Aviation News

Aircraft operators in Illinois are responding to reports that their state is proposing a 5 percent luxury tax on aircraft valued at $500,000 and up. The tax would be in addition to state and local use taxes already in effect. Aviation advocacy groups have been quick to respond. The National Business Aviation Association, for example, […]

Gulfstream Aerospace will lay off 1,200 employees and furlough 1,500 more for five weeks. The job losses will be spread throughout its facilities nationwide. The airframer currently employs 6,000 in Georgia (most at its Savannah headquarters) and some 4,000 more at satellite facilities around the country. Gulfstream attributed the employment reduction to shrinking order backlogs. […]

The latest version of the House FAA funding legislation-H.R. 915 (known as the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009) received a nod from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The bill does not incorporate user fees, and is supported by most in the general aviation industry. Next in line is the House Ways and Means Committee, […]

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) maintains that its Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP) was drawn up with input from the industry it is meant to address. The overwhelming majority of some 4,800 respondents disagreed, and expressed their opinions during the proposal’s public comment period. LASP aims to set airline-style security procedures for general aviation aircraft […]

A spokesman for a group of Eclipse 500 owners sounds less than thrilled with some plans to resurrect the manufacturer. Randall Sanada of Jet Alliance said the Eclipse Owners Group would, itself, like to buy the assets of Albuquerque-based Eclipse, which is now facing Chapter 7 liquidation proceedings. He called the efforts of others to […]

“The next generation of air travel has arrived,” according to the FAA in the person of retiring Acting Administrator Robert Sturgell, who gave the go-ahead for ADS-B to go live in South Florida airspace late last year. ADS-B, which is short for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, is a datalink approach to air traffic management. It is […]

Back in my youthful exuberance days, I and another guy (whose name and face both now elude my memory) used to compete to see how short we could land a Cessna 150. The answer was, pretty short. We would come in hanging on the edge of a stall and stomp on the brakes the moment […]

The TSA’s Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP) reached the end of its comment period last week to a fresh round of raspberries-not only from the aviation peanut gallery but also from the state legislature of Alaska. State Senator Gene Therriaut and Representative Mike Kelly proposed anti-LASP resolutions in their respective chambers. National Air Transportation Association […]

Totally fair or not, for a newspaper reporter, the irony was just too juicy to resist. Big Three auto industry executives flying ‘luxury jets’ to Washington to plead for a taxpayer bailout. The story caused a national sensation and set packs of other reporters on the scent, hoping to share some of the glory of […]

I remember a story from years ago about a group of local kids near an airport who broke into several airplanes and stole avionics. They were found out when someone heard an ELT whoop-whooping on 121.5 and they tracked it to the trunk of a junk car where the kids had stashed the loot-after unwittingly […]