News

A man entered a guilty plea in federal court Tuesday for shooting at (and hitting) a crop-dusting airplane on Feb. 22, 2008, while it was flying near his hunting ranch in Texas. The man, Stephen Paul Riley, 41, will face sentencing in May. Court documents state that Riley shot at the crop duster, striking it […]

The number of workers employed full-time by U.S. air carriers dropped 2 percent to 381,639 from November 2011 to November 2012, the Department of Transportation said Tuesday, adding to a recent downward trend. Though the overall number of employees recently saw 22 months of growth, the movement was subtle and began to reverse in late […]

A Bombardier CRJ200 operated by a regional airline crashed on Tuesday in southeast Kazakhstan, killing all 15 passengers and six crew members on board. The jet had missed its first approach at the Almaty airport in fog at about 1 p.m. local time and was climbing away from the airport when it suddenly “veered off […]

Eleven people died in Alaska aviation accidents in 2012, down from 21 deaths the year before, continuing a steady drop in aviation fatalities in the state, the Alaska Dispatch reported this week. Several safety initiatives were cited as likely contributing to the improvement, including efforts by the FAA Safety Team office in Alaska, which has […]

It’s a busy time of year for aviation enthusiasts — coming up in the next few weeks are the debut of a new 3-D version of the 1986 film Top Gun in Imax theaters around the country, a tour of classic Commemorative Air Force warbirds in the Southwest, a symposium at Fantasy of Flight in […]

Innospec, the American owned company that is the world’s sole producer of tetraethyl lead (TEL), the octane booster for gasoline, has reportedly told its shareholders it will stop producing the additive for automotive fuel by the end of this year but will keep making it for avgas. The company says on its website that it […]

A tourist helicopter that crashed in Nevada in December 2011, killing the pilot and two couples on a sightseeing tour over Hoover Dam, was brought down by an improperly fastened nut, the NTSB determined on Tuesday. The investigators found that a maintenance crew working on the Eurocopter AS350-B2 before the flight had probably reused a […]

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will be leaving his job after four years in President Obama’s Cabinet, he announced on Tuesday morning. In a statement to his staff, LaHood said he was proud of his team’s achievements, including FAA reauthorization, a rule to combat pilot fatigue “that was decades in the making,” progress on NextGen, and […]

Two exhibitions of interest to business jet owners and operators are scheduled side-by-side at Farnborough March 19-21. The Business Airport World Expo and the Business Jet Interiors World Expo are expected to draw exhibitors and attendees from all over the world. The airport exhibition is a venue for FBOs to show prospective customers the services […]

The NTSB says a Cirrus SR20 that parachuted to safety last week in Danbury, Conn., was out of fuel. In its preliminary report on the incident, which was widely publicized in the mainstream media, the NTSB says the aircraft, with a flight instructor, another pilot and a third person on board, was on final for […]