News

Passengers aboard JetBlue Flight 1266, an Embraer ERJ-190 out of Fort Myers, Fla., for Boston’s Logan Wednesday afternoon, heard a large bang and looked to see that an emergency slide had deployed in flight, inside the cabin. The inflation pinned a flight attendant to his seat and led the cockpit crew to declare an emergency […]

EAA (link) and AOPA (PDF) each wrote strongly worded letters to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta “demanding” that a new policy regarding sleep apnea in pilots and controllers be suspended (and ultimately killed) because it addresses a problem that hasn’t been proven to exist, exceeds the Federal Flight Surgeon’s mandate and could cost the pilot community […]

A blogger in the San Francisco Bay area who published patent drawings on Wednesday that show designs for a battery-powered “personal aircraft” with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities, has now updated the story with a photo. The patents were filed by Zee.Aero, a somewhat mysterious company based in Mountain View. Caleb Garling, writing for the […]

The two-seat e-volo Volocopter rotorcraft flew for the first time, on Sunday, inside an arena in Karlsruhe, Germany, the company announced Wednesday morning. The aircraft flew multiple times, with several flights almost reaching the 70-foot-high ceiling of the arena. The takeoffs and landings were smooth, the company said, and flight was vibration-free. Eighteen small, quiet […]

A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a simple technology that could help to prevent icing on aircraft wings, the university announced on Wednesday. The team experimented with ridged surfaces to see if they could reduce the time it takes for a water droplet to hit a surface and then recoil. […]

Two people are confirmed dead and two others are missing after a Learjet headed for Mexico from Fort Lauderdale went down off the coast of Florida late Tuesday. According to the Miami Herald, the aircraft was on a medevac flight from Cozumel to Fort Lauderdale and was on the return flight after dropping off a […]

The biennial Dubai Air Show seems to be supplanting Paris and Farnborough as the place Boeing and Airbus go to duke it out in the orders numbers game. As of Day 3 of the show, more than $160 billion in orders had been placed (breaking the previous record of $155 billion) and Boeing had gathered […]

The FAA is showing no signs of backing off a controversial new policy to detect and treat obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). As we reported in an exclusive story on Monday, Federal Flight Surgeon Dr. Fred Tilton is ordering Aviation Medical Examiners to automatically refer pilots (and at some point in the future, controllers) with a […]

Ten grants to aviation charities, totaling $60,000, have been awarded by the Lightspeed Aviation Foundation. The recipients were chosen through an open online voting process at the Foundation’s website. “With twice as many votes as last year, the awards are having a meaningful impact on expanding awareness and appreciation for aviation,” said Allan Schrader, president […]

Just three days after 50 people died in the crash of a Boeing 737 in Russia, a government panel said the pilots climbed too steeply after their first missed landing attempt, then lowered the nose to try to gain speed, but they overcompensated and sent the airplane into a near-vertical dive. The Interstate Aviation Committee […]