briefs

Well, it’s hard to say who got more out of a special day to help a little boy survive cancer and fulfill his already well-developed dream to become a pilot. The folks at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina teamed up with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to give five-year-old Evan Moriarty a glimpse of […]

An AirTran pilot wants his job back after prosecutors dropped charges that he intended to fly an airliner while drunk. In a carefully worded statement, lawyer John Watkins said his client “wasn’t in violation of the law.” The pilot was arrested Jan. 12 and charged with trying to help fly 60 passengers from Las Vegas […]

A well-developed sense of self-preservation, a lucky break in traffic, and likely a well-developed skill-set has won two pilots the accolades of a small community. Two pilots are being given the keys to the city of Roseland, Ind., and are being proclaimed “Citizen Heroes” by the St. Joseph County Red Cross for setting their crippled […]

A long-simmering dispute over the location of a New Jersey medevac unit took an ironic twist when the unit’s helicopter was used to airlift a severely injured employee of the unit’s most vocal opponent. Thomas E. Mulrooney suffered severe burns on his face and upper body after being doused in molten plastic at Polycel Structural […]

Maybe it’s the 1970s-vintage computers many FAA staffers use, perhaps it’s the 1950s-style labor-relations environment (OK, it has been getting better) or maybe the industry it governs is just a bit on the conservative side, but the Government Accountability Office has confirmed something many have long suspected: When it comes to new ideas, the FAA […]

Adam Aircraft’s A500 centerline twin is creeping closer — granted, at a pace far behind its predicted schedule — to the point where certification seems inevitable, having completed 230 out of the 235 tasks required, spokesman John Hamilton told AVweb at Sun ‘n Fun. The fully conforming prototype has acquired 675 flight hours, and customer […]

COLUMNS The Savvy Aviator #17: But It Just Came Out Of Annual!When an IA signs off an annual inspection, most owners assume the aircraft is airworthy and safe to fly. That’s usually true, but not always. In this month’s Savvy Aviator column, AVweb’s Mike Busch offers a particularly egregious example.

While the new-generation airplanes with their glass panels and satellite datalinks are awesome machines, the fact is there are still thousands of pilots hand-flying their little puddlejumpers behind round dials. They’re pre-planning flights on paper sectional charts, and getting their weather before they leave the ground. To help those pilots out, Enflight.com offers a newly […]

The story of the twin-engine P-38 fighter known as Glacier Girl is well-known by now, but the airplane this week is making its first appearance at Sun ‘n Fun. It’s been opening the daily 2 p.m. airshow with dramatic low fly-bys, climbing out steep and banking hard to show off that distinctive profile with the […]