briefs

COLUMNS Say Again? #53: Radio RealitiesRadio communication was invented over 100 years ago. You’d think we’d be able to do it better by now, but people tend to get sloppy. And sometimes the “professional” pilots are the worst. Until we get more controllers or fewer aircraft, AVweb’s Don Brown says we have to start talking […]

Aircraft owners at a Pittsburgh-area airport say they’re being forced out of their hangars by a tripling of rents. The rent for hangar space for small planes at Allegheny County Airport is going from about $550 a month to almost $1,600 a month in a move that pilots claim is an attempt to force them […]

A 55-foot pleasure yacht became a rescue ship off Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., last Saturday when a Piper Navajo was successfully ditched in the Atlantic about six miles from shore. The Spindrift was able to rescue all six people aboard, including an eight-month-old baby. The plane was on a flight from the Bahamas to Ft. Lauderdale […]

A Virginia company is pinning its future on an out-of-this-world airplane. Aurora Flight Systems recently started building a plant at Manassas Regional Airport to build aircraft designed to fly over Mars. The hang-glider-like aircraft is the first intended to fly in the atmosphere of another planet and its mission is to take photos that have […]

China’s main flying school has ordered 42 Cessna 172s as part of a major expansion. The Civil Aviation Flying University of China (CAFUC) wants to increase the number of students trained from 600 to 1,000 a year. The CAFUC is the primary training facility for airline pilots in China and the country’s burgeoning civil aviation […]

The fourth fatal plane crash in eight months at Denver’s Centennial Airport is prompting calls for an investigation into the safety of the field and has spurred politicians to address the safety of the MU-2 (involved in two of the four accidents). But while politicians and aviation officials concede that the facility has had a […]

All things considered, this might not be so far off… After a long flight, I was draining the sumps in an FBO’s men’s room where the urinals were crowded closely together. A wide bodied pilot pulled up behind me, surveyed the scene, and asked, “What is this, taxi into position and hold?”

COLUMNS Motor Head #8: Return from Oshkosh — Engines in the Headlines<Oshkosh was a good destination for the engine lover last month. New airframes sometimes inspire new powerplants, and even the big boys had some R&D news, as AVweb’s Marc Cook explains in this month’s Motor Head column.

AVmail: August 15, 2005Reader mail this week about security and ATC privatization around the world, the miracle in Toronto and much more.

An AVweb reader recently passed along in-cockpit video of a Canada Air Force CT-155 Hawk before, as, and after its in-flight ingestion of a bird. The aircraft’s heads up display is visible, the bird is visible, as is the last image caught on camera — a farmer’s field. Synopsis of the May 14, 2004 accident […]