News

With the bankrupt Columbia aircraft company due to go up for sale on November 27, Cirrus CEO Alan Klapmeier told AVweb on Tuesday that his company won’t be making a bid after all. “We have done our due diligence, and we think there are a lot of problems that would have to be solved,” he […]

Precision Airmotive has reached a tentative deal with “a group including Tim Henderson, President of Aero Accessories, and others involved in the manufacture of the Tempest brand of general aviation products,” to buy Precisions line of MSA aircraft carburetors, according to a news release from Aero Accessories/Tempest issued Monday. The group says it plans to […]

Despite airline bankruptcies, the withering of cushy retirement plans and having to suffer the indignities of long security lines to get to work, pilots are a happy lot, according to the Nov. 26 issue of Time. In an article about job satisfaction, the magazine reports that 49 percent of professional pilots say they’re “very happy” […]

The Department of the Interior says it will continue using helicopters to herd wildlife in national parks despite an accident in October that destroyed a helicopter but only caused minor injuries to the pilot and the biologist on board. The NTSB says the Bell 206 snagged the top wire of a fence as the chopper […]

It may be music to the ears of some, but airplane noise may be hard on the heart. A Swedish study suggests that men who live near airports have a greater risk of developing high blood pressure than those who live in quieter neighborhoods. “It is thought that aircraft noise causes stress problems when it […]

A Honolulu department store could face the FAAs wrath after a Honolulu Police Department helicopter tangled with the tethered balloon the store was using to advertise a sale. The HPD chopper was supporting ground units chasing a suspected thief last week when it clipped one of the lines holding the Savers Thrift Centers promotion balloon […]

The Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands will demonstrate how the application of Fault Tolerant Control can be used to keep damaged aircraft flying and improve their chances of being successfully recovered. Fault Tolerant Control involves the creation and adaptation of on-board control systems to handle unanticipated in-flight emergencies and keep the shiny side […]

The families of two helicopter television journalists killed in a collision in Phoenix in July have donated much of the considerable public fund created in their memory to a group that helps the families of police officers killed in the line of duty. Pilot/reporter Scott Bowerbank and cameraman Jim Cox, of KVTK, died July 27 […]

The environmental group Friends of the Earth says Lead emissions from general aviation aircraft endanger public health and warrant regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency. Friends of the Earth is calling on the agency to either regulate or, if lacking present evidence, to investigate “the health and environmental impacts of lead emissions from general aviation […]

Click for larger images Five people were injured Thursday when Airbus suffered its first ground test accident. The event involved Airbus’s second largest aircraft, a 359-seat A340-600, that “broke free” while testing its four engines (rated at 56,000 pounds of thrust, each) and crashed into a noise-reduction barrier at the Airbus facilities in Toulouse, France, […]