Collins Aerospace announced that Steve Timm has taken over as president of its avionics business unit, five months after the company merged with UTC Aerospace Systems (UTAS).

The FAA has assembled a new, multi-agency Technical Advisory Board (TAB) to review the proposed software fix for the Boeing 737 MAX’s maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS), the flight-control law implicated in two crashes of the aircraft type that killed 346 people over a five-month period.

New questions are being raised over the development and oversight of the Boeing 737 MAX after revelations the manufacturer knew about a misconfigured angle-of-attack (AOA) disagree annunciator alert message on the aircraft in 2017, but did not fix it or tell operators about the problem until after last October’s crash of a Lion Air 737 MAX 8—the first of two to strike the model in five months.

FAA is targeting late May or early June for approving Boeing’s proposed changes to the 737 MAX and issuing an airworthiness directive that would mandate the upgrades and clear the way for US MAX operations to resume, the agency told airline representatives April 12.

Airbus and Boeing commercial aircraft deliveries for 2019 year-to-date, sorted by most-recent delivery date.

L3 Commercial Aviation announced a new line of cockpit voice and flight-data recorders (CVR/FDR) designed to meet the 2021 European mandate for CVRs with a minimum of 25 hrs. of recording time.

As the investigation continues into the causes of last month’s Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX accident, sources close to the probe say flight data recorder (FDR) data firmly supports the supposition that the aircraft’s left angle-of-attack (AOA) sensor vane detached seconds after takeoff and that, contrary to statements from the airline, suggests the crew did not follow all the steps for the correct procedure for a runaway stabilizer.

Airbus and Boeing commercial aircraft gross orders for 2019 year-to-date, sorted by most-recent date of order placement with manufacturer.