briefs

Airline Pilots Against Age Discrimination (APAAD) has hired Patton Boggs, a high-powered Washington, D.C., lobbying firm, to power up their campaign to get two bills through Congress that would let them keep flying till age 65 (without having to seek employment with a foreign airline), The Hill reported yesterday. Fifty pilots are expected to come […]

The first conforming prototype of the Seawind amphibian is complete and ready to start flight tests, the company announced on Monday. Testing should be complete and a certified Seawind amphibian ready for market by this winter, company spokesman Bill Poirier told AVweb yesterday. “A lot of the certification testing is already done,” he said. All […]

Sino Swearingen Aircraft Corp. announced last week it will expand its operations in San Antonio, Texas, building a 220,000-square foot, $20 million manufacturing plant and adding 850 jobs, doubling its workforce. The company is gearing up to start cranking out 100 copies per year of its SJ30-2 business jet, with first delivery expected by the […]

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An S7Airlines A310 with 204 people on board apparently went out of control after landing at Irkutsk Airport (Russia) early Sunday and at least 122 people are dead. Passenger Margarita Svetlova, 15, told the New York Times the airplane seemed to land normally and, after initially starting to slow down, began speeding up. There were […]

The buzz around Burbank Airport isn’t the usual industry gossip. People are talking about the planes and the bees. The airport fire department has been kept busy recently dealing with swarms of bees that apparently think engine nacelles make ideal bee condos. The crew of a chartered King Air returned to the plane after a […]

COLUMNS The Savvy Aviator #33: Hangnails and Hand TransplantsYour engine is not too far from TBO when it develops a cylinder-related problem. Your mechanic suggests you might as well “bite the bullet” and overhaul the engine now, rather than pour any more money into it. Is he giving you sound advice?

New Mexico’s Spaceport has scheduled its first launch of a spacecraft for Aug. 14. The 20-foot-tall, 800-pound rocket will be fired by UP Aerospace, a Colorado company that designed the craft to carry light payloads into space at low cost. The rocket will carry over 50 payloads and experiments, mostly from high-school and college students. […]

The pilot of a Cessna 180 landed on a residential street in Oklahoma on Sunday, then tried to take off, but clipped power lines and crashed nose-first into a suburban front yard. The pilot was killed and his 11-year-old grandson was critically hurt, The Associated Press reported. The airplane had taken off from a private […]

The FAA might not have money to hire inspectors or examiners these days, but it’s spending $59 million to buy 122 houses and soundproof 1,000 more near Mississippi’s Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport. Another 1,300 homeowners will be paid $3,000 for right-of-flyover privileges, a strategy that’s meant to ward off potential lawsuits, the Sun-Herald reported on Monday. […]