A small nonprofit air ambulance service in Maine that has been accident-free could provide an alterative model for such operations across the nation. LifeFlight of Maine, which operates two Agusta A109E helicopters, has outfitted the aircraft with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment to improve flight safety, and in the process has adopted nearly every safety recommendation that the National Transportation Safety Board has made for air ambulances, the Washington Post reported. LifeFlight spent $275,000 on night vision goggles, spare parts and monthly training sessions on using the equipment. Both helicopters are equipped with three-axis autopilots, radar altimeters and onboard weather radar, allowing them to fly under instrument flight rules. The program, created in 1998 by two Maine hospitals but operated as a separate nonprofit organization, has never had an accident. Its helicopters respond to about one-half of 1 percent of all emergency medical calls in the state, or 1,400 last year. That’s a far smaller proportion than for many other air ambulance services, most of which are for-profit businesses.

The NTSB wants the FAA to take quick action that could prevent another mid-air collision over the Hudson River like the one earlier this month that killed nine people. Establishing mandatory altitudes for airplanes and helicopters to fly at while in the congested river corridor is one move that could help, the board said in a letter to the FAA. Requiring all aircraft to monitor and transmit on a common traffic advisory frequency could also make a difference, the letter says. The NTSB wants changes to air traffic control procedures so that controllers would be required to either tell aircraft to switch to the advisory frequency or else clear aircraft to enter the Class B airspace above the river corridor. At the time of the collision, the Piper Lance that was involved had asked for flight following and was being handed off from one controller to another, while the sightseeing helicopter was making position reports on the existing common frequency. The FAA has said it will wait to act until it sees the report from a working group of controllers and safety experts that it convened two weeks ago. That group is expected to complete its work this week, the New York Times reported.

The National Transportation Safety Board is seeking stricter and more thorough regulations that would protect airframes of all sizes from bird strikes. The new recommendation comes as the board released its report into the March 2008 collision of a Cessna 500 jet with a pelican near Oklahoma City. The jet lost control and crashed, killing all five people on board. Similar to recommendations the NTSB made after the ditching of a US Airways flight in the Hudson River earlier this year, the board also wants better reporting and data on aircraft bird strikes. The FAA also should do a better job making sure airports in wildlife areas stick to published plans to deter birds and other animals, the NTSB said. In the Oklahoma City crash, the pelican struck one wing, causing extensive damage to it. The NTSB said it wants to see more published guidance for how pilots should respond in such incidents.

A pair of runway incursions three weeks apart at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport has investigators looking at the training process for new air traffic controllers. In the June 3 and June 26 incidents, the same controller in training was on position, though backed by different certified controllers supervising the trainee, CNN reported. In the first incident, a Southwest flight and a Continental Express flight were cleared to take off from the same runway at the same time. The crew of the Continental flight saw the other airplane and stopped, avoiding a collision by about 500 feet. In the second incident, an ExpressJet flight was cleared to taxi across the same runway that a CommutAir flight had been cleared to take off from. The ExpressJet plane stopped before crossing the runway when it saw the other plane. FAA officials said the responsibility for the incursions will lie with the two certified controllers who were watching the trainee when the incidents occurred. The air traffic controllers union said the trainee had completed less than a third of the required training hours on that position had received only 11 hours of training in June. The union attributed that low number of training hours to the large number of trainees, which has made it hard at some airports to pair certified controllers with trainees.

Reaffirming what many general aviation pilots already knew, a new report from the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found that general aviation planes don’t pose a security risk and that GA airports are largely secure. The report, conducted at the request of a Texas congresswoman, directly refuted claims in a Houston television station’s report last year that three GA airports were not secure, making it easy for anyone to gain access to planes. The inspector general found that at those three airports, as well as at many other airports, the combined efforts of law enforcement and airport users serve to keep airports secure, often simply because airport users recognize when something is out of place. The report suggests that existing measures are sufficient, but acknowledges the recent opposition from many pilots over the Transportation Security Administration’s plans for GA pilots coming into larger airports to pass background checks. The inspector general’s report ducks taking a position on the expansion of the Large Aircraft Security Program, but notes that it “would push existing security efforts for the largest charter flights down to many smaller aircraft involved in corporate and private aviation.” The report does not make any recommendations to the TSA or other federal agencies.

