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FAA Approval Expected This Week… Almost half the crankshafts needed to fix engines caught in the Lycoming recall have been forged and have passed a rigorous quality-control process, a company spokesman told AVweb this week. Sue Bishop, manager of corporate communications for Lycoming’s parent company, Textron, said there now are 559 shiny new cranks waiting […]

A number of readers have contacted us noting problems reading the new AVflash and the AVweb Web site itself. For starters, some find the text too large … for others, it’s too small. Beginning this week, both the HTML version of AVflash and the site itself have scalable fonts adjustable via browser setting. (The default […]

Capstone Gets A Positive Report In Alaska… …New Ideas Growing In Florida While Capstone relies on well-developed technologies such as GPS and datalinks, edgy new ideas for safer flying are growing under the Florida sun. At the University of West Florida in Pensacola, researchers at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition are testing new […]

Commander Files for Chapter 11 Protection Restructuring Planned… Commander Aircraft Company, a manufacturer of high-performance single-engine aircraft, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Delaware last Friday. Wirt Walker, CEO of Commander’s parent company, Aviation General Inc. of Bethany, Okla., told AVweb on Tuesday that operations at the company “will be going […]

Your Calls Are Welcome Lycoming is denying claims by a Texas law firm that owners of IO-540 engines affected by its crankshaft recall are risking future insurance coverage by accepting a compensation package. “We strongly disagree with this position and are certain that accepting our Customer Care Program with its general release will not adversely […]

Lawyers leading a class-action lawsuit against Lycoming are warning their clients that signing a legal release relieving the engine maker of any liability in the ongoing crankshaft crisis may leave them without insurance coverage. Thus far, Lycoming is silent on the issue. Recall that Lycoming offered generous reimbursement for travel and aircraft leasing to owners […]

Stand By For An Urgent Letter — From Your Insurer…

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has done what a lot of people said couldn’t be done. They’ve recruited and hired and trained and staffed 424 of the nation’s airports with 47,000 federally employed security screeners. They’ll all be in place this week, meeting the congressional deadline set eight months ago. “This was an enormous task, […]

Lott Proposes GA-Inclusive Meeting… This is one meeting we won’t want to miss. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the Senate majority leader, wants a sit-down with aviation industry representatives — and he doesn’t just mean the always cash-starved airlines. “One of the things I want to do early next year is bring in, sort of, a […]

As OASIS Evolves… Next time you bust your computer-addicted teenager for spending hours chatting to friends via instant messaging, maybe you should take a lesson, instead. It may not be too long before you do your flight planning in a pretty similar, if more sophisticated, interactive way. “This is something (flight service station) briefers would […]