briefs

Virgin Galactic is on track for taking passengers into space by the end of 2008, Richard Branson said on Monday. “It is going very well, we have 100 engineers working on it and we have had about 50,000 people who have put their names down to fly,” he was quoted by UTV online. Branson was […]

An Albatros L-39 jet that crashed in Alaska last month may have hit the water two miles from its target airport three times after descending under low clouds in poor visibility, according to a preliminary report by the NTSB. The ATP-rated pilot was trying to execute an instrument approach at the Ketchikan International Airport, shortly […]

Aircraft Investor Resources (AIR), the parent company of Epic Aircraft (six-place experimental propjet manufacturer), has been sued by British firm Farnborough Aircraft Corp. over a dispute that grew from a cooperative arrangement between the two companies, the Bend Bulletin reported last week. Farnborough says that Epic, based in Bend, Ore., was supposed to deliver a […]

On Monday, President Bush announced that his budget request to Congress for fiscal year 2007 would include $16.8 billion for NASA, a 3.2-percent increase over 2006. But the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate would see its budget cut by 22 percent. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said the $724.4 million aeronautics allotment would be focused on “the […]

Columbia Aircraft is in the business of selling airplanes but, until now, it concentrated those efforts, quite naturally, on selling its own Columbia 350 and 400s. However, the company has apparently come to the conclusion that many of its customers are aircraft owners looking to upgrade into one of Columbia’s speedsters. So Columbia has introduced […]

A 16-year-old Tennessee boy who allegedly decided that stealing an airplane and using it to buzz a neighborhood in the pre-dawn-a.m. was a good way to settle a score with his girlfriend is being described as “a good pilot” by local police. Murfreesboro Deputy Police Chief Scott Daniel told WSMV News that he was impressed […]

An NTSB report says a quickie repair job led to the engine failure and subsequent crash landing of a Piper PA-28 on a freeway in Concord, Calif., in April of 2004. While the pilot and his son walked away, the plane’s propeller sliced through a minivan and almost severed the leg of an 11-year-old girl. […]

Authorities in Clarke County, Ala., are trying to determine whether a piece of metal that appears to be an aircraft wingtip found in the woods by hunters came off a Piper Saratoga that crashed near there about a week ago. They’re also interested in two apparent bullet holes in the part, according to a report […]

We’ll be the first to say that flying is good therapy but as a Nebraska inmate’s choice of rehabilitation the idea has raised some eyebrows. While he was still in jail, local corrections officials and the FAA allowed Barry Greg Caughlin to climb in an airplane by himself and head off into the wild blue […]

As aviation groups and pilots battle it out with the federal government over 3,000 square miles of airspace around Washington, D.C. (deadline for comments on the proposal — docket number 17005 — to make the Air Defense Identification Zone permanent is today), the Air Force is proposing adding a 2,400-square-mile military operations area in eastern […]