State-owned airline, Estonian Air, officially ceased operations on November 8th 2015. This was following a European Union (EU) ruling stating that the airline had benefited from government funded subsidies, which gave the carrier unfair advantage. The airline was ordered to recover the US$91.3 million it had received from the government. The airline stated that it would be unable to repay the subsidies and consequently would be required to cease operations.

The Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) announced that they would be suspending the flying certificates of all Boeing 737 aircraft operating within Russia. This decision was prompted by reports that the tail control surfaces of the Boeing 737 suffer from constructive deficiencies. The IAC concerns stemmed from the 2013 fatal crash of Tatarsan Airlines Flight 363. Russia’s Aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, has stated that the IAC cannot prohibit airlines from operating their 737 aircraft. However, the IAC will be holding a meeting with Boeing representatives and officials from Russia’s regulatory bodies, to better understand the concerns associated with the Boeing 737 aircraft.

The U.S. National Transport Safety Board (NTSB) has recently released the 2014 accident statistics for the United States. The results indicate that, despite the decrease in fatal accident rates in 2014, the overall accident rate for the same period experienced a slight increase. The 2013 U.S. accident results showed an accident rate of 0.248 per 100,000 departures. However, this figure had increased to 0.311 per 100,000 departures in 2014. Despite this increase, the NTSB noted that no fatalities or hull losses (referring to an aircraft being written-off or destroyed) occurred in 2014.