Aircraft

Operators of Quest Aircraft Kodiak turboprop singles are now eligible to equip their aircraft with TKS ice-protection, and receive approval for flight into known icing (FIKI). The word couldn’t come at a better time, as the winter icing season is descending on North America with a vengeance this month. The big utility turboprop is used […]

Editor’s Note: The Lockwood AirCam is a one-of-a-kind airplane, tough, capable, ingenious and elegant all at once. Designed as a photo platform for a National Geographic_ story on the remote and pristine Ndoki Rain Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the AirCam soon evolved into a commercially available product that continues to attract a […]

The pilot, 69, had almost finished a six-month refurbishment of a Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser. He had been rebuilding airplanes for 40 years, and his habit was to have a certain A&P mechanic perform a “semifinal” inspection as each project neared completion. The mechanic would give him a list of things that needed to be […]

Flight training specialist ATP isn’t listening to the doom and gloom about the sad state of general aviation shipments and billings for the first three quarters of 2010. It just ordered six new Piper Seminole light twins, which, when delivered before year end, will increase the school’s fleet of Seminoles to 87 nationwide, complemented by […]

The catastrophic failure of one of its four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines caused damage to several systems on board a Qantas Airbus A380. A chain of failures had the pilots using all their available skills to bring the megaliner back to Singapore for a safe landing earlier this month. No one on board was injured, […]

A little over a year ago a good friend asked if I would consider writing a column about a skytyping/airshow operation. My friend was a former chief pilot at our New York domicile, and through the years the job had given him the opportunity to become acquainted with pilots that had unique backgrounds; one of […]

It was a wintry day in Salt Lake City with the temperature hovering around freezing and a high, overcast sky with good visibility. We were on the second leg of a three-leg day flying a Lear 35 from a military base to Washington, D.C., carrying three passengers including a VIP. I was sitting right seat […]

This lighter, simpler, less expensive turbine helicopter creates a whole new niche.

How do you one-up the world’s best-selling helicopter, the Robinson R44? Simple. You put a turbine in it. But wait! … It wasn’t that easy. Talk of a “Robinson turbine” began swirling around the helicopter community clear back in 2001. But if you asked company CEO and founder Frank Robinson back then if the company […]

A rash of seat track failures in the mid 1980s led to an FAA airworthiness directive (AD) on several Cessna models. Faulty latch mechanisms led to several accidents in which the seat slid back and the pilot lost control of the airplane. Now, the FAA has published a notice of proposed rulemaking that adds new […]