News

Pipistrel, a light-aircraft manufacturer based in Slovenia, has won a contract to supply India’s military with 194 copies of its Virus SW 80 Garud two-seat trainer. “This is without a doubt the largest contract in the entire 26-year history of Pipistrel,” said Ivo Boscarol, Pipistrel’s owner and general manager. The company will produce about seven […]

In the persistent quest to squeeze ever more passengers into the finite space of a composite tube, Airbus has patented a proposal to stack a second layer of seats above the middle rows of wide-bodies to fill those cubic feet with fare-paying cargo. The company has filed a variety of designs to accomplish the high-density […]

The captain of an Allegiant Airlines MD-88 reportedly stopped the imminent evacuation of the aircraft on the runway at Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport Sunday after crews extinguished an engine fire. The local ABC affiliate, 13 Action News, reported the flight crew aborted the takeoff of Flight 516 to Fresno about 1:20 p.m. after “indications […]

The FAA has announced (PDF) it will allow drop-in replacement of electronic attitude indicators, without a vacuum-driven backup, as long as there’s a backup power source for the electronic instrument. The new policy applies to aircraft weighing less than 6,000 pounds. The agency said it has determined that electronic attitude indicators are more reliable and […]

AOPA has launched a new program, the High School Aviation Initiative, to encourage students to enter aviation careers. As part of this effort, the newly formed Aviation Education Leadership Alliance will hold its first gathering Nov. 9 in Lakeland, Florida, home of the Central Florida Aerospace Academy. The organization invites new members to join and […]

Conflicts involving amateur-operated drones made the news again this week, one involving an irritated neighbor who disabled one with a gun. In Louisiana, Aaron Hernandez lost his $1,200 quadcopter Monday night while flying it around his father’s house outside Baton Rouge. Hernandez told WBRZ 2 the neighbors had expressed objections to his drone flying before, […]

Inspections of older GE engines on airliners around the world could begin in the coming weeks as investigators learn more about the uncontained engine failure that started a fire on a British Airways jet one month ago in Las Vegas. In an update from the NTSB this week, investigators found that a disk in the […]

The FAA, behind schedule in finalizing regulations for commercial use of unmanned aerial systems, will be ready by June 17, 2016, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by the agency’s deputy administrator. Michael Whitaker told a House aviation subcommittee, when pressed for specifics, that June of next year would be a realistic time frame for the […]

A trove of 8,400 NASA photos from the moon missions has been posted online in its “raw, high-resolution, and unprocessed form.” Kipp Teague, of the Project Apollo Archive, an independent, non-NASA website, said he worked with NASA to obtain the public-domain Apollo mission imagery. Teague has collected images in a Flickr gallery from both the […]

Burt Rutan is the 2015 winner of the National Aeronautic Association’s Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy. The trophy is awarded annually to a living American for “significant public service of enduring value to aviation in the United States.” It’s the latest in a long list of awards for the prolific aircraft designer, who retired from Scaled […]