by Isabel Goyer

NetJets announced yesterday that it has agreed with Bombardier to buy 120 Global aircraft over the next many years. The deal, which is valued at $6.7 billion, includes firm orders for 50 aircraft and options for 70. Details on the options were not made public initially. The order includes Global 5000, Global Express XRS Vision, […]

In a phone call to Flying, Cirrus Aircraft president Brent Wouters said that the deal would give Chinese firm China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Company (CAIGA) 100 percent ownership of Cirrus. Financial details of the merger weren’t immediately released pending notification of shareholders. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and would take effect, Wouters […]

At its annual meeting in Washington, D.C., the General Aviation Manufacturers’ Association gave its formal assessment of the past year, and to no one’s surprise, 2010 was one to forget. Shipments of new airplanes were down in all segments, with pistons, turboprops and bizjets all walloped by a still-weakened global economy. Overall, shipments were down […]

A brand new Gulfstream G550 that ran off the end of Runway 29 at Appleton, Wisconsin’s Outagamie Airport reportedly belonged to Microsoft co-founder and Portland Trailblazers owner Paul Allen. No one was hurt in the accident. Gulfstream operates a large aircraft completion facility at Appleton, though there was no word on the cause (the NTSB […]

On Monday morning, Embraer entertained dignitaries and members of the press as it officially cut the ribbon on its $50 million, 90,000-square-foot assembly facility, where it will put the finishing touches on its Phenom 100 entry-level light jet and Phenom 300 super light jet. Embraer now builds, assembles and completes both airplanes in Brazil, where […]

When I was first getting my feet wet with instrument flying one of the hardest but most crucial skills was learning how to make things simple. Those of you who are experienced instrument pilots might chuckle at this because doing that is the essence of much of what we do in the single-pilot cockpit. As […]

My first takeoff out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the EA500 was anything but an anticlimax. We’d just finished up our pre-takeoff check and Jerry Chambers, Eclipse Aerospace’s chief pilot, was giving me some last-minute advice on the takeoff when the tower came with a takeoff clearance, “No delay for landing 737 traffic, three-mile final.” […]

(January 2010) — We were settled in at 24,000 feet, cruising along at around 225 knots true, burning 24 gallons of 100LL every hour while watching the nautical miles slip behind us. We’d taken off from Orlando Executive (ORL) in a Cessna Corvalis and were an hour into our flight, cruising at an altitude that […]

(February 2011) — We got an e-mail last month from a reader taking Peter Garrison to task for suggesting in his Technicalities column that, if the FAA did a thorough review of the Light Sport Aircraft industry, it would find a lot of discrepancies in the certification process for light-sport airplanes. It seemed like a […]

While at the 2010 NBAA convention, I stopped by the booth of Stratos Aircraft to check up on the progress the company was making with its eponymous single-engine jet. What I discovered was pretty much exactly what I expected to discover. The company was exceedingly optimistic about the prospects for its jet while admitting there […]