News

Don’t see a video screen?Try disabling ad blockers and refreshing this page.If that doesn’t work, click here to download the video directly. When skydiver Felix Baumgartner stepped out of his capsule 24 miles high above the Earth on Sunday, he was all alone up there, but he had 8 million people watching on YouTube — […]

Sikorsky’s S-76D, the newest version in a popular line of medium-size helicopters, is now certified, the company said this week. Deliveries are expected to start early next year, to start filling a half-billion-dollar backlog of orders. The S-76D features all-composite main rotor blades as standard equipment, new integrated avionics, and Pratt & Whitney Canada PW210S […]

Randy Babbitt, who served as FAA administrator from 2009 to 2011, has been hired by Southwest Airlines to oversee the carrier’s labor relations. Babbitt will be responsible for all negotiation, communication and ongoing relationships between Southwest and the 11 organizations that represent 87 percent of its workers, the company said in a news release on […]

Don’t see a video screen?Try disabling ad blockers and refreshing this page.If that doesn’t work, click here to download the video directly. When skydiver Felix Baumgartner stepped from his space capsule on Sunday from 128,000 feet, he broke two records that stood for more than 50 years and he also kept a promise to himself. […]

There are almost as many pilots with lapsed certificates in the U.S. as there are active pilots, and AOPA sees its new flying club initiative as a way to bring some of them back into the fold. At an information session at AOPA Summit in Palm Springs on Friday, Adam Smith, head of AOPA’s new […]

FAA interim Administrator Michael Huerta says one of the FAA’s short-term goals is to cut the cost of aircraft certification in half while increasing safety. Huerta spoke to the Wichita Aero Club Thursday while on his way to AOPA Summit in Palm Springs. According to the Wichita Eagle, Huerta said the FAA wants to standardize […]

The European Union is considering creating a single FAA-style agency to oversee aviation regulation and enforcement for all member countries. The current European Aviation Safety Agency is charged with many of those duties but individual countries have retained domestic aviation oversight and have opted out of some initiatives, slowing progress toward a homogenous system of […]

The accident rate varies among the various sectors of general aviation, says a new report from the Government Accountability Office, but without better data it’s hard to tell what’s really going on. For example, experimental amateur-built airplanes were involved in 21 percent of the fatal accidents reviewed, but accounted for only 4 percent of the […]

Skydiver Felix Baumgartner was all suited up and ready to fly on Tuesday morning when a gust of wind knocked down the still-inflating helium balloon that would carry him to 120,000 feet, and the mission was scrubbed. The next launch window for the Red Bull Stratos project, which aims to break U.S. Air Force Col. […]

The fiery crash of a Gulfstream G650 during flight testing in April 2011 was caused by an aerodynamic stall and subsequent uncommanded roll during a one-engine-out takeoff flight test, the NTSB determined on Wednesday. Those events were the result of several human failures, according to the NTSB: Gulfstream’s failure to properly develop and validate takeoff […]