Aviation News

Authorities in Colombia say an Avianca A320neo likely flew around South America for three days with the bodies of two stowaways in a gear well. The airline said it found the two, likely teenage boys, on Friday night when the plane went in for scheduled maintenance. “At its arrival to the El Dorado airport in […]

The Allied Pilots Association is accusing American Airlines of “training on the cheap” in its implementation of new fleet-wide flight deck procedures during challenging conditions. The union says the company preceded the changes with a bulletin, flight manual amendments and a short video rather than through a formal training process. “American Airlines Flight Operations management […]

Pilots in border regions are wondering why the FAA has deleted much of the aeronautical information from non-U.S. airspace from its latest sectional charts. The late December release of the sectionals omit detailed airspace information in Canadian airspace, and the changes reportedly apply to Caribbean and Mexican regions along the border and off the coast […]

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed rules to allow wireless communications for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS/drones) in the 5030 to 5091 MHz band, which would give operators to access the licensed spectrum. The Commission further stated that it is seeking comments on “whether measures are necessary to facilitate such use on flexible-use wireless networks.” […]

Innovative Solutions & Support (IS&S) has received an FAA supplemental type certificate (STC) for installation of its ThrustSense autothrottle on some Beechcraft King Air aircraft. The STC covers King Air 200s and 300s equipped with Garmin G1000 and NXi flight decks. Designed to automatically “control engine power settings by precisely computing and adjusting to the […]

Retired NASA astronaut Walter Cunningham passed away last Tuesday at the age of 90. Selected for NASA’s third astronaut class in 1963, Cunningham went to space on the Apollo 7 mission, which was noted for being the first crewed flight test of the Apollo spacecraft. Before joining NASA, he served as a fighter pilot in […]

Longtime general-aviation wheel and brake provider Matco Manufacturing has been purchased by NMG Aerospace, a large aerospace design and manufacturing conglomerate that builds parts for everything from Airbus A380s to Apache tailwheels. For the immediate future, Matco will remain in Woods Cross, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. George Happ, who had owned Matco […]

The officially retired F-117 stealth fighter will fly long into retirement, according to a Request For Information issued by the Air Force and uncovered by msn.com. In the document, the USAF is asking potential contractors to maintain an unspecified number of Nighthawks in stealthy flying condition until at least 2034. The type was retired from […]

The frenetic pace of the business jet market is starting to ease as COVID wanes and threats of a global recession loom. In an essay on the current trends provided to AVweb, market analyst Brian Foley says the COVID-spawned increase in bizjet sales and usage was bound to end, but a hopeful stat within that […]

As expected, President Joe Biden has renewed the nomination of Phil Washington to head up the FAA. The agency has been without an administrator for almost a year and there were no hearings to confirm him in the last Senate. The new Senate sat on Jan. 2 and Washington was among several second-time nominations put […]