News

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has certified light sport aircraft for the first time, in a newly created certification category. Three airplanes have been certified as European Light Aircraft (ELA): Czech Sport Aircraft’s PS-28 Cruiser, the Flight Design CTLS-ELA, and the Evektor SportStar RTC, EASA said. The new category certifies aircraft with no more […]

The FAA has opened another investigation concerning California pilot Dave Riggs as an offshoot of its probe of a fatal L-39 crash that happened in Nevada in May. Riggs lost his flight privileges for a year for a 2008 buzzing of the Santa Monica pier in an L-39 and he was in formation with Doug […]

Francis Gary Powers will be posthumously awarded the Silver Star on June 15, 50 years after his U-2 spy plane went down in Russia on May 1, 1960, during the height of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Although Powers received service medals and top recognition from the CIA, this is the […]

Avionics icon Ed King, who in the 1950s started King Radio in his basement, has died at age 90. Ed King once set the standard for which all general aviation avionics were judged. King eventually moved his King Radio business to a farmhouse in Lenexa, Kan., and then began an impressive run of innovative avionics […]

Six people were killed in the crash of a 2006 Pilatus PC-12/47 that appears to have broken up in flight some 50 miles southwest of Orlando, Thursday. The crash took place at about 12:30 p.m. and early reports state that parts of the aircraft have been recovered more than two miles from the main wreckage. […]

A new fictional film, Flight, due for release this November, charts the complicated, mostly post-crash life of an airline pilot played by Denzel Washington, and it comes with a twist. The pilot is made a hero by his actions during a crash landing, but his blood tests positive for alcohol. The cast of the movie […]

According to the Collings Foundation, you can see their historic aircraft at airshows largely because of specific exemptions granted by the FAA, but that could soon change for them and similar organizations and your chance to comment ends June 18. In March of 2011, the FAA put a moratorium on issuing the exemptions and they […]

The Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a $19 million contract to install backup systems into existing F-22 Raptor fighter jets that bypass otherwise unresolved problems with the aircraft. Air Force officials are still stymied by reports from pilots who say they have suffered hypoxia-like symptoms while flying the jet. After months-long failed attempts to […]

Solar Impulse completed its two-stage flight from Switzerland to Morocco on Tuesday, landing just before midnight in Rabat after a 19-hour flight from Spain. The solar-powered electric aircraft had been in Madrid for more than a week waiting for a weather window to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and the desert of northern Africa. With […]

Passengers aboard an Air Canada flight bound for Vancouver from Ottawa last week were presented with an interesting dilemma. They were essentially asked who they believed, the flight attendants who walked off the plane claiming the aircraft wasn’t safe or the captain who insisted, via PA announcements, that it was. Globe and Mail columnist Gary […]