Rob Mark

European regional airline KLM Cityhopper, a division of KLM, announced last week that it is now employing an in-house developed virtual reality system to train pilots on the Embraer 175 and 190 aircraft. KLM said in a news release that Cityhopper “is the first airline to integrate VR into its pilot training for Embraer aircraft.” The company […]

Premier Aircraft Sales, the Diamond Aircraft dealer for much of the eastern US and the Caribbean said in a news release that it recently delivered the first Diamond DA40 NG with a brand new jet-fuel-powered Austro engine (at 168 hp) to UFLYVI, based in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. The news release said, “UFLYVI is […]

FlightSafety International’s Textron Aviation Training program now offers King Air 360 pilot training at its Tampa Learning Center, while courses for maintenance technicians to support the airplane will be held at the Wichita Maintenance Learning Center, located next to the Textron Aviation Service Center. The new Beechcraft King Air 360 offers digital pressurization for cabin […]

The crash of a T-6 Texan II in Alabama last week—in addition to the loss of an F-18 Hornet near China Lake California earlier in the week—was enough for the head of Naval Air Forces to call for a one-day safety stand-down that grounded all non-deployed units in an attempt to determine the cause of […]

A Daher TBM 700, N965DM, departed Manchester, New Hampshire (KMHT), on October 2 at approximately 19 minutes past 10 am bound for Buffalo, New York (KBUF), some 374 miles to the west. The pilot, a prominent New York attorney, held a private pilot certificate with an instrument rating and filed an appropriate IFR flight plan […]

The AOPA’s Air Safety Institute last week published the 30th Nall Report, an annual look at safety statistics surrounding GA flying. The latest report looks at 2018 safety data gathered from both the NTSB and the FAA. The report began, “Although 2018 saw an increase in total accidents, the good news is that the overall […]

A Champion 7ECA Citabria was my first taildragger as well as my first airplane. The first few hours of tailwheel instruction chronicled in my logbook made the score pretty clear—Citabria: 2, me: 0. My instructor always managed to add colorful comments to my logbook to illustrate the at-times-agonizing progress—”Crash and Dash,” he called many of […]

Lemont, Illinois-based Argonne National Laboratory said in a news release on its website that it is developing Aeronomie, a dynamic aircraft simulation tool to demonstrate the future performance of a variety of aircraft such as electric and hybrid vehicles, urban air mobility and unmanned aerial vehicles. Aeronomie is capable of simulating entire flights by optimizing […]

At this point in the year, it’s pretty widely known that pilot hiring at the airlines fell off a cliff during most of 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak. Louis Smith said, “The 12 major US airlines combined hired only 98 pilots in September.” Smith is president of the Future and Active Pilot Advisors (FAPA). Aircraft […]

Boeing’s latest aviation employment forecast—Pilot and Technician Outlook 2020-2039—reflects the chaos the industry is facing as it copes with the chaos surrounding COVID-19, the pandemic that has already put tens of thousands of professionals on the street, exacerbated on September 30 by the expiration of government airline payroll subsidies. The forecast includes data for commercial […]