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67 Killed in Potomac River Mid-Air Collision

At 8:47 p.m. on 29 January 2025, American Airlines Flight 5342 — a Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet operated by PSA Airlines — collided with a US Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter at an altitude of approximately 300 feet over the Potomac River, less than half a mile from the threshold of Runway 33 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. All 67 people aboard both aircraft were killed: 64 passengers and crew on the regional jet, and the three-member Army crew. It was the deadliest aviation accident on American soil since 2001, and the first fatal crash of a US commercial passenger flight since 2009.

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Iberia Takes World’s First A321XLR Delivery

On 30 October 2024, Airbus handed over the world’s first production A321XLR to Iberia at its Hamburg delivery centre, marking a defining moment in the commercial aviation industry. The aircraft’s entry into service heralded a new era in which single-aisle jets — long confined to short and medium-haul operations — could credibly challenge widebody aircraft on transatlantic routes.
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Voepass ATR 72 Spins to Ground, Killing 62

On 9 August 2024, a Voepass ATR 72-500 fell from cruising altitude and crashed into a residential neighbourhood near Vinhedo, São Paulo State, killing all 62 people on board. The accident was captured on video by ground witnesses and circulated widely on social media, becoming one of Brazil’s worst aviation disasters in recent memory and drawing urgent international attention to the hazards of airframe icing on regional turboprop aircraft.
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Boeing CEO Faces Senate Over Safety Culture

On 18 June 2024, Boeing’s chief executive Dave Calhoun appeared before a US Senate subcommittee investigating the aerospace manufacturer’s safety culture and quality control failures. The hearing, which featured new whistleblower allegations released just hours earlier, represented one of the most significant moments of congressional accountability in the company’s turbulent recent history.
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Singapore Airlines Turbulence Kills One, Injures 104

On 21 May 2024, Singapore Airlines Flight SQ321 encountered severe turbulence over Myanmar, killing one passenger and injuring 104 others in one of the most widely reported aviation safety incidents of the year. The event — the first turbulence-related fatality in commercial aviation in more than two decades — refocused industry and regulatory attention on the hazards of convective weather at cruise altitude and the limitations of current turbulence forecasting technology.
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Forged Documents, Real Aircraft: The AOG Technics Parts Fraud

Aircraft engine components on a workshop bench in an aviation maintenance hangar

A fraud investigation centred on a small UK aircraft parts broker has sent ripples through the global aviation maintenance industry. In September 2023, a High Court ruling and a Federal Aviation Administration notice brought the full scale of the AOG Technics scandal into sharp relief — revealing that tens of thousands of engine components had been sold with forged safety certificates, and that aircraft carrying those parts remained in service.

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