Aviation News

If there was any doubt that the current financial crisis is hitting general aviation hard, the latest round of announcements from manufacturers should reinforce the bad news. The new year will get off to a lousy start for some 2,000 employees at Cessna. In a memo to employees, company management announced a second round of […]

Over the holiday period, a reported several hundred XM Weather subscribers were unable to access the service through their Garmin handheld GPS navigators (service to my personal GPS 396 remained unaffected). Garmin has issued a software update to address the issue, and it is available as a free download to customers, as are all software […]

French industrial conglomerate Daher has completed its acquisition of a 70 percent stake in Socata, the Tarbes, France-based manufacturer of the TBM 850 single-engine turboprop. The marriage is seen as a win-win, since Daher stands to further its reach into the aerospace field. The company already has involvement in aerospace, automotive, defense and nuclear industries. […]

Still facing reduced production (eight aircraft per week from 16), Cirrus had some good news in the form of FAA approval for flight into known icing (FIKI). In a press ‘Webinar’ on Monday, company management also outlined a series of marketing strategies for the coming year, including defining a series of option-package levels (S, GS […]

An Indianapolis money manager, faced with financial setbacks and a pending divorce, might have tried to fake his death after reporting an inflight emergency to ATC and parachuting from his Piper PA46 over Alabama. The airplane crashed more than 200 miles away, near Milton, Florida. Alabama local authorities say a man identified as 38-year-old pilot […]

On Tuesday night, with no fanfare whatsoever, Congress left out a provision of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) that would have prohibited TARP beneficiaries from using bizjets. No word on exactly why the provision was deleted, but NBAA, among other aviation member organizations, is delighted. In a release on Wednesday, NBAA President Ed Bolen […]

When Cirrus announced its FIKI-approval, company president Brent Wouters was able to boast that the newly equipped aircraft had an empty weight eight pounds lighter than its predecessor. That could be due, in part, to a new composite-based propeller hub from Hartzell that trims more than four pounds from previous units. That adds to the […]

Three years ago I wrote about an accident involving a pilot who became impatient waiting for a stratus layer to lift, and went out looking for a break (or its ambiguous cousin, a “thin spot”) through which he could climb to VFR on top. That accident took place in Los Angeles, and I described the […]

Under an STC received early this month by Flight Resource of Bloomer, Wisconsin, most larger single-engine Cessna piston models from the 180 taildragger through the 210 series are now eligible for retrofit with composite propellers from MT Propeller of Straubing, Germany. The lightweight propellers incorporate a steel leading edge and scimitar-shape blades with no life […]

When one of Republican strategist Karl Rove’s top IT operatives dies while flying his personal single-engine aircraft, it’s not hard to imagine that eyebrows will be raised among conspiracy theorists. But the preliminary NTSB report on the crash that took the life of pilot and sole occupant Michael Connell tends to point in a more […]