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.
Airbus A380 operators are facing inspections of specific belly-area fuselage panels after loose panels were discovered on an in-service aircraft, says a draft European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) directive published Oct. 18. EASA’s proposed directive will require detailed inspections around specific belly fairing frames at 1,200 total cycles or 240 cycles after a final rule’s effective date. The checks, based on an Airbus service information sent out in early October, would be required every 1,200 cycles unless an Airbus-suggested modification is made.
The furloughing of FAA inspectors and technical staff delayed routine approvals for a majority of repair stations surveyed by the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA), the trade group reports. Sixty-one percent of respondents to ARSA’s survey report that tasks such as repair station manual approvals were put on hold due to the furloughs. Thirty repair stations participated in ARSA’s survey.
The narrowing wage gap between the world’s economically mature markets and its emerging ones could wipe out the cost advantage of sending labor-intensive widebody heavy checks to regions such as Asia by the early 2020s, industry analysts contend. “If we look back even 10 years, the gap between developed and developing regions of the world created a very large arbitrage play for companies that could take airplanes into that lower-cost region,” says TeamSAI CEO Chris Doan. “We saw a lot of airplanes move from North America and Europe into Asia.”
