Mark Phelps

Bumpy air isn’t pleasant. For passengers, it can feel even worse, sometimes to the point where it becomes necessary to offload lunch. Airmanship guru Wolfgang Langewiesche addressed the problem in his 1944 classic, Stick and Rudder: “It is in rough air that straight flight becomes an art — and the interesting thing about it is […]

On Tuesday night, The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) aired Flying Cheap, an investigative report on the regional airline industry. The broadcast is also available online at www.pbs.org. Focused on the crash of Continental Flight 3407, the report examines the airlines’ regular practice of codesharing, in which a regional carrier (in this case, Colgan Air) partners […]

A Cirrus SR20 flown by a local pilot collided with a Piper Pawnee towing a glider over Boulder, Colorado, last Saturday. The glider pilot released its tow rope and flew through the burning wreckage, but he and his two passengers landed safely. The Pawnee fell out of control and crashed, killing the pilot. The Cirrus […]

Round one of the heavy snows in the Washington, D.C. area last Friday resulted in heavy damage to the roof of the Dulles Jet Center FBO. The hangar roof collapsed at about 8 a.m. on Saturday morning under the weight of as much as three feet of snow. Though five people were inside at the […]

An avionics software upgrade for the ages; and a pair of new-version piston twins made the list of Flying‘s Editors’ Choice Awards for 2009. Avidyne’s Entegra Release 9 upgrade is much more than a simple download. It’s a game-changing update that brings one of the original glass panel systems for light aircraft back to the […]

The 21st Annual Conference of Women in Aviation International (WAI) will occur Thursday, Feb. 25 to Saturday, Feb. 27 at Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Key speakers include FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt and NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman. For more info, go to www.wai.org.

Flying eNewsletter has received scores of e-mails detailing relief efforts by pilots flying to Haiti. The stories range from individual owner-pilots in single-engine pistons to corporations donating the use of their jet fleets to aid the victims of last month’s earthquake. In many cases, the e-mails came not from the pilots, themselves, but rather from […]

Hawker Beechcraft took the wraps off its newest website (www.hawkerbeechcraft.com) this week. Designed to be “customer-focused” the site is designed to offer more information as well as exciting ways to experience the company’s products online. Recognizing the importance of the Internet in today’s society, HBC’s director of marketing Ron Gunnarson said, “A customer’s first impression […]

This year’s Red Bull Air Racing World Championship will run in cooperation with Cirrus Aircraft. Announced last week at Santa Monica, California, the partnership will enable guests at the Red Bull races in either the Race Club or High Flyer’s Lounge to have special access to the Cirrus SR22 and the developmental single-engine Cirrus Vision […]

When general aviation advocates received copies of President Obama’s 2011 budget, presented on Monday, they immediately honed in on the issue of user fees. A preliminary version of the budget presented last year included language favorable to introducing such fees, which have long been opposed by just about everyone on the GA side. But the […]