News

A Bell 206 helicopter on a flight to retrieve a heart for a transplant patient crashed in the woods early Monday morning in Jacksonville, Fla., killing the pilot and the two medical workers on board. The crash ignited a fire that burned about 10 acres of forest. The NTSB said there was no distress call […]

General aviation accidents and fatalities both declined in 2010 for the fourth year in a row, AOPA said last week. Based on data from the National Transportation Safety Board, the total of 1,435 GA accidents was the lowest in 20 years. Fatalities for the year totaled 450, down from 478 in 2009. AOPA’s Air Safety […]

The union representing pilots who fly for UPS already has filed suit over new FAA fatigue rules that exempt cargo airlines, and now FedEx pilots also have expressed outrage over the rules’ “casual dismissal of cargo pilots and their families.” The rule “completely ignores the safety of cargo pilots and instead lets operators choose to […]

An Austin, Texas, software firm says it has taken a lot of the work out of hiring pilots with an algorithm that sorts through the resumes of thousands of pilots to find those suited to specific jobs being offered. Pilot Credentials is now handling FedEx’s and Southwest’s candidate screening through a database of potential pilots […]

The last G200 has rolled off the production line in Savannah, Ga., Gulfstream said last week. The business jet was among the first in the super-midsize category when it was certified in 1998, originally flying as the “Galaxy” before Galaxy Aerospace was acquired by Gulfstream in 2001. The last jet is the 250th in the […]

Hawker Beechcraft says the U.S. Air Force hasn’t given a fair shake to its bid to provide up to 55 airplanes for light air support, and on Tuesday, Hawker said it’s taking the argument to federal court. The company said it has asked the Air Force — twice — to explain its choice, with no […]

Embraer’s latest business jet, the Legacy 500, saw daylight on Dec. 23 and the Brazilian planemaker is pinning a lot of its future in the business jet market on the clean-sheet Legacy 500 and its follow-on, the Legacy 450. As we reported from EBACE 2008, the new aircraft fill the gap between its light and […]

While it might be hard for travelers to sing the praises of the U.S.’s airport security apparatus, that doesn’t stop the TSA employees at LAX from belting it out for their customers in what has become a holiday tradition at one of the country’s busiest airports. Uniformed, but smiling, dozens of the people who take […]

Those flying into the 2012 Sport Aviation Expo in Sebring, Fla., in January are in for a smooth surprise. Runway 18-36 is being rebuilt and will be a lot easier on the equipment and personnel. “The existing pavement section has exceeded its design life and is severely cracking,” said Sebring spokeswoman Erin Ries. The airport […]

The widespread deployment and use of X-ray based full-body scanners at airports is the new norm, but critics say the machines are ineffective, can cause cancer, and overstep civil rights — because of that, legal battles continue. In late November, the European Commission linked X-ray “backscatter” machines to a number of cancer cases and moved […]