briefs

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The new CEO of Airbus has quit after just three months on the job, saying he wasn’t given the autonomy he needed to lead the company through its current crisis… NBAA’s annual convention is coming up next week, Oct. 17-19, in Orlando. AVweb‘s Jeb Burnside will be there. Watch for two special editions of AVwebBiz […]

A pilot from Calgary, Alberta, was indicted last week in California for allegedly carrying about 300 pounds of cocaine, worth some $30 million, aboard a Cessna 340 headed from San Diego to British Columbia on Sept. 27. The pilot, Daniel Raymond LeClerc, 35, was arrested when he landed to refuel at an airport in a […]

It’s a simple idea: If a wing could change shape in flight, it could do things that our rigid wings can’t do. The Wright brothers attempted it with wing warping. We use the same idea when we employ flaps and ailerons, and some military aircraft have variable-geometry wings that can sweep back and change aspect […]

Google’s 3-D maps of the Earth are proving useful in the aviation world. Dispatchers who work with firefighting airplanes for the U.S. Forest Service are incorporating the 3-D maps into their flight-following system, and they say it works great. Linda Naill, an aircraft dispatcher at the Sierra Front Interagency Dispatch Center in Minden, Nev., uses […]

The FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO) is preparing to make the necessary changes to handle predicted increases in air traffic over the next two decades, says Chief Operating Officer Russell Chew. “It isn’t about being the best and the brightest,” he told aviation industry executives last Thursday, at the Aerospace Industries Association’s civil aviation council […]

A recently released NTSB factual report on the May 23 crash of South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer’s Mooney M20E says the Lycoming engine had flown just 20 hours since a recent overhaul, and suggests that some bolts may have been incorrectly installed. The piston single was halfway down the runway at a private airstrip […]

Late last month, Swiss aviation startup Aviace filed suit against Eclipse Aviation, saying the Albuquerque-based aircraft manufacturer delayed and then canceled its order for 112 Eclipse 500s at a price of $1.045 million apiece. When Aviace placed the fleet order for the very light jets in May 2002, it said it planned to offer the […]

COLUMNS The Pilot’s Lounge #105: Flying In To AirVenture — It’s Time To Slap Around The BozosAnother summer in Oshkosh has come and gone — and good riddance, say many. AVweb’s Rick Durden heard some sad and frustrating stories while in the virtual lounge at EAA’s AirVenture 2006.