News

NASA plans to launch its experimental spacecraft Orion on Thursday morning, atop a Delta IV rocket. The unmanned spacecraft, which is the prototype for a manned ship that will carry four astronauts to deep space, will orbit the Earth twice, reaching a distance of 3,600 miles above the planet. Lockheed Martin is the main contractor […]

Shortcomings in design and certification ultimately led to the fire in a lithium-ion battery installed on a Boeing 787 in January 2013, the NTSB said on Monday. In the board’s final report on the incident, investigators said Boeing’s safety assessment of the battery, which was part of the data used to demonstrate FAA compliance, was […]

The FAA has rolled out a new online search tool that will help make it easier for pilots to find Notices to Airmen relevant to their planned flight. The tool “means that the days of rooting around trying to find applicable Notams while planning for a flight are just about over,” says NBAA. The new […]

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 […]