News

Sonic booms rattled the southeast coast of Florida Friday evening as two F-15s were scrambled to intercept an aircraft that violated presidential restricted airspace over West Palm Beach. The fighters had to hit the afterburners to catch up to the unidentified “general aviation aircraft” after taking off from Homestead Air National Guard Base, about 100 […]

Airport operators and flight schools in the Palm Beach, Florida, area are bracing for long-term economic loss and disruption due to the presidential TFR covering President Trump’s visits to his Mar-a-Lago resort. For the third weekend in a row, the presidential TFR covering Trump’s visit has shut down busy Palm Beach Country/Lantana airport and disrupted […]

U.S. Navy Rear Adm. DeWofl Miller showed little enthusiasm for trading F/A-18 Super Hornets for F-35s, as has been proposed by President Trump in an effort to reduce the total program cost of the F-35 Lightning. Testifying at a House Subcommittee hearing on the F-35 program, Miller said, “The F-35C provides unique capabilities that cannot […]

NBAA and four businesses have petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals to review the FAA’s deal with the City of Santa Monica to shorten the airport’s runway. Under the deal, the runway would be cut immediately to 3,500 feet from almost 5,000, limiting its use and likely forcing some of the current tenants to immediately […]

ExpressJet Airlines led major U.S. carriers for 2016 in highest percentage of bags lost. According to Department of Transportation statistics, ExpressJet received reports of mishandled baggage from 0.43% of all passengers—91,383 bags—which was down from their 2015, also industry-leading, loss rate of 0.51% of passengers reporting bags mishandled. At the opposite end of the spectrum, […]

The Stratos 714 VLJ prototype, designed as a 400 knot, 4-6 place jet, made its second test flight late last month from its home base of Redmond, Oregon, in anticipation of a public debut later this year. Carsten Sundin, Engineering Manager at Stratos, told AVweb of the flight test performance, “We are continuing with expected […]

More than 90% percent of certification work on new aircraft and aircraft parts is outsourced by the FAA to the manufacturers themselves, according to a GAO report. Similar to the FAA delegation of airman certification authority to Designated Pilot Examiners, the FAA has been authorizing most certification work to be performed by employees of the […]

Military pilots aren’t flying often enough to be as proficient as they need to be, Lt. Gen. Jon Davis, the head of Marine Corps aviation, told reporters in Washington, D.C., recently. “We’re about three hours per pilot per month better than we were [in May 2015], but that’s not good enough,” Davis said, according to […]

A Canadair CRJ-700 operated by PSA Airlines struck a deer during takeoff from Charlotte’s Douglas International Airport on Wednesday morning. In an air traffic control recording (full audio from LiveATC.net below), the pilot and the tower controller discuss an unidentified “loud bang” heard by the pilots, which the pilot of another aircraft reported as a […]

The next Air Force One should be anything other than a Boeing 747; even Northrop Grumman’s next-generation stealth bomber would be a better choice, says a report by Wright Williams & Kelly (WWK). President Trump has tweeted that he finds the $3.2B projection for the Presidential Aircraft Recapitalization program to replace the Air Force’s Boeing […]