Aviation News

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner has won the 2011 Robert J. Collier Trophy, one of the aerospace industry’s most prestigious annual awards, by beating out a slate of other noteworthy finalists that included the Lockheed C-5M Super Galaxy, the Gamera human-powered helicopter, and Pipistrel’s Taurus G4 electric-powered airplane. “We were very pleased with this year’s slate of […]

A lawsuit filed last week by the environmental protection group Friends of the Earth is drawing renewed attention to the debate over leaded avgas, prompting a number of aviation industry leaders to speak out in defense of the industry’s progress on the issue. The suit, filed against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), alleges the EPA […]

The shared ownership market got a new entry recently when Atlanta (PDK) based Ascension Air launched its Cirrus shared ownership service. Ascension Air offers eighth shares in new Cirrus SR22s at remarkably competitive rates. According to Ascension Air, pilots can get into a new airplane for around $10,000 down and a flat monthly fee of […]

The Blue Ash Airport (KISZ) outside Cincinnati, Ohio, will close this summer, if the city of Cincinnati has its way. In a statement issued on March 8, city manager Milton Doheny revealed that “the city administration is providing notice to the FAA, the city of Blue Ash, and the current Blue Ash airport tenants and […]

As part of a broad initiative begun five years ago to improve aviation’s “safety culture,” the FAA is encouraging air traffic controllers to report operational errors and mistakes without fear of punishment or reprisal. The change is leading to an increase in reported errors but, the agency says, a reduction in overall risk as well. […]

Using ForeFlight Mobile to file the flight plan, monitor the weather and get airport information, Editor-in-Chief Robert Goyer flew out to ForeFlight’s headquarters in Houston last week to hand over the 2011 Editors’ Choice Award to ForeFlight for its popular ForeFlight Mobile aviation app. Accepting in person for ForeFlight was co-founder and managing director Tyson […]

Italian aircraft maker Tecnam, which is perhaps best known for its LSA models but which is now branching out in new directions, has issued a progress report on one of those new models, the four-place P-2010, which, taking a page out of Cessna’s Citation X/Ten playbook, it has nicknamed the Twenty-Ten. The to-be-certified model is […]

In its latest annual industry forecast, the FAA predicts the number of general aviation piston airplanes will decline at a rate of 0.1 percent over the next 20 years, even as airline and business jet travel greatly expand. The forecast’s findings, presented at the 37th Annual FAA Forecast Conference in Washington, D.C., last week, project […]

Beginning on Oct. 1, the FAA will switch to its online Form 8500-8 medical application, otherwise known as “FAA MedXpress,” in a move aimed at eliminating the cumbersome paper medical forms. The FAA introduced the online form in 2007, but didn’t make its use mandatory. In explaining the change, the agency said the MedXpress system […]

If one-stop shopping for your database updates sounds too good to be true, well, you’re still mostly right. But for some owners, the time has arrived, thanks to a program from Jeppesen and Garmin called PilotPak that lets select owners pay for one database subscription and install it on all of their panel-mount units. PilotPak […]