Stephen Pope

It’s hard to say exactly what is going on in this video shot on Saturday over the seaside town of Wassenaar in the Netherlands, but what’s clear is cockpit cameras caught one airplane descending into the top of another, causing quite a bit of damage in the collision but luckily no injuries. According to news […]

The House Small Business Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow to examine the finer points of the Obama Administration’s proposed $100 per flight user fee and its potential impact on jobs. Chaired by Missouri Republican Sam Graves, the Small Business Committee has increased its scope and gained influence in recent years, especially since the recession […]

I was talking with a flight instructor the other day who related a funny story that provides a lesson for all of us. During a flight review with a private pilot, the instructor created a simulated emergency by saying: “Okay, you’re flying along and suddenly you realize the engine is on fire. What are you […]

During his Private Pilot checkride over the weekend, Brian Garrett of Westminster, Colorado, had to deal with a real in-flight emergency on top of all the other required practical test maneuvers after one of the blades on his Sting Sport LSA separated midflight. According to the Longmont Times-Call, at some point during the flight exam […]

When we talked to the folks at SkyVector.com at Oshkosh, they promised big improvements were coming. If you’ve never made a visit, the site supplies digital VFR sectional and IFR enroute charts of the United States that look great, are super easy to use and, best of all, are completely free. Now, SkyVector has expanded […]

A bankruptcy judge has rejected a proposal to give eight top Hawker Beechcraft executives up to $5.3 million in bonuses, ruling the plan would reward them merely for staying at their jobs. The judge in the case said the plan amounted to retention incentives, and did not meet legal standards that require “challenging goals” before […]

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) has released its first docket of factual information surrounding the May midair collision of a Beech Bonanza and Piper Cherokee near Warrenton, Virginia, involving airplanes owned by an NTSB and FAA employee. The NTSB has asked the Canadian agency to take the lead in the investigation to avoid […]

Here’s a tip if you’ve ever wondered when you should start your descent to your arrival airport (assuming you don’t have an FMS with top-of-descent calculation capability). A quick and easy way to figure it out is to start with your altitude above field elevation and multiply that number by three. This will give you […]

The world paused on Saturday to remember Neil Alden Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon and an enduring icon of the space age, who died suddenly after complications from cardiovascular surgery. He was 82. A quiet and private man who friends knew as humble in spite of his outsized accomplishments, Armstrong was […]

Pipistrel Aircraft is again being allowed to import its LSA models into the U.S. after the FAA imposed a week-long ban on the grounds that the agency couldn’t verify where the airplanes were actually being built. Pipistrel is based in Slovenia a few miles from the Italian border. Because Slovenia doesn’t have a bilateral certification […]