News

Divers have located the empennage section of AirAsia Flight 8501, Indonesia’s search and rescue agency said on Wednesday local time. It’s not yet known if the wreckage found contains the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, which are normally located in the rear of the aircraft. Nor did the agency say whether acoustic equipment had […]

All 13 people aboard a New Zealand skydive plane managed to jump to safety Wednesday after the aircraft had an engine failure. There were six customers going for a tandem jump with six employees of Skydive Taupo when the engine problems developed shortly after takeoff from Taupo Airport. The six customers likely needed little prodding […]

The FAA will announce a final rule today to require all Part 121 airlines to have safety management systems. A safety management system is defined by the FAA as “the formal, top-down, organization-wide approach to managing safety risk and assuring the effectiveness of safety risk controls.” Most major carriers already have their own ways of […]

The FAA is still not saying when it will release its proposed rules for unmanned aircraft systems, but on Tuesday, the agency granted two more exemptions to allow UAS operations, including the first for real estate photography. The agency gave the exemptions to Douglas Trudeau, of Tierra Antigua Realty in Tucson, Arizona, and to Advanced […]

Flytenow, a startup online business that wants to match empty seats in general aviation aircraft with passengers who would share the costs, has sued the FAA over its statement that the practice would violate FARs. “This is a classic case of government overreaction to new technologies and innovative ideas,” said Jon Riches, a lawyer at […]

ForeFlight has added a synthetic vision upgrade to their popular iPad-based flight-planning software, the company recently announced. The upgrade provides a three-dimensional view of terrain and airport features, and dims or brightens to simulate daylight and night conditions. The Stratus ADS-B receiver is not required to run the feature, the company says, but with Stratus […]

The team restoring a B-29 Superfortress in Wichita says the airplane will be ready for flight testing in the spring, and they are planning to fly the airplane this summer at EAA AirVenture, where it will join the B-29 Fifi. “It’s the first time in 60 years that two B-29s have been able to fly […]

Searchers are waiting for calmer seas to send divers down to what is believed to be the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 5801 in the Java Sea off Borneo. Sonar scans have located five large objects, including one 60 feet long by 18 feet across, that authorities believe is the fuselage of the A320 that went […]

Rockwell Collins has been tapped to lead a NASA-sponsored study into “single pilot” operations of commercial airliners. In a news release last month, the company said the study will determine the feasibility of SPO in airliners while acknowledging the considerable barriers in the way. “The aviation industry has been looking at the potential for single-pilot […]

The FAA is now saying it doesn’t know when proposed rules governing the commercial use of small unmanned aerial systems will be ready for publication. Congress has set a deadline for the agency to map out the integration of UAS lighter than 55 pounds by next September and it was widely speculated that something would […]