Flight Safety

An apparent power surge at Belgium’s air traffic control facilitiesclosed some of the nation’s airspaceWednesday morning, forcing flights to divert to nearby countries, The Independent reported. A Belgocontrol spokesman told UK news agencies the cause of the power surge is yet unclear. “The surge also took out our emergency generators, which is why we had […]

A Singapore Airlines Airbus A330-300, with 182 passengers and 12 crew on board, lost both engines while en route from Singapore to Shanghai on Saturday, the airline has reported. The flight encountered weather at 39,000 feet, about three and a half hours after departure and 160 miles from shore. Both Rolls Royce Trent 772 engines […]

AOPA this week opened its application period for student pilots who are looking for help with the cost of flight training. The AOPA Foundation will award almost $120,000 to help teens learn to fly, study in an accredited aviation program or attend a summer camp with an aviation or aerospace theme. Applications will be accepted […]

Data communications are now available at Newark Liberty International Airport, the FAA said last week, and later this summer the service will expand to Houston and Salt Lake City. Data Comm is already in use at Memphis International Airport, “where it’s delivering great results,” according to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. By next year, Data Comm […]

Years ago, like 1960, I was a newly hired DC-3 co-pilot for Continental Air Lines. We could fly either VFR or IFR, depending the weather situation at the time. Needless to say, we went for VFR whenever we could. [One day,] the weather wasn’t the greatest, but we thought VFR would work. Called ground for […]

Aviation groups say a proposed new bill will essentially block military veterans from using their Veterans Administration benefits to obtain aviation degrees. The new measure would cap the VA benefits at $20,235 per year for flight training, a fraction of the cost of the programs that form the basis of degree aviation programs. The provision […]

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr says random tests to determine the psychological fitness of pilots could reduce the risk to passengers from mentally ill pilots. In his first media interview since the Germanwings disaster in March, Spohr told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung such checks would likely require a loosening of strict doctor-patient confidentiality laws that now prevent […]

When I tour around to report on airplane projects, I have basically two reactions and having the imagination of a turnip, these are consistent. The first is wide-eyed wonderment at the audacity of it all; building machines that lift and hurl themselves through the atmosphere with people in them. The second, upon realizing the staggering […]

Airbus is ordering engine software checks on A400M military aircraft after one of the four-engine turboprops crashed in Seville, Spain, on May 9 during a test flight, killing four of the six on board. According to a Reuters report, Airbus found data from the crash indicating a possible problem with the installation of the system […]

The FAA this week issued an Emergency Airworthiness Directive for Avidyne Integrated Flight Display units due to cases of incorrect course indications during RNAV approaches where the final fix is not aligned with the final approach course. The AD (PDF)affects some software versions of 10- and 12-inch R9 displays and the IFD540. It requires adding […]