Aviation News

Eclipse Aviation employees were promised last Friday that their paychecks for the first two weeks of November would be delivered by last Tuesday. They were not disappointed, as company management was able to secure the financing needed to pay workers-at least for now. Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Eclipse would not comment on its financial state, but […]

Responding to a marketplace reluctant to commit, Diamond Aircraft is making the grass in its pasture a little greener for DA40 prospects who may be teetering on the fence. Among the incentives to buy now: For every DA40 bought and delivered before the end of this year, the company is offering free maintenance-including parts and […]

To an industry thirsting for relief from the current world financial crisis, the Middle East is a bubbling oasis of sales activity. At the recent Middle East Business Aviation (MEBA) show in Dubai, Wall Street’s woes seemed foreign, indeed. Business jet manufacturers were finding cash buyers for their wares with no sign of a credit […]

Aspen Avionics’ Evolution EFD1000 Pilot Primary Flight Display is now available as a factory option on the two-seat Diamond Aircraft DA20 for less than $8,000. That makes the DA20 the only certified glass-cockpit-equipped aircraft available for less than $200,000, according to its manufacturer. Diamond Aircraft President Peter Maurer said the glass-equipped DA20 will allow flight […]

For pilots who might have found Honeywell’s Apex glass avionics suite’s joystick controller a challenge in turbulence, relief is on the way. Apex users can now opt for a trackball to replace the joystick-said to be awkward to manipulate in turbulence. The trackball cursor control device (CCD) has a hand rest and uses computer mouse-like […]

On a flight in his Cessna single over the southern UK, 65-year-old Jim O’Neill suffered a stroke that reportedly caused a blood clot to press on his optic nerve, impairing his vision to the point where he could not see the instrument panel in front of his face. Otherwise mostly unaffected, O’Neill coolly radioed for […]

To be correct, we should really be calling them Localizer Performance with Vertical guidance (or LPV) approaches; but most pilots simply refer to them as “WAAS” approaches. That’s because they are based on the Wide Area Augmentation System for GPS enhancement. Now that the FAA has commissioned the 1,333rd such approach, they officially outnumber the […]

At the AOPA Expo in San Jose last week, Cirrus again raised the safety bar with the announcement that an enhanced vision system (EVS) is now an available option for aircraft equipped with the Cirrus Perspective by Garmin synthetic vision avionics suite. The $14,900 EVS system is also available as a retrofit for existing Perspective-equipped […]

With worldwide panic over the economic crisis and cautious euphoria over the presidential election, aviation can expect to assume back burner status for the foreseeable future. There are no hot button issues affecting the general public, and that means concerns of pilots and others who are neck-deep in this industry will just have to wait. […]

The FAA has granted technical service order (TSO) approval to Avidyne for its new MLX770 Datalink Satellite weather transceiver. The approval clears Avidyne to begin deliveries of the unit, which allows operators of Avidyne-equipped aircraft to access the company’s Network Operations Center for WSI weather updates around the world. Certified to TSO C159 for “avionics […]