News

The FAA has issued an amendment to its 2009 rule on Part 61 flight training to make several corrections and clarifications. To conduct flight tests for the sport-pilot certificate, examiners aren’t required to have a medical certificate as long as they have a U.S. driver’s license, the FAA now says. EAA welcomed the change. “While […]

As part of its strategy to upgrade the National Airspace System, the FAA last week proposed to reduce the number of VOR facilities to a “minimal operational network” by 2020. The agency said the minimum network would enable aircraft anywhere in the continental U.S. to proceed safely to a destination with a GPS-independent approach within […]

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EAA will roll out its new Young Eagles-style familiarization program for adults in January. In a year-end interview, EAA President Rod Hightower said the program, named Eagle Flight, will fly its first adult pilot wannabe in March. The name was presumably chosen from submissions by EAA members after the program was announced during EAA AirVenture […]

AOPA is reporting that the FAA is being pressured to close contract control towers at more than 100 GA-only airports. Quoting unnamed sources, AOPA says the Office of Management and Budget has made the suggestion that funding be pulled from contract towers at airports that don’t have commercial service or high volumes of military traffic. […]

It appears 100-percent bonus depreciation may make a comeback for at least one more year when the smoke clears on the payroll tax deduction controversy. The House version of H.R. 3630 (PDF) contains language restoring the tax measure that allows moneymaking businesses to write off the full value of equipment expenses, including airplanes, in a […]

Both of general aviation’s principal advocacy groups say they’re taking a wait-and-see attitude toward last week’s proposal by the FAA to radically raise the cost of digital charting data to the industry. AOPA and NBAA had representatives at the meeting last Tuesday, in which the FAA’s AeroNav division said it wanted to charge about $150 […]

NASA may be dependent on Russia until at least 2017 to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station but the agency hopes to develop commercial alternatives soon. The agency is seeking to maintain development of at least two competing space taxi designs to fill the void left by the now-retired Space Shuttle. Today, NASA is […]

Iran says that knowledge it gained through reverse engineering less sophisticated drones allowed it to trick an RQ-170 Sentinel drone into landing itself there, nearly undamaged, in early December. An Iranian engineer says specialists reconfigured the drone’s GPS coordinates to tell the aircraft it was actually landing at its base in Afghanistan, the Christian Science […]

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says that as of November, “global safety performance is at the best-ever level recorded,” with one notable exception. According to IATA, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States have seen their accident rate increase by 55 percent, year over year. That contrasts with global accident rates that are (so […]