Stephen Pope

The FAA has issued an Advisory Circular detailing pilot operational requirements when flying with automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) technology for compliance with FAR 91.225 and 91.227. The new regulations require aircraft operating in designated classes of airspace (pretty much anywhere you need a transponder now) to be equipped with ADS-B Out starting on Jan. 1, […]

The pilots of a Polish-built PZL SW4 turbine-engine light helicopter walked away without injury after crashing on Sunday while performing cold weather testing in Fairbanks, Alaska. Temperature at the time of the accident was minus 36 degrees F, according to the FAA, which said the crash happened at the Fairbanks International Airport. The runway was […]

Remember that online petition asking the White House to abandon its $100 per flight user fee proposal? More than 9,000 of you signed it, prompting the government to consider the issue and write a response. Authored by Dana Hyde, a Washington bureaucrat with the bureaucratic-sounding job title Associate Director for General Government Programs for the […]

As Boeing moves ahead with plans to leave Wichita, Learjet revealed it will expand its footprint there. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and ** Bombardier** Business Aircraft President Steve Ridolfi on Tuesday announced an expansion of the company’s Learjet production site, saying the growth will create 450 new jobs over the next seven to 10 years. […]

Could it be the first sign of a broader industry turnaround? The blossoming of a single flower signaling the end of long, hard economic winter? It’s hard to say, but the news is encouraging: Robinson Helicopter Co. just reported it more than doubled its production in 2011, building 356 helicopters last year versus 162 in […]

After grounding the pilot of an ultralight late last month for operating an “illegal” commercial operation, FAA officials are again allowing conservationists to lead 10 young whooping cranes to their winter home in Florida using an ultralight that the cranes think is a mother bird. The FAA said in a statement Monday that it will […]

A father and daughter from Alabama are continuing their medical mission in Haiti after safely ditching off the coast of Florida near the Bahamas on Saturday when the engine in their Cirrus SR22 suddenly quit. Dr. Richard McGlaughlin, 59, and his daughter, Elaine McGlaughlin, 25, departed from their home near Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday for […]

_Enola Gay. FIFI. The Great Artiste. Kee Bird. The Big Stink. _ It was an airplane dubbed “Superfortress.” Yet many of the most famous Boeing B-29 bombers that plied the skies during the latter days of World War II carried strangely meek-sounding individual names. Perhaps that’s of benefit to our collective psyche since the airplanes […]

(January 2012) I pulled the radar-detector-size electronic device from my flight bag, set it on the glareshield and frowned. Electrical and audio wires dangled across my lap as I plugged the first cord into the power receptacle on the far-right side of the cockpit and the others into my David Clark headset, which I then […]

(January 2012) Sitting in the darkened area control center in Zurich, Switzerland, the air traffic controller on duty could scarcely believe what he was seeing on his radar screen: Somehow, two airliners in his sector cruising at precisely the same flight level were just miles apart on a collision course over southern Germany. Keying his […]