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In Brainteaser Quiz #163, I asked, “What is the dumbest phraseology you routinely hear on CTAF?” CTAF means Common Traffic Advisory Frequency, the unsupervised, pilot-to-pilot, radio forum used when operating at airports without control towers. I asked the question because, as a flight instructor, I spend hours listening to all sorts of garbage on the […]

Click here for all our news stories from the AOPA Summit – both for 2011 and previous years. And our AVwebAudio newsletter has the complete run-down of this year’s multimedia coverage: Want to get AVwebAudio in your inbox every Friday? Just log in to AVweb (or create a free account in the upper right corner […]

The day before AOPA Aviation Summit opened this week in Hartford, Conn., the association hosted its second Flight Training Summit, for about 100 participants. During that event, AOPA introduced a demo of MyFlightTraining, an online personalized support system that aims to help student pilots achieve their goal of earning a pilot certificate. The program, which […]

At AOPA Summit on Friday, FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt announced that he signed off this week on creating a new Aviation Rulemaking Committee that will review the current flight-training rules. “The ARC will make recommendations as to how to improve testing and instruction,” he said. “This effort is part of a five-year plan for transforming […]

In its first interim briefing to the public, the FAA committee charged with recommending a framework for replacing leaded avgas indicated this week that a straight-up drop-in appears increasingly improbable. Both the FAA’s Robert Ganley and Michael Kraft of Lycoming engines told a small audience at AOPA Summit on Thursday that an across-the-board replacement for […]

Liberty Sport Aviation brought a new LSA to the AOPA Summit in Hartford, Conn., this week, for the airplane’s U.S. debut. The all-metal low-wing Bristell is built in the Czech Republic. “We were looking for something fast, fun, and easy to fly,” said John Calla, of Liberty. The cockpit is a roomy 51 inches across […]

“We want our customers to be truly ecstatic about our products,” said Dale Klapmeier, co-founder of Cirrus Aircraft, at AOPA Summit on Thursday, appearing in his new role as CEO. Klapmeier said he wants to promote GA to new customers not only because it’s useful, but because it’s fun. “We’re in this business because having […]

While the industry awaits an unleaded replacement for 100LL, Continental has moved rapidly forward to certify a new version of its six-cylinder IO-360 that will run on lower octane fuel. At AOPA’s Summit in Hartford, Connecticut, the company’s CEO Rhett Ross told us the new engine will be used in the four-place C4 announced by […]

AOPA Aviation Summit opens in Hartford, Conn., on Thursday with a challenging agenda: how to get all of general aviation’s advocates to work together to advance the industry. President Obama’s Jobs Act may have provided a rallying cry with its shop-worn inclusion of user fees on top of fuel taxes as a new method of […]

Even as the new aircraft market continues to stumble, more companies are getting into the aviation insurance game and, as a result, premimum prices for some classes of aircraft are at historic lows. In a podcast from AOPA Summit in Hartford this week, Jon Doolittle of Sutton James Insurance, told AVweb that insurance premiums on […]