Business Aviation

Cirrus Aircraft said today its special-mission platform, Cirrus Perception, is now FAA certified and ready to enter service for a variety of applications, including law enforcement, traffic monitoring, mapping, search and rescue, border surveillance and more. “Special-mission operators are constantly looking for ways to increase their capabilities while reducing operational costs,” said David Moser, vice […]

Founder and CEO of Icon Aircraft, Kirk Hawkins, spent his formative years in a way many pilots would envy—motocross racing, skydiving, flying little airplanes and ultralights and mucking around with boats. In the process he picked up a private pilot certificate and acquired an understanding of the wide appeal of motorsports, including recreational flying, across […]

Somewhere in the considerable reading I’ve done on the Apollo program, a comment from William Anders stuck with me. Anders was the lunar module pilot on the historic Apollo 8 mission in 1968. It marked the first time a manned spacecraft had departed earth orbit to journey to another body in the solar system. Anders […]

Comments filed by the NTSB in reaction to the FAA’s proposal to overhaul Part 23 aircraft certification were not wholly supportive of the changes, and now AOPA, EAA and the Aircraft Electronics Association have weighed in with a response. The three groups sent a joint letter to NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart noting that they share […]

European regulators have long restricted the use of single-engine turbine and turboprop airplanes for commercial operations at night or in instrument meteorological conditions, but that’s about to change. After 20 years of work and negotiations between industry and government agencies, a key EASA committee has voted to approve a new regulatory framework that will allow […]

The Falcon 8X is now EASA-certified, Dassault Aviation announced this week, and FAA approval is expected to follow by the end of next month. The design, based on the company’s 7X, offers the longest range of any Falcon jet, up to 6,450 nautical miles, and the biggest cabin, almost 43 feet long. “Feedback from the […]

Gulfstream is touring the U.S. this summer with a full-scale mockup of the cabin and flight deck for its new G600 business jet. The company unveiled its final plans for the new cabin last year at the NBAA convention in Las Vegas, but the mockup was introduced just a few weeks ago in Savannah, Georgia. […]

If you’re a reader of current events—and these days, who isn’t?—you can’t have missed Friday morning’s seismic news about the U.K.’s vote to exit the European Union. It’s easy to compartmentalize that as being “over there” with little or no impact on the U.S. Pardon me, but I don’t think so, although no one knows […]

Bombardier will sell its amphibious aircraft program to Viking Air Ltd., the two Canadian companies announced today. The agreement covers the type certificates for all variants of the CL-215, CL-215T and Bombardier 415 airplanes, which are used worldwide as water bombers for firefighting. “This transaction supports our goal of rebuilding a clear path to profitable […]

Over the years one of the issues that has plagued aircraft owners and airport sponsors alike is trying to figure out what can be stored in an aircraft hangar that’s on an airport that receives federal grant money through the Airport Improvement Program (AIP). That money comes with strings, the big one is that the […]