Pilots carry wide-ranging authority when it comes to safety onboard the plane, said Rader, the American Airlines spokeswoman.
Officers now provide critical life safety functions during plane incidents, from firefighting and passenger rescue to basic medical support and assisting in water rescues.
The board has not so far said the battery problem would endanger the safety of the plane in flight nor recommended that the planes be grounded.
It said its safety tests showed that plane engines had "increased tolerance levels in low ash density areas".
Officials worry heavier passengers squished into one seat may pose a safety hazard when a plane must be evacuated during an emergency.
It is a bit like learning the safety instructions on a plane before take-off: you hope you will never need them, but you know it would be unwise to miss the lesson.
On Sunday, the National Transportation Safety Board said the plane's cockpit voice recorder captured sounds of loud thumps seconds after the pilot and first officer commented on a nearby flock of birds.
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Over the ocean, where there is no radar to warn of impending collisions, safety rules require a plane to occupy a slice of sky 160 kilometers long and 300 meters thick, severely limiting traffic.
Ray Conner, the head of Boeing's commercial airplanes unit, said Friday that Boeing is convinced about the aircraft's safety, and that the airlines that have bought the plane are also confident in its safety.
The blocking of plans for the Queen Mother to fly to Iran in Concorde by Harold Wilson because he was worried about the plane's safety.
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Jordan also repeated his belief that the plane had no safety problems, saying the company would have voluntarily grounded it if any mechanical trouble had been found.
The National Transportation Safety Board is also asking how problems with the aircraft's lithium-ion battery system that led to a fire aboard one plane and smoke in another escaped the notice of regulators and company officials who certified the plane's safety.
Their jumps were staggered for safety reasons and both left the plane at about 14, 000ft (4, 300m), reaching speeds of up to 200mph (322kph) in freefall.
Juneyao recalled a flight out of Shanghai and transferred passengers to another plane after determining there was no safety threat, the airline said in a statement posted to the Twitter-like Sina Weibo microblogging service.
"The air marshals and the flight attendants have legitimate concerns, certainly, for their own safety, but the threat of taking over a plane with a small, sharp instrument is zero, " Hawley said.
The P-51 aircraft, The Galloping Ghost, was flying the fastest it had ever flown on the Reno course since the plane had been modified in 2009, the safety board said.
For instance, currently each plane is flying within a very large, imaginary "safety sphere", to maintain safe distances between airborne aircraft.
According to news reports, the MD-83 was involved in a minor safety incident in August 2006 among others when Alaska Airlines operated the plane.
Another airline expert, Philip Butterworth-Hayes, said the safety of the Boeing 737 along with the five runways of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam and its advanced safety systems would have helped as the pilot tried to land the plane.
With nine fatal plane crashes between 1974 and 2003, the airline had a poor safety record.
To prevent that, controllers must keep a hockey-puck-shaped safety zone at least 5 kilometers in diameter and 300 meters thick around each plane.
The plane's grounding on Jan. 16, an enormous black eye for Boeing, marked the first time since 1979 that FAA had ordered every plane of a particular type to stay out of the air for safety reasons.
Wreckage from the crash was dispersed over a large area, with pieces of the plane found as far as five miles away, according to National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Eric Weiss.
International regulators grounded all 787 Dreamliners in January so that safety checks could be carried out on their batteries after incidents on a Japan Airlines plane and an All Nippon Airways plane.
The FAA approved test flights for the Boeing planes with strict conditions to assure safety: Only essential personnel will be on board, crews must continuously monitor the plane for battery-related problems and tests will be conducted over unpopulated areas.
Last month, safety regulators grounded the entire fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners after a battery on a plane operated by Japan Airlines caught fire, while a battery malfunction forced an emergency landing of a flight operated by All Nippon Airways.
"President Jonathan assures air travelers in the country that every possible effort will be made to ensure that the right lessons are learned from the tragic loss of valuable lives in today's plane crash and that further measures will be put in place to boost aviation safety, " the statement from Jonathan's office said.
Plane manufacturers and airline operators work closely with the FAA on better procedures and passenger safety.
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Last month, the National Transportation Safety Board said federal investigators had not been able to determine the causes of fires in two plane batteries or the electrical shorts that occurred.
The FAA announcement comes on the same day the National Transportation Safety Board told reporters it had identified the exact battery cell that first short-circuited on a plane in Boston in early January, but still had not determined the root cause of the electrical short.
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