Aviation News

The criteria we use to select our annual Editors’ Choice award winners are fairly simple: We look for the best products, technologies, ideas and innovations that emerged in the preceding year. Once we’ve separated the merely good from the great, we cull our list even further, debating why some contenders should make the final cut […]

The Bell Helicopter 505 Jet Ranger X, a five-seat multi-mission helicopter, has achieved certification by Transport Canada Civil Aviation (TCCA). The light helicopter progressed quickly through certification after its unveiling at Heli Expo in 2014. “The Bell 505 is truly a game changer in the short light single market, and we are proud of the […]

It was a year filled with big news stories that not only helped to reshape the general aviation landscape but will almost certainly continue to do so for many years to come. The past 12 months have seen aircraft milestones, major changes to FAA regulations and a presidential election unlike any we have witnessed in […]

Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association president Mark Baker this week penned a letter to President-elect Donald Trump addressing the potential economic consequences of a temporary flight restriction (TFR) surrounding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. In the area surrounding Trump’s Florida residence, a presidential TFR would affect six airports with a “total economic output […]

Cirrus Aircraft handed over the first customer SF50 Vision at an extravagant ceremony on Monday at its production facility in Duluth, Minnesota. The milestone caps a decade-plus-long effort to introduce to the aviation market the first single-engine personal jet. This initial customer Vision Jet, painted in an attractive red-and-white scheme that Cirrus calls Corso Red […]

Gulfstream is known for being on top of its development schedule, and this time the company has broken the targeted deadline for the first flight of the technologically advanced G600, announced last year concurrently with the shorter G500, an airplane well on its way to certification by the end of next year. The G600 was […]

Diamond Aircraft Industries Inc., Canada surprised much of the industry when on December 13 it sold 60 percent of the company’s shares to Wanfeng Auto Holding Group, a diverse Chinese manufacturer of parts for both the automobile and the aviation industry. An English-language news outlet in China, CRJEnglish, said the deal was closed at Diamond’s London, […]

Women in Aviation International (WAI), an organization dedicated to the encouragement and advancement of women in all aviation career fields and interests, just announced its 2017 inductees to the International Pioneer Hall of Fame. Inductees include the U.S. Navy’s first class of eight women aviators, who entered training in January 1973. Six women in that […]

The FAA issued its final version of an updated Part 23 that overhauls the airworthiness standards for general aviation airplanes weighing less than 19,000 pounds with 19 or fewer seats. The agency, as well as the industry, hopes the new rule reduces the time needed to economically move safety-enhancing technologies for small airplanes into the […]

The FAA plans to update aviation’s general flight rules section — Part 91.176 — with new performance-based guidelines aimed at improving flexibility for operators of aircraft equipped with an Enhanced Flight Vision System (EFVS). The rule, effective March 13, 2017, will allow aircraft on an IFR flight plan in most categories to fly a straight-in […]