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June 04, 2020

Piaggio Aerospace May Have A Future After All

Italian A/C Manufacturer Reportedly Draws 19 Bids

For those of you who thought the innovative Piaggio Aerospace program may be toast, you may be wrong. Piaggio Aerospace, best known for the curvy Avanti EVO Twin Turbo-Prop, filed for the equivalent of bankruptcy protection late in 2018. Since then, some 19 international concerns have expressed interest in acquiring the stumbling company. Via a public statement, the company’s special administrator Vincenzo Nicastro, reported that, “Bids came in a bit from all over the world but especially from North America, Europe and the Far East.”

Thus Far; FAA Has Refused to Require Their Installation

As expected for some time, the NTSB, in a safety recommendation report issued Tuesday called on helicopter manufacturers to equip turbine-powered helicopters with crash-resistant systems to record data, audio, and images. The NTSB asked the manufacturers – Airbus Helicopters, Bell, Leonardo, MD Helicopters, Robinson and Sikorsky – to act since the FAA has not implemented a series of NTSB recommendations made in 2013 and 2015. Those recommendations were issued after NTSB investigators found the lack of recorded data hindered their understanding of several crashes that could have serious flight safety implications.