Sean Broderick covers aviation safety, MRO, and the hardware side of the airline business from Aviation Week Network's Washington, D.C. office.
Broderick's aviation career started in 1991, working for Airbus in Toulouse. His industry experience includes four years with an aviation consultancy, where he helped launch a U.S. Part 121 carrier; 12 years with the American Association of Airport Executives, where he served as editor of Airport Magazine; and 20 years in full- and part-time roles with Aviation Week writing primarily about safety and the aftermarket.
Broderick was named the 2020 Aerospace Journalist of the Year by the Aerospace Media Awards. He also shared in a 2020 Neal Award for Best News Coverage with Aviation Week Network colleagues. Broderick and Aviation Week colleague John Croft shared the 2015 Flight Safety International Cecil A. Brownlow Publication Award recognizing "significant contributions by journalists to aviation safety awareness."
He graduated from James Madison University with a B.S. in Communications ('91) and earned an M.S. in Integrated Marketing Communications ('13) from West Virginia University.
FAA in mid-July kicked off special audits of nine U.S. major carriers, focusing on four specific programs required by agency regulations and guidance materials. Agency audit teams are going well beyond ensuring the oversight programs -- which cover safety, reliability, internal evaluation, and continuing analysis and surveillance (CAS) -- are in place. FAA's goal is to determine how each one is working at each carrier, and how the best individual programs can be shared with other airlines, partially through better FAA oversight.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators do not know for sure what started the chain of events that brought down TWA 800, but that hardly means the four-year probe was in vain. Quite the contrary -- aviation safety experts believe it will be remembered as the watershed event in an effort to beef up safety in the much-neglected area of non-structural systems.
Recommendations approved yesterday by the National Transportation Safety Board put a strong emphasis on improving the way everyone in commercial aviation -- from aircraft designers to mechanics -- deals with wiring systems. Two of the four recommendations, made as part of the TWA 800 investigation final draft report, deal specifically with wiring design, safety and upkeep. NTSB called on FAA to review aircraft design specifications to determine which wiring systems are safety-critical.
