Aviation News

Flight Design conducted the first flight of the C4 prototype in Germany last Thursday, officially launching the test phase for the first general aviation airplane scheduled to be certified under new rules designed to improve safety and bring down the costs of future light aircraft. Flight Design conducted the first flight at its headquarters in […]

For fans of California-based Icon Aircraft, the anticipation of a new kind of light-sport airplane for a new kind of pilot is on the verge of becoming a full-fledged reality. Icon has completed the first customer A5 light-sport amphibian, which it plans to fly later this month and deliver in June after final FAA approval […]

Investigators say the pilot of a twin-turboprop Piper Cheyenne that crashed short of the runway at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport on Sunday reported smoke in the cockpit minutes before the airplane went down in a wooded area in a south Florida nature preserve. All four people were killed in the crash at about 4:25 p.m. […]

An Alaska Airlines flight made an emergency landing on Monday when the pilot discovered someone trapped in the front cargo hold, officials said. Flight 448 was bound for Los Angeles but had to return to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport about 14 minutes later when the captain reported that he heard banging coming from underneath the plane, […]

A student pilot who survived a helicopter crash in December has filed lawsuits claiming his instructor was using FaceTime, a popular video chat application, on his cell phone during the instructional flight in a Robinson R22. The lawsuits were filed by the student, Jonathan Desouza, and his lawyer against the flight school that operated the […]

Is it time to rename the 59-year-old international avionics association? The Aircraft Electronics Association (AEA), currently holding its annual convention in Dallas, might want to think about calling itself the ADS-B Association. Much of the news and talk at the event, which was sold out to exhibitors and filling up with attendees by Thursday, centered […]

The National Transportation Safety Board released more than 800 pages from its accident investigation docket that reveal troubling clues about what may have caused last May’s crash of a Gulfstream IV in Bedford, Massachusetts, which killed seven people on board including Philadelphia Inquirer owner Lewis Katz. The most disquieting information contained in the trove of […]

Aspen Avionics has revealed an unusual approach to angle-of-attack (AOA) indication for light airplanes that uses a simple software update to the company’s Evolution flight displays without requiring any extra hardware, sensors or external aircraft modifications. Instead, the patent-pending technology calculates AOA from flight envelope data received through the Evolution display’s integrated air-data computer and […]

The National Transportation Safety Board yesterday issued four new Safety Alerts for general aviation pilots and mechanics highlighting risks uncovered in a number of recent accident investigations. Three of the alerts are geared toward pilots. They address: mountain flying skills and survival equipment considerations; transition training before flying an unfamiliar aircraft with different flight characteristics […]

Pilatus Aircraft, based in Stans, Switzerland, announced it had a record year for sales revenues in 2014. With revenues of CHF 1.174 billion (more than $1.2 billion), the company saw a 16 percent jump over 2013, which was also a strong year. Pilatus delivered 127 airplanes last year, 15 more than the previous year. The […]