News

Both Continental and Alaska Airlines this week are launching their first passenger flights powered by biofuel. On Monday, a Continental Boeing 737-800 flew the first biofuel-powered commercial flight in the U.S., from Houston to Chicago, burning