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.
Seven industry groups are concerned that recently issued guidance to support FAA's insulation flammability reduction rule significantly expands the materials that the regulations cover. As O&M went to press, FAA was considering both a joint request from the parties and a broader request from one of the associations to extend the rule's Sept. 2 effective date so the issues could be addressed.
FAA has been negotiating airworthiness bilaterals since the 1930s. Today, the agency has some form of airworthiness bilateral with 30 countries (see chart, p. 54). For years, FAA and its foreign counterparts negotiated bilateral airworthiness agreements (BAAs). These took the form of single documents that had both the boilerplate, high-level language summarizing the deal and the technical details that, from the aviation industry's perspective at least, contained each accord's most important parts.
FAA's recently issued order on Instructions for Continued Airworthiness (ICA) appears to give independent repair stations a bit more access to key repair data, but stops well short of adopting all of the proposals put forth by a repair station industry group last year.
