Aircraft

The 2009 edition of Heli Expo, the Helicopter Association International’s annual industry tradeshow, was held in Anaheim, California, in late February. It was one of the busiest HAI conventions in terms of attendees (15,728 on the first day alone) and exhibitors — a total of 584 with more than 70 helicopters on the show floor. […]

Walking into the softly lit hangar for dinner this night was to enter a pilot’s dream house. In one corner was a 1932 Staggerwing 17R serial number one, the very first Beechcraft manufactured, standing proudly in her elegant wheel fairings; in another was a 1938 S18D Twin Beech serial number 178, the 11th Model 18 […]

Hartzell announced it has earned FAA approval to install its new high-performance scimitar three-blade “Top Props” on all naturally aspirated models of the Beech Baron 58s. Previously the new propellers had been approved only for Barons with electrothermal prop ice protection, but now airplanes with fluid anti-ice, or those with no ice protection, are included. […]

The newly certified Quest Kodiak is built in the company’s factory in Sand Point, Idaho, a quiet northern Idaho resort community nestled in the mountains. With a modestly sized single runway airport, the location initially seemed unlikely to me. But after I flew the airplane, I reconsidered. Forget the runway, you could operate it out […]

Three years ago I wrote about an accident involving a pilot who became impatient waiting for a stratus layer to lift, and went out looking for a break (or its ambiguous cousin, a “thin spot”) through which he could climb to VFR on top. That accident took place in Los Angeles, and I described the […]

All-new design airplanes from startup companies are often called “paper airplanes” because the company has no track record of producing any kind of airplane. So when you design a paper airplane, you should shoot for the moon, and Stratos, a new would-be jet maker in Bend, Oregon, has with its Model 714 personal jet. For […]

Last year when Bend, Oregon, company Columbia Aircraft exhausted its last gasp efforts at getting enough cash to stay in business and declared bankruptcy, there was immediate speculation that Cessna would buy the company’s assets at auction. As it turned out, Cessna had been looking at that possibility for some time already. And by the […]

Since its certification back in 1994, the hallmark of the remarkably successful Pilatus PC-12 turboprop single has been its tremendous flexibility and utility — with a cabin full of passengers and cargo, it can go from a cozy dirt strip to the city lights a thousand miles distant, flying far above the terrain and much […]

It’s official. With the introduction of the G3 version, the seminal Cirrus SR20 piston single is all grown up. I hadn’t fully realized that until recently, when I had the lucky chance to fly a pair of SR20s, one really old one (well, as old as they get) and one brand spanking new one, in […]

Could an airplane hit the bull’s-eye more squarely in today’s environment than the TBM 850? I don’t see how. The turboprop single burns about half again as much fuel as a typical piston twin, but it flies at least 100 knots faster on that fuel. And its range easily stretches out over 1,200 nm even […]