briefs

A new scholarship program that helps people with disabilities learn to fly gave away its first two awards last week in Atlanta. Able Flight chose Brad Jones and Stephany Glassing to take part in an intensive and demanding flight-training program. “Able Flight’s goal is to challenge its scholarship winners so that their own achievements will […]

Pilots flying above New York City are getting sloppier, according to an analysis by the New York Post based on FAA data. Incidents of pilots flying into restricted airspace in the area in the last year increased 42 percent over the year before, according to the Post. Violations included flying into temporary restricted areas over […]

AVMAIL AVmail: Dec. 25, 2006Reader mail this week about IFR charts, good and bad ATC and more.

COLUMNS Motor Head #17: All I Want for Christmas…AVweb’s Marc Cook doesn’t believe in fairy tales — he knows he can’t get turbine power and reliability at piston prices and fuel consumption, for instance — but he does want Santa to give him a few nice improvements to his engine.

AVweb posts audio news on Mondays, plus a new in-depth interview each Friday. In last Friday’s podcast, you’ll find an interview with NORAD’s Stacia Reddish on its Santa tracking project. And AVweb’s podcast index includes interviews with Bill Lear, Jr.; NATA President Jim Coyne; Eclipse Aviation’s Vern Raburn; Honda Aircraft’s Jeffrey Smith; Cirrus Design cofounder […]

While it may not be exactly what more traditional aircraft makers have in mind for the term, it would be hard to argue the definition with Yves Rossy. The 47-year-old adventurer, who made headlines two years ago by gliding across the English Channel with a pair of strap-on wings, has taken the natural evolution of […]

Officials in Hickory, N.C., say one way to improve the Hickory Airport would be to close a 4,400-foot runway. The runway, which sees only 6 percent of the airports traffic, will need a $2.3 million paving job in a few years and that got the creative thinkers at city hall pondering its fate. Tearing up […]

The maintenance supervisor for Turkish Airlines lost his job, but it was a camel that paid the ultimate price for a maintenance crews jubilation over the retirement of a particularly troublesome aircraft. As is customary during times of great joy in Turkey, the maintenance crew was so happy to be rid of the Avro RJ100 […]

While a union spokesman described a state of panic in air traffic control facilities in Seattle Dec. 15 during a record storm that interrupted power, the FAA was patting itself on the back for a system that functioned almost uninterrupted thanks to ingenious coast-to-coast ATO teamwork and a new organization-wide contingency plan. These notably divergent […]

The NTSB is looking into the role a reportedly unreliable obstruction light played in the crash of a Cessna 210 at Lee Airport in Edgewater, Md., on Dec. 9. According to the NTSB preliminary report, witnesses who arrived on the scene shortly after the crash reported that the light was not illuminated and a pilot […]