Aviation News

Melbourne, Florida-based Liberty Aerospace has selected the 100-horsepower Rotax 912S air- and liquid-cooled engine as an alternative to the Teledyne Continental IOF-240-B. Liberty president and CEO Keith Markley says the new engine option is a response to international demands from customers in Southeast Asia, where aviation fuel can reach prices as high as $20 per […]

Scott Ernest, a veteran of GE Aviation, has been named president and CEO of Cessna Aircraft by parent company Textron. Ernest replaces former Cessna Chairman and CEO Jack Pelton, who retired only weeks ago. Ernest faces an extremely tough bizjet market that, despite recent hopeful signs, remains mired in a three-year slump. Single-engine business, likewise, […]

An official investigative report confirms speculation that Air France 447, the flight that crashed into the Atlantic two years ago under then-mysterious circumstances, suffered a high-altitude stall before descending 38,000 feet in 3.5 minutes and crashing into the ocean According to the preliminary accident report issued by the BEA, the captain had just relinquished control […]

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is embracing general aviation as part of its disaster planning preparations after conducting a successful large-scale disaster drill that included private aircraft dealing with a simulated national emergency. “Our GA ‘ready fleet’ performed superbly,” said Marianne Stevenson, president of AERObridge, a group that coordinates use of private aircraft […]

House Representative Bill Shuster (R – PA) has withdrawn an amendment that some say would have further stalled a bill attempting to increase the amount of rest required for airline pilots.**** Shuster’s legislation would have required the FAA to investigate the economic effects of new rules, as well as any possible alternatives, before they could […]

Cessna announced last week that the Citation Ten is on schedule to make its first flight by the end of 2011. Deliveries of the midsize jet are expected to begin in the latter half of 2013.** ** According to Cessna, the Citation Ten has a new design and performance capabilities that allow it “to fly […]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is looking into an incident in which two regional jets came within just a few hundred feet of each other while crossing paths at Chicago O’Hare International Airport last week.** ** The event occurred around 9:30 a.m. on Monday, May 16, when an Embraer ERJ-145 operated by ExpressJet Airlines […]

German newspaper Der Spiegel is reporting that stricken Air France Flight 447 appears to have entered a deep stall from which the Airbus A330’s crew could not recover before crashing into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, 2009. The newspaper cites sources close to the investigation as saying cockpit voice recorder data shows 58-year-old captain […]

Members of a bipartisan group of 33 U.S. senators have signed a letter sent to Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski urging him to overturn a frequency spectrum license waiver awarded to broadband satellite communications company LightSquared until testing can show the company’s mobile 4G technology won’t interfere with GPS signal reception. The issue has […]

This week’s eruption of an Icelandic volcano seems to be a repeat of much of last year’s drama when a larger eruption shut down much of Europe’s airspace for nearly a week, costing billions of Euros in the process. ** ** This time around, the authorities were well prepared, though how much good that preparation […]