In a momentous shift of its normally conciliatory relationship with aircraft manufacturers, the United States Senate, on June 17, 2020, introduced the “Aircraft Safety and Reform Act,” legislation that will, if enacted, effectively reverse the provisions of the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2018 (“2018 FAA Act”) which allow aircraft manufacturers to perform, with a minimum of FAA oversight, the certification for safety purposes, of the aircraft it manufactures. The proposed, bipartisan, legislation, seeks…

On June 4, 2020, President Trump issued an Executive Order, “EO On Accelerating the Nation’s Economic Recovery from the Covid-19 Emergency by Expediting Infrastructure Investments and Other Activities” (“EO”) for the expressed purpose of forestalling “the likelihood of a potentially protracted economic recovery with persistent high unemployment,” EO, Sec. 1, resulting from the business closures necessitated by the onslaught of Covid-19. Predicated on the authority granted in the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. § 1601,…

In the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, Pub. L. 115254, § 188, Congress required the Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) to “evaluate alternative noise metrics to current average day-night level standard, such as the use of actual noise sampling to address community airplane noise concerns.” In its April 14, 2020 Report to Congress (“Report”), FAA thumbed its nose at that mandate, and chose instead to enumerate the various available metrics, without any attempt at comparative analysis…

Attorney Paul Fraidenburgh shares insights from his recent meeting at the Pentagon about navigating the DOD Siting Clearinghouse process for the siting and development of new wind farms.  Click here to read the full article.  …

If there is anything to be learned from the FAA’s distribution of the $10 billion in funds allocated to airports in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, it is that allocating billions of dollars in just a few weeks is more difficult than it sounds. On March 27, 2020, the CARES Act was signed into law as Public Law No. 116-136. The CARES Act is aimed at mitigating the effects of…

The development of Vertical Take-Off and Landing Vehicles (“VTOL”) looks like the wave of the future, especially where highway traffic is becoming an increasing impediment to a constructive workday. All is not rosy, however, where VTOL must share the air with conventional aircraft and the ground with densely populated urban areas. The most advanced VTOL to date is a U.S. based technology anticipated to become available for commercial use in 2023. The aircraft is configured…