Aviation News

Australia’s remote outback is best explored from the air, and with help from Air Safaris International, based in Toronto, U.S. pilots can get the full Aussie experience. Guided self-fly tours last 11 to 21 days, with stops at Ayers Rock, tropical beaches, offshore islands, and the Great Barrier Reef. Custom tours also can be designed. […]

For pilots who want to explore the Caribbean region, loaded with beautiful beaches and resorts, AOPA Expo offers several options. The folks at Caribbean Flying Adventures help you plan your own flight via their web site. Features include pre-departure checklists, online access to required documents, step-by-step arrival and departure procedures, and approach videos to each […]

If aircraft owners and pilots come to AOPA Expo looking for ideas about how to have more fun with their airplanes, they have plenty of options. ParkWest Air Tours, based in Grand Junction, Colo., will train pilots in mountain flying and then take them and their families on a guided tour to some of the […]

O.K., so we guessed wrong. When Mooney announced the new Type-S Acclaim last week, we guessed that some of its additional 5-knot speed gains over the Acclaim came from reducing the size of the cooling inlets. No, says Mooney CEO Dennis Ferguson, the Acclaim’s speed was inched up entirely through subtle drag reduction on the […]

Couldn’t make it to the Aircraft Owners & Pilots Expo this year? AVweb editor Mary Grady snapped plenty of photos at the show, just to give you a flavor of the excitement. gallery ONE |gallery TWO CLICK FOR LARGE IMAGESEACH IMAGE WILL OPEN IN A NEW WINDOW gallery ONE |gallery TWO

This is the first time AOPA Expo has been held in Hartford, and AOPA President Phil Boyer admitted on Thursday morning that there was some concern whether the faithful would flock to this remote corner of the world. “The leaves here aren’t like we showed you in all the pictures,” he said — trees remain […]

Right up front, we’ll say we’ve heard the same complaints about Lockheed Martin’s handling of the Flight Service Station contract as everyone else: Long wait times, dropped calls, lost flight plans and briefers lacking local knowledge of the areas they cover. Lockheed Martin’s Dan Courain, the company’s VP of aviation services, says he has gotten […]

It’s axiomatic that to survive in the business of general aviation, a manufacturer has to constantly roll out new models or, at the very least, improved versions of the standing product line. Diamond has done both and at this week’s AOPA Expo in Hartford, it announced two new variants of the DA40, the XLS and […]

Does the world really need an unpressurized Piper Mirage? Piper thinks it does and at the AOPA Expo show in Hartford this week, it announced the new Matrix which, although technically a new type certificate, is really a variant of the well-established Malibu/Mirage series. Piper CEO Jim Bass told AVweb this week that it believes […]

Sportsplanes.com said they will introduce the Breezer II LSA this fall, featuring a bigger baggage compartment and heavy-duty toe brakes to replace the handbrake lever on the current model. The Breezers are built in Germany … . Powerful Learning has released two new software products, the VFR Pilot Review System and The Private Pilot Study […]