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.
Mobile satellite communications specialist Inmarsat leveraged a “groundbreaking but traditional mathematics-based process” to analyze data from other flights that use its satellite network and establish a pattern that helped investigators nail down Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 final flight path as traveling south over the Indian Ocean, an Inmarsat executive explained.
An industry-led working group collecting best practices for helping pilots improve their situational awareness has narrowed its focus to monitoring the flight path, two group members tell Aviation Week. “We realized that that’s where the action is,” says NTSB Member Robert Sumwalt, whose challenge to industry at a 2012 human factors meeting led to the working group’s formation (Aviation DAILY, July 19, 2013).
As industry tackles areas like runway safety and inflight loss of control, which are seen as ripe for safety improvement, a working group is zeroing in on ways to minimize the most common contributor to airline accidents: inadequate flightpath monitoring.
