News

As the FAA gets ready this week to award a massive contract (estimated at $1 billion) to implement the so-called NextGen airspace system, there will be folks with sharp pencils looking over its shoulder. In an Aug. 15 memo obtained by AVweb, the Department of Transportations Office of Inspector General has told the agency it […]

The Royal Flying Doctor Service, which dispatches medical help to Australias far-flung regions by air, has now relaxed restrictions on night flights after the communities it serves took steps to keep kangaroos off their airport runways. Last April, a medical flight hit kangaroos while landing at Coonamble in New South Wales. The Doctor Service then […]

A new company is offering general aviation operators a way to atone for the environmental sins they commit every time they start their engines. In today’s podcast interview with AVweb‘s Russ Niles, Jeff Witward, of Carbon Neutral Planes, says his company’s programs will add less than a dollar an hour to the operating cost of […]

The new boundaries of the Air Defense Identification Zone come into effect at 1 a.m. EDT and those who fly in that airspace should have a look at the new NOTAM to make sure theyre familiar with how it affects their flying. In addition to the almost circular shape of the ADIZ, which is 30 […]

Some adherents of the Sikh religion are upset with a new Transportation Security Administration policy that will allow random searches of turbans. According to India Daily, until recently, TSA staff would pat down or ask for removal of the turban, a religious icon in the Sikh faith, only if the metal detector kept going off. […]

Some people in Floridas Martin County (not many of them pilots, wed wager) say county commissioners should ignore the FAA and close 460 feet of runway at Witham Field without the agencys approval. “Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead,” local resident Jon Chicky is quoted by the Palm Beach Post as saying during a […]

The PR campaign to gain support for the FAAs airspace modernization program, known as NextGen, took to the air on Friday as members of the mainstream mediagot a demonstration of ADS-B on the agencys test bed aircraft. The agency has found a natural conduit to mainstream exposure on the topic by linking the existing technology […]

Two people died and 11 were injured after a hot air balloon caught fire and crashed in the Vancouver, B.C. suburb of Surrey on Friday evening. Bill Yearwood, of Canada’s Transportation Safety Board said a fire started in the balloon’s basket shortly after it lifted off on a tethered flight with 12 passengers and a […]

CNN say a judge in Brazil has turned down a request from Long Island bizjet pilots Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino to use a U.S. court to testify about their role in a collision between their Embraer 600 and a GOL Boeing 737 that resulted in the deaths of all 154 aboard the airliner last […]

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey urged Los Angeles officials to get on with the job of putting more distance between two heavily-used parallel runways a week after two airliners came within 40 feet of colliding at a runway/taxiway intersection.”I’ll put it plainly,” Associated Press quoted her as telling a lunch meeting of the Los Angeles Area […]