Aviation News

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 […]

The Pilatus PC-12 that crashed near Lakeland earlier this month had changed course to avoid bad weather directly before the crash, according to a preliminary report released by the NTSB this week. The NTSB cited ATC transmissions showing a controller warning the 45-year-old Pilatus PC-12 pilot of a sizeable area of precipitation northwest of Lakeland […]

After spending 15 months in orbit conducting classified missions, the Air Force’s unmanned X-37B space plane made its way back to Earth over the weekend, touching down at Vandenberg Air Force Base early Saturday morning. The landing marks the second arrival of the secret space plane – a craft first initiated by NASA in 1999 […]

Hawker Beechcraft’s path to solvency will likely include a major decrease in bizjet production, according to a recent report by the Wichita Eagle. As part of its recent bankruptcy filing, Hawker Beechcraft submitted a “Project Flight” plan outlining three potential options for moving forward, all of which preserve the company’s piston, King Air and military […]

After lying on the bottom of the Baltic Sea for more than half a century, the wreckage of a rare Junkers Ju 88 is being brought to the surface by a group of German military divers. The wreckage, located just off the coast of the German island of Rugen, was first found in the 1990s […]

The FAA and NASA have worked out an agreement covering who will be in charge of licensing and public safety for private-sector spacecraft lifting off and landing inside the borders of the United States. The agreement puts the FAA in charge of any crew-carrying spacecraft that launches and lands in the U.S., but also requires […]

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday to meet with Michael Huerta, the Obama administration’s nominee to head the FAA. Huerta is now Acting FAA Administrator. He has served in that role since last December, when former FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt resigned after he was charged with drunken driving. Babbitt was found […]

E-Volo, the company that performed the first flight of an all-electric, 16-propeller multicopter last October, is pressing forward with the development of commercial versions of the craft and giving the public a glimpse into just what those variants might look like. Over the next two years, the company says it hopes to develop a regulation […]