Aviation News

The FAA is moving to temporarily grounding doors-off helicopter tour flights in which passengers are tethered to the aircraft, after the March 11 crash in New York City of a Liberty Helicopters Airbus AS350 that killed five people. “The FAA will order operators and pilots to take immediate actions to control or mitigate this risk,” […]

Cessna is moving quickly on the SkyCourier project, which parent company Textron Aviation announced in November. The company has completed the initial wind tunnel testing at the San Diego Wind Tunnel at the San Diego International Airport in California, and is making progress toward a final design. The model used for the wind tunnel testing […]

A startup endeavor backed by Google cofounder Larry Page has tested an electric-powered vertical takeoff and landing drone in New Zealand. The company, Silicon Valley based Kitty Hawk, revealed released a video of the prototype in flight. The Cora autonomous craft is targeted at the nascent airborne taxi market that some experts predict could explode […]

Owners of older Cessna 172s will be excited to learn that Dynon Avionics just received its first supplemental type certificate for the flagship SkyView HDX avionics system aimed at the classic four-place aircraft. Cessna owners will now be able to replace the vast majority of their legacy instruments with a SkyView HDX system offering complete […]

White Plains, New York-based Safe Flight Instrument Corporation has patented a system that can alert pilots and help them avoid tail strike scenarios. The “Tailstrike Warning System” relates angle-of-attack rather than pitch guidance to ground proximity. The system also helps predict a tail strike threat in the case of a sloped runway. Because the warning […]

AOPA has launched the first section of a four-year program for high school students, a program designed to encourage young people into aviation careers. Three career and technical pathways are included: pilots, aerospace engineering and drones. The first curriculum, which is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, […]

The Southern Utah University’s Aviation department is spearheading an effort to update the aviation maintenance curriculum the FAA requires all U.S. training providers to use. The Cedar City-based University claims the curriculum has not been adequately updated in more than 56 years. According to SUU, “aviation students are not prepared for real world jobs because […]

Garmin says the first of its new G500 TXi and G600 TXi clean-sheet touchscreen flight displays are on their way to customers following approvals by both the FAA and EASA in Europe. The TXi series incorporates touchscreen design with modern processors that support improved map and chart rendering, faster panning and contemporary single-finger zoom and […]

Although the attempt to corporatize the nation’s ATC system has been sent to a semi-permanent holding pattern, the criticism of how the FAA has been managing the NextGen project to update the national airspace system continues. The DOT’s Inspector General in a recent report said it received 17 hotline complaints “alleging serious problems and abuse […]

Five passengers who died in a helicopter crash into New York City’s East River on Sunday were strapped into the doorless Airbus AS350 by five-point harnesses and screwed-down carabiner shackles that required a knife to cut through the nylon safety straps that held the occupants inside, according to reports. When the single-engine helicopter went down […]