Search Results for: general aviation inc

Cruise through aviation forums on the Internet and you’ll find descent planning is a popular topic. Ask how people plan their descent and answers range from, “I wait for ATC to give me lower,” to a series of calculations, with a lot of rules of thumb in between. Wait for ATC to Assign LowerMany of […]

This past year weve delved rather deeply into many of the details and vagaries of approaches you can fly with your satellite-based navigator. To do so, weve used many industry-standard terms and their common acronyms. Since a lot of these are unfamiliar to many pilots, weve gotten criticized for our journey through the acronym jungle, as one reader put it. …

Technically advanced aircraft (TAA)-those with a primary flight display (PFD), multi-function display (MFD), and GPS-are sexy. Pilots are drawn to them like Pooh Bear to honey. Besides being eye-catching, TAA attempt to address some of the biggest problems in aviation by providing pilots with a lot of supplementary safety information. Moving maps designed to improve situational awareness make it almost impossible to get lost. Databases store more information at the touch of a button than…

Another light-sport amphibian has entered the field, this one from Vickers, a New Zealand company. The Wave, an Icon look-alike with a Lycoming IO-360 engine, will sell for under $180,000, the company said, and will be available for sale at EAA AirVenture in 2014. Kit manufacturer Vans Aircraft has a second batch of ready-to-fly RV-12s in production by partner Synergy Air, in Eugene, Ore. The first batch of 12 was announced a year ago and sold out the first day. The LSA version sells for $123,000, fully equipped, or $115,000 for the base model.

Fuel is the single biggest variable expense for aircraft operators. What if you could reduce your cost by 30 percent? In addition to being expensive, gas is heavy. New airplanes containing the creature comforts of a luxury car have terrible useful loads with full tanks. Maybe three normal adults can fit into a typical four-place airplane before being overweight. Add baggage, golf clubs, or fishing poles and youre leaving gas behind. Trading gas for weight can severely limit range, one of the consequences of traveling by plane.

Its no secret that general aviations accident rate is significantly worse than the airlines and corporate flight departments. According to NTSB studies over the first 10 years of this century, youre 12 times more likely to have an accident when flying your own or a rented GA aircraft.

lectric-powered airplanes may still be far from mainstream, but interest in this technology continues to grow. In late April, Airbus engineers successfully flew the E-Fan, a tandem two-seater with a pair of electric-powered ducted fans on the tail. The batteries, carried in the wings, provide 30 minutes of flight.

Cirrus has been flying a Vision jet since 2008, but the first copy of the final production version flew for the first time on March 24. The jet is one of three conforming flight-test aircraft that will complete the flight-test regime, with deliveries expected to start late next year. Cirrus chief test pilot Mike Stevens flew the jet for an hour after takeoff from Duluth (Minn.) International Airport, and said it handled and performed very well and all systems functioned properly, just what you want in a first flight. The SF50 is a seven-seat, pressurized, single-engine jet, with a price of $1.96 million. Cirrus CEO Dale Klapmeier said the company has 500 reservations for the aircraft.

The opposite of a dive-n-drive descent on an approach is called a Continuous Descent Final Approach, or CDFA. You might think of an ILS as the ultimate CDFA. More specifically, though, this technique is applied to a non-precision approach. So, well use the synonym, Constant Angle Non-Precision Approach (CANPA) for a CDFA on a non-precision approach. What are they? Should you fly one?

Two years after Cessna announced its intent to develop a diesel-powered Skylane 182, Textron Aviation announced today at the opening day of AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, a similar modification program to the most produced airplane in the world — the Cessna 172 Skyhawk. Besides being powered by jet-A fuel, which is generally more plentiful and […]