Aviation News

Last night at the Aircraft Electronics Association convention in Reno, Nevada, Garmin shook up the avionics world with the introduction of two new panel-mount navigators, the huge Garmin 750 and the smaller but similarly capable Garmin 650. The two navigators are touch screen devices that do everything the GNS 430 and 530 do and more […]

On Monday FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt announced a plan to reduce general aviation accidents substantially and incrementally over the next 10 years with a 10 percent improvement as the target. At Sun ‘n Fun, the FAA will host the first of nearly 100 meetings across the country designed to let pilots and the FAA work […]

The FAA last week decided to grandfather in existing airport access to residents of hangar homes so long as the airport develops a security plan for that access. The policy on so-called “through-the-fence” agreements continues to oppose new access at airports that receive federal funds, though the agency takes no stance on airports that are […]

The CJ1+ program has “run its course,” said Robert Stangarone, vice president of communications at Cessna Aircraft Company. Having delivered three airplanes of this model in 2010 and with only two scheduled deliveries for this year, the company cites decreased customer demand as the reason for closing down its CJ1+ production line. First introduced in […]

In an event hosted inside a large hangar at the Cessna manufacturing facility on Monday, state and local government officials and industry spokespeople showed their support of Wichita’s ailing aviation businesses and its workers. More than 2,000 people attended the event, which was organized by GAMA in partnership with Cessna, Hawker Beechcraft and Bombardier Learjet. […]

The Lindbergh Foundation will present famed inventor and pilot Dean Kamen with this year’s Lindbergh Award next week at Sun ‘n Fun in Lakeland, Florida. Best known for inventing the Segway people mover, Kamen earned special recognition from the Lindbergh Foundation for his lifesaving inventions, including the insulin pump, and his work as the founder […]

The Australian newspaper is reporting that a Dornier commuter plane was forced to return for a landing at Brisbane after the airplane’s flight instruments malfunctioned. The cause: green caterpillars were found to be clogging the pitot static system. There were no injuries. The Australian went on to report that when asked, a spokesman for the […]

The safety of several Indian airlines has come into question after investigators uncovered scores of extreme violations. Pilots from IndiGo and MDLR airlines were caught flying passengers with forged qualifications, and shortly thereafter a list emerged of 56 airline pilots who had failed sobriety tests in the past two years. The drunken pilots were employed […]

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has been tapped to deliver one of the keynote speeches at the upcoming Pilot Training Reform Symposium, to be hosted by the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators (SAFE) May 4 and 5 in Atlanta. Babbitt’s address, “Meeting the Training Challenges of the Second Century Of Flight,” is just one of […]

The 2010 Nall Report analyzing accident data from 2009 has been released, and the findings are troubling. While at first glance the numbers appeared to show improvements in the past decade with a total of 1,418 general aviation accidents, 255 of which resulted in fatalities, they did not tell the whole story. The decrease in […]