News

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 […]

Wildlife conservation groups are in an uproar after an old photograph was circulated online showing a U.S. Wildlife Services SuperCub painted with 58 paw-print decals — one for each wolf shot from the aircraft. Wolves were removed from the endangered species list in 2011, but Idaho, Montana and Wyoming Wildlife Services agents have shot hundreds […]

Federal officials Wednesday confirmed earlier reports that signals from a nationwide broadband system proposed by LightSquared will significantly disrupt existing GPS service. In separate statements, the National Coordination Office for Spaced-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT), the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation essentially said that under current circumstances, GPS cannot coexist with […]

A District Court Judge has ordered the United States to pay $4.4 million to the family of a pilot killed in a 2005 plane crash after finding that a controller (currently serving as a front line manager) “breached his duty of care.” Judge Edwin G. Torres found that controller Harvey Pake failed to provide accurate, […]

A 55-page report this weekend made public a laundry list of flaws currently dragging on the F-35 fighter program and is complicated by a production plan called “Concurrency” that allows Lockheed Martin to churn out the jets while testing continues. Structural cracks, electrical gremlins and a “classified” problem are among those mentioned in the report. […]

American Airlines is the first U.S. airline to be officially approved by the FAA to use iPads as an electronic flight bag in all phases of flight, the FAA said this week. The airline received the approval on Dec. 1. The FAA said only two iPads are allowed to be operated in the cockpit at […]

J. Lynn Helms, who served as FAA administrator from 1981 to 1984, died on Dec. 11, at his home in Westport, Conn., at age 86. Helms may be best remembered for his role during the 1981 strike by air traffic controllers. According to the Washington Post, Helms advised Reagan administration officials that air traffic safety […]

The FAA’s AeroNav charting division told vendors this week that it proposes to charge end users of digital charting producers about $150 a year to close a $5 million shortfall in its budget due to declining paper chart sales. The new fee, if adopted, would presumably more than double the cost of some popular iPad […]