by Isabel Goyer

At the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association (COPA) gathering in Duluth, Minnesota, yesterday, Avidyne announced a new product, the IFD-440. The navigator will boast many of the features of the larger IFD-540, which Avidyne announced at last year’s AirVenture show and which it currently plans to start shipping early next year. The IFD-440 will be […]

When Cessna put production of its Corvalis single-engine speedster on hiatus two years ago following a delamination event of a wing structure — no one got hurt — the company clearly had its work cut out for it. It not only had to fix its production processes, something the company says it has successfully done, […]

There are certain ungainly looking airplanes whose great utility and flying manners bring with them a kind of charm that belies their looks. The GippsAero GA8 Airvan might just be this kind of airplane. With its squared-off features and asymmetrical shape, it is kind of an odd duck, the kind that no pilot walks by […]

Eurocopter is making a grand U.S. tour with its X3 hybrid developmental heloplane, which features a pair of conventional looking turboprops in addition to a conventional looking rotar. The craft, which Eurocopter developed in just three years’ time, is nearly 100 knots faster than the fleetest comparably sized conventional helicopters. The X3 has achieved better […]

An FAA aviation rulemaking committee has released its report on the state of FAA airman knowledge tests, and the news is good for pilots. The committee was composed of many of the most forward-thinking and experienced pilot-educators in the industry, and their findings represent the cutting edge of opinion on testing. The authors spared no […]

The upcoming integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the National Airspace System within the next few years has local, county, state and federal agencies pining for drones, this according to a story in the Christian Science Monitor. The story points to the public’s conflicted view of drone operations — they like them for hunting […]

The idea behind avionics is that they should do what we want them to do without causing undo hassle or requiring too much attention on our part, attention we should be giving to flying the airplane. It’s like Facebook, the remarkably successful website that has attracted hundreds of millions of followers by giving them what […]

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), which has entered the Embraer A-29 Super Tucano in the United States Air Force’s Light Air Support competition, is crying foul over the latest developments in what is proving to be an ongoing drama with elements of international intrigue. To be sure, one of SNC’s complaints is an en eye-opener. To […]

What’s the biggest hurdle to getting young people involved in aviation? Some might say that it’s the money; others might offer that it’s the lack of exposure to aviation or the lack of active involvement in the activity. In any of these cases, a new endeavor, the Lakeland Aero Club, starting up in Central Florida […]

The Navy lost one of its unmanned aerial systems (aka, “drones”) in a crash in Maryland on Monday. The craft crashed in a sparsely inhabited area across the Chesapeake Bay from the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, where the drones are being used for training, according to the Navy. The RQ-4A BAMS-D drone is a […]