briefs

When the FAA’s Light-Sport Aircraft rules were announced at Oshkosh in August, it was clear that a long road to implementation lay ahead. Last week, a milestone on that road was reached, when ASTM International published the first edition of consensus standards for light-sport aircraft. The publication includes guidelines for the design, manufacture, maintenance and […]

________TRAINING The Cessna, The Sky … and the Cartoonist: Chapters Four and FiveJohn Ewing continues flight training with chapters on climbs, descents, and turns. But things are never easy when going “back to school” in the retired years of life, and our writer/cartoonist is flummoxed by more technical vocabulary and high-g-force turns. But he’s looking […]

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A twin-engine turboprop carrying two crew members and 13 passengers crashed Tuesday night in Kirksville, Mo. The British Aerospace Jetstream 32, operating as American Connection Flight 5966, hit trees while making a visual approach to the Kirksville Regional Airport at about 7:45 p.m. local time, crashed, and burned on impact. The aircraft’s wings apparently were […]

Liberty Aerospace, of Melbourne, Fla., announced yesterday that Kuwait Finance House – Bahrain has signed an agreement to acquire 75 percent of the stock of Liberty’s parent company, through a combination of stock purchases from stockholders and a working capital investment. Liberty’s management and staff will remain unchanged. Liberty manufactures the FAA-certified two-seat Liberty XL2 […]

Starting this week, the government of Brazil joins Colombia in empowering its air force to shoot down suspected drug planes. The policy is meant to staunch a growing commerce in cocaine using airstrips hidden in the vast Amazon forest. The Aviation Crime Prevention Institute (ACPI), based in Ormond Beach, Fla., warned last week that the […]

Somebody must be getting a free ride, because the business-aviation folks have now declared they too — like their big brothers, the airlines — pay more than their fair share of the cost of the national airspace system. The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) hired an economics firm to study the issue, and found that […]

The FAA presented Cessna with full Type Certification for the Model 525B Citation CJ3 in Wichita last Friday. The newly certified Citation completed 150 hours of function and reliability testing on Oct. 9. Cessna plans to deliver the first Citation CJ3 later this year. The CJ3 has a longer cabin than the CJ2, new Williams […]

During 12 1/2 years with Ballistic Recovery Systems (BRS), CEO Mark Thomas led the company’s evolution from a strapped-for-cash operation that lost money on every transaction to a fast-growing, profitable industry player with a product that at last count had saved 176 lives. Last week, Thomas announced that he’s ready to move on. “It’s a […]