Aviation News

The U.K. and Norway say they’ll soon lift a 17-month ban on the use of two models of Airbus Super Puma helicopters to service offshore oil operations. The H225LP and AS332L2 helicopters were taken off that kind of duty after a crash in April of 2016 in which the rotor blades separated from a Super […]

Some owners of drones who registered their aircraft with the FAA will be eligible for a refund of their $5 registration fee and deletion of their data, says the agency. Starting just before Christmas 2015, the FAA started requiring operators of unmanned aerial systems weighing more than 0.55 pounds (one quarter of a kilogram) to […]

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a Chinese conglomerate that owns the Volvo and Lotus automobile brands, has agreed to buy the Terrafugia flying-car company, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. The XConomy Boston website also reported on the sale, saying they have “independently been tracking rumors about the acquisition.” Terrafugia CEO Carl […]

A 747 that has been parked at Quonset State Airport in Rhode Island for a couple of years now is being transformed into a replica of Air Force One, according to a local news station. The 747 first flew into the airport in Evergreen livery in June 2015, and has been sitting outside through rain, […]

I’m wondering if we’re seeing a canary in the mineshaft moment here. This week, with the news that Seattle-based Horizon Air is cancelling more than 6 percent of its flights due to lack of pilots, the supposed true-or-not-true pilot shortage seems to be coming to a head. Actually, I think the canary has been dead […]

It all started a few decades ago in a place 8500 miles away. Walt Fricke was in the copilot’s seat of an Army helo in the midst of the chaos of a combat assault in Vietnam. When the crew fired the air-to-ground rockets, one exploded leaving the tube. Shrapnel blasted into one of Walt’s legs, […]

A good friend of mine who’s an aircraft broker called me this week to ask for my take on what to do about ADS-B installations. He has to have a ready answer for buyers and sellers of legacy airplanes who are asking about this. What was I telling people, he wondered, laboring under the misguided […]

A deHavilland Mosquito T Mk III, which was restored and test-flown in New Zealand, flew for the first time in the U.S. last Friday in at Paine Field, in Everett, Washington. The Mosquito now is based at the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum, where it received a fresh coat of paint on arrival, plus […]

A dispute over noise caused by helicopters flying over the tony Hampton area outside New York City made it all the way to the Supreme Court, but this week, the judges said they won’t hear the case. The Town of East Hampton had petitioned the court last November, after a federal appeals court said the […]

If you haven’t caught Sean D. Tucker’s solo airshow performance in his 40-plus years on the circuit, you have this year and next, and then he plans to retire. Tucker, who turned 65 this year, told the Dayton Daily News that he hopes to find a sponsor to launch a formation flying team as his […]