briefs

Sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), which is in a pitched battle with the FAA over the proposed privatization of VFR control towers, recently asked the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to compare the performance of 71 FAA-staffed towers, 69 of which are […]

Flying blind isn’t just a clich for Miles Hilton-Barber. Hilton-Barber, 54, became the first blind person to fly across the English Channel in a microlight aircraft last weekend. Hilton-Barber was among about 80 pilots to take off from Headcorn Airfield in Kent (U.K.). He flew with a sighted pilot for safety and legal reasons. With […]

Canada’s British Columbia has been under assault from wildfires throughout the summer and aerial firefighting pilots are fighting back with new tactics to tackle the massive blazes. The tanker group has resorted to “mass launches by multiple aircraft” during a fire’s early stages to try and prevent the sort of disaster that befell Kelowna, B.C., […]

A helium leak halted an attempt by two British men to set an altitude record in a balloon. Colin Prescot, 53, and Andy Elson, 48, hoped to set a world record by piloting their 387-meters-tall helium balloon to 39,600 meters (132,000 feet). The QinetiQ 1, as it is called, was supposed to loiter for an […]

There’s no shortage of imagination when it comes to new ways to make aviation more convenient and accessible, even if the result of these musings can be a little out of the ordinary. Take, for example, the Freedom Ship, which is touted as “the future city on the sea.” With a design length of 4,500 […]

The faithful will make their annual pilgrimage to Reno Stead airport next week to pay homage to horsepower and high speed as some of the gutsiest pilots compete for air racing’s most coveted title. Hyped by organizers as the “world’s fastest motor sport,” and officially called the National Championship Air Races and Air Show 2003, […]

Think how things have changed at your favorite airport since 9/11. Fences where there didn’t used to be fences, proplocks, barbed wire, ID cards, and more. Yet last weekend, officials at Gerald R. Ford International Airport, in Grand Rapids, Mich., were shown how easily all of that can be circumvented by a man with a […]

As hard as we try to see signs of a robust economic recovery on the horizon, the news stubbornly continues to be mixed. United Air Lines announced last week that its emergence from bankruptcy protection will likely be delayed until next year at the soonest, instead of later this year as it had hoped. But […]

Boeing is under scrutiny, and the heat is about to intensify on Wednesday, when a hearing will be held by the Senate Commerce Committee about the planemaker’s $21-billion leasing deal with the U.S. Air Force for 100 B767 aerial refueling tankers. A report issued last week by the Congressional Budget Office concluded that “the proposed […]

Flight tests last Wednesday proved that modifying the shape of an aircraft can reduce the intensity and noise of a sonic boom, Northrop Grumman has announced. The new technology could eventually make it possible for supersonic jets to fly from point to point over land, instead of being restricted to transoceanic hops, like the Concorde […]