Stephen Pope

Whiskey 7, a Douglas C-47 that flew as a lead ship dropping paratroopers during the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, embarked today on another important mission, taking off from a grass strip in central New York to travel back in time to France for the 70th anniversary of the D-Day storming of the beaches […]

The aviation industry is mourning the passing of Jim Christiansen, the well-known former president of NetJets and past chairman of the National Air Transport Association. He was 67. Most recently Christiansen was serving as vice president of business development at FlightSafety International. His start in aviation began as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot serving a […]

Capping one of the most contentious and hardest fought competitions for government aircraft ever, Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin secured a $1.24 billion contract to begin building a new presidential helicopter based on Sikorsky’s S-92. The winning team was the only bidder in the latest phase of a decade-long effort to start replacing Marine One, the […]

George Bye, the founder of a company called Bye Aerospace who proposed an electric-powered Skyhawk a few years ago, is shifting his focus to a two-seat trainer called the Sun Flyer. Bye and his business partner Charlie Johnson have formed a company called Aero Electric Aircraft Corp. to build an electric LSA in Colorado based […]

Even though it’s likely only a temporary reprieve, it’s still good news for supporters of the A-10 Thunderbolt II as backers seek to head off the iconic tank buster’s imminent retirement. A House Armed Services Committee panel has voted to delay deactivation of the A-10, affectionately known as the Warthog, meaning the full House will […]

It looks as though Flying’s stick-and-rudder skills competition will be fiercely contested as Redbird Flight Simulations reports that more than 1,400 pilots and non-pilots have registered to compete for a free trip to Oshkosh 2014. So far three contest modules have been released for the Flying Challenge Cup, including Lazy 8s, Precision Landings and Steep […]

Several media companies including The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Associated Press have challenged the FAA’s authority to prohibit the press from flying drones in search of a story. In a briefing filed this week with the National Transportation Safety Board, a group of 16 media outlets argued that current FAA regulations […]

Got weather? Really? Well, is it the type of weather information you need to make a truly informed go, no-go decision? Maybe not, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is recommending that the FAA and the National Weather Service work together to put better weather information in pilots’ hands. The NTSB action comes […]

The FAA’s draconian blanket ban on “commercial” UAV flying is a joke. An NTSB judge said as much in March by **tossing out a $10,000 FAA fine **against a videographer who made a promotional film for the University of Virginia using a small quadracopter. Others regularly fly similar remote-controlled craft to shoot videos or take […]

A fuel leak aboard the World War II-era B-17 bomber “Liberty Belle” caused the in-flight fire that destroyed the historic airplane when it made an emergency landing in an Illinois corn field in June 2011, the NTSB said in its final accident report. According to investigators, the weekend before the crash mechanics identified a fuel […]