Learn to Fly

Starting May 1, anyone who wants to take part in an EAA-sanctioned Young Eagles event will have to take an online training course and undergo a standard background check before interacting with the young participants. EAA introduced its Youth Protection Policy earlier this year and got an earful from some volunteers who objected to what […]

EAA Young Eagles pilots fly up to 70,000 boys and girls every year, but until this year there has been no training or formal policy on keeping the events safe for all involved. EAA’s Rick Larsen spoke with AVweb’s Russ Niles about the new policy and the controversy it’s caused with some volunteers. Duration: 11:00 […]

New FAA rules affecting how student pilots are certified took effect today. The new rules require all applicants to be vetted through the FAA’s Airmen Certification Branch, a process the FAA says will take about three weeks. Currently, the FAA completes the same vetting process, but not until after a student certificate has been issued, […]

Icon Aircraft founder Kirk Hawkins has famously said his company aims to reshape—actually reinvent—general aviation by “democratizing” access to it. What that means exactly is about as clear as mud, but this week, Icon’s buyer agreement escaped into the wild, and it appears as though Icon’s view of “democratization” centers on a legal construct that […]

Almost 5,000 people attended Women in Aviation’s annual convention in Nashville. The meeting wrapped up Sunday and the group celebrated awarding more than $10 million in scholarships since the inception of the scholarship program in 1995. “Thousands of women made powerful connections this week that will enhance their lives and careers for years to come,” […]

An integral part of the various jobs I’ve held for the last 37 years has involved reviewing aircraft accident reports and looking at data generated from them. During that time, what the NTSB euphemistically refers to as “maneuvering,” has remained in the top three causes of fatal accidents with usually about 40 percent of general […]

If there’s a great untapped resource in general aviation—other than unsold airplanes—it must be empty seats. Four-place airplanes rarely fly with more than two people and if we had data on it, I suspect most piston aircraft flights have one body aboard. And once this autonomy thing comes together, we can dispense with him/her and […]

Women of Aviation Week will kick off with the arrival of an Air Canada flight at Vancouver International Airport. Onboard the airplane will be an all-female flight crew and they’ll be cleared to land by a female air traffic controller in a media event. That it took a coordinated effort by WOAW, Air Canada and […]

A couple of months ago, aviation journalists were getting calls from a Japanese survey company with some questions about the aircraft engine market. Over the course of an hour, they asked about market demand, certification requirements and what buyers might expect of a new aircraft engine. The marketeers described themselves as working for a company […]

Perhaps one of the most popular flight schools in the U.S. to earn a single-engine seaplane rating, Jack Brown’s Seaplane Base in Winter Haven, Florida, has trained nearly 20,000 pilots. To find out what the draw is all about, Aviation Consumer editor Larry Anglisano recently enrolled in Brown’s $1,400 SES course and had his cameras […]