Oxford company secures funding for CO2-based jet fuel project
An Oxford University start-up company has teamed with United Airlines to make jet fuel from carbon dioxide. In 2020, Oxford scientists announced they had discovered the process for transforming carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons that could be used to power aircraft. The team set up OXCCU, which announced at the beginning of June that it had secured £18 million in funding from new investors including two global energy companies and...
Unruly passengers on the rise
The International Aviation Transport Association (IATA) reports the number of unruly passenger incidents increased in 2022. IATA calls for more states to take the necessary authority to prosecute passengers under Montreal Protocol 2014 (MP14), and for greater crew de-escalation training. Analysis illustrates that the number of unruly passenger events changed from one in every 835 flights in 2021, to one in 568 flights in 2022. The...
Industry calls on government to enact student funding protection
Industry associations are calling on government to enact financial protection measures to prevent students from losing their training investment in the event of a flying school folding. Following the recent demise of two large Approved Training Organisations (ATOs), Tayside Aviation and FTA-Global, the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA), Bristol Groundschool, Wings Alliance and Seager Publishing have written a joint letter to...
To oversee or not to oversee?
Investigations by FTN have uncovered the possibility that the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) may be failing in a statutory duty to provide financial oversight of UK flying schools, potentially increasing the financial risk to students enrolling on flight training programmes. As has been recently reported in FTN, two major UK Approved Training Organisation (ATOs) have collapsed over the last couple of months and in both instances,...
Overflight of glider sites
The UK Civil Aviation Authority is reminding pilots to avoid overflying gliding sites. The CAA says that almost all gliding sites in the UK use a winch launch, where gliders are launched with a winch and steel cable instead of being towed by an aircraft. The CAA adds that 90% of gliding clubs winch launch to at least 2,000 feet above ground level. A winch launching glider can reach over 1,000 feet in about 20 seconds, says the CAA,...
