Aircraft

A second wild ride of an Air France Airbus has gained the attention of safety investigators. French media reports emerged last week about an Air France flight that recently experienced some events similar to those of Flight 447 shortly before it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, reigniting debate over what caused the fatal crash that […]

(October 2011) In today’s challenging used biz-jet market, it’s safe to say that value is everything and that even then it’s sometimes not enough. This has led to some remarkable refurbishment programs designed to take much of the used airplane part out of the equation while actually giving buyers better performance — in some cases […]

French engineer and helicopter pilot Pascal Chretien recently flew into the history books with an aviation feat that took him only about one meter off the ground. Despite the low altitude, his completion of the first untethered, all-electric manned helicopter flight last month is quite an achievement. Flying a prototype he designed and built largely […]

(September 2011) Anyone who’s been around aviation for any length of time knows that there’s no such thing as a perfect airplane. As good as they are when they come out of the factory, they can almost always be made better with the application of some ingenuity and some well-thought-out hardware. Seemingly simple solutions and […]

EASA has issued an airworthiness directive (AD) in response to the runaway trim incident that temporarily grounded the Falcon 7X fleet in May. Most of the fleet was shortly returned to service. The new AD, developed in conjunction with Dassault, calls for a modification of the fly-by-wire system to allow for earlier failure detection and […]

A story that appeared Wednesday in The New York Times — but which actually dates back more than a year — reported on a U.S. Air Force program that takes lightly used, corporate-configured King Airs and turns them into spy planes — the newly named Liberty MC-12, which are used to gather intelligence on enemy […]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday called for a sharp reduction in the number of domestic airlines and said the country may have to resort to buying foreign-built aircraft to improve its shaky air safety record. Medvedev made the comments after visiting the** crash site of a Yak-42** about 150 miles north of Moscow that […]

A chartered Russian jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Tunoshna, Russia, on Wednesday, killing most of the members of the elite Russian hockey team Lokomotiv. The flight was on its way to Minsk, Belarus, for the opening game of the team’s hockey season. Reportedly among the dead are Lokomotiv head coach Brad McCrimmon, an NHL […]

JetNet users will now have access to Aircraft Cost Calculator (ACC) software, an advanced data program built to clarify the financial costs involved with aircraft ownership, at a discounted rate, the two companies recently announced.**** The ACC program allows users to access and compare data for close to 200 of the most popular business aircraft […]

The Enstrom Model 480B‘s blend of forgiving flight qualities, turbine power and an almost six-foot-wide cabin help make it one of the most surprising light helicopters on the market today. Pilots love it, for all of the reasons just listed, as well as for its low operating costs and an exceptional safety record since its […]