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According to AOPA, pilots win because of performance standards written into the deal. In a statement, AOPA President Phil Boyer said pilots can soon look forward to phone calls being answered by a live briefer within 20 seconds, radio calls answered within five seconds and the requested information supplied within 15 seconds. Urgent PIREPs would […]

What It May Mean, And When All of the existing FSS positions in the FAA will be eliminated and Lockheed Martin will hire its own staff. The FAA announced Tuesday the company won the government’s largest-ever competitive outsourcing competition with a bid that will cut the number of FSS offices by two-thirds (from 58 to […]

The T-37 pilots had completed a training session and were on their way back to Sheppard Air Force Base, in Texas. They contacted USAF Radar Approach Control and were told they had radar contact. They descended to 5,000 feet and leveled off at 200 knots, the NTSB said. After leveling off from the descent, the […]

In Search Of Causal Factors The pilots of an Air Force training jet saw the crop-duster seconds before the two airplanes collided 5,000 feet above rural Oklahoma about 11 a.m. on Jan. 18, the NTSB said in its preliminary report, posted Thursday. The two pilots in the Cessna T-37B jet ejected safely. The pilot of […]

Tinkering with the current system is fine, but in the end, nothing less than a complete transformation will do the job — so says the Joint Planning & Development Office, a federal agency that has taken on the task of designing the Next Generation Airspace System (NGATS) for the year 2025. The plan, released to […]

Software To Relieve Bottlenecks With all those airplanes in the works, plus thousands of light jets destined for the airways, and an apparent economic upswing driving ever more traffic into the skies, long-term predictions say air traffic will triple over the next 20 years. Since the amount of airspace will remain the same and new […]

Cessna is not the only airplane manufacturer with plans to grow in 2005. Lancair said last week it will hire 130 new workers at its Bend (Ore.) Municipal Airport facility between now and mid-summer. The company already has over 400 employees, and has been ramping up its production rate over the past year. Backlog of […]

Cessna Had A Good Year Cessna Aircraft Co. shipped 654 single-engine piston aircraft and 64 Caravans in 2004, the company said on Thursday. Cessna also delivered 179 Citation jets and took orders for 330 more. “This has been a solid year for Cessna,” said CEO Jack Pelton. In 2004, the company introduced the G1000 glass […]

Under International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) regulations, airline pilots from more than 180 countries can fly into the United States up to age 65. More than 40 other countries have raised their pilot retirement age to 63 or 65. For years, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) has stood by the age-60 rule, despite grass-roots […]

Legislation Would Add Five Years With Congress back in session, a bill to raise the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots from 60 to 65 has reappeared as well. The bill foundered last year, but senior Republicans Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Rep. Jim Gibbons of Nevada have revived it, and pressure for change […]