briefs

In the days of Internet forums, companies have to be careful about riling their customers — those customers are likely to start chatting online, find other disgruntleds and build a crescendo of bad feeling. That seems to be what’s happening with some users of JP Instruments’ (JPI’s) engine-monitor units. JPI has encoded the data output […]

It’s pretty rare that we hear about a threatened airport, and then find out that the threat has subsided and all’s well. But that’s just what happened in Los Angeles County, when the Regional Planning Commission voted 4 to 1 on April 20 to retain Agua Dulce Airpark as a public-use airport. Some neighbors had […]

One-quarter of the huge new Airbus A380 will be built from various composites and advanced materials — 22 percent carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic, and 3 percent “glare,” a glass fiber-aluminum laminate, which is being used for the first time on a civil airliner. These materials, and the expectations that their use will increase (Boeing’s 787 will be […]

Over 70 NetJets pilots formed a picket line outside the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting in Omaha, Neb., on Saturday. The pilots passed out leaflets about their ongoing efforts to negotiate a contract with the fractional airline, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s conglomerate. “Our issues have seemingly fallen on deaf ears,” pilot Alan Hayes said in […]

The long-running battle among professional pilots to rescind the FAA’s “age-60 rule” met a major roadblock on Monday when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. A dozen pilots were trying to appeal a lower-court decision that the rule does not constitute age discrimination. The pilots argued that as long as they are competent […]

The single-engine, very light Vantage jet, which was built by Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites and flew way back in 1996, has been reborn. It’s now morphed into a twin-engine very light jet (VLJ) living in Brazil. The original owners, Visionaire Corp., sank into bankruptcy with $35 million in debt. In 2003, Matt Eller of Eviation […]

AVmail: May 2, 2005Reader mail this week about firefighting tankers, ATC privatization, the value of various aircraft and much more.

COLUMNS As the Beacon Turns #89: Send In the DronesWho needs two pilots in an airline cockpit when one will do? For that matter, who needs one when a flight-sim-trained teenager can do it from the ground? Heck, get one of those brains in a dish and you don’t even need the teen! AVweb’s Michael […]

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