 3 years years and in southwest's case the dot are suing the airline in court in order to have them pay maximum civil penalties this time the focus was on flights between Chicago Midway and Oakland in

16:12 California as well as other flights between Baltimore and Cleveland now the airlines do have some arguments of their own here Southwest said that those flights happened over two years ago and boasted that in 2024 they had a 99% flight completion rate beating everyone else in in the US and JetBlue also highlighted that these are old flights and argued that the US government has to share some of the blame here because of the understaffing of air traffic control contributing to these delays they also added that they hope that a new Administration will prioritize ATC modernization and the likely reason they mentioned that was because all of these moves by the US Department of Transport were done by the outgoing Administration and that means that we

16:59 don't yet know if the new president's government would pursue these fines in particular that do suit against Southwest and it turns out that that's a great segue to our last topic Donald Trump's Administration and their effects on Aviation I did a video on what that might look like a few months ago and now we're beginning to see some of the results sort of Trump's choice to replace transport secretary Pete budich is Shan Duffy and one of his first statements was to say that Boeing needs some tough love to mend its ways also highlighting that the company is the country's largest exporter more specifically Duffy has said that he intends to keep the production cap of 38737 Max aircraft per

17:44 month which the FAA put into place last year and he also stated that he plans to meet with boing's CEO at the earliest possible moment now as we are recording this not all nominations in the new government are final so so there's obviously more to come here but the main question for most observers in the aviation world has to do with tariffs specifically towards China and well basically everyone else and on that topic there are some mixed messages Trump didn't introduce these new tariffs on the first day of his presidency as he had previously promised that he would do instead he is calling for studies on tariffs against China Mexico and Canada and he also spoke on the phone with Chinese president XI Jin

18:30 ping before his inauguration and he continues to threaten tariffs towards several countries including European union members now this matter would likely stay fluid for some time until we see what actually happens and also what counter tariffs are imposed on the United States by the countries who are ultimately targeted but what do you think let me know in the comments here below and also let me know what you think of this new video format sadly after the original taping of this video we received the tragic news of a midair Collision over Washington DC involving a crj700 flown by PSA on behalf of American Airlines and a US Army VH 60m Blackhawk

19:16 helicopter as I'm recording this the recovery efforts are still ongoing but sadly it appears that all 64 passengers and crew in the crj and three crew members in the helicopter have all perished if that turns out to be true it would make this the first fatal crash of any American registered passenger jet on American soil since the colan air crash back in 2009 now the PSA crew were performing American Airlines flight 5342 from V Kansas over to Washington Ronald Reagan National Airport a service that typically arrives at its destination around 900 p.m. local time the aircraft used was a 20-year-old crj 700 as I said carrying 60 passengers and four crew and

20:03 according to an army representative the three crew members in the helicopter was completing some sort of training flight when the disaster struck it's worth noting that this specific helicopter unit routinely carry senior officers or other VIPs around Washington so what do we know so far well the PSA crj700 was initially on approach for Runway 01 which is the longest available runway in Ronald Reagan Airport during their approach a controller asked them if they could transition to the slightly shorter Runway 33 instead in order to help ease the traffic flow which the crew agreed to do moments later a controller also asked an army helicopter crew with call sign Pat 25 if they had the crj in sight

20:50 and that helicopter crew responded affirmatively but there was more than one helicopter in this formation and there was also a departing aircraft from rway Z 1 at around the same time so as we're recording this we don't really know which helicopter crew responded or which aircraft they confirm to have in sight the helicopter in question was equipped with a mode as transponder but did not transmit a dsb information that's why it couldn't be tracked on Flight Radar 24 for example and this transponder should have meant that the anti-collision system tcast would be operational but below 1,000 ft all oral tcast warnings are normally inhibited anyway we will learn much more about this during the coming weeks and months and it would likely take years

21:36 before the final report is released but one thing that we can be absolutely certain of is that this is a sad Landmark event for aviation in the United States now there have been other fatalities on flights in the US after the Corgan air crash including Asiana flight 214 in San Francisco in 2013 which I actually covered over on the mentop pilot Channel but this accident seems to have end a period of nearly 16 years without deadly crashes involving us passenger carriers and with many discussions in the previous years about possible ATC shortages and congestions at Key airport including the one where this tragedy hit we are likely going to hear much more about that as this investigation gets underway in any case the thoughts of my team and I goes out to the friends and

22:23 families of the victims and we wish for strength and resolve for the investigators that will now take this off on their work will eventually make us understand the root cause to this horrible accident and we will then be able to learn from it and make Aviation even safer that's the way that we always operate and on that somber note I'll finish this episode there are links to American Airlines and any other crisis resources that we can find in the description here below and as always when something like this happens I will soon set up a patreon zoom hangout where my patrons can ask their questions directly to me and any experts that I invite if you want to join this go to patreon.com jooin Mentor pilot we've set up a free membership for a week for this

23:10 occasion my name is Peter hornfeld you're watching Mentor now and I hope that you will have an absolutely fantastic day bye-bye