News

Chinese authorities said last week they plan to open up nearly one-third of the country’s airspace to general aviation flights next year, on a trial basis. Starting in January, airspace below 1,000 meters in northeastern, central, and southern China will be open, as well as the airspace above six pilot cities, according to China Daily. […]

click for larger image It’s not unusual for a pilot to land on a road in an emergency situation, but this week in Florida, a pilot mistook a road for a nearby runway, and landed there in his fully functional Cirrus SR22. The 23-year-old private pilot wasn’t hurt, but the airplane hit a couple of […]

The federal government has reportedly said the case is closed on Hawker Beechcraft’s bid to sell a light attack version of its Texan II trainer to the Air Force. Realistically, that leaves only Brazil’s Embraer Super Tucano in the running for the potential $1 billion deal. Hawker Beech was told last week that its version […]

Cessna has decided there will be no plane-Jane Skycatchers and is boosting the base price of the aircraft from $114,000 to a more feature-laden $149,000. However, less than half of the hefty increase is due to making things like an MFD, intercom and sun visor standard, features Cessna says most customers were ordering anyway. Cessna’s […]

AOPA says it’s hoping to organize a “unified voice” from aviation chart providers for a Dec. 13 meeting in which the FAA will lay out at least some of its plans to restructure the distribution of online navigation data. As AVweb reported Nov. 13, the FAA intends to stop universal free access to online products […]

When the Red Bull Air Races were canceled for the 2011 season, it was expected to be a one-year hiatus, but now officials are saying the races won’t return until 2013. “There will be no races in 2012,” spokeswoman Nadja Zele told RGJ.com. “A revamped concept and a fixed race calendar will be revealed in […]

A bill that recently passed in Congress takes a major step toward reinstating the Block Aircraft Registration Request (BARR) program, NBAA said this week. The new appropriations bill contains a clause that prohibits the FAA from using any funds to prevent GA operators from blocking their flight data on public tracking sites. NBAA President Ed […]

Evidence shows that the engine quit on Kyle Franklin’s Waco during an air show in March, but NTSB investigators had no luck finding out why, according to the board’s final report, published this week. Franklin’s wife, Amanda, who performed as a wingwalker in the show, suffered extensive burns in the forced landing and died about […]

Gulfstream Aerospace has received a provisional type certificate for its new Gulfstream G650 from the FAA, the company announced last week. The approval keeps the company on track to start completing the interiors and deliver the first jets to customers in the second quarter of next year. The $65 million jets will be the fastest […]

Our sister publication, Aviation Consumer, is conducting a survey on owner experiences with early model EFIS systems such as the Garmin G1000 and Avidyne Entegra installed in OEM aircraft no newer that 2007. The magazine is interested in finding out how these systems have held up in the field. For this survey, we’re interested only […]