The General Aviation Manufacturers Association released the final 2020 numbers showing piston aircraft suffering a small loss of less than 1 percent compared to 2019, while business jets and piston helicopters both fell by more than 20 percent. Other sectors were down as well, resulting in a drop of just under 10 percent for fixed-wing […]
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson headlined an Aviation Safety Town Hall today that looked ahead to a post-COVID-19 landscape, saying the industry needs to take “proactive safety steps” to ensure the accident rates remain low as the airlines emerge from the pandemic downturn. “This town hall is part of a continuing dialogue that will help us […]
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s “eSpirit” electric aircraft has reached the taxi-test stage after four years of development. The Diamond HK-36-based project, dubbed eSpirit of St. Louis as a nod to Charles Lindbergh’s “notion of balance between aviation and the environment,” is a testbed for students and faculty to develop a unique electric propulsion system. According to […]
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced on Monday that it plans to decommission its reconstruction of the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800. The reconstruction, which has been used in NTSB accident investigation training courses for almost 20 years, is housed in a 30,000-square-foot hangar at the board’s Ashburn, Virginia, training center. Prior to […]
If NASA’s landing of the Perseverance vehicle on the surface of Mars this week wasn’t impressive enough, the space agency has just released dramatic footage of the entry and landing sequence shot from the vehicle itself. Although the narration gives the impression of the imagery happening in real time, the video is actually occurring about […]
NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt updated the agency’s investigation of the incident involving United Flight 328, which lost an engine on departure and made an emergency landing back at Denver. While stressing that the investigation is in the very early stages, Sumwalt said that the indications are that metal fatigue led to the failure of one […]
After a two-week investigation, the FAA has apparently decided that all is well with the SpaceX Starship interplanetary rocket test program even though its last two rockets blew to smithereens while attempting to land at the company’s Boca Chica, Texas, test facility. “The SN9 vehicle failed within the bounds of the FAA safety analysis,” the […]
Capitalizing on sophisticated processing power and vibrant display technology, Mid-Continent Instruments and Avionics has developed a line of replacement instruments to upgrade the aging gauges in older aircraft. Or gussy up the ones in newer airplanes. The company’s new Flex product line appears to be aptly named since a single instrument can be customized for […]
The FAA will issue an emergency AD for requiring stepped up inspections of the fan blades on Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engines following the uncontained failure of an engine on a United Airlines Boeing 777 near Denver on Saturday. FAA Administrator Steve Dickson issued a statement saying the engines have a unique hollow fan blade […]
A United Airlines Boeing 777 suffered an uncontained engine failure over Broomfield, Colorado, on Saturday afternoon, spreading debris over a mile on the ground. There were no injuries on the aircraft or on the ground. There were 229 passengers and 10 crew onboard. Meanwhile, what appeared to be turbine blades fell from a Boeing 747-400 […]
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