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New Marketing For An Old Market While university flight departments are forging new ground, most flight schools, whether their fleet has round dials or glass, are still facing the same old challenges — how to find enough new students, and then keep them. To help fill that need, a new company in Nashville, Tenn., Flight […]

The MTSU training also integrates private pilot and instrument training (with an FAA exemption to allow concurrent training) so students take both checkrides at once. According to Paul Craig, director of the MTSU program, “The new [glass-cockpit] technology solves the two problems that make IFR different from VFR: 1) We can see through clouds, and […]

Glass Cockpits Go Ab Initio Old training methods may not match new equipment and as glass cockpits grow ever more common on new (and retrofitted) aircraft, learning to fly on the old round gauges is a task going the way of navigating with a map and compass and E6-B. At Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), […]

The DHS authorization bill also mandates changes to the Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) program that have long been lobbied for by the participating pilots. If approved by the Senate, the bill would require the DHS to issue badges to qualified FFDOs and allow them to transport their weapons “on their persons,” rather than inside […]

Bills Mandate Access Within Three Months Two bills that would mandate allowing GA operations back into Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) passed in the U.S. House last week. The first-ever authorization bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which passed on a vote of 424 to 4, requires the department to implement a security […]

Meanwhile, the new ground-based Visual Warning System around the D.C. ADIZ is ready to deploy on Saturday. The system signals pilots who intrude into the no-fly zone with low-level laser beams in an alternating red-red-green light sequence. Any pilots who receive the warning must immediately turn away from the signal and contact Air Traffic Control. […]

AOPA Reaches Out Via Mass Media If the wanderings of a Cessna 150 would disrupt the day of thousands of people, and frighten them a bit in the process, could it happen in any worse place than Washington, D.C.? Concerned about the lingering effects of that scare on all those legislators and regulators, AOPA took […]

Meanwhile, troops of “citizen lobbyists” arrived in Washington, D.C., this week to meet with their congressional representatives in search of support for space exploration. The National Space Society Legislative Conference took place Tuesday and Wednesday, with training sessions followed by visits to the Hill. The “blitz” precedes the 2005 International Space Development Conference, which begins […]

Meanwhile, the race to get passengers into suborbital flight is heating up. Aera Corp. announced last week that tickets are on sale now for seats aboard its Altairis rocket. The company says it is on track to start launching from Florida’s Cape Canaveral in December 2006. The Altairis rocket launches vertically, lands horizontally and can […]

SpaceDev Says It Has A Plan SpaceDev, the California company that built the hybrid rocket motor that drove SpaceShipOne, says it has just about completed its plan for a safe, affordable launch system — the SpaceDev Dream Chaser — that could carry six passengers into low earth orbit. CEO Jim Benson said he believes the […]