Aviation News

Southwest Airlines, in an effort to prevent layoffs or extended furloughs, is offering “the most generous buyout package in our history” to reduce staffing by about 30 percent, according to reports. Southwest, like many airlines, accepted CARES funding to remain afloat during the COVID-19 epidemic, but that support is due to expire at the end […]

Delta’s last MD-88 and MD-90 aircraft have completed their final passenger-carrying flights before heading into retirement at the aircraft boneyard in Blytheville, Arkansas. The airline’s last MD-90 arrived in Atlanta from Houston a little before 9 a.m. local time on Tuesday followed by the last MD-88 arriving from Washington-Dulles at around 10 a.m. Originally scheduled […]

Expressing frustration with the FAA’s reluctance to require data logging on all turbine helicopters, the National Transportation Safety Board has issued a new safety recommendation calling on manufacturers to step in and install the technologies voluntarily. The NTSB has asked for mandatory data recording in turbine helicopters before, with recommendations published in 2013 and 2015. […]

Aviation groups have jointly asked the FAA to extend the terms of the special regulations (SFAR) that provided extensions for medicals and flight currency, among other things. SFAR 118 went into effect on April 30 and extended certain medicals due to expire between the end of March and the end of May until June 30. […]

After an unstable approach that resulted in an over-the-fence speed of more than 200 knots, the crew of a Pakistani Airlines International A320 with 99 people aboard skipped the airliner down the runway three times on the engine nacelles before getting it airborne, according to the Straits Times. All but two of those on board […]

After a 16-year history with more twists and turns than a Robert Ludlum novel, Epic Aircraft has delivered two certified E1000 high-performance single turboprops and plans to fill its order book as soon as possible. The Bend, Oregon, company, which occupies the former Columbia/Cessna facilities at the airport there, has orders from all over the […]

The coronavirus pandemic will hit operators who fly in Canada squarely on the bottom line as Nav Canada, the not-for-profit private corporation that runs air traffic services, hikes fees for commercial operations an average of 29.5 percent. Nav Canada isn’t allowed to make money but it also has to earn enough to cover costs and […]

U.S. astronauts returned to space on a U.S. rocket on Saturday for the first time since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011. NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the new Crew Dragon capsule to orbit from Cape Canaveral. Bad weather threatened a second scrub of the launch […]

SpaceX is four for four on the loss of prototypes of its silo-like Starship interplanetary vehicle after Serial Number 4 (SN4) blew up on the test bed in Boca Chica, Texas, on Friday. The spectacular explosion came on the eve of SpaceX’s first manned launch of its Crew Dragon capsule at Cape Canaveral on Saturday. […]

AeroTEC and magniX successfully conducted the first flight of their eCaravan all-electric Cessna 208B Grand Caravan on Thursday. The 30-minute flight took place at the AeroTEC Flight Test Center, which is located at Grant County International Airport (MWH) in Moses Lake, Washington. According to magniX, the eCaravan is currently the world’s largest all-electric commercial aircraft. […]