Aviation News

The Department of Transportation yesterday issued a report sharply critical of the FAA’s certification procedures for the Eclipse 500 very light jet. The FAA had already publicly announced that its own team of inspectors found no substantive fault with the certification process. A hearing yesterday before the House Aviation Subcommittee included testimony to the effect […]

The Texas Supreme Court has denied Lycoming’s appeal in a six-year legal contest over crankshaft failures. Lycoming appealed a 2005 ruling against Interstate Southwest, a Texas-based subcontractor that had supplied crankshafts for Lycoming engines. Some of the crankshafts failed, causing accidents and some deaths, but the court ruled that Interstate Southwest had manufactured the parts […]

The day after vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin wowed the country with her address, fact checkers challenged her account of how she disposed of her predecessor’s private jet as a cost cutting measure. Referring to the previous Alaska governor’s state-funded 1984-vintage Westwind II, Palin said, “That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on […]

Citing lower-than-expected sales, Cirrus Design has eliminated more than 100 jobs at its Duluth, Minnesota, and Grand Forks, North Dakota, locations. The company expects to freeze production rates at 14 aircraft per week. The slumping U.S. economy is at the core of the slowdown, with international sales of Cirrus aircraft up by some 20 percent. […]

Last Friday, a Cessna 152 that took off from Monmouth County Executive Airport in New Jersey lost power and landed on the Garden State Parkway. The early afternoon incident resulted in no injuries and no damage to the two-place Cessna. Pilot Joe Rubino and passenger John Hannon were on a local flight to photograph real […]

Eclipse Aviation is now subdivided into two corporate segments: a manufacturing division and a customer service division. The move came last week as part of new CEO Roel Pieper’s move toward “operational excellence.” The new president of the Eclipse Manufacturing Division is Peg Billson; and former vice president of sales and marketing Mike McConnell becomes […]

Last month’s FAA computer overload that delayed hundreds of flights has been addressed, and the agency announced an update will be in place by year’s end. Memory upgrades are expected to improve reliability as early as next month, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, which quoted Hank Krakowski, chief operating officer of […]

European private equity firm Permira agreed last month to sell business aviation service company Jet Aviation for a reported $2.25 billion. Permira bought the Swiss-based general aviation conglomerate in 2005 for an estimated $700 million from an ownership group led by the Hirschmann family. The late Carl Hirschmann founded Jet Aviation decades ago. With its […]

Almanac data stored in the receivers of some early Garmin ‘Flybuddy’ GPS units has led to degraded operation. Affected units, according to a service advisory from Garmin, include all Model 819 and Model 820 Flybuddy GPS units and Model 2001/2101 systems with TSO-C115b GPS sensors. The company noted that Model 2001/2101 systems with later TSO-C129 […]

Often considered one of the best barometers of general aviation health, the numbers for used turbine aircraft sales continue to decline overall, though sales outside North America are on the rise. According to AvData, based in Utica, New York, business jet sales in North America were down from 199 in June 2007 to 116 in […]