Aviation News

Mira Slovak, also known as “The Poor Refugee,” passed away this week at the age of 84. While not very well known to our generation, Slovak became a legend when he won the very first National Championship Air Races’ Unlimited Category, flying an F8F Bearcat, in 1964. Slovak didn’t cross the finish line first, but […]

A fractional ownership firm out of Atlanta, which currently offers six Cirrus SR22 GTS airplanes to its owners, has announced it is opening up a second location in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The expansion will happen in August, the company said, but customers have already signed up at the new location, which will offer two Cirrus […]

French aerospace manufacturer Thales has come up with a proof-of-concept that takes multitasking to a whole new level. The experimental touchscreen control station would allow UAV pilots to operate multiple aircraft simultaneously. “The operator simply has to sit down and define what to track,” said Arnaud Galimberti, the project’s engineering manager. “Take-off, flight trajectory, tracking […]

Reaction by pilots and aviation leaders to a scathing three-part special report in USA Today yesterday on air safety titled “Unfit for Flight” has been overwhelmingly negative, with the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association calling the series of articles “extremely flawed, sensational, one-sided and inaccurate.” AOPA said the report “gets the general aviation safety record […]

An air traffic controller’s attempt at humor has caught the attention of the national media as well as the FAA after his joke forced a Delta 777 on approach to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to go around. Delta Flight 630, en route from Detroit, was flying at just over 1,000 feet in Atlanta airspace after […]

A 21-year-old pilot who works for a skydiving company was forced to make a skydiving jump of his own — his first ever — to bail out of his Cessna 182 after a previous jumper damaged the aircraft in flight. Southern Illinois University student Shawn Kinmartin was flying south of St. Louis at 11,500 feet […]

Mother nature showed her power in Florida over the weekend with severe weather affecting the peninsula. A major thunderstorm rolled through on Sunday, wreaking havoc on homes, roads and airports. Officials at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport were forced to close the airport after a lightning strike created three big holes in one of the […]

Sikorsky has achieved a new milestone in the S-97 Raider program, currently in the development phase. The team at Sikorsky’s Development Flight Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, recently turned on the helicopter’s electrical power for the first time. “This is a big milestone for a development program,” said Sikorsky’s S-97 Raider program manager, Mark […]

Richard Rockefeller, the nephew of former vice president and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, died on Friday morning when he crashed in his Piper Meridian in poor weather soon after takeoff from Westchester County Airport outside New York City. Rockefeller, 65, had flown his PA-46 from his home in Maine to celebrate his father David […]

Accident investigators are focusing on two perplexing clues as they try to determine what caused the deadly crash of Gulfstream IV in Bedford, Massachusetts, on May 31 after the jet failed to lift off from the runway during what should have been a routine takeoff. The first mystery concerns the GIV’s flaps. Investigators found the […]