Flight Safety

The cost of new aircraft keeps going up and the number produced keeps going down, so it’s really no surprise that people have begun looking for other ways to get the benefits of a new airplane without having to pay increasingly unreachable amounts for them. Taking old planes, stripping them down and rebuilding them seems […]

The FAA plans to shut down circling approaches wherever feasible, and last week the agency published its selection criteria for deciding which approaches will be cancelled. The changes are part of an effort to “right-size” the National Airspace System, and eliminate redundant and unnecessary procedures, the FAA said. Input from AOPA was taken into consideration. […]

It’s now illegal to possess most laser pointers (outside of houses) within six miles of any Canadian airport thanks to an order made by Canada’s transport minister on Friday. Marc Garneau issued an interim order banning anyone from having a laser pointer with more than one milliwatt of output power while outdoors in a six-mile […]

Operators of Boeing 777s will likely be taking a close look at the landing gear on their aircraft after an unusual incident at Narita Airport in Japan on Friday. A Korean Air 777-300 was taxiing to the gate when the axle holding the rear set of wheels on the main gear broke. The wheels folded […]

A proper FAA reauthorization may have to wait (again) thanks to this week’s surprise retirement of a Supreme Court justice. All of the focus in Washington will be on the maneuvering ahead of President Donald Trump’s pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy and unless everything goes exactly right for the long-awaited FAA bill, it’s likely […]

A pilot friend of mine once described a trip he and I flew in my airplane as “boring.” It was a one-stopper from Wichita to Florida, mostly done in or above IMC and at 11,000 feet MSL. It was a smooth flight without any drama, but my passenger found it unsatisfactory because he couldn’t see […]

Flying an RV-8 from Los Angeles, California to Oxfordshire, England in 19 days may strike many as an adventure of a lifetime. For me, the 7,000-n.m. trip was my way to return home after working four years in the Tesla Motors Design Studio in Hawthorne, California. Airfields along the Crimson Route, partially developed in WW-II […]

New research from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health suggests that flight attendants are at a higher risk than the general public for several forms cancer. To gather data, the Harvard Flight Attendant Health Study surveyed U.S.-based flight attendants and compared the results to non-flying groups of similar ages and genders. The study […]

This week, AVweb’s news roundup came across reports on a new Air Repair Station certification for Wayman Aviation, Adventure Aviation’s acquisition of an AL250 simulator, the recent release of an IFR communications manual from PilotWorkshops and additional AirVenture forum presentations by Superior Air Parts. Wayman Aviation announced last week that it has earned FAA Part […]

Boeing’s New Hypersonic Concept I’d love to see the technology advance. I’ve been following Reaction Engines in the U.K. for several years. The have a very interesting concept for using ultra-high-efficiency heat exchangers to produce oxygen from the air to use in rocket propulsion, thus reducing the need for the weight of O2 on board. […]