News

In formal safety recommendations issued yesterday, the National Transportation Safety Board tackled the issue of controller fatigue, suggesting the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) work together to “to reduce the potential for controller fatigue.” The recommendations, numbered A-07-30 through -32, come during the NTSB’s investigation into the Aug. 27, 2006, fatal […]

It appears that FAA Administrator Marion Blakey is backing off her claim that “one hundred percent of our major capital programs are on schedule and on budget,” a statement she made most recently in a speech March 29 to the Aircraft Electronics Association. During a speech last Thursday at the Pratt & Whitney Women’s Leadership […]

Can the general and business aviation industry have the cake of a Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS) without having to “eat” user fees, too? Perhaps it can, if refinement of positions taken recently by NBAA and AOPA on pending legislation to reauthorize the FAA and install a user-fee scheme is any indication. In remarks […]

Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., is close to declaring the FAAs proposal to impose user fees on general aviation dead. “I think weve finally gotten the stake out and are about to drive it through user fees,” he told The Wichita Eagle’s editorial board last week. Tiahrt told the Eagle brass that hes made fighting the […]

Opposition is mounting to a Massachusetts Air National Guard plan to conduct low-level (500 feet minimum) training over a 3,600-square-nautical-mile area of northwestern Maine and a sliver of eastern New Hampshire known as the Western Mountains. The sparsely populated resort area is already a military range, but only a small section is used for low-level […]

The British military is testing a system that would, essentially, allow a pilot to command his own pilotless wingmates. The system, developed by QinetiQ with funding from the British Ministry of Defense, enables the pilot of a fighter jet to simultaneously control up to four unmanned companion aerial vehicles. According to Technology News, it was […]

If the images portrayed by Chinas Xinhua news agency are accurate, Chinas jetliner for the 21st century looks suspiciously like a Russian military transport from the 1970s. The high-wing, high-tailed creation, with its multiple banks of landing gear trucks clustered under the fuselage, looks like the big Antonovs that still toil as chartered military cargo […]

Cessna says it hopes to resume deliveries of its Mustang entry-level jet soon after the schedule was stalled by a software glitch in the airplane’s Garmin G1000 avionics suite. Cessna spokeswoman Pia Bergqvist told The Wichita Eagle the problem was discovered shortly after the first delivery of a Mustang (a company demo plane) last November […]

Crash investigators in Indonesia say the Garuda Airlines Boeing 737-400 that overran a runway, resulting in 21 deaths on March 7, was going about 230 knots when it touched down, close to double the normal landing speed. The airliner caught fire after running off the end of Yogyakarta Airport’s runway, but 119 people, including the […]

As if we didnt have enough weather to worry about here on Earth, scientists have confirmed what has long been anecdotally acknowledged — that solar flares play havoc with GPS signals. And with the FAA moving steadily toward satellite-based technologies for the future of airspace management, the warnings from last weeks Space Weather Enterprise Forum […]