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.
Egyptian-led investigators of the EgyptAir Flight 990 accident have produced a scenario for mechanical failure of the Boeing 767 elevator control and note that such a failure occurred on another 767 on the ground. Meanwhile, some of the evidence originally cited by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board as pointing to a suicide theory is now being downplayed.
In the strongest aviation safety move since the 1996 grounding of ValuJet, FAA on Friday proposed to suspend Alaska Airlines' authority to do heavy maintenance unless the carrier can demonstrate quickly that extensive record-keeping problems found during a recent audit have been addressed. If enacted, the proposal also would forbid Alaska from outsourcing any of its in-hangar maintenance, meaning the carrier's airworthy fleet would shrink naturally as planes needing scheduled work are grounded.
FAA in late April rolled out parameters for getting repair assessment guidelines for work done along the so-called ``pressure boundaries'' of a dozen models of older planes, but left industry guessing at the rule's true ramifications by not releasing guidance material outlining exactly what's expected.
