Stephen Pope

LightSquared is threatening legal action against the Federal Communications Commission if the agency does not grant the company approval to build a planned nationwide network of around 40,000 broadband towers that many experts warn will cause interference with GPS receivers. LightSquared argues that any interference with high-precision GPS receivers from the company’s planned network is […]

The nearly 4,000 FAA workers who were furloughed during a two-week partial shutdown of the agency over the summer will receive back pay for the time they missed, according to the Department of Transportation. The pay will show up in the workers’ Oct. 18 paychecks, said an e-mail sent to worker’s from Transportation Secretary Ray […]

Let’s imagine for a moment the following hypothetical situation: Two airplanes are taking off at exactly the same moment from parallel runways. Airplane A accelerates to and climbs out at Vx while Airplane B accelerates to and climbs at Vy. What will happen in each case? Of course, we already know that Vx is the […]

The downcast economies of North America and Europe are continuing to weigh on the general aviation piston and turboprop markets, which now aren’t anticipated to bounce back to pre-recession production levels for several years or perhaps an entire decade, according to a new industry forecast released this week. The GA industry’s presumed savior – namely […]

__It’s not often that an amateur aeronautical tinkerer will hit upon a business idea so perfectly suited for the times that it advances, almost overnight, to become a runaway success story. Such was the case in 1971, when a young engineer from Oregon named Richard VanGrunsven tried, in his own words, to “build a better […]

General aviation and airline trade groups are banding together to fight the Obama Administration’s plan to raise fees on airline passengers and business aircraft operators as part of the White House’s sweeping reforms to cut the country’s ballooning debt. The Air Transport Association says security is a national-defense function and that their members already pay […]

The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) and Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) will take their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals on Dec. 2 as the groups seek to overturn restrictions the Department of Transportation imposed on the Block Aircraft Registration Request (BARR) program. NBAA and the FAA in 1997 devised the BARR […]

Federal officials say the public was never in danger in a Massachusetts man’s alleged plot to blow up the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol using remote-controlled model airplanes filled with explosives, but that the intent was very real. The explosives delivered to Rezwan Ferdaus, a U.S. citizen of South Asian background, were always closely monitored […]

All 19 people aboard a Beech 19000D carrying tourists to see Mt. Everest were killed on Sunday when their twin turboprop crashed as it tried to land in rain and dense fog at Nepal’s main international airport. The airplane, operated by Buddha Air, crashed in Kotdanda, about 10 miles from the capital, Katmandu, as it […]

Boeing on Monday delivered the first 787 Dreamliner to launch customer All Nippon Airways during a rain-soaked ceremony at the Everett, Washington, factory where workers assembled the airplane. More than 500 employees involved in the 787 program strode alongside the all-new jetliner as Boeing Commercial Airplanes president and CEO Jim Albaugh presented an oversized, ceremonial […]