Aviation News

John Young, NASA’s longest-serving astronaut and the first to command the Space Shuttle, died Friday. He was 87 and died from complications from pneumonia. Young went to space six times, walked on the moon and was the only astronaut to take part in all of the Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs. “If anybody deserves the […]

A Van’s RV-7 that crashed on New Year’s Day in Northland New Zealand, killing both occupants, has caught the attention of the RV community because of the possibility of structural failure. If the investigation confirms the witness accounts, it will be the second suspected fatal in-flight breakup of an RV-7 this year. A similar aircraft […]

A wild-eyed Canadian artist, dreamer and ultralight pilot who inspired one of the world’s most unusual wildlife conservation efforts died Dec. 30 in his underground house in rural Ontario. Bill Lishman was 78. In 1985, he “imprinted” a flock of 12 Canada Geese he’d raised on his biplane ultralight. In 1988, he led them, in […]

Aviation museums are often busiest in the summer, when families take vacation time, but winter can be the best time to explore their collections, when the museums are less crowded and offer respite from the cold. This month, the New England Air Museum, in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, will hold an Open Cockpit Day on Jan. […]

Piper Aircraft hired more than 300 employees in the last 18 months, a 20 percent increase in staffing, the company has reported. The growth is driven by increased demand for Piper’s trainer airplanes and its M-class line. The M-class single-engine turboprops — the M600 and M500 — and the piston-powered M350 were certified in 2016. […]

GE Aviation announced Thursday it had successfully test run its partially 3-D printed Advanced Turboprop engine, which is set to power the Textron Denali single turboprop. Details of the test were scant in the GE press release but “early indications show that we will meet or exceed all the performance numbers we have quoted for […]

Santa Monica Airport has reopened after a 10-day closure, with its sole runway shortened to 3,500 feet, a loss of 1,500 feet. The change is the latest effort by the city to reduce traffic at the urban airport, an effort that has long been opposed by the aviation community. “This is a great day for […]

The restored B-29 ‘Doc,’ which made its debut at Oshkosh this summer, will be back at the show in 2018, Doc’s Friends have announced. The partial tour schedule, released last week, also includes stops in Pennsylvania, Kansas and Missouri. Meanwhile, volunteers are about 60 percent through the planned winter maintenance program that began in early […]

An unidentified banner pilot starred in what could become an instructional video on how to ditch an airplane when his Piper Pawnee had engine trouble in the Bay of Biscayne near Miami last Friday. The video, shot from a boat full of people who didn’t seem to realize the gravity of the situation until the […]

I can recall almost to the day when I first became aware of the great breaking Chinese general aviation wave—or takeover, if you prefer. It was mid-June 2005 and I was riding with Michael Feinig, then Diamond Aircraft’s managing director, at breakneck speed down the autobahn to the company’s factory at Wiener Neustadt, Austria. Diamond […]