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Conflict Arises As New Space Era Advances Last week, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) accused Boeing and Lockheed Martin of conspiring to prevent new competitors — such as SpaceX — from getting government contracts for rocket launches. A lawsuit filed in federal court in California says a proposal by the two aerospace giants to form a […]

The pilot was David Eugene Hokanson, 67, of Mercer Island. The two girls, Brittany Boatright, 15, and Kandyce Cowart, 14, were close friends. Both attended Aviation High School in Seattle and aspired to careers in aviation. Others among the school’s 200 students told The Seattle Times they will continue to pursue their dreams. “I thought […]

No Systemic Problems Suspected “With 500,000 flights and 1.2 million kids safely flown as Young Eagles, we think our safety procedures are pretty sound,” EAA spokesman Dick Knapinski told AVweb on Tuesday. “But we are working with the NTSB on their investigation and if they turn up anything they think we could do to enhance […]

At the other end of the spectrum, private pilots can be certified at age 16, which occasionally raises questions about judgment and maturity. Such a case occurred last week, when police in Marshfield, Wis., filed charges against two 16-year-old boys who allegedly buzzed a packed stadium during an after-dark high-school football game. Witnesses said the […]

Pilot Safety — How Old Is Too Old? The number of FAA-certified pilots age 80 and up has increased by 73 percent in the last five years, to about 3,800, even as the number of pilots overall declines. So how does that affect safety? A study by AOPA, due out next month, aims to find […]

Under the new GA access rules, the operator of any private aircraft must submit passenger and crew manifests to the TSA 24 hours in advance of landing, and the TSA will conduct background checks on everyone. Only corporate aircraft with professional crews need apply. In addition, the airplane first must land at one of 12 […]

BizJets Return To National Airport A chartered Hawker 1000 jet landed at Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) on Tuesday morning, the first GA aircraft to land there since September 2001. The jet, operated by New World Jet of Teterboro, N.J., landed at about 7 a.m., taxied beneath welcoming arches of water sprayed from two fire […]

Meanwhile, in Washington, the problem has been returns dropping off the screens and it’s proving a little harder to pin down. Since the middle of September, controllers have occasionally had radar returns briefly disappear, while the information tag remains. Brown told The Washington Post that it’s believed that overlapping radars are the cause and upgrades […]

The FAA says it’s now fixed a problem with an antenna at Boston’s Logan International that forced controllers to use a backup system requiring increased spacing between airliners, thus reducing capacity by about half for a couple of days. Furious local officials demanded an investigation into what they said was a slow federal response to […]

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) has launched an impressive PR campaign on air traffic safety in correlation with its contract negotiations with the FAA. In the midst, the rest of us are getting an unprecedented look (both in terms of volume and detail) at the complex interplay between the agency, the employees and […]