News

The first FAA-approved hybrid course for A&P mechanics, offering some of the coursework online, has graduated its first class from Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology in Tulsa, Oklahoma, officials at the school have announced. Fifteen students completed the program, which comprises 13 to 16 months of coursework online and then seven months at the […]

The Mayo Clinic is now offering a free online BasicMed course for pilots, the organization has announced. The course consists of six modules, covering medical self-assessments, warning signs of serious medical conditions, effects of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, and more. The course takes about 90 minutes to complete and is followed by an online test. […]

Piper Aircraft hired more than 300 employees in the last 18 months, a 20 percent increase in staffing, the company has reported. The growth is driven by increased demand for Piper’s trainer airplanes and its M-class line. The M-class single-engine turboprops — the M600 and M500 — and the piston-powered M350 were certified in 2016. […]

Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Kitty Hawk, showed a clip on CNN last week that shows an unmanned VTOL taking off vertically from a runway, transitioning to horizontal flight at about 60 MPH and then landing vertically. Fareed Zakaria, host of the “The Next Big Idea” show, says the video hadn’t previously been shared with the […]

A Cessna Caravan carrying ten American passengers and two Costa Rican crew crashed and burned in Costa Rica on New Year’s Eve, killing all on board. The passengers included Bruce and Irene Steinberg, of Scarsdale, New York. The other passengers were not identified but the State Department confirmed they were American. All that remained of […]

Australia is relaxing recently tightened immigration laws and will allow foreign commercial pilots to work in the country on two-year visas. The country slashed the issuance of work visas last April but relented on pilots because a shortage is threatening to result in flight cancellations. Australia depends on aviation to serve its far-flung wilderness areas. […]

Six people died in the New Year’s Eve crash of a De Havilland Beaver seaplane in Australia. The aircraft, operated by Sydney Seaplanes, was being used to shuttle passengers to a waterside restaurant and crashed on the Hawkesbury River, just north of Sydney, about 3:10 p.m. In addition to the pilot there were reportedly at […]

AOPA celebrated two lobbying milestones this holiday season, one national and one grass-roots. According to AOPA, over 25,000 pilots are now flying under BasicMed, rather than with an FAA aviation medical. “May 1 [2017] marked the implementation of BasicMed, or the biggest shift in aeromedical certification for general aviation pilots since the 1960s,” says AOPA. […]

Two weeks after the Commerce Department finalized import duties of 292% on Bombardier’s Canadian-made C Series jets sold in the United States, EgyptAir announced firm orders for 12 of the larger CS300 single-aisle jets. “Welcoming EgyptAir to the family of C Series operators is another landmark moment for Bombardier,” said Fred Cromer, president of Bombardier […]

GE Aviation announced Thursday it had successfully test run its partially 3-D printed Advanced Turboprop engine, which is set to power the Textron Denali single turboprop. Details of the test were scant in the GE press release but “early indications show that we will meet or exceed all the performance numbers we have quoted for […]