News

An airshow pilot was killed during practice for the New York Air Show on Friday after the tail separated from the aircraft. The aircraft, a Giles 202 owned by airshow performer Andrew Wright, crashed in a wooded area. Reports did not immediately confirm the pilot was Wright, who has flown the Giles since 2001, according […]

AOPA’s Air Safety Institute released its 24th annual Joseph T. Nall Report (PDF) this week, including for the first time a review of helicopter accident causes. Overall, accident rates for non-commercial fixed-wing aircraft climbed from 6.30 per 100,000 hours in 2010 to 6.54 in 2012 due to flight time decreasing while accident counts remained level […]

Bell Helicopter’s new assembly plant for its upcoming Short Light Single rotorcraft is open in Lafayette, Louisiana, the company announced Thursday. Based at Lafayette’s regional airport, the 82,300-square-foot leased hangar will house assembly of Bell’s 505 Jet Ranger X. Bell chose the site in 2013 and broke ground a year ago with plans to hire […]

NASA’s orchestrated crash of a Cessna 172 on Wednesday, the last in a series of impact tests, completed the data-gathering phase of research aimed at improving the performance of ELTs. The agency’s Search and Rescue Mission Office completed the last of the three drops from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia to simulate severe but […]

Hot-air balloons are common enough in the U.S., but gas balloons, which are popular in Europe, are seldom seen in U.S. skies. A small group of enthusiasts is trying to change that, with the establishment of the Aero Club of America, based in Statesville, North Carolina, which is probably the first club of its kind […]

The last project standing in what was once a crowded field of proposed single-engine personal jets hit a milestone Tuesday that could lead to certification by the end of the year. The FAA granted type inspection authorization (TIA) to Cirrus’s Vision SF50 single-engine jet. TIA is the approval for FAA inspectors to start flying the […]

Vintage jets have been banned from performing aerobatics over land and all Hawker Hunter fighters have been temporarily grounded in the U.K. following Saturday’s crash of a Hunter at the Shoreham Air Show in southern England. The Civil Aviation Authority announced Monday that “high energy” aerobatics will be outlawed for jet warbirds at most airshows […]

A controller who was trying to help a Bonanza pilot in distress directed him to a runway that no longer exists, according to an NTSB preliminary report posted this week. According to the report, the pilot of the Beech C35 Bonanza had taken off from Westhampton Beach, New York, on Sunday, August 16, on an […]

The Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Transportation Department has released three reports that are critical of how the FAA has managed pilot records and the costs and technology for air traffic control, and said it also plans to examine the FAA’s procedures with regard to drones. The OIG found the FAA has made […]

A few months have gone by since the B-29 Superfortress known as “Doc” rolled out of its hangar in Wichita, and the restoration team says the countdown is on for the first flight, which they hope will take place before the end of the year. Before that flight can take place, the FAA must issue […]