News

“About midnight last night, the FAA Notam system crashed,” AOPA’s Chris Dancy told AVweb early on Friday morning. “Pilots need to know that the system is not being updated, and we don’t know at this point how long it will be before it is back on line.” Flight service briefers at Lockheed Martin are advising […]

Now that U.S. airline pilots can fly to age 65, litigation is now moving forward to overturn wording in the 2007 law that also specifically barred some 3,000 pilots forced into retirement before age 60 from being rehired with their prior pay, position and benefits. Congress last year passed the Fair Treatment for Experienced Pilots […]

L-3 Communications Avionics Systems (L-3 Avionics) Thursday received TSO authorization and STC approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for the SmartDeck integrated flight controls and display system. The system is currently the only one available in the light aircraft market, according to the L-3, that includes a standard dedicated 4 x 5.25-inch display for flight […]

For a week in early May Middle Tennessee State University played host to this year’s Safety and Flight Evaluation Conference (SAFECON). This event, which is governed by the National Intercollegiate Flying Association (NIFA), allows different universities to compete in 12 aviation events to test their students’ piloting skills. Four events are in the air and […]

Staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly is not one to let anything get in the way of his goals. After losing his right leg below the knee in Iraq five years ago, Kelly has since earned his helicopter and helicopter CFI certificates as well as a degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Now, Kelly is the first wounded […]

Our sister magazine, Aviation Consumer, is conducting a survey on hangar availability, cost and purchase options. We would love to hear from you on this topic. Just drop an e-mail to aviation_safety@hotmail.com, and we’ll respond. (The results will appear in a future issue of Aviation Consumer. For subscription information, click here.)

Sales of piston aircraft showed a slump in the first quarter of this year, down 28 percent compared to the year before, as AVweb recently reported, and the numbers for light sport aircraft reflect a similar trend. The data for 2008 through April show sales off 30 percent compared to a year ago. The numbers […]

Less than two weeks after announcing cutbacks in staff, DayJet on Tuesday said it will expand its network of DayPorts, adding two more Florida cities, for a total of nine sites. With the addition of Jacksonville and Sarasota, 62 percent of Florida’s population now lives within 35 miles of a DayPort airport, the company said […]

When the Air Transport Association, the lobbying group for the airlines, sent out an e-mail this week griping about all the private jets that cluttered up the airways during Kentucky Derby weekend, the National Business Aviation Association was quick to respond. “The ATA’s suggestion that GA air traffic at a well-planned weekend event in a […]

A pair of New England balloon pilots have developed what they hope could be a new way for homebuilders to share design ideas, modeled after “open content” and “open source” collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux. “Closed content gets fixed in time,” says pilot Dan Nachbar, of Amherst, Mass. “Open content tends to evolve. Good […]