News

An Italian air force pilot is dead after his Typhoon fighter crashed in the ocean during an airshow near Rome on Sunday. Capt. Gabriele Orlandi’s jet failed to recover from a loop and hit the water about a mile offshore from Terracina, about 30 miles south of Rome. Horrified spectators were watching from a beach […]

An unusual collision sent the pilot of a light aircraft to the hospital for observation and left the pilot and passenger of a helicopter unscathed at a private strip near Clearwater, Florida, on Saturday. Zack Taylor, the owner of Clearwater Air Park, told local media the Piper Arrow was landing and hit a hovering Robinson […]

A contest sponsored by Lightspeed and CloudAhoy is inspiring general aviation pilots to draw in the sky. Contestants make line drawings using the path of their airplanes, recorded using CloudAhoy, a smartphone-based GPS flight tracking app. The concept, on a larger scale, was popularized in the last few years by jet aircraft manufacturers who used […]

After complaints from members about discriminatory fuel pricing and high ramp fees at airports with only one FBO, AOPA is putting some muscle into finding ways to force FBOs to lower their fees. Earlier this week, AOPA convened a panel of FBO owners, airport managers and GA pilots to discuss ways to fight the fees. […]

Two brothers in Seattle, working as Egan Airships, have built a drone that combines features from both fixed-wing aircraft and blimps to create an aircraft that can hover, take off and land vertically, and fly at up to 40 mph. The 28-foot-long aircraft weighs less than 55 pounds and uses a patented streamlined envelope design, […]

“Several failures in close succession” by a jet’s flight crew were the probable cause of a runway excursion at LaGuardia Airport last October, according to the NTSB’s final report,issued Thursday. The Eastern Air Lines Boeing 737-700, a chartered flight carrying then-vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence and campaign staff, overran Runway 22 during landing. The airplane departed […]

Stratolaunch, the massive airplane that is being built by Scaled Composites to deliver satellites to low Earth orbit, successfully ran all six of its Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines for the first time this week, the company has announced. The PW4056 engines, which previously powered a Boeing 747, support a payload capacity of more than […]

Spike Aerospace, one of a handful of companies working to bring back supersonic civilian flight, said on Wednesday they will fly their first SX-1.2 demonstrator aircraft by the end of this month. The scaled, proof-of-concept unmanned aircraft will help validate the aerodynamics of the planned S-512 supersonic jet, the company said. “We’re very excited to […]

The danger of carbon monoxide poisoning in aviation was the subject of two safety alerts released by the NTSB on Wednesday, one for pilots (PDF) and one for mechanics (PDF). The risk of CO poisoning is “generally overlooked and underestimated” by both pilots and mechanics, the safety board said. A defect or leak in the […]

United Airlines will say goodbye to the Boeing 747 Nov. 7 with a special flight to Hawaii that commemorates its first use of the airliner in commercial service. The flight sold out within hours on Tuesday. The last scheduled United 747 revenue flight will be from Seoul to SFO on Oct. 29. United’s first aircraft […]