Aviation News

Burt Rutan, who retired from his company Scaled Composites in 2010 only to announce he is building a new airplane in his garage, provided some details regarding the progress on what he has named the SkiGull. The SkiGull is designed as a multi purpose airplane capable of landing on water (it incorporates design details to […]

Crash investigators believe with a “high degree of certainty” that the wing part that washed up on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean last week indeed did come from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 — though they have stopped just short of confirming a definitive positive identification. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced yesterday that […]

FlightSafety International is in the process of building a new full flight simulator to train King Air 350 pilots flying behind Rockwell Collins’ new Pro Line Fusion avionics suite. The new Level D FS1000 simulator will be introduced at the FlightSafety Learning Center in Atlanta and is expected to enter service early next year. The […]

While we haven’t seen evidence of the skies being blackened by drones just yet, the FAA says it has now granted more than 1,000 exemption approvals to commercial UAV operators for everything from film production to pipeline patrol to real estate photography. As of today, the agency says it has issued 1,008 Section 333 exemptions, […]

There are many more questions than answers surrounding an in-flight low fuel emergency involving an Allegiant Air MD-80 arriving in Fargo, North Dakota, last month, with fingers variously being pointed at the pilots, the airline’s management and the Fargo Tower controller. The drama unfolded when Allegiant Air Flight 426 from Las Vegas to Fargo, being […]

Three members of Osama bin Laden’s family were killed on Friday when the Embraer Phenom 300 twinjet they were aboard crashed on approach to Blackbushe Airport west of London. UK officials confirmed those killed in the crash were Saudi nationals visiting England on vacation, as well as their pilot. The Saudi-registered Phenom reportedly crashed into […]

Airbus engineers have quietly received a patent for a 20-passenger hypersonic “ultra-rapid” business jet that would be capable of whisking the well-heeled from San Francisco to Paris in under three hours. The patent claims the ambitious aircraft would significantly reduce its sonic boom to allow flights at supersonic speed over land. Turbojets and a rocket […]

The General Aviation Manufacturers Association released its quarterly shipment report last week — a report that compares general aviation aircraft delivery numbers year over year. This latest report compares the first half of 2015 to the same time period in 2014, and the results will not make the aviation industry jump for joy. The total […]

While the U.S. population has been on a steady and strong increase for decades, the pilot population has slowly been declining as the large number of amazing aviators that came out of the World War II and the Vietnam War are aging. But with the emergence of new young pilot groups there is hope for […]

As a child, Jessica Cox wasn’t allowed to climb the slide at the playground. Born without arms, she was limited — not by her own abilities, but by protective grown-ups who told her, “Oh, you can’t do that.” “I wanted to be up high,” Cox said, but because she had no way of holding onto […]