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Facing “growing skepticism” among the aviation community about the FAA’s ability to successfully modernize the nation’s airspace, two top lawmakers are calling for reforms that could spark significant changes to the agency’s organizational structure. Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) and Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Frank LoBiondo (D-N.J.) issued a call for reform at […]

Major airworthiness directives related to aircraft systems aren’t all that uncommon, but a new AD issued by the FAA yesterday that calls for the replacement of the primary flight displays in certain Boeing 737 and 777 airliners raises eyebrows not just for what must be replaced but also the reason why. The FAA on October […]

The Dream Chaser, a reusable crewed space shuttle currently under development by Sierra Nevada Corporation, may one day carry people into space with the help of Stratolaunch’s massive carrier plane, the brainchild of aviation legend Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The news comes on the heels of Sierra Nevada Corporation’s announcement that it […]

On a Thursday in March 2013, the 500-hour pilot of a Mooney M20E arrived at Angel Fire, a ski resort east of Taos in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. With him were his girlfriend, his sister and his sister’s 13-year-old daughter. They came from San Antonio, stayed with a cousin of the […]

The passengers were all sound asleep in the back. It would be a shame to awaken them to prepare for the landing. I let them sleep until the very last moment. There had been none of the usual complaints, like “we’re too hot” or “we’re too cold.” They had no inkling of what lay ahead […]

As seasoned recreational pilots we sometimes forget just how little about general aviation our passengers really know and understand. Many of our right-seaters probably think flying in a light airplane is little different from what they experience on the airlines. From their time flying United or Delta, they know the drill is to sit down, […]

We bought ice and Styrofoam chests at a Family Dollar store after leaving the Bourgeois Meat Market in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and packed them with crawfish boudin (sausage), headcheese and beef jerky. The boudin and headcheese (sounds gross but this stuff is a scrumptious pâté kind of thing) would be OK for a long time but […]

“Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that,” my instructor said. I was confused. I wasn’t even sure I understood what his complaint was. But when I did, I realized the issue lay at the very heart of the debate about how to deal with cockpit automation. I said, “Let’s talk about it on the ground.” […]

If you saw the red, black and white Sportsman at the Glasair booth at AirVenture this summer, it may not have looked a lot different from the airplanes the company has displayed in the past. But the bright green lettering on the side of the nose and the modified bottom cowl tell a ­different story. […]

“Landing gears are made retractable in all modern high-speed airplanes. The drag of fixed ‘under-carriages’ used in old-type, and still in small and slow airplanes, is avoided in this manner.” Thus wrote Sighard Hoerner, the great compiler of drag data, in 1951. One of the oddities of the present moment is that of the three […]