briefs

Boeing plans to spend $5.8 billion to develop its 7E7 Dreamliner, The Seattle Times reported on Friday, plus about $3 billion more that will come from partners in the project. Last week, Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher was in Moscow to cement an agreement to invest $2.5 billion in the Russian aerospace industry, in return for […]

Private pilots may be wowed by glass-cockpit technology, but they’ve been slow to adopt it. One market that is warming up quickly is flight schools. “It makes sense when you’re talking about training tomorrow’s pilots,” said New Piper CEO Chuck Suma, as his company delivered two new Warrior IIIs to Downing College, in Shirley, N.Y., […]

The FAA is not really quite ready to start certifying student sport pilots, but until it is ready, it has an ad hoc procedure in place, EAA reported last week. For now, aspiring airmen can use the standard application form and just write in “Sport Pilot” under “Other.” Inspectors and examiners will get complete instructions […]

________TRAINING The Cessna, The Sky … and the Cartoonist: Chapters Six and Seven Stalls — a word (and sound) that strikes fear in the hearts of student pilots. And professionals, for that matter. But our bold aviator and cartoonist knows it is a required part of pilot training, and he’s ready to take his partner, […]

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Bill Bennett, an Australian hang-gliding pioneer who helped popularize the sport in the U.S., died on Oct. 7 in Arizona at age 73, it was reported this week. Bennett was taking off with an instructor in a trike — a powered ultralight with a hang-glider-like wing and weight-shift control — at Lake Havasu Airport when […]

A corrugated iron roof hardly seems like a soft place to fall, but it helped slow down Lt. Charlie Williams enough that he survived with minor injuries after his parachute failed to open during a training exercise in Kenya. Williams, 25, of the British Army, was on his third jump two weeks ago when he […]

Bruce Bohannon broke two of his own world records on the way up — he hit 12,000 meters in 20 minutes, 36 seconds, to establish new time-to-climb standards in the Unlimited and C-1.b classes (the old record was 22:29), but the one he really wanted Saturday proved elusive once again, EAA reported on Monday. Bohannon […]

You have to wait until Dec. 1 to take an actual FAA Sport Pilot “knowledge test” (what used to be known as the “written” in the pre-computer age), but you can start studying now, because the FAA has posted its test-question bank online. Questions are posted for sport pilots and for sport-pilot flight instructors/examiners. The […]