Stephen Pope

Imagine sliding open the door to your hangar, unplugging the power cable snaking from your airplane to a quick-charging station on the wall and taking to the sky in a sleek four-seater powered only by the smooth, quiet, nonpolluting whir of an electric motor connected to rows of lithium battery packs nestled in the wing. […]

Electric motors use electromagnetic force to produce movement. Magnetic forces — attraction and repulsion — cause the electromagnet inside an electric motor to spin. Motors with metal brushes perform this function by creating opposite charges that attract and repel as the rotor changes polarity. A brushless electric motor relies instead on a solid-state controller to […]

There’s quite the debate raging at the moment about whether it’s OK to bank steeply in the traffic pattern or, for safety reasons, if we should limit the steepness of turns when we’re low and slow. In a recent blog post over at AirFacts.com, former Flying editor Richard Collins had this to say: “The pilot […]

The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been halted by rough weather in the southern Indian Ocean, where investigators now say they are certain the Boeing 777 with 239 people on board went down. Malaysian officials said yesterday that satellite data examined by the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch and Inmarsat had led them […]

The FAA is crafting rules that would allow electric airplanes to operate in U.S. airspace, but there is one big caveat: No passengers will be allowed on board. That’s according to a draft FAA order that spells out operating limitations for such aircraft. The proposed revision to FAA Order 8130.2 really isn’t that big of […]

In subfreezing temperatures and buffeting winds, a Cirrus Aircraft test pilot yesterday flew the first production conforming Vision SF50 jet, taking off from Duluth International Airport at around 5 p.m. for the one-hour shakedown test. “The Vision Jet handled and performed very well and all systems functioned properly – just what you want in a […]

Aviationweather.gov is getting a whole new look and feel today, but don’t worry, the National Weather Service promises that all of the content previously available on the site will still be there — just with updated page layouts and menus. The site underwent a makeover to bring its look in line with sister site weather.gov, […]

A closer examination of satellite data confirms that missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, ending a baffling weeks-long mystery and focusing the search for the Boeing 777’s black boxes in the area off the southwest coast of Australia. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said at a press conference this morning […]

Accident investigators are reviewing amateur video that shows a Piper Aerostar twin performing extreme low-level maneuvers over a Colorado neighborhood moments before crashing. The pilot, the sole occupant in the airplane, was killed instantly when the Piper crashed in a fireball next to homes on the outskirts of Aurora. Nobody on the ground was hurt. […]

Search aircraft and ships are headed to a location in the southern Indian Ocean where Australian officials said satellite images show debris that could be from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Officials cautioned that is unclear at this point whether two large pieces of debris belong to the Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8 […]