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Meanwhile, the FAA is under fire for wasting money in a project that was designed to fast-track its contracting process by using pre-qualified vendors. The project has been shut down after costing the agency tens of millions of dollars in overruns, The Washington Post reported last weekend. The FAA awarded 114 contracts under the system, […]

Airports are getting more creative at finding ways to make money, USA Today reported this week. At Houston’s Bush International Airport, for example, some empty spaces are being put to work growing high-grade hay to sell to local ranchers. Other airports are developing golf courses, hotels, office parks, and residential developments. In Miami, the county […]

Build it and they will complain? Tiny Culleoka, Tenn., doesn’t face the same urban pressures as fast-growing Bakersfield and, ironically, that’s why Harry Askey has been forced to close the private airstrip he’s been using for 13 years. Askey claims that when he asked Maury County officials if an airstrip was allowed on his 80-acre […]

The FAA says Bakersfield Municipal Airport (California) will remain an airport “in perpetuity” despite the current city council’s development designs. The city asked the FAA to relieve it of its obligations under the Airport Improvement Program so it could sell off the airport for housing and commercial development. The FAA could have simply said no, […]

While the Sport Pilot rule was originally aimed at inspiring new aircraft designs and manufacturing, it’s also spawned a renaissance of popular old designs that meet the weight and performance limitations. And it seems like the design many credit with starting the modern GA movement, the Piper J-3 Cub, is leading the LSA charge. There’s […]

The driving force behind a native American bid to enter the small aircraft business has decided to go it alone. James E. Billie, who went by Chief Jim Billie when he was chairman of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, has taken over all the assets, including type certificate, of the Micco Aircraft Inc. He’s renamed […]

Foamex, a Pennsylvania company whose main business is making cushion material for beds and furniture, is in the final stages of an FAA-funded research project to come up with an affordable way to make aircraft fuel tanks more fire- and explosion-resistant. As we described in our Sept. 22 Audiocast, Foamex Technical Products has developed a […]

A Johns Hopkins University study looked at the same issue, from a slightly different perspective, and came up with similar conclusions in 2001. The institution’s School of Public Health and Hygiene revealed in its study of Alaskan accidents that the biggest difference between crashes in which the occupants survived and those in which they were […]

The Canadian Transportation Safety Board is recommending the FAA and Transport Canada beef up certification standards for small aircraft in light of a study that shows many crash victims survive the impact only to be killed or horribly injured by fires that start after the crash. In a report issued, ironically, a day after Comair […]

All of these issues were on the agenda for a wide-ranging meeting on aviation safety held yesterday afternoon in Washington by the House Aviation Subcommittee. However, immediate concerns over air traffic control stemming from last month’s fatal Comair crash in Kentucky took precedence. The lawmakers “attacked” the FAA, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. They were […]