Aircraft

The B-17 Flying Fortress Liberty Belle, known for traveling around the country attending air shows and giving people the experience of riding in a World War II bomber, has abruptly ended its tour of duty. An apparent in-flight fire forced the pilots to bring the airplane down in a cornfield near the Aurora Municipal Airport […]

__The special light-sport aircraft market offers a range of airplanes — there are 115 S-LSA models approved by the FAA — that serve many missions. To gain a bit more perspective on the offerings, I arranged for demo rides in three S-LSAs during this year’s Sun ’n Fun in Lakeland, Florida. Each was touted as […]

Despite the widespread adoption of Garmin’s integrated avionics systems in a variety of airplanes from four-place piston singles to turboprops and business jets, never before has the company’s G1000 glass cockpit flown in a helicopter. The conventional wisdom has always seemed to argue against shoehorning Garmin’s wide LCD flight displays into the tight confines of […]

After several attempts at flight and 12 crash landings, the founder of Cessna Aircraft Company, Clyde Cessna, completed his first successful flight in June 1911, one hundred years ago, according to company archives. The 31-year-old Cessna had added an engine and propeller to a copy of the Blériot XI fuselage and was teaching himself to […]

Russian flag carrier Aeroflot has taken delivery of its first Sukhoi SuperJet 100, a modern fly-by-wire regional jet intended to compete head to head against hot-selling models from Bombardier and Embraer in the 75- to 95-seat category. Featuring PowerJet SaM146 engines capable of producing 17,000 pounds of thrust and an integrated avionics system developed by […]

Eclipse Aerospace’s upgraded Avio Integrated Flight Management System (IFMS) has sold out through March 2012, the company announced this week. With Avio IFMS, the new company has come a long way from the Eclipse 500‘s original avionics system. Specifically designed for the Eclipse very light jet by avionics supplier Innovative Solutions & Support, Avio IFMS […]

Bombardier’s Global Vision flight deck has earned Transport Canada certification, marking the first such approval for the Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion-based avionics system. The milestone clears a path for Bombardier business jets equipped Global Vision components to obtain certificates of airworthiness, said Bombardier vice president Stéphane Leblanc. “To date, we have completed over 600 […]

Sales of Soloy’s MK II turbine-engine conversion kits for the Cessna 206 have cooled off considerably since the start of the economic downturn two years ago, but interest from an unlikely source is driving renewed demand, the Olympia, Washington, company says. Soloy has completed a number of Mk II conversions for floatplane buyers looking for […]

(June 2011) There are good reasons that the Piper Archer is an airplane commonly found in flight school fleets. Its stable flight characteristics and simple design make it an excellent trainer. And with enough speed to get you where you want to go, but not too much to get you in trouble, as well as […]

(June 2011) We’d just landed, taxied in and shut down the one-of-a-kind King Air 250 on the Atlantic FBO ramp at my home airport of Austin Bergstrom. We’d made our fuel order, closed up the big airstair door and started into the FBO when my flying buddy, Hawker Beechcraft’s Mark Mohler, spotted a pretty King […]