briefs

https://avweb.com/avmail/ Reader mail this week about Air Force One’s secret flight, noise at British airports and more.

Australian air traffic controllers say small airplanes with inadequate transponders have repeatedly strayed into commercial-jet airspace since new rules took effect Thursday. The government says safety has not been compromised… An Antonov 26 crashed shortly after takeoff in central Congo on Saturday, killing all 22 people aboard… Boeing announced last week that it had fired […]

The very last Concorde ever to defy gravity touched down Wednesday at the airport where it was built, carrying 100 British Airways crew members on its final flight. But in true British fashion (remember Churchill?) the fans of the craft aren’t ready to settle for defeat. Promising to “fight to the end” — and apparently, […]

A recent draft report released by the Southern California Association of Governments predicted that air traffic in the region will double by 2030, and smaller airports will need to expand facilities to accommodate that growth. Nearly 23 million residents are expected to inhabit the area by then. The region includes 57 public-use airports: six commercial […]

It’s not only small airplanes that run into trouble with neighbors over noise — plenty of folks in crowded cities around the world live beneath the approach paths of passenger jets, and the noise is a major bone of contention. In a new research project launched in Britain this month, scientists are examining a number […]

The NTSB released its final report last week on the October 2002 midair crash of two Cessna 172s in Coral Springs, Fla., in which two people died. The probable cause of the crash, according to the safety board, was “the failure of the dual students and flight instructors on both [aircraft ] to see and […]

Three German siblings said last week that DNA tests have proved what they long suspected: Charles Lindbergh was their father. The three, Dyrk Hesshaimer, Astrid Bouteuil and David Hesshaimer, were born in 1958, 1960 and 1967. They are not seeking money from the Lindbergh family — their father visited them once or twice a year […]

The soft sands of Kill Devil Hill can be cruel and hard, as Ken Hyde’s Wright Experience team discovered last week when their Wright Flyer reproduction was damaged in a crash. “I think the repairs will be done by Monday morning,” pilot Kevin Kochersberger told AVweb on Saturday, but he couldn’t be certain. The propellers […]

___________SPECIAL EVENTS Coming Soon — A New Air and Space Museum: Birds In A Gilded CageOn December 15, the Smithsonian will open its new Udvar-Hazy Center, an enormous annex to its flagship National Air & Space Museum. AVweb newswriter Mary Grady visited in October and provides this sneak preview.

California helicopter pilot Jim Cheatham helped keep 10,000 marathon runners safe but it’s the allegedly ruffled feathers of 43 seabirds that could land him a fine. Cheatham stands accused of three misdemeanor counts of “airborne harassment of birds” after federal officials somehow determined he flushed 43 common murres from the Castle Rock Murre Colony in […]