Stephen Pope

When something went wrong in the air during a practice flight, aerobatic pilot Dan Marcotte jumped from his Ultimate Aero 10-200, parachuting to safety as the single-seat biplane crashed in a fireball onto a northern Vermont interstate. Marcotte, an experienced aerobatic pilot, bailed out of the airplane last Friday over Highgate, Vermont, near the Canadian […]

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is partnering with a company founded by Erik Lindbergh, the grandson of Charles Lindbergh, to curb emissions and noise from aircraft engines by developing new electric and hybrid power systems. Lindbergh, CEO of Powering Imagination, and Dr. Richard Anderson, Director of the Eagle Flight Research Center at Embry-Riddle, noted that pollution and […]

The idea that the flight-control computers in a modern fly-by-wire airplane are in charge all of the time still sparks debate among pilots more than 25 years after the technology became the de facto standard in Airbus airliners. The very notion that the computers can ignore the pilot’s inputs if they so choose but the […]

With warmer weather on the way many pilots around the country will be trading their winter hats and gloves for t-shirts and shorts. If the airplane you fly doesn’t have air conditioning you’ll want to be sure to plan ahead to avoid roasting in a sun-baked cockpit. Once you’re airborne this isn’t usually a problem […]

British aerospace manufacturing company Cobham has sold S-Tec and Chelton Flight Systems to some of the same people it bought them from, saying the businesses no longer fit its strategy. The new owner of S-Tec and Chelton Flight Systems is a name you probably have never heard. Genesys Aerosystems, newly formed by original Chelton co-founders […]

A teenager who climbed into the wheel well of a Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767 survived a flight from California to Hawaii on Sunday despite freezing temperatures and a lack of oxygen as the jetliner cruised for hours at FL380. FBI and airline officials said the 16-year-old boy was questioned after he climbed down from the […]

The details of what really happened are still murky, but what we do know is the owner of a video-camera-equipped Hexacopter flying near the scene of a car accident in Springfield, Ohio, earlier this week was charged with felony obstruction after police said he refused to land his UAV even as a medevac helicopter prepared […]

Talk about a quick trip back to the top of the hill. In a video posted to YouTube a few days ago, U.S. Ski Team member Reese Hanneman can be seen being towed up a mountain somewhere in the Alaska Range behind an Aviat Husky. Hanneman tweeted a link to the video and the Alaska […]

For the second straight year the National Aeronautic Association has bestowed the prestigious Robert J. Collier Trophy on an unmanned program, leading to serious questions about whether the prize committee still views traditional aeronautic endeavors with the same high esteem as when aircraft and real pilots routinely claimed the award. The 2013 Collier Trophy recipient […]

Vulcanair of Italy has revealed plans for a four-place light single dubbed the V1.0 that the uninitiated will probably mistake for a wildly modified Cessna Skyhawk. The high-wing design will feature a 180 horsepower Lycoming IO-360 engine and Garmin glass avionics — both hallmarks of the Cessna single. But unlike the Skyhawk, Vulcanair plans to […]