Search Results for: general aviation inc

After 9/11 the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency’s authority and funding saw massive expansions as its mission swelled from border security to a statutory mandate to keep a watchful eye for terrorist threats anywhere in the country. Part of that broadened authority includes the CBP’s General Aviation Pilot Certificate Inspection program, which as you […]

Work crews finished hauling away the largest of the rocks and muddy stumps only a few days ago, turning what had been a leafy hill behind the Just Aircraft factory in tiny Walhalla, South Carolina, into a rutted, scarred clearing barely the size of a football field. Even my host, company co-founder Troy Woodland, doesn’t […]

Turn on your faucet—any faucet. Start with just a slow stream of water. See how smooth, transparent it is? That’s an example of laminar flow. Now, accelerate it by opening the taps fully. Notice how it roils, as a brook after a rainstorm. What you see is the essence of turbulence.

Why can one airplane take off and land on short runways while another requires significantly longer takeoff and landing distances?

Last week, after enjoying one flyable day in between snowstorms, I gave up on aviating and took myself to the movies. The flick had great reviews and an impressive cast, but it was as gloomy as the weather. I sat for a couple hours and watched a totally dysfunctional family implode — the mother dying […]

AOPA president Mark Baker sat down with the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently to deliver a message: Unwarranted stops of general aviation airplanes by CBP agents must end. The response from the agency’s new top official? We agree. AOPA says it has received more than 50 reports from members who have been […]

SyberJet, the company that took over the Sino Swearingen SJ30 design after the company went bankrupt, broke ground yesterday on a new 30,000-square-foot completion, delivery and training center at the Cedar City Regional Airport (KCDC) in Cedar City, Utah. Several hundred people were in attendance at the groundbreaking event, including government officials, suppliers, family members […]

A new private pilot, who had big dreams but not big money, was contemplating purchasing an older Mooney. He had limited mechanical skills and no concept of the potential cost of maintaining a complex airplane. He just liked the looks of the plane and its performance. Roger that. Many people buy their first aircraft for […]

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 […]

It is a Saturday night in Ithaca, New York. The temperature is 7 degrees, and the gusts of 26 knots blow snow across the ramp. The only available evidence of this blowing snow is provided by powerful floodlights attached to the hangar that make for a scene that is both bright white and, just beyond […]