briefs

The widow of an 80-year-old student pilot who was killed in March 2000 when two aircraft collided on a runway in Florida has accepted an offer of $1.4 million to settle with the FAA. Shirley Heffner, 77, had filed a $30 million suit against the agency after the NTSB blamed controllers’ actions for the crash. […]

Two atmospheric oddities last week had both citizens and the military wondering if they were seeing things. Lt. Col. Michael Humm, a Pentagon spokesman, Thursday confirmed that NORAD had scrambled fighter jets to intercept and identify the source of a contrail initially reported at 4 p.m. EST Wednesday moving from the Caribbean to the United […]

The Smithsonian Institution’s annex to the National Air and Space Museum, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, is nearly 75 percent finished and is scheduled to open December 2003, at Washington Dulles International Airport, 100 years after the Wright brothers’ first powered flight. Seventy denizens installed for the opening will include a Lockheed SR-71, the Space […]

A UK environment advisory group, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP), which previously reported on the environmental impact of aviation both in 1994 and 1997, has decided that the contribution of aircraft exhaust to climate change supports a changeover from air to rail travel — especially for short-haul flights. The real culprits are of […]

A town meeting last month offered solutions for Alaskan operators who’d gained temporary exemption from the FAA’s new attempt to standardize field approvals. The FAA’s latest policy on the approval of major repairs and non-STC modifications to aircraft was announced Sept. 13, but it only took a few weeks for Alaskan pilots to win temporary […]

The National Association of Air Traffic Specialists (NAATS) last week organized pickets at airports across the nation to draw attention to what they believe are President Bush’s plans to privatize the nation’s flight service station system. The Bush administration has officially begun its examination intended to determine if there would be financial benefit from turning […]

A Thanksgiving day event in Kenya has led the U.S. government to warn airports that portable rocket launchers could be used to target commercial aircraft in the United States. Going one step further Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, Sunday requested of the Bush administration immediate action to […]

New Jersey legislators have backed off on a plan to fingerprint and do background checks on aircraft renters and student pilots. The state’s Senate Transportation Committee was supposed to consider Bill 1438 on Monday but committee members postponed the discussion, opting to let those who actually have responsibility in such matters (i.e., the FAA, the […]

A 23-year-old St. Augustine flight instructor and his 52-year-old Swiss flight student found themselves answering some pointed questions from authorities after flying through restricted airspace over the Florida Power’s Crystal River nuclear plant. The two men were en route from St. Augustine to Cedar Key in a single-engine Piper when they got lost. Before they […]

Authorities have found the body of a Texas man who is thought to have jumped from a Cessna 152 last Sunday. Authorities say Russell Filler wasn’twearing a parachute when he exited the plane from 9,000 feet near Waller, Texas, leaving a startled flight instructor, Benito Munoz, alone in the cockpit. Munoz said Filler asked him […]