TERRAFUGIA LEAVES U.S. FOR CHINA
Flying car maker Terrafugia laid off most of its staff at its U.S. headquarters and will move to China. The company, which makes a folding-wing vehicle designed to drive to the airport and take off and land on conventional runways, recently received Special Light Sport Aircraft airworthiness certificate from the FAA but is not yet street legal. Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a large Chinese conglomerate, bought the company from its founders, a group of MIT graduates, in 2017. It laid off almost 100 people at its Woburn, MA. headquarters and did not immediately comment on the company’s future plans. When it got the FAA approval, the company said it planned to have road approval by the end of 2022.
MAX NOW FLYING EVERYWHERE
All the world’s major aviation authorities have recertified the Boeing 737 MAX. The European Aviation Safety Agency was the last to sign off on the aircraft. It also accepted all the FAA’s modification requirements without adding any of its own. “Following extensive analysis by EASA, we have determined that the 737 MAX can safely return to service,” said EASA Executive Director Patrick Ky. “This assessment was carried out in full independence of Boeing or the Federal Aviation Administration and without any economic or political pressure; we asked difficult questions until we got answers and pushed for solutions which satisfied our exacting safety requirements.” EASA did its own flight and simulator tests as part of an independent evaluation of the aircraft, which was grounded for almost two years following two crashes that killed a total of 346 people.
