Aviation News

On Sunday morning, the 65th anniversary of Chuck Yeager’s historic supersonic flight in the Bell X-1, Austrian base jumper Felix Baumgartner became the first person to ever go faster than the speed of sound without the benefit of a craft. The record came after Baumgartner leapt from an altitude of 128,000 feet from the gondola […]

A Brazilian appeals court upheld the guilty verdict against two American pilots on Monday for their involvement in the fatal crash of a Boeing 737 that killed 154 people in 2006, but denied prosecutors’ arguments that the men should serve time in prison. After receiving the guilty verdict last year, the two men were sentenced […]

In conjunction with the annual AOPA Aviation Summit last week, AOPA arranged the Flight Training Summit — a meeting with flight instructors and industry representatives to introduce AOPA’s new field guides to flight training, get ideas for initiatives for the Center to Advance the Pilot Community and announce the winners of the organization’s new training […]

October 14 was no ordinary day for Drew Gryder of Hampton, Georgia. It was the day of his 16th birthday. And Gryder spent this milestone birthday doing something not many, if any, teenagers had done before. He completed triple solo flights – taking to the skies in a glider, a single-engine airplane and a multi-engine […]

Cobalt Aircraft Industries has selected the SmartDeck integrated avionics suite from Canada’s Esterline CMC Avionics for its sleek Co50 five-place, all-composite single, the companies announced at AOPA Summit in Palm Springs, California. The Co50’s standard SmartDeck avionics system will include dual air-data/attitude-heading reference systems (ADAHRS), WAAS GPS and an integrated digital autopilot. Cobalt says its […]

The FAA has approved the type certificate for Sikorsky’s long-anticipated S-76D, opening the floodgates to a nearly half-billion-dollar order backlog from customers who have waited patiently through three years of program delays. The FAA signed the S-76D type certificate on Oct. 12, capping an intensive flight test program that originally called for certification of the […]

Visitors to Lockheed Martin Flight Services’ (LMFS) booth at the AOPA Aviation Summit have a chance to get a first look at the new Automated Flight Service Station (AFSS) Pilot Web Portal. The new system is integrated with the company’s live briefers, allowing users to choose between an online briefing, a live briefing from an […]

Van’s Aircraft introduced an S-LSA version of the RV-12 on Thursday at AOPA Summit in Palm Springs, California. The new model will come completely built, unlike the current RV-12, which is an Experimental LSA (E-LSA). E-LSAs are essentially LSAs that comes in kit form. Van’s president and CEO Dick Van Grunsven said the new model […]

Tamarack Air Group’s president Nick Guida released some details at AOPA Summit yesterday on the company’s secret ATLAS project – aftermarket winglets for the Cirrus SR22. But these are winglets with an interesting new angle. ATLAS stands for Active Technology Load Alleviation System, and it addresses the primary obstacle in adding winglets. Though fixed winglets […]

“The Ultimate Fighter” television star Stephan Bonnar tangles with UFC (Ultimate Fighter Championship) middleweight Anderson Silva this Saturday night in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But at least Bonnar won’t have to worry about one thing. His wife is expecting their child back home in Las Vegas, and the Bonnars were concerned he might miss the […]