Aviation News

As we race inexorably toward the week of Oshkosh to partake in the bounty that is the greatest airshow of the year there are some tangible signs that general aviation is poised for a return to real, honest-to-goodness growth. For starters, the first Icon A5 light sport amphibian will be handed over to its new […]

Some surprising findings are highlighted in the National Transportation Safety Board accident report detailing what went horribly wrong in the skies over Afghanistan in May 2013, when a National Airlines Boeing 747 cargo plane climbing out after takeoff suddenly rolled over and plummeted into the ground, sending up a massive fireball. The dramatic accident was […]

John Kounis, editor of aviation magazine Pilot Getaways, died suddenly this week at his home in Glendale, California. Kounis was an avid pilot with several thousand hours of flight time and the proud owner of a Cessna 185. During his exciting career, he visited more than 50 countries in a variety of general aviation airplanes. […]

Certified flight instructors now have a new option for renewing their annual Transportation Security Administration requirement through King Schools. TSA Security Awareness Training for CFIs is a free course designed to help flight instructors with the recurrent TSA training in the year between the Flight Instructor Refresher Course (FIRC), which includes the required training. The […]

Solar Impulse 2 is stuck on the ground in Hawaii after suffering “irreversible” battery damage caused by overheating during its record-setting, five-day flight from Nagoya, Japan, project leaders said. The solar-powered airplane, with Swiss pilot André Borschberg at the controls, landed safely in Hawaii on July 3, completing the longest leg of its around-the-world attempt […]

James “Jim” Bede, the sometimes-controversial airplane designer who created more than a dozen airplanes types since the 1960s — including the Bede BD-5J micro jet that appeared in a James Bond film — died on July 9 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was 82. Born in Cleveland in April 1933, Bede graduated from Wichita State University […]

Dueling press releases arrived in my email inbox at around the same time on Friday morning, one from Airbus claiming the E-Fan demonstrator had made history by becoming the first electric-powered airplane to cross the English Channel and another saying French pilot Hugues Duval had actually pulled off the same feat the night before in […]

Have you seen the TV ads for the new “Mission: Impossible” movie, the ones showing Tom Cruise improbably hanging on for dear life on the outside of a military transport plane as it blasts into the sky? Hollywood CGI is getting pretty good, I recall thinking. Well, that was no CGI. Cruise actually strapped onto […]

Airbus Group’s E-Fan demonstrator was able to successfully cross the English Channel on Friday morning, mirroring Louis Blériot’s historical flight nearly 106 years ago. But the record flight is already proving controversial. Taking off from Lydd Airport in southern England, the twin-fan electric airplane completed the flight in 38 minutes, reaching a cruise altitude of […]

After winning the first round of Air Race 1 World Cup in Tunisia in early June, Thom Richard stormed across the finish line first, once again, in the second round of the competition in Lleida, Spain, on June 28. The longtime Reno Air Race pilot was up against the heat (a grueling 104 degrees) and […]