News

WHAT’S NEWWhat’s New for March 2007This month AVweb’s survey of the latest products and services for pilots, mechanics and aircraft owners brings you Rotax training classes, multimedia courses, a dictionary, a Mode S transponder and more.

COLUMN INDEX Leading Edge #2: Standard Operating ProceduresSOPs provide middle-of-the-envelope safety…and the basis for more advanced flying.

COLUMN INDEX Across the Pond #1: Dysfunctional EU Family This week AVweb introduces a new columnist, Liz Moscrop, whose monthly Across the Pond column will explore GA issues in Europe. This month she looks at the challenges of multiple aviation authorities.

Although windborne debris was at first dismissed as a cause for the 14 cracked aircraft windshields last week at Denver International Airport, investigators now are saying FOD, or foreign-object debris, was indeed to blame. Microscopic analysis showed fine particles caused pitting that in turn caused cracking, NTSB investigator Jennifer Kaiser told the Denver Post. The […]

According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, an ABC News story — cited in Monday’s AVwebFlash — regarding a controller’s emergency handling on Aug. 31 of an American Airlines jetliner at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport “left out huge gaps.” NATCA Dallas TRACON representative Mike Conely maintains that it was the “operational supervisor in charge’s decision,” […]

The Phenom 100 and Phenom 300 executive-jet programs are moving forward on schedule, Embraer said Tuesday. Final assembly of the Phenom 100 prototype is ready to start within the next few weeks at the company’s main plant in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The jet will be powered by two Pratt & Whitney Canada PW617F turbofan engines, […]

Don’t waste another minute making “tedious” logbook entries, says fboweb.com. Now, it may be hard to justify calling a two-minute-or-so chore “tedious,” but plenty of pilots find their logbooks getting behind, or just give up altogether on keeping them up to date. Fboweb.com will take care of that recordkeeping for you, but with a few […]

If you think you’ve heard it all when it comes to air-taxi concepts, think again. West Palm Beach, Fla.-based Earthjet is adding its own twist by using a franchise business model for per-seat Part 135 service, in addition to conceptually designing the roughly 14,000-pound light jet to be used by the franchisees. “We believe the […]

Pilots depend on accurate weather forecasts, and many of those forecasts originate with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This week, NOAA is launching an effort to improve the accuracy of forecasts released 24 to 96 hours before a winter storm. A high-altitude Gulfstream IV jet will fly out of Honolulu to acquire atmospheric […]

There’s nothing new about ab initio training programs that start flight students off from zero time with the goal of an airline job. But ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Organization, is now developing that track into a completely separate certification path, with a drastic cut in the required flight time to get to the right […]