News

Its not often that both pilots walk away from a midair collision. Its rarer still when the airplanes involved are 60-year-old wire and wood antiques and at least one of the pilots is older than the aircraft. It happened Saturday when Ralph Baxter, an 82-year-old former airline and Navy pilot, was practicing aerobatics in his […]

Last week AOPA President Phil Boyer was in Washington, D.C., to brief the national media on the dark days that lie ahead if FAA Administrator Marion Blakey and the Bush administration hold sway on user fees. Boyer told the National Press Club that the real agenda is to cut Congress out of the decision-making process […]

Just because the Bush administration and FAA Administrator Marion Blakey want them doesnt necessarily mean theyll get the user-fee structure they seem to favor. The current incarnation of Congress is feeling its oats these days, and all the groundwork laid by the alphabet groups to curry favor with key members could pay off in those […]

We should find out today just what all the FAAs political maneuvering and posturing of the past year or so were intended to do as the Bush administration releases its 2008 budget request. Somewhere in those trillions of dollars is the governments plan to reshape the way the FAA is funded, and it has aviation […]

An international effort has emerged to ensure that the last two Martin Mars flying boats can be enjoyed by generations of aviation buffs to come. The massive aircraft, which have had a spectacularly successful career as air tankers for the past 40 years, would become museum pieces at opposite ends of the continent under an […]

The National Business Aviation Association has challenged FAA Administrator Marion Blakey to prove that the current system of funding the FAA is flawed. But in a news release issued last week, NBAA President Ed Bolen says the agency has declined those overtures and now appears determined to overhaul a system he says works just fine. […]

Eclipse Aviation will get a 1-percent stake in Aspen Avionics under the out-of-court settlement of a suit launched by Eclipse late last year. As AVweb reported in December, Aspen founders Peter Lyons and Jeff Bethel were sued by Eclipse, which claimed rights to the AT300 Hazard Awareness Display, a nifty little moving map and terrain […]

A King Air B200 landed Friday at Cape Giardeau, Mo., with a cracked windshield, buckled skins and much of its horizontal stabilizer gone, but the beginning of this story is just as interesting. John Taylor was acting as Flight Nurse aboard an aeromedical helicopter in the area that day transporting a specialty team when his […]

In a letter sent Thursday to Eclipse Aviation customers, Vice President of Customer and Product Support Ken McNamara had good news to share regarding the performance enhancements for the Eclipse 500 very light jet. He said the company has “demonstrated that we have exceeded our performance guarantees of speed and range” for the Pratt & […]

On Jan. 24, Open Air was granted a Part 135 air carrier certification to operate its fleet of brand-new Cirrus SR22s for on-demand, air-taxi service out of Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) in Gaithersburg, Md., about 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C. Flying from the back yard of arguably the most sensitive and restrictive airspace in […]