News

GAMA and Build A Plane have opened up their 2015 design competition, and high-school teams are invited to apply before the Feb. 13 deadline. The call for entries may close earlier if the limit of 100 entries is reached. Each school will receive a free “Fly To Learn” curriculum that includes flight simulation software from […]

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said Sunday that rulemaking planned for the end of this year on unmanned aerial systems (UAS) will focus on aircraft certification and “qualifications” of pilots. “I can’t say what is going to be in it but broadly speaking, what we are looking at are all the questions relating to how we […]

Transport Canada has released the details of its new rules governing the commercial use of unmanned aerial systems. As we reported last month, the agency, the equivalent of the FAA, announced a significant liberalization of so-called “low threat” UAS operations. Those were generally described as line-of-sight operations below 300 feet in rural areas away from […]

CNN Money says Lockheed Martin and Boeing are working on a supersonic airliner designed to fly legally over land. The report says the aircraft will carry 88 passengers at Mach 1.6, or about twice as fast as regular jet airliners. That’s a little slower than the Concorde, which last flew a little more than 11 […]

Diamond Aircraft’s first DA42 Twin Star has a new home in Austria’s science and industry museum, theTechnisches Museum Wien in Vienna. The twin-engine diesel airplane had its first flightin December 2002 in Austria with Diamond CEO Christian Dries as test pilot. A year and a half later, the DA42 made the first nonstop Atlantic crossing […]

The Society of Aviation and Flight Educators announced Friday that Executive Director Doug Stewart will retire when his contract expires in February. Stewart was among the founding members of the organization, which formed in 2009. Stewart was SAFE’s first chair and was named executive director in November 2011. “I fully expect to remain connected to […]

The president of the world’s second largest AOPA pilots group is retiring sometime in 2015. Kevin Psutka, president of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA), will step down as soon as a replacement can be hired, COPA said Thursday. Psutka, a former RCAF navigator and reserve pilot, has been in the job for 18 […]

The 2015 Red Bull Air Race World Championship will feature two new stops in Japan and Russia, organizers announced this week. Red Bull will hold eight races and start its tour on Feb. 13 in Abu Dhabi, where the series launched its 2014 season. New venues will be in Chiba, Japan, May 16-17 and Sochi, […]

Video of passengers pushing an airliner where its wheels had frozen to the ground in northern Russia made news around the world this week. The video shows people pushing the Tupolev Tu-134 backwards on a tarmac in Igarka, where it was 61 degrees below zero, the Associated Press reported. The UTair Russian airliner was to […]

Cirrus’s SF50 jet program took a major step forward on Tuesday with the first flight of its second certification flight test aircraft. C1, as it has been dubbed, took off at 3:30 p.m. from Duluth International Airport for a 45-minute flight. Pilot Terry LeSage said it went the way test pilots like test flights to […]