Aviation News

The FAA has issued an interim notice that suspends opposite direction operations involving IFR aircraft at Part 139 airports – those that serve scheduled commercial traffic with more than nine passenger seats or unscheduled carriers with at least 31 seats. The notice is a result of “several losses of separation,” such as the most recent […]

A recent market analysis released by Jetnet, a company that has researched business aviation since 1988, shows promising trends in the business aviation market. The used bizjet market is showing improvements and business jet operations by U.S operators are slowly increasing domestically and internationally. The first six months of 2012 showed a promising up trend […]

Scientists at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California are celebrating after the Curiosity rover completed a successful landing in the Gale Crater on Mars late Sunday night PST. After its long journey, which began atop an Atlas V rocket on Nov. 26, 2011, the rover […]

The Pilots Bill of Rights championed by Sen. James Inhofe (R – Okla.) has been signed into law, bringing with it a new era of transparency in which the FAA must expand legal protections for pilots by providing access to investigative reports and ATC recordings, and handing over evidence being used as the basis of […]

Icon Aircraft, the California developer of the Icon A5 amphibious light sport airplane, has enlisted Cirrus Aircraft to produce a “significant portion” of the composite airframes for the LSA. As part of the agreement announced on Monday, Cirrus will build the composite airframe components for the Icon A5 at its factory in Grand Forks, North […]

Hawker Beechcraft has issued pink slips to 170 hourly and salary workers as the bankrupt company continues exclusive talks with Chinese-based Superior Aviation regarding a potential sale of the storied American manufacturer. The layoff notices – which gave the affected employees 60 days notice – were issued to workers at Hawker Beechcraft’s Little Rock facility […]

One of the delights of Oshkosh is seeing new, innovative airplanes. The Lisa Akoya, an amphibious model destined for the LSA category, fits that bill to a tee. The airplane, which will sell for around $350,000, features a range of approaches never before seen in any airplane. I spent a delightful hour with the folks […]

Three airliners were headed on a collision course at Reagan National Airport on Tuesday in the latest in a string of high profile incidents caused by air traffic control errors. Tuesday’s incident involved three US Airways commuter jets, two of which had just taken off from the airport and one of which was inbound to […]

Investigators trying to determine what caused the deadly crash of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 in the jungle mountains of Indonesia say controllers cleared the airplane below the minimum safe altitude for the area minutes before the jet slammed into a mountain shrouded in low clouds. Sukhoi had planned a 30-minute demonstration flight on May 9 […]

Have you heard the term “sequestration” in the news lately? It’s a jargony description for the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts that are scheduled to take effect next year unless politicians work out a deal to slash the federal deficit. The FAA will be caught up in this fiscal belt-tightening, to the tune of more than […]