Aviation News

Loss of control accounts for more than 40 percent of fixed-wing GA fatal accidents, a sobering statistic that has prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to put this danger on its “Most Wanted” list of safety improvements. Now, a group of flight instructors in the Washington, D.C. area is tackling the problem as well through […]

Training airplanes powered by fuel-efficient compression ignition diesel engines are catching on in a big way in China, where the burgeoning GA infrastructure favors jet-A fuel rather than 100LL avgas. In the latest move to diesel power, the Xinjiang Tianxiang Flight School in northwest China is doubling its fleet of Diamond DA40 trainers to 30 […]

David Gowan, a 57-year-old Mooney M20K pilot from North Dakota, had just reached 1,000 feet after taking off from Minnesota’s Hawley Municipal Airport on Tuesday when his engine quit. Searching for a landing spot, he spotted a clear area on Highway 10 and brought the airplane down. After touching down, however, the Mooney caught up […]

During 18 months in 2003 and 2004, SpaceShipOne, Scaled Composites’ original air-launched spaceplane, made 14 free flights of which six were powered, the rest glides. Although SS1 was a novel design with an untried type of motor and was venturing into inhospitable territory last visited by the X-15 almost 50 years earlier, the privately funded […]

The HondaJet is an important step closer to its market introduction after the FAA on Friday awarded the light jet’s provisional type certification. Honda Aircraft is planning for initial customer deliveries to start after remaining flight testing is completed in the next couple of months. Provisional type certification is a common design approval awarded to […]

An Air Canada Airbus A320 touched down about 1,100 feet short of the runway at Halifax International Airport while attempting to land in heavy snow early Sunday, injuring 25 passengers and crew when the jetliner’s landing gear tore off. Photos of the crash scene show the wrecked airliner with its nose cone missing and engines […]

Bertrand Piccard, one of the two founders of Solar Impulse, has completed the fifth leg of the pioneering journey in Si2, landing early Tuesday morning at Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport in China. The leg from Mandalay, Myanmar, to Chongqing was a marathon of epic proportions, taking Piccard 20 hours and 29 minutes to complete. At […]

Airlines and aviation safety regulators around the world are considering a range of measures intended to prevent another tragedy like the one witnessed in the French Alps last week when a packed Germanwings jetliner crashed with its copilot at the controls. German prosecutors say the 28-year-old pilot Andreas Lubitz apparently crashed the Airbus A320 intentionally […]

A new solar-electric aircraft has entered commercial production and is getting ready for its first delivery. Named the Silent Falcon, the UAS is produced by Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Silent Falcon UAS Technologies (SFUAS), a former subsidiary of Bye Aerospace, which specializes in alternative energies for aviation application that is also involved with Aero Electric Aircraft […]

The pilot, 58, was a hotel owner in the northwest England town of Chester. Although he did not fly professionally, he held commercial licenses for both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. In 2002 he had replaced his first airplane, a 160 hp fixed-gear Socata Tampico, with a 1970 Cessna 310, which he flew for 300 hours […]