News

Air Accident Digest says changes may be made to the Federal Flight Deck Officer program to encourage more airline pilots to carry guns in the cockpit. According to the Web site, issuing badges would allow armed pilots to instantly identify themselves to other law enforcement officials and establish authority during an incident. Another change being […]

RegionsAir, which operates regional flights for Continental Airlines to Cleveland and American Airlines to St. Louis, has suspended operations to resolve issues with its training policies. The company was shut down for two days last week and resumed service last Monday before being shut down again on Thursday. In a news release quoted by the […]

The Kansas Aviation Museum says it needs a quick $110,000 or an army of well-equipped volunteers to bring a Cold War relic home. A B-47, the first swept-wing, pure jet bomber, is no longer welcome at the Oklahoma City fairgrounds, and the Kansas museum would like to bring it back to Wichita, where it was […]

Israeli Aerospace Industries is working on an airliner-sized unmanned aerial vehicle capable of carrying 60,000 pounds of freight. And the only reason its focusing on a cargo plane is that the flying public wont accept a pilotless passenger plane. Shlomo Tsach, IAIs director of flight sciences, told the Jerusalem Post the technology already exists to […]

Civil aviation is doing its bit to reduce fuel consumption and help the environment, according to FAA Administrator Marion Blakey. In a speech to a meeting on energy security, Blakey said she welcomes the Air Forces commitment to run half its fleet on so-called synthetic fuels by 2015. Synthetic fuels are liquid fuels produced from […]

After about two years of posturing, the rubber hits the road for the FAAs attempt to radically change the way it does business this week. On Wednesday, Administrator Marion Blakey will be in front of the aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to defend the agencys reauthorization proposal. That will be a […]

Hawaiian tour industry officials have leapt to the defense ofHeli-USA Airways after the helicopter tour operator suffered itssecond fatal crash in as many years this week. “I have everyconfidence in these guys,” Mike Stewart, a local tour companyoperator who books flights with Heli-USA,

After being walloped by weather and bogged down by bureaucracy,Columbia Aircraft says it has to trim its workforce by 10 percent tomake ends meet. The Bend, Ore., planemaker announced on Thursday itwill lay off 59 of its 605 employees because of unforeseen factorsthat cut the number of deliveries it could make lastyear. Although sales have […]

Representing the general aviation community during a Senate aviation subcommittee hearing on FAA reauthorization on Thursday morning, National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) president and CEO Ed Bolen urged lawmakers to immediately reject aviation user fees in any form, saying the proposal advocated by the airlines and FAA would be “disastrous” for the national aviation system […]

COLUMN INDEX Probable Cause #27: Never EstablishedA Seneca pilot crashes 2,000 feet from the runway on a low IFR night. The pilot may have thought he was proficient, but was he really?