Spirit Airlines and Southwest Airlines have “serious competitive concerns” about the planned strategic partnership between JetBlue Airways and American Airlines. Miramar, Florida-based Spirit on 7 January filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation (DOT), asking the agency to take a closer look at the plan, and ensure there are no anti-competitive measures within it that should be prohibited. Southwest says in an 11 January letter to the DOT that it joins Spirit in these reservations about the venture. Spirit’s complaint was not immediately available. “Spirit’s complaint mirrors Southwest’s concerns about the partnership, which are especially acute at slot-controlled airports that both American and JetBlue serve, particularly Ronald Reagan Washington National airport (DCA) and New York La Guardia airport (LGA),” Dallas-based Southwest writes. “The competitive issues … are magnified by the fact that JetBlue acquired the great majority of its DCA and LGA slots via government-mandated slot divestitures based on JetBlue’s role as an independent low-cost carrier (LCC) that would exert competitive discipline against dominant legacy airlines at those airports.” The airline adds that if American and JetBlue begin to coordinate their services, this “would obviously no longer be considered an independent LCC providing competitive discipline to American or other legacy carriers”. In its own letter to the DOT, the National Air Carrier Association (NACA), which represents low-cost and cargo carriers including Spirit, Frontier AIrlines, Allegiant Air, Sun Country Airlines and Atlas Air, says on 8 January that it supports the concerns, and is requesting an investigation of the planned cooperation “to determine if implementation of these agreements would constitute an anticompetitive unfair method of competition that must be prohibited consistent with the public interest”. American and JetBlue announced the partnership last July, saying at the time they propose to operate codeshare flights and offer reciprocal frequent flier benefits, in order to better weather the coronavirus crisis. The joint venture would be focused on cities in the Northeast USA. In a letter to the DOT at that time, Southwest did not completely oppose the collaboration but said “certain aspects of the transaction raise potentially serious anticompetitive concerns that should be thoroughly investigated and remedied”. “For example, there have been media reports that the two carriers envision a much greater degree of cooperation and coordination than mere codesharing,” it adds. American, it maintains, dominates slots at the two major East Coast airports, and has an unfair advantage should it share its resources with JetBlue as part of the deal. The two airlines would together have 64% of slots at Reagan National, and 32% at LaGuardia, according to 2020 figures it quotes from the FAA. Southwest’s figures for the two airports were 9% and 5%, respectively.

The Sriwijaya Air Boeing 737-500 that crashed four minutes after taking off from Jakarta went into storage in March 2020, and was certified to be airworthy by Indonesian authorities in December, before its re-entry into service. The Indonesian transport ministry and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) add that the carrier had “met the stipulated conditions” for the extension of its aircraft operation certificate (AOC), after a routine check in November. The stricken aircraft, a 24-year-old 737 registered PK-CLC, also underwent inspection on 14 December after being in storage since 23 March amid the coronavirus pandemic, said the Indonesian DGCA. Director-General of Civil Aviation Novie Riyanto says the inspection is routine for all aircraft that had been parked, and is part of return-to-service procedures. The former Continental Airlines jet had its airworthiness certificate extended to 17 December 2021, and returned to Sriwijaya operations on 19 December, but did not fly any passengers. It was only on 22 December that it resumed passenger flights, discloses the Indonesian transport ministry. The authorities also conducted a separate inspection in early December on the aircraft’s engine bleed air 5th stage check valve, but it is unclear what the result was. This was in response to the US Federal Aviation Administration’s order for the inspection of US-operated 737 aircraft that have been parked for more than a week, for corrosion of engine bleed air valves. PK-CLC, operating flight SJ182, plunged into the sea after take-off on 9 January, killing 62 passengers and crew. Unverified data from flight tracking sites suggest that contact was lost roughly 4min after take-off, with the aircraft reaching a maximum altitude of 10,900ft before rapidly descending to just 250ft, when transponder contact was lost. Search and rescue operations are still ongoing, with the authorities closing in on the location of the aircraft’s cockpit-voice and flight-data recorders. So far, Indonesian search and rescue agency Basarnas says aircraft debris, as well as bodies and clothing, have been pulled from the Java Sea. Reports, citing investigators, have also indicated that the aircraft was likely to have remained intact before it hit the water. It was also reported that the crew did not declare an emergency before the incident, nor did they report any issues with the aircraft before it crashed.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the federal agency responsible for aviation accident investigations, has recommended closer scrutiny of flight instructors following a 2019 crash in Mokuleia, Hawaii, that killed 11 people. In a safety recommendation report published on 7 January, the NTSB says the pilot of the accident aircraft, which was carrying skydivers on a parachute jump flight, had been inadequately trained. It asks the Federal Aviation Administration to create a more robust programme to flag instructors whose “student pass rate… has become substandard”. “The FAA’s stated practices on flight instructor surveillance are that substandard pass rates are indicative of instruction that needs to be more closely monitored so the FAA inspector can determine whether the instructor is providing adequate flight training,” the agency says. The NTSB is making the recommendation following a fatal accident on 21 June 2019. A twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 65-A90 crashed just after take-off, destroying the aircraft, and killing the pilot and his 10 passengers. While the investigation is ongoing, the NTSB has already determined that the pilot had likely been inadequately trained, and had initially failed numerous FAA exams after training at a school in Torrance, California. “Even though the… flight instructor endorsed the accident pilot for a private pilot certificate with an airplane single-engine land rating, an instrument airplane rating, and a commercial pilot certificate with an airplane multi-engine land rating, the accident pilot did not pass the checkrides for each on the first attempt,” the NTSB says. In addition, the FAA had determined that in the two years ending in April 2020, only 59% of that same instructor’s students passed their checkrides on their first attempt. The FAA offers several paths for instructors to keep their qualification - one of them requires a pass rate of 80% of five or more students within a two-year period. “The NTSB found, however, that even with the substandard student pass rate, the Mokuleia accident pilot’s flight instructor was not receiving appropriate additional scrutiny,” the organisation adds. “According to the FAA’s Aviation Instructor’s Handbook, a student’s ‘failure to perform often results from an instructor’s inability to transfer the required information.’” NTSB now wants the FAA to be automatically notified if instructors’ pass rates dip below 80%. In response to the recommendation, the FAA says it is “working closely” with the NTSB to investigate the accident in Hawaii, and that it “takes NTSB findings and recommendations very seriously”. “The FAA is evaluating the NTSB’s recommendations from this investigation and will provide a preliminary response within 90 days,” the agency adds. In the US, certified pilots who choose to teach often use the job as a stepping stone to a commercial pilot role at a passenger or cargo carrier. Since 2013, US regulations require new airline pilots to have 1,500h of total flight time before they can apply. With the high cost of training and renting aircraft, many candidates first become flight instructors with the goal of logging hours. But instructor pay tends to be low, and before the aviation downturn, when airlines were hiring, turnover levels were high – about 80% at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, according to the school’s assistant dean and chairman of flight training Kenneth Byrnes. Once pilots had hit the required time, “they were gone”, he says. “The goal of a flight instructor is ‘to teach each learner in such a way that he or she will become a competent pilot,’” the NTSB says, quoting from the FAA’s Aviation Instructor’s Handbook. “The NTSB is concerned that the substandard pass rate of the accident pilot’s flight instructor did not trigger any FAA surveillance and that other flight instructors with similar (or lower) pass rates might not receive any FAA surveillance.”