briefs

While the air traffic controllers are hoping to pre-empt a privatization bid, the process to examine contracting out of flight service station functions grinds on. AOPA announced last week that it will be able to provide input on the study, which will look at everything flight service station personnel do. AOPA is particularly interested in […]

There could soon be a law to stop something the FAA swears will never happen, anyway. A bipartisan bill has been introduced that would bar the Department of Transportation from contracting out air traffic control services to commercial interests. Four senior members of transportation and aviation subcommittees sponsored the bill, including Rep. James L. Oberstar […]

Civil Air Patrol leaders met with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge last week to tell him the 64,000 members of the Air Force auxiliary can help tackle one of the biggest enemies of national security — the high cost of maintaining it. “CAP has the largest privately-owned fleet of single-engine aircraft in the nation,” said […]

The last chance for most of us to break the sound barrier (at least voluntarily) will be sometime in October. That’s when British Airways will stop flying Concorde from London to New York. Air France will stop its Paris-to-New York service May 31. As AVweb reported earlier, rumors of the demise of Concorde began surfacing […]

Two more key executives have left Mooney Aircraft Company. Tom Bowen, the company’s vice president of engineering and the chief operating officer during its bankruptcy, left Friday and is headed to Lancair Certified where he’ll work on projects to make those airplanes go higher, faster and farther. Jim Cullen, the company’s director of manufacturing, resigned […]

The Wright brothers overcame some pretty incredible obstacles to get their planes in the air but they never came up against anything like the TSA. Ken Hyde, of The Wright Experience, discovered this week that the Virginia airstrip where he plans to test-fly his replica of the first airplane capable of sustained and controlled flight […]

While alphabet groups in the U.S. are fighting federal policies they say give control of the skies to sports interests, the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association’s battle is a horse of a different color. A Quebec government department that normally deals with agriculture issues is trying to clip the wings of rural residents. The Commission […]

Forget about visions of baling wire and binder twine maintenance, today’s cash-strapped airlines are actually safer to fly, according to the FAA. Nicholas Sabatini, who heads up the regulation and certification section of the agency, said money problems tend to cause airlines to mothball their older aircraft in favor of new (and theoretically more trouble-free) […]

Authorities are still puzzling over the cause of a plane crash that killed six adults but left a 13-year-old girl apparently just slightly injured. Tora Fisher’s parents, Anthony and his wife, died along with pilot Robert Monaco, co-pilot Eric Jacobsen and passengers Michael Campanelli and Thomas Fox when the King Air 200 they were in […]

The children of Baghdad probably don’t expect anything good to drop out of the sky on them these days but a retired Air Force colonel wants to change that. Col. Gail Halvorsen wants to reprise the 1948 flight over Berlin that earned him the nickname the Candy Bomber. Halvorsen gave the German kids something to […]