FAA

The FAA has awarded more than $766 million in grants aimed at building safer, more sustainable, and more accessible airports across the United States. The funding, the fifth round of FY 2021 Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grants, will pay for projects at 279 airports in 44 states, as well as projects in Guam, Puerto Rico, […]

The FAA has opened the comment period on a nose-gear airworthiness directive (AD) for the Tecnam P2006T piston twin that follows onto a mandatory continuing airworthiness information (MCAI) initiated under EASA in March 2019. The proposed AD and MCAI address an unsafe condition driven by a manufacturing defect in the nose landing-gear (NLG) piston tube. […]

Aerospace company Electra Aero has begun working with the FAA Center for Emerging Concepts and Innovation (CECI) and the Atlanta Aircraft Certification Office (ACO) to define the certification path for its electric short-takeoff-and-landing (eSTOL) aircraft. The company has hired industry veteran Randy Griffith as its director of certification. Griffith led the certification of the Eclipse […]

A month after sending billionaire Jeff Bezos into space, Blue Origin is set to launch one of its New Shepard reusable rockets this week. The New Shepard mission, also known as NS-17, will fly a NASA lunar landing technology demonstration, 18 commercial payloads inside the crew capsule—11 of which are NASA-supported—and an art installation. Liftoff […]

“We swung over the hills and over the town and back again, and I saw how a man can be master of a craft, and how a craft can be master of an element. I saw the alchemy of perspective reduce my world, and all my other life, to grains in a cup… And I […]

It was a dark and stormy night; my electrical system had failed, and the battery was dead. Descending lower and lower in the murk, looking for familiar landmarks, I saw—dead ahead—the magnificent Jeremiah Morrow Bridge spanning the Little Miami River on Ohio’s Interstate 71. My only option was to fly beneath that high-and-wide span and […]

In a move that has caused aviation associations across the board to band together in protest, on July 12 the FAA released a “clarification” on flight training in experimental aircraft that puts into formal policy a letter of guidance issued in June. In effect, the new policy adds a requirement that AOPA’s president and CEO […]

The FAA and the Aircraft Electronics Association announced on June 23 that it has accepted the association’s petition for approval of its avionics repair apprenticeship program, and that completion of the program satisfies the requirements for issuance of an avionics repairman certificate. The program validates the way that many new avionics repair technicians come into […]

“Any other traffic, please advise.” Probably few radio communications that pilots make incur such wrath as that request, which many pilots still make at the conclusion of an initial call to a unicom frequency when approaching a nontowered airport. And it was just one of the topics covered by a panel of experienced GA pilots, […]

The full breadth of general aviation aircraft offers something to suit every potential pilot—and that includes those that fall under special airworthiness categories. The rising popularity of experimental aircraft, such as the RV series from Van’s Aircraft, turns upon their high performance-to-cost ratio and a serious fun factor driven by models that range from fabric-covered […]