News

An unlicensed 17-year-old was reportedly at the controls of what The Associated Press is reporting was a Piper PA30 Twin Comanche that crashed Tuesday evening in Alabama, killing him and his two teenaged passengers. The AP is also reporting that Sherrie Smith, the mother of Jordan Smith, who was flying the twin, said he had […]

Transportation authorities in China have pitched general aviation in that country as “the next driving force after the car industry” and the Chinese government will be providing targeted funding to jumpstart GA there. Ma Xin, deputy director of the National Air Traffic Management Committee Office in China, delivered the quote at the Zhuhai Air Show […]

Pilot David Zehntner and his wife ended a Sunday flight in their Cessna 182 with a low pass of their home, which is located below the approach path to his local airport in LaBelle, Fla., but this time the view included a burglar. At about 800 feet inbound for landing, the couple spotted what appeared […]

Incentives for biofuel development in the new “fiscal cliff” bill — also known as the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012” — could help the industry to move forward in 2013, advocates say. According to the Renewable Fuels Association, provisions in the bill should lead to “a year of growth and milestones for the advanced […]

Virgin Galactic is on track to send a test flight into space this year, although tourist flights are not expected to start until 2014, according to recent news reports. An article in the January issue of IEEE Spectrum says Richard Branson expects to be aboard a flight into space by the end of this year. […]

click for larger version – and directions to make your own James May, known as Captain Slow on the popular Top Gear BBC program, recently shared his design for an “ultimate” paper airplane, complete with winglets and elevons, created from a sheet of standard A4 letter-size paper. “It’s a sort of cross between a Vulcan […]

Amidst the tension of the economic discussions in Washington on New Year’s Day, the Senate was busy confirming the nominations of political appointees and Michael Huerta was one of them. Huerta, who has held the post of acting administrator since former Administrator Randy Babbitt stepped down more than a year ago, was among dozens of […]

An American-registered Dassault Falcon 900 took off from an Iranian airport Monday about three weeks after it had made an emergency landing. According to The Associated Press the aircraft was on its way to Rotterdam from Abu Dhabi in early December when a technical fault forced a diversion to Ahvaz in southwestern Iran. There was […]

China’s aviation technology gap may have closed somewhat in recent days with announcements of some breakthroughs that may make it less dependent on the West for stuff it needs to advance its aerospace industry. Just after Christmas, photos were “leaked” of what appears to be the country’s most ambitious aircraft to date, the Y-20 transport. […]

Buried in all the statistics that surface at this time of year when analysts try to determine what, if anything, the activity of the previous year says about how things will be in the coming years is this grim fact: Only one new airport opened in the U.S. in 2012. The forward-thinking folks of Stockton […]