News

GE and NASA, with help from Snecma of France, have teamed to continue evaluation of counter-rotating fan blade systems for open rotor jet designs. Back in the ’80s, GE successfully flew an open-rotor jet engine. The GE36, with two rows of counter-rotating blades, was mounted on Boeing 727 and MD-80 aircraft and demonstrated fuel savings […]

Mexican officials’ initial investigation of the Learjet crash in Mexico City that Nov. 4 killed Mexico’s Interior Minister, and second most powerful official, Juan Camilo Mourino, along with eight others on the jet and five on the ground, suggests pilot competence and wake turbulence may have contributed, according to Mexican officials. The interpretation of evidence […]

Project leader Ron Small’s study, under the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), is working on a tool that will help pilots overcome spatial disorientation in real time, and so help avert the root cause of 10 percent of general aviation accidents. According to Science Daily, the current project involves the use of specially designed […]

Thursday, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel confirmed that local managers at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport air traffic control center had hidden controller mistakes … and that makes it twice in three years. The FAA has responded by initiating an amnesty program to help make sure the errors are properly reported and resolved. Controllers are […]

All licensed and current pilots are invited to complete an online study seeking input about symbols for use on air traffic displays. The Cockpit Display of Traffic Information Symbol Research Study is being conducted in conjunction with the USDOT Volpe Center and MITRE Corporation’s Center for Advanced Aviation Systems Development (CAASD). The study will call […]

Eclipse Aviation says it will be able to pay its workers on Tuesday and has asked them to report for work as usual on Monday. The company, which sent home workers without their paychecks last Thursday and left it up to them whether they stayed at the plant, did not say what caused the delay […]

Northrop Grumman says that 77.8 percent of teachers sent floating around in a modified Boeing 727 aircraft flying parabolic arcs as part of the company’s Weightless Flights of Discovery Program report an increase in the number of their students interested in pursuing science and math careers. In a release, the company said 205 once weightless […]

The first three quarters of 2008 showed 2,977 aircraft shipped compared to 2,918 shipped over the same period last year, but those 59 extra airplanes made a big difference. The 2 percent increase in the total number of shipments accounts for a $3.1 billion (or 20 percent) increase over the value represented by last year’s […]

Albuquerque television station KOB is reporting that Eclipse Aviation failed to meet its payroll for the first two weeks of this month and that at least some employees have “emptied their desks and left.” Eclipse public relations manager Alana McCarraher did not immediately respond to two voicemails and an email request for comment from AVweb. […]

photo: EAA Jerry Smith Jerry Smith, regional sales manager for the Garmin’s aviation division in the south and central U.S., died on Tuesday in an accident, while piloting his personal airplane on business. Smith was flying his Cessna Cardinal 177 when he crashed near Rich Mountain, in Mena, Ark. He was a commercial pilot with […]