Stephen Pope

| It’s an annual rite of passage for millions of high school seniors: anxiously checking their mailboxes for thick envelopes and weighing their options about where to go to college. For that special breed of student who couldn’t imagine anything less than a career in aviation, the choices become somewhat clearer. If your goal is […]

The FAA has further clarified what the new Restricted Airline Transport Pilot (R-ATP) certificate might mean for recent college graduates. The new rules require airline first officers to hold an ATP and to have logged 1,500 hours of flight time, or an R-ATP license and 1,000 hours if they’ve graduated from an approved four-year aviation […]

With one day left to go in the month, January 2014 is shaping up to be one of the safest ever in terms of general aviation fatal accidents and fatalities. Perhaps coincidentally, it was also one of the coldest months in decades. There have been four fatal crashes this month in the United States involving […]

We’ve recently had a Tanis engine preheater installed in our Diamond DA40 to deal with the ill effects of the arctic polar vortex blast — words that should never follow each other in a single sentence, in my opinion. The preheater is designed to keep the cylinders warmed to a temperature 70 degrees above ambient […]

As of this month, the Eurocopter brand name is no more as the new Airbus Helicopters emerges as the world’s dominant player in civil rotorcraft manufacturing. The company was formally renamed on January 2, and the transition is now complete as the new-look Airbus Helicopters has rolled out a revamped website and officially changed the […]

The $1.1 trillion government spending bill passed by Congress includes money for the Piston Aviation Fuels Initiative (PAFI), an FAA plan to start the transition to high-octane unleaded piston aviation fuel by 2018. The appropriation for fuel research was slightly higher than the requested level through fiscal year 2014. PAFI is an FAA/industry partnership that […]

Anybody in the market for a new light piston twin won’t have to spend much time creating a list of potential airplanes to buy. As long as we can agree that the French single-seater Cri Cri and the open cockpit AirCam don’t quite cut it as viable options in the quest for a do-it-all twin, […]

The parent companies of Gulfstream and Cessna each reported positive year-end financial results, although for very different reasons — profits at Gulfstream soared to record numbers in 2013, while Cessna reported a smaller loss this year than last. Both manufacturers, however, are hinting that 2014 will be a very good year. Gulfstream hauled in revenues […]

Henry Ogrodzinski, a “beloved gentleman-statesman” of aviation who for the past 18 years served as president and CEO of the National Association of State Aviation Officials, died at his home in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday after a two-year battle with cancer. He was 65. Ogrodzinski, known as Henry O to friends, began his aviation advocacy […]

The Garmin Pilot mobile app just got a whole lot better with the rollout yesterday of a portable Garmin ADS-B and WAAS GPS receiver with an integrated attitude sensor that greatly expands the application’s capabilities. Garmin says the new GDL 39 3D portable unit brings ADS-B traffic and weather information to the Garmin Pilot app […]