Aviation News

Cessna Aircraft on Saturday launched the inaugural “Cessna Discover Flying Challenge” during an open house in Independence, Kansas. The event kicked off a five-week flying tour for a group of selectively chosen ** Cessna Skycatcher** pilots that will include visits to various fly-ins, airshows and other aviation gatherings, all done in the name of raising […]

The NTSB blamed pilot error for the crash of NASCAR team owner Jack Roush’s Beech Premier I at EAA AirVenture two years ago, finding that Roush failed to apply full power while attempting to abort a landing on Runway 18R. As a result, Roush’s jet stalled at low altitude, crashed onto the runway and split […]

Eurocopter is making a grand U.S. tour with its X3 hybrid developmental heloplane, which features a pair of conventional looking turboprops in addition to a conventional looking rotar. The craft, which Eurocopter developed in just three years’ time, is nearly 100 knots faster than the fleetest comparably sized conventional helicopters. The X3 has achieved better […]

A recent patent awarded to Airbus by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office indicates engineers at the industry giant have quite a unique design up their sleeves – a double fuselage airliner, to be exact. Design drawings associated with the patent, filed in 2008, show the fuselages connected by way of two forward-swept wings, with […]

The Solar Impulse HB-SIA concept airplane has cleared another hurdle and successfully completed a flight from Rabat-Salé International Airport outside Rabat, Morocco, to Ouarzazate. This was the most challenging flight to date for the test mission in preparation for a round-the-world flight scheduled to take place in 2014, according to the Swiss company. At an […]

Gamera II, a giant human-powered helicopter developed by students at the University of Maryland’s Clark School, has been vying this week for both new world records and the $250,000 Sikorsky Prize. On Thursday, the team made an unofficial 40-second human powered flight, shattering the group’s previous 11.4-second record set with a flight of the Gamera […]

JetBlue Flight 194 was forced to return for Las Vegas McCarran International Airport after the Airbus A320 suffered a loss of two of its hydraulic systems on Sunday. The pilots determined they needed to turn back and declared an emergency, but first they had to burn off a large amount of fuel. That maneuvering took […]

As investigators continue to probe the fatal 2011 crash of a Gulfstream G650 test aircraft, the NTSB recently voiced some harsh words regarding Gulfstream’s handling of the investigation. In a letter dated April 4, 2012, NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman outlined a number of offenses committed by the bizjet giant, including information withholding, noncompliance with NTSB […]

An FAA aviation rulemaking committee has released its report on the state of FAA airman knowledge tests, and the news is good for pilots. The committee was composed of many of the most forward-thinking and experienced pilot-educators in the industry, and their findings represent the cutting edge of opinion on testing. The authors spared no […]

The upcoming integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the National Airspace System within the next few years has local, county, state and federal agencies pining for drones, this according to a story in the Christian Science Monitor. The story points to the public’s conflicted view of drone operations — they like them for hunting […]