Airplane News: Phillips Pauses Unleaded, Ural A320, JetBlue & Spirit Merger, and a Balloon Crash

Welcome to your weekly General Aviation news update, and this week we have 4 stories for you; Phillips 66 pauses unleaded testing, Ural Airlines won’t fly A320 from field, JetBlue & Spirit merger blocked, and a Balloon Crash in AZ. First up this week is Phillips 66, who has been working to create an unleaded Avgas Alternative. According to Avweb, a “major test failure” occurred and resulted in Phillips pausing the initiative. Details about the issues were not publicized by Phillips, but other sources with knowledge of the issue said the test fuel was powering a Lycoming Engine in a test cell. Sources said the engine failed due to a buildup of Manganese deposits that fouled the spark plugs and/or caused pre-ignition. We’ll keep you updated if we see anything else! Next up this week is Ural Airline, who won’t be flying the A320 out of that field after all. Instead Ural will scrap the A320 for parts starting next summer due to the unavailability of parts. If you’re unfamiliar with this story, Ural intended to refuel the airplane and fly it out of the field where it crash landed due to fuel starvation in September of 2023. Probably for the better that the airplane is scrapped rather than risk flying out of a farm field. Third up this week is Jet Blue and Spirit Airlines. If you hadn’t heard… About the bird-kidding, Jet blue was looking to purchase and basically absorb Spirit Airlines. A federal judge has blocked the 3.8 Billion take over saying it would reduce airline competition and increase fare prices. The judge said “Spirit is a small airline, But there are those who love it. To those dedicated customers of Spirit, this one’s for you.” We’ll keep you updated with what we see next from Spirit. Last up this week is a sad one, a hot air balloon crash in Eloy, AZ killed 4 people this week. The balloon, a Czech Republic BB 85, was initially carrying 13, however 8 folks were skydivers who exited the balloon prior to the crash. According to Police, the skydivers departure was planned and was not in response to any balloon problems. Witnesses said the copy was deflated and the balloon’s basket hit hard in the desert. It’s unclear what may have caused the crash but we’ll keep you updated if we see anything else. Alright, that’s it! Have a great week and we’ll see you next week. https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/290142/ https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/phillips-66-suspends-unleaded-avgas-testing https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/ural-airlines-scraps-plan-to-fly-a320-from-field https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/judge-blocks-jetblues-takeover-of-spirit