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When the Oregon Aero SkyDancer wrote “Get Well Alan” in white smoke across the blue sky above Oshkosh last week, it wasn’t only to express the company’s wishes to the crowds at EAA AirVenture. Alan Henley, the lead pilot for the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team, who was spending the show in a hospital bed instead of […]

A Sikorsky S-61N helicopter used by the U.S. Department of Forestry to fight fires crashed at about 7:30 p.m. local time Tuesday in a remote wooded area about 35 miles northwest of Redding, Calif. Of the 11 firefighters and two pilots reported to be on board, nine were unaccounted for and presumed dead and four […]

Although reliability and performance are always mentioned in promotional material for business jets, Russian planemaker Antonov has carved out a pretty difficult niche for competitors of its Antonov Business Jet to match. “The head of Russia’s Business Aviation lobby Maksim Fedotov admits he’d rather have [a well-known business jet] than a domestic jet,” Russia Today […]

Within a week of the departure of former CEO Vern Raburn, the new management of Eclipse Aviation has reportedly dropped all court actions aimed at uncovering the identities of bloggers who had uncomplimentary things to say about Eclipse. The company had asked the courts to order Google to release the identities and IP addresses of […]

If you’ve ever missed a turn, set the altitude bug incorrectly or committed any of thousands of sins that air traffic controllers routinely catch and help correct every day without much fuss, those days are apparently over. The FAA has apparently ordered controllers to violate pilots for any and all errors and has threatened to […]

A Hawker 800 jet that crashed in Minnesota last Thursday, killing all eight on board, had already touched down but then ran about 1,000 feet beyond the end of the runway into a grass field where a wing hit an ILS antenna, the NTSB said late last week. “The antenna stands about 8 feet high […]

Corporate aircraft have been flying into China for years, of course, but the launch of the Olympics in Beijing this week will bring general-aviation aircraft into the country in unprecedented numbers, and the country’s aviation infrastructure will never be the same. U.S. officials are pressuring China to open up its skies, which are 80 percent […]

Attendance at this year’s EAA AirVenture was “on par with last year,” EAA President Tom Poberezny said Sunday. He said that at the start of the show the expectation was that high fuel prices and the generally poor economy would sap attendance but the numbers have held and he credits the quality of the show […]

Qantas has long enjoyed a reputation as just about the safest airline on Earth — it launched in 1920 and its last fatal accident was in 1945 — but a string of three in-flight emergencies in eight days has prompted Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority to conduct a safety review. “There have been a number […]

The FAA has posted its 2009-2013 Flight Plan online, and will accept comments on it until August 22. The plan details the agency’s strategy to meet goals such as deploying NextGen airspace technology, and improving safety. The plan sets a goal to reduce general aviation accidents by 10 percent by 2018, by providing better cockpit […]