News

The Federal Communications Commission will reportedly propose lifting a ban on passenger use of cellular phone use – both for voice and data connections – above 10,000 feet. Doing so would shift the approval decision to airlines, which would still be restricted from offering that utility while their aircraft operate below 10,000 feet. The FCC […]

A Boeing 747 Dreamlifter reached its final destination of McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita Thursday afternoon after it landed at the wrong airport late Wednesday. The Dreamlifter, which has an expanded fuselage to accommodate large aircraft parts, was supposed to land on McConnell’s 12,000-foot runway to pick up parts at Spirit Aerosystems. Instead, the […]

Authorities allege that John Walsh, 46, has been using an unregistered LSA-type aircraft and falsified pilot certificate to fly customers near Key Largo, Fla. Walsh was charged Tuesday with felony operation of the aircraft – an M-Squared Breeze II that would otherwise be an LSA or experimental category aircraft, fitted with pontoons – in a […]

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 […]