The FAA is asking all U.S. airlines to take new measures to check out prospective hires and to provide better training. The first round of recommendations emerged after a meeting of government officials, airlines and union representatives last week, the FAA said in a news release. While the FAA wants all airlines to sign on to the changes, for now they’ll be voluntary. The changes would include doing more thorough background checks of new hires to determine not just their performance at other airlines, but any checkride failures or other training problems. And airlines will start looking for ways to bolster their training programs, though it’s too soon to say what specific changes might be made. The meeting last week was spurred in part by the crash of a Colgan Air Bombardier Q400 last winter that killed 50 people in Buffalo, N.Y. The pilots of that plane were fatigued and may not have had enough training in it, an NTSB hearing revealed. The captain had previously failed a checkride that Colgan did not know about, either. In addition to the newly announced voluntary efforts, the FAA has said it will revise mandatory flight time and duty time limits for flight crews.

General aviation pilots and advocacy groups will continue working with residents and businesses to develop safety plans for flights at North Las Vegas Airport, but there are no flight restrictions in the airport’s future. The state legislature last week passed a resolution encouraging the collaboration, but it left out earlier language that would have let county officials regulate airport operations, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association reported. Following two fatal crashes at North Las Vegas last year, including an experimental plane that destroyed a home and killed three people when it crashed, some residents and officials said they wanted to ban certain types of planes at North Las Vegas. AOPA had expected the legislative victory since April, when the group was able to get the pending bill changed. A working group set up earlier this year to focus on safety issues at the airport doesn’t have a specific mandate, though it is expected to make proposals and recommendations later this year. It would be up to the pilot community to adopt whatever suggestions emerge.

A regional airline that flies to airports in Florida and the Bahamas could face $1.3 million in fines from the FAA for crew schedules that forced pilots to exceed their daily and weekly duty limits. The FAA is also charging the airline and flight school with installing uncertified air conditioning compressors and other parts in some planes, the Wall Street Journal reported. The airline replaced those parts with certified equipment when the FAA pointed out the problems. The FAA and U.S. House investigators have been looking into scheduling issues at Gulfstream for about a year. Some pilots there said the airline deliberately falsified its records to make it look like pilots were flying within allowable duty hour limits, when it fact they were forced to fly more. But in announcing the potential fine last week, the FAA said the discrepancies apparently emerged when paper flight logs were entered into an electronic database. Gulfstream has 30 days to respond to the FAA’s proposed fine and said it has evidence refuting the FAA’s charges.

The two pilots flying Continental Connection flight 3407 when it crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., in February may have slept in the crew lounge at Newark before the flight and one commuted overnight from Seattle the night before. Those and other details into the flight emerged during three days of National Transportation Safety Board hearings last week, shining a bright light on the grueling schedules pilots for regional airlines must maintain, the New York Times reported. Colgan Air, which operated the Continental Connection flight, said at the hearings that Capt. Marvin Renslow made about $55,000 per year and that First Officer Rebecca Shaw earned $25,000 annually. But the NTSB calculated, based on the number of hours in her logbook, that Shaw was actually earning just $16,000 per year, since pay is based on the number of hours in the air. The hearing also focused on whether Shaw may have been sick and whether Renslow had ever received training on how the Bombardier Q400’s stick shaker and stick pusher worked – both devices made to prevent a stall. What the cockpit voice recorder transcripts made clear was that both pilots violated sterile cockpit rules during the approach and neither appeared to notice that the plane was loosing airspeed in the seconds before it stalled. The CVR also captured a conversation between the two pilots in which Shaw said she had never flown in icing conditions and was worried about doing so; the plane crashed in an area of light to moderate icing.

Responding to two spin-related accidents since 1998, the FAA is now requiring owners of all Cessna 150s and Cessna 152s to make changes to the rudder – or else install a placard prohibiting acrobatic maneuvers. The AD requires installation of a kit that replaces the rudder stop, rudder stop bumper and some other hardware. It comes partially in response to a 2005 accident in which a student and instructor practicing spins were killed when they were unable to recover from a spin. Investigators found the rudder nut had jammed behind the bumper because a mechanic had installed a part incorrectly. A similar problem occurred in the 1998 accident in Canada. The airworthiness directive gives owners 100 hours of flight time or 12 months, whichever comes first, to make the changes. The FAA expects it will cost each owner $410 in parts and labor to comply with the AD. Though the cost is relatively low, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association has objected to the AD all along on the grounds that most problems could be caught by a one-time visual inspection and that the FAA was overreacting. But the FAA argued that the issue is a design problem, not a mechanical one, and that a visual inspection would not be enough.