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.
By Sean Broderick/AviationNow.com Maintenance&Safety Editor, [email protected]
FAA's recently mandated service difficulty report (SDR) revamp will mean too much burden for too little safety benefit, operators and repair stations believe. Industry questioned the level of detail demanded by FAA in the new reports, which must be filed from Jan. 16. American and Delta said FAA's demand that SDRs be filed on defects that have fixes outlined in manufacturer repair manuals -- in other words, problems that are already well-understood and documented -- is a waste of time.
Memory lapses and procedural shortcuts are the leading causes of maintenance errors, and more than 60% of workers responding believe management either doesn't know about short-cuts or tolerates them, according to a ground-breaking Australian survey on maintenance human factors.
FAA in mid-July kicked off special audits of nine U.S. major carriers, focusing on four specific programs required by agency regulations and guidance materials. Agency audit teams are going well beyond ensuring the oversight programs -- which cover safety, reliability, internal evaluation, and continuing analysis and surveillance (CAS) -- are in place. FAA's goal is to determine how each one is working at each carrier, and how the best individual programs can be shared with other airlines, partially through better FAA oversight.
