Aviation News

Two well-known filmmakers were killed on Saturday in a helicopter crash in Eastern Australia. The men, 60-year-old American cinematographer Mike deGruy and 52-year-old Australian writer-producer Andrew Wight, died when the Robinson R44 helicopter Wight was piloting crashed shortly after takeoff from Jaspers Brush, an airfield approximately 100 miles south of Sydney. According to the Australian […]

Even before the opening kickoff on Sunday night, Super Bowl XLVI smashed one record – the number of private aircraft flying to the game. More than 1,100 private aircraft had parking reservations at area airports for the weekend, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation Aviation Division. And that number doesn’t include the hundreds of […]

Utah Valley University recently released a brief video highlighting major milestones in aviation history in a video animated in 3D. While it’s impossible to include all major historical events in 3:35 minutes, the video does a good job of including some of the most significant achievements, from Leonardo Da Vinci’s early drawings to the first […]

A 41-year-old pilot was killed on Monday after being struck by the moving propeller of his 1974 Piper Cherokee. The accident took place around 8:30 a.m. at Gillespie Field in El Cajon, California, just outside of San Diego. According to officials, the pilot, who has been identified as Gordon Trygve Mylo Woodard of Lakeside, California, […]

A House-Senate Conference Committee has reached agreement on a long-term FAA reauthorization bill that would provide funding and program direction for the agency through fiscal 2015. A final vote on the measure is expected soon. The FAA has been operating under 23 short-term funding extensions since 2007. The long-term bill, if passed, would authorize $63.4 […]

Stratolaunch Systems, the new space tourism venture launched in partnership between billionaire Paul Allen and legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan, has broken ground on a hangar facility in the Mojave Desert intended to house what would be the largest airplane ever. The hangar facility will span 92,640 square feet and is slated for completion in […]

Popular belief says the cleaner the leading edge of an airfoil is, the more efficient it becomes. But scientists are now looking into how strategically placed bumps on the main rotors of helicopters may boost performance. Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Göttingen, Germany, claim they got the idea of using the concept […]

Bizjet maker Bombardier last week handed over the ceremonial keys for a Global 6000 jet to fractional firm NetJets even though the airplane won’t be ready for actual delivery until much later this year. It is only now entering completion, the stage at which the final touches, interior, paint and avionics are added. The event […]

When the FAA launched its ADS-B program a decade ago, there was a lot of concern over the potential costs of what would be mandatory equipage on a par with the huge costs incurred by required installation of transponders decades ago. While these concerns have not been answered, the FAA smartly worked what it has […]

If you enjoy sharpening your piloting skills with Microsoft Flight Simulator but wish you could ratchet up the realism a notch or two, check this out. Vatsim, a worldwide community of virtual air traffic controllers and PC pilots, is planning a major live event the weekend of Feb. 18 in Newark, New Jersey, that will […]