News

Business aviation groups are breathing a collective sigh of relief with the news late Tuesday that Congress has dropped a provision from a business assistance plan that would have required companies to get rid of their aircraft to qualify for relief. In a last-minute revision, Congress agreed to drop an amendment that would have required […]

An Atlanta lawyer and pilot claims the Transportation Security Administration’s Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP) is unconstitutional and he’s started a campaign to convince Congress of that. Alan Armstrong says the stated goal of the program is to prevent aircraft from being used to carry biological, nuclear or other weapons in attacks against the U.S. […]

Police in Quincy, Fla. say they’ve arrested an Indiana pilot who is alleged to have faked a distress call, parachuted from his Piper Meridian and fled a small Alabama town on a motorcycle he’d hidden there. Earlier, some authorities suspected Marcus Schrenker had managed to leave the country in his apparently determined bid to escape […]

The Associated Press is reporting that a public auction to sell the assets of Eclipse Aviation Wednesday has been cancelled for lack of qualified competing bidders. According to AP’s story, that will pave the way for EclipseJet Aviation, owned by current Eclipse Chairman Roel Pieper, to pick up the company for roughly 20 cents on […]

When Quest Aircraft launched its Kodiak design back in 2005, the company said it was motivated by a need to support missionary activities in remote places around the world. This week, that goal has been fulfilled with the delivery of Kodiak serial number 008 to JAARS Inc., the first mission or humanitarian customer to take […]

Soon after retiring from his 18 years as AOPA’s president, Phil Boyer has taken a next step common to many executives who complete a successful career while still healthy and full of energy — he has joined the board of an industry stalwart. Aspen Avionics announced on Tuesday that Boyer will be the first outside […]

Diamond Aircraft is furloughing 180 of its 684 employees in London, Ont., to balance inventory as weakening demand settles over the light aircraft market. But company CEO Peter Maurer told AVweb in a podcast interview that he hopes the furloughs will be short-lived as the new Lycoming-powered DA42 twin goes into production. He said there […]

Authorities in Alabama are looking for the pilot of a Piper Malibu that crashed in Florida after the pilot apparently made a fake distress call, put the aircraft on autopilot and parachuted out late Sunday. The plane went on to crash near East Milton on the Florida panhandle while the pilot, identified as Marcus Schrenker, […]

Cirrus Design will announce a series of model changes for 2009 today, including certified flight into known icing for the SR22. A news conference is scheduled for 10 a.m. Central time in which the company will unveil details of the FIKI system, which will be an enhancement of the current TKS set-up now available. There’s […]

Garmin has issued an update for certain handheld GPS units to fix a problem with access to the XM weather option. The 4.60 upgrade is aimed at upgrading “XM data validation for XM subscribers with weather data only.” Over New Year’s hundreds of Garmin XM subscribers lost weather capability and it was several days before […]