Aviation News

Economic hardship continues to challenge general aviation aircraft manufacturers, and a disappointing first six months of 2011 underscored that point. According to aircraft shipment and billing figures recently released by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), airplane shipments worldwide dropped 15.5 percent during the first half of 2011 compared to the same time frame last […]

The FAA is back up and running at full speed after President Barack Obama signed into law a stopgap measure ending a two-week shutdown that halted airport construction projects and tax payments by airlines and furloughed thousands of agency employees. Now the FAA is back at square one as Congress prepares to renew a contentious […]

Gulfstream Aerospace last week announced the promotion of company veteran Larry Flynn to president, a move that will take effect next month. Flynn will replace another Gulfstream veteran, Joe Lombardo, as president, though Lombardo won’t be going far. He will continue to oversee Gulfstream, along with Jet Aviation, as vice president for parent company General […]

The FAA says that a draft advisory circular that seemed to imply that rank-and-file Part 91 aviators would be held to the same standards as charter providers and the airlines when using EFBs (like the Class 1 Apple iPad) was never intended to change the regulatory lay of the land. The FAA’s Steve Morrison, who […]

The 2011 edition of AirVenture Oshkosh was one for the ages. The weather was beautiful, the airplanes, and there were a lot of them, were spectacular, and the politics were, well, intriguing. The show got off on a very strange note when AirVenture Chairman Tom Poberezny called it quits by retiring at high noon by […]

The saga of hijacker D.B. Cooper, who parachuted out of a Northwest 727 in November of 1971 after getting $200,000 in ransom money never to be seen again, might be near an end. The famous outlaw’s real name is not known. In fact, D.B. Cooper was actually a misunderstanding of his alias, which was written […]

Two men were killed on Saturday when they made a forced landing in a replica Wright Model B Flyer in a rural Ohio field. The men were conducting a test flight in the replica, known as the “Silver Bird,” when they made a radio call from the air alerting authorities about their impending forced landing. […]

Lancair introduced an integrated, all-glass panel for its single-engine turboprop Evolution at AirVenture called EFC900X (Evolution Flight Control 900X), including Garmin’s GFC 7X autopilot. The GFC 7X is the first Garmin autopilot to be installed in an experimental airplane and is currently exclusive to the Evolution. “This is a huge vote of confidence from Garmin,” […]

Flight Design’s John Doman called the 2011 AirVenture “very successful” after dealers placed orders for 40 of the C4 airplanes, currently in the development process, and eight LSAs during the show. Some of these airplanes were sold to customers. Doman also said the company is strengthening its dealer network in the United States, which currently […]

Piper Aircraft Inc. is taking a mock-up of its PiperJet Altaire on the road, along with a message of the company’s commitment to the development of the single-engine very light jet. While the mock-up was on display at EAA AirVenture last week, Piper announced that the company has started fabrication of the Altaire’s first conforming […]