News

A blue-ribbon panel that was told by the Department of Transportation several months ago to look into the “safety culture” of the FAA has filed its report. “We have found the FAA’s aviation safety staff to be unambiguously committed to its core mission of safety,” the panel reported. “However, we find a remarkable degree of […]

The recently formed Thielert Engine Owners Group (THENOG) said on Tuesday that it will “exhaust every available legal, political and economic avenue” to ensure that any new owner of the bankrupt company will not leave owners high and dry. The group was responding to last week’s announcement from Thielert that several purchase offers have been […]

Dick Silva has been working for over 10 years to get the popular Seawind experimental amphibian to the market as a certified aircraft, and this week, he said he has found some new investors and hopes to soon restart operations. Last year, the company’s only flying prototype was destroyed in a crash that killed the […]

The world’s most important business aviation event, the National Business Aviation Association’s annual convention, is coming up Oct. 6-8 in Orlando and there will be hundreds of product announcements and updates. AVweb will be there with daily coverage of the events, news conferences and announcements that make this show so important but if your company […]

The National Business Aviation Association has announced that Phil Boyer, the outgoing president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, is the winner of its 2008 Award for Meritorious Service to Aviation. NBAA says it’s the organization’s “most distinguished honor” and is awarded to an individual who “has made significant, identifiable contributions that have materially […]

Plenty of pilots are familiar with technology that tells us to “Turn right” or “Turn left” in a friendly female voice — because it’s installed on the dashboards of our cars, fresh from Best Buy. Now Alaska Airlines will be the first airline to provide similar technology for all of its airplanes, to guide pilots […]

Solazyme, a San Francisco-based company, announced on Tuesday that it has produced fuel derived from algae that meets the Jet-A fuel standards set by the American Society for Testing and Materials. The ASTM standards measure performance in areas such as density, stability, flashpoint, freezing point, distillation and viscosity. By meeting those criteria, the company said, […]

Jet fuel costs grabbed the spotlight on the second full day of the Canadian election campaign on Tuesday. Current Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that if his government is re-elected it will cut the federal excise tax on jet fuel in half, to about nine cents per Canadian gallon. No reductions in the 50-cent-per-gallon tax […]

While fuel prices are the overwhelming factor in the spate of recent airline failures, the Web site Telepresence Options claims that teleconferencing is also having an impact. The site, sponsored by a group called the Human Productivity Lab, says meeting face to virtual face by satellite is becoming a money-saving alternative to air travel and […]

It’s been a heck of a ride for most involved in business aviation for the past five years, but does what goes up necessarily have to come down? Leaders from all sectors of the industry will gather in London Oct. 23 and Oct. 24 for the second Future of Business Jets conference and they’ll tackle […]