Aviation News

The varied training scenarios were developed by SAFE in cooperation with Redbird Flight Simulations, and are available for download at the SAFE website. The scenarios are the same ones used at the SAFE booth at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh and last week at AOPA Summit in Palm Springs, California. SAFE Executive Director Doug Stewart said, “Given […]

With sales of new aircraft gone sour, the light aircraft refurb industry finds itself in a bit of a sweet spot. At AOPA Summit, for example, Todd Peterson of Peterson’s Performance Plus reported he cannot keep up with demand for his Cessna 182 Skylane upgrade. The “King Katmai” conversion includes upgraded engines (260-hp or 300-hp), […]

On October 14, Brigadier General Charles “Chuck” Yeager completed a celebratory flight to mark the anniversary of his historic first supersonic flight. In pure Air Force fashion, Yeager, now 89, broke the sound barrier 45,000 feet over the Edwards Air Force Base at 10:24 a.m., 65 years to the minute after his original flight. But […]

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 […]