Business Notes

It's a record to give pilots and passengers pause: seven Piper Malibu Mirage aircraft have broken apart in midair in the past 22 months. The manufacturer, Piper Aircraft of Vero Beach, Fla., insists that the six-seat, single-engine plane is entirely airworthy. The Federal Aviation Administration has suspicions to the contrary and last week issued a directive grounding the 518 remaining Malibus in foul weather and limiting the ways the planes can be flown.

Prompting the action was a mid-March accident in Florida that killed a family of four when their Malibu fell apart during a rainstorm. The FAA has not determined the cause of the accident and is still investigating the six similar mishaps, but says it has found evidence of "gross" excess strain on the wings of the aircraft that crashed. The manufacturer attributes the accidents to "pilot error and pilot inexperience" in adverse weather at speeds greater than the planes were designed to handle.