Kiwi Cuts Jet Fleet Over Pilot Training Flap

The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that Kiwi International Airlines Inc. had reduced its fleet to 11 Boeing 727s from 15 because many of its pilots were improperly trained and it lacked the personnel to run all its planes.

The airline, based in Newark, N.J., flies about 82 flights a day, to Atlanta, West Palm Beach, Fla., Las Vegas, Chicago and other cities. FAA officials said they expected it would cut its flights by about 25 percent.

Nicholas Sabatini, manager of the flight standards division for the FAA’s Eastern region, said in a telephone conference call Friday evening that a special safety inspection had recently found that since February 1995 the airline had been using a training manual different from the one the agency had approved.