Bethany Whitfield

Canadian TV director John Driftmier was killed on Sunday in an airplane crash while filming the second season of “Dangerous Flights,” a reality program for the Discovery Channel that follows fliers as they “risk their lives in the high-danger, high-stress business of aircraft delivery.” While little is known about the crash, it reportedly took place […]

The National Aeronautic Association released its list of Most Memorable Aviation Records of 2012 on Tuesday, and, not surprisingly, topping out the selections was Felix Baumgartner’s 199,431-foot freefall skydive jump in October. The Austrian jumper’s world-watched feat smashed the previous record of 80,380 feet set by Yevgeni Nikolayevich Andreyev 50 years earlier. The NAA also […]

Flying Editor-in-Chief Robert Goyer’s Cirrus SR22 was involved in a midair collision with a Cessna 152 on February 1 approximately 13 miles west-southwest of Easterwood Field Airport (KCLL) in College Station, Texas. Both the flight instructor and the student flying in the 152 were uninjured, while the commercial pilot operating the Cirrus SR22, who is […]

Three men were killed early Sunday morning while flying in a Bell 206 being used to shoot a reality TV show for the Discovery Channel. The crash occurred at the Polsa Rosa Ranch in northern Los Angeles County — a frequent location for film production — under unknown circumstances, according to FAA officials. Pilot David […]

A report released by the Department of Defense Inspector General on Monday calls into question the Air Force’s analysis of the fatal 2010 F-22 crash — which the military attributed to pilot error — that caused the death of Captain Jeff Haney. In the new report, the Inspector General blasts the service’s findings, saying they […]

While the rest of the Boeing 787 fleet remains grounded, the FAA has authorized a one-time crew-only Dreamliner flight to return one of the airplanes from a paint facility in Fort Worth, Texas, to the company’s factory outside Seattle. FAA approval for the flight was given alongside the stipulations that the flight crew take a […]

If NASA’s recent research efforts come to fruition, air travel of the future could take place in flatter, sleeker aircraft that resemble manta rays and require drastically less fuel than contemporary designs. Such designs have often been posed throughout history as potential solutions in the drive to increase efficiency and reduce fuel consumption, but the […]

The next daredevil attempting to break the world record for freefall speed will have to go a little faster following the release of new data from Felix Baumgartner’s jump from the edge of space in October. According to Red Bull Stratos, Baumgartner achieved even higher speeds than initially thought, albeit by slight margins, after jumping […]

It took authorities approximately two years to gather enough evidence to press charges in a 2008 incident in which multiple shots were fired at a cropduster as it flew over a property next to Flying Lead Ranch, owned by 41-year-old Stephen Paul Riley, in northern Texas. On Tuesday, Riley pled guilty to shooting the airplane […]

The Cirrus SR20 that deployed its whole airplane recovery parachute last week in Danbury, Connecticut, did so after making a classic mistake that continues to top the list of general aviation accident causes. According to a preliminary report released by the National Transportation Safety Board on Friday, the airplane was on approach to Runway 26 […]