Aviation News

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) have filed a joint request with the FAA seeking to allow many private pilots to use a driver’s license and medical self-assessment in place of a third-class medical certificate. Current FAA regulations require pilots to hold at least a third-class medical to exercise […]

The leaders of five aviation organizations have sent a letter to Congress urging support for the development of** alternatives to leaded avgas** in the FAA’s fiscal 2013 budget. The EPA is considering curtailing the use of leaded aviation fuel, and environmental groups have stepped up legal action designed to outlaw avgas. In their letter, the […]

The supersonic aircraft of the future could look quite different from that of designs past, if the recent findings of one MIT researcher and his colleagues hold true. Assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics Qiqi Wang has developed a supersonic biplane design that he says could reduce drag and consequently fuel consumption and sonic boom, […]

GlobalNavSource, a Florida company that does certification and testing of the iPad for aviation use, has reported that the latest iteration of the tablet computer, which Apple is just calling the iPad, has passed rapid decompression testing to 51,000 feet. The test is necessary, says the company, in order to confirm that the pilots have […]

Cirrus Aircraft has told Flying that it won’t be at next week’s Sun ‘n Fun fly-in in Lakeland, Florida. The company knows that the decision will prompt rumors, and it’s right. We’ve already started hearing them. Any time a major single-engine airplane manufacturer skips one of the country’s major airshows, the result is often suspicion […]

Organizers of the annual Sun ‘n Fun fly-in in Lakeland, Florida, say they have paid a substantial outstanding balance relating to last year’s tornado, which tore through the show grounds and damaged dozens of airplanes. The organization had been seeking to recoup cleanup costs from aircraft owners’ insurance companies with limited success. In a memo […]

The U.S. government gave up searching for the wreckage of Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Model 10 Electra a little more than two weeks after the airplane disappeared in the Central Pacific near Howland Island on July 2, 1937. Now, 75 years later, the State Department is reopening the case. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and […]

Five people died on Thursday afternoon when a Cessna Citation 501 crashed while attempting to land at Macon County Airport in Franklin, North Carolina. According to the Miami Herald, eyewitnesses said the aircraft appeared too high during its first steep, fast descent into Runway 25. On the second attempt, the Citation, again according to witnesses, […]

Just a few months after EASA granted approval to GE Aviation’s new H80 turboprop engine, the FAA has given the engine the green light as well. With FAA type certification now in hand, the 800 horsepower H80 is cleared for use on the Thrush 510G crop duster, which made its first flight with the H80 […]

Wing-walker Todd Green, who was killed in front of thousands of spectators last August when he fell from a Boeing Stearman during an attempted helicopter transfer, let go of the airplane too early, the NTSB concluded in its recently published accident report. According to the report, both the A75N1 Stearman and the Hughes 269C helicopter […]