briefs

The TFR that early Tuesday set an ADIZ for the Class B airspace surrounding New York City from the surface up to but not including 18,000 feet also closed down all operations (except commercial carrier traffic flying into LaGuardia) within seven nm of the U.N. through 4:30 p.m. yesterday. The wording was passed on to […]

An airspace dispute of a different sort is brewing off the windy coast of Maui as the FAA prepares to clamp down on what it claims is a hazard to operations at Kahului Airport on the Hawaiian island. The agency is planning to cancel a waiver that allows kiteboarding, or kitesurfing, within five miles of […]

Well, the Windy City failed to live up to its name and so did the Wright Flyer. The Wright Redux Association’s replica of the first real airplane couldn’t break the surly bonds of a Chicago lawn last Saturday, despite three attempts. “The Wrights flew into a 25-mph wind. I think we could have flown if […]

The final frontier may be coming to a museum or science center near you in the next five years. General Motors, Space Day Foundation, and Lockheed Martin have joined forces to sponsor a 12,000-square-foot traveling exhibition on the whos, the hows and, perhaps most important, the whys of space exploration. “SPACE: A Journey to Our […]

The ad suggests something nothing less than revolutionary but, alas, Cessna’s gussied-up 172, the SP model, doesn’t really fly “fuel free.” What it does, however, is fly on free fuel, the first $3,500 worth, anyway. The company’s latest incentive supplies new owners with a fuel card that works at any FBO accepting Multiservice Fuel cards. […]

The rest of us could learn a lesson in air-crash survival from a couple of Minnesota tots. Three-year-old Lily Pearson and her big sister Grace, 4, defied monumental odds in surviving a plane crash that killed their mother Kathryn Pearson and uncle Charlie Erickson last Aug. 28. The Beechcraft twin piloted by Erickson went down […]

_______COLUMNS As the Beacon Turns #68: Under the WireDealing with an engine failure in a helicopter includes the same rule as in an airplane: Pitch for proper airspeed. However, the margin for failure is much tighter in whirly-birds, and even simulated engine failure can cause a real emergency landing. AVweb’s Michael Maya Charles just had […]

As the new Light-Sport category gets closer to reality, U.S. manufacturers are bracing for an influx of aircraft from Europe and Australia but there’s also a new player in that market. A Vietnamese company has built the prototype of what it calls a “superlight” aircraft. The Voice of Vietnam news service reports a two-place version […]

Big Brother is watching us, but JetBlue? The discount airline admitted last week that it turned over personal information on a million of its passengers to an Army contractor that used the information to find out their Social Security numbers, financial histories and occupations. The airline violated its own privacy code in doing so and […]

It’s been 18 years since Executive Jet revolutionized business-jet ownership and now the FAA has caught up to the fractional ownership industry with a set of regulations. The agency published a final rule for the Regulation of Fractional Aircraft Ownership Programs and On-Demand Operations last Wednesday in the Federal Register. The new rule recognizes the […]