briefs

On Tuesday, personal locator beacons (PLBs), which have been in use in Alaska since 1994, became available to pilots in the lower 48 (see AVweb’s review). The small, easily portable beacons, which use satellite signals to pinpoint location, have been credited with saving hundreds of lives in Alaska. Boy Scouts in Waterbury, Vt., carried out […]

Warbirds and other surplus military equipment in private hands appear safe, at least for this year, from the Bush administration’s fixation with destroying the historic items. Every year, the White House tries to include, as part of the defense authorization bill, a section that would require owners of warbirds and other ex-military equipment to “demilitarize” […]

A new safety and engineering center, with the power to stop a space shuttle launch, will be in place before Atlantis blasts off as early as next December, NASA announced Friday. NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe told a meeting of the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors and the Florida Press Association that the safety center will […]

As air shows go, it’s a big one — but then so are the hearts of the organizers. Van Nuys Airport’s Aviation Expo 2003 raised $101,000 for more than 20 local nonprofit youth and service organizations. Nature played a role by turning down the Southern California heat to attract more than 385,000 people over two […]

A fatal crash involving one of its students has prompted a Florida flight school to accelerate the closure of its primary flight-training department. Gulfstream Academy of Aeronautics will continue to offer advanced training to existing pilots who want to work for the airlines but it’s no longer taking private, commercial, multi- and instrument-rating students. There […]

Adam Aircraft is next in a lengthening line of modern designs to have chosen Avidyne’s FlightMax Entegra integrated flight deck for its push-pull A500T twin. The Avidyne system (reviewed, June 15, by AVweb) features two 10.4-inch diagonal, high-resolution sunlight-readable displays as pilot and co-pilot primary flight displays (PFD). Each display has its own electronics for […]

Well, the test pilot came out of it unscathed, but the crash of a cutting-edge unmanned prototype off Hawaii is a tragedy nonetheless for this fuel-cell test project. The solar-electric Helios Prototype flying wing was destroyed when it crashed into the Pacific Ocean in the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility off the island of […]

As the mystery of a missing African airliner lingers, more details of its disappearance, and a U.S. connection, are surfacing. The missing plane has been the subject of an international search since it vanished after departing Angola on May 25. The last known flight of the Boeing 727 was recorded shortly after it had been […]

Now that Boeing has a name for its new jet — the Dreamliner — the race is on to build a manufacturing facility for the ambitious project. To date, about 24 states have submitted bids to host the new assembly plant. All kinds of incentives — from tax breaks to favorable zoning — are being […]

A U.S. Air Force crew’s quick action may have prevented a South Pacific ditching by the crew of a Canadian cargo aircraft. The Kelowna Flightcraft Convair 580 was on a delivery flight from the company’s base in Kelowna, British Columbia, to Palmerston North, New Zealand, when the crew, two Canadians and a Kiwi, realized they […]