briefs

When the Environmental Protection Agency began work on a project to develop an airborne chemical detector system, it was for the purpose of monitoring industrial accidents. But in the last few years, the EPA’s Aero Commander 680 has been pressed into duty for national security, to detect chemical hazards. The Commander carries high-tech sensors known […]

The U.S. Air Force is feeling the crunch of a budget strained by the global war on terror, and it’s going to mean cutting flight experience by about 32,000 hours, the Air Combat Command (ACC) said last week. The Air Force’s projected shortfall for fiscal year 2005 is about $3.7 billion. Cutting up to 60 […]

AOPA’s 15th annual Fly-In and Open House is coming up on Saturday, June 4, at the Frederick, Md., airport, and it’s not just for the already-converted. AOPA is offering special activities for folks who want to fly but haven’t yet made the plunge. Three one-hour seminars on “How to start learning to fly” will be […]

Landing safely on an aircraft carrier has long been admired among pilots as one of the most challenging tasks to master, but those days could soon be over. GPS technology now allows the pilot to let the airplane land itself. While the landing system has been in the works for a while, it’s now coming […]

COLUMNS From The CFI #7: Scenario-Based TrainingWith new, technically advanced aircraft becoming more common in the air and at FBOs near you, many in the industry have been asking if we need to take a new look at how we train new pilots. AVweb’s Linda Pendleton has certianly been asking, and she discusses the kinds […]

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There’s been plenty of talk about outsourcing maintenance work on airliners, with concerns raised about quality control and oversight. And recently there was a roundup of maintenance workers in North Carolina with illegal immigration status, some of them from countries considered possible sources of terrorism. But what about outsourcing the maintenance work overseas? America West […]

The FAA is never quick to hand out Type Certificates, but there seem to be a lot of them coming along lately. Newest on the list of good-to-go GA aircraft is the two-seater Symphony 160, built by Symphony Aircraft Industries (SAI) of Three Rivers, Quebec. “Receiving the Symphony 160’s FAA type certificate is a significant […]

The 1999 crash of an American Airlines MD-82 in Little Rock, Ark., in which 11 people died (including the flight’s captain) is under debate in federal court this week. A lawsuit by the captain’s widow alleges that the airport was negligent, because the approach light system that the jet ran into was too close to […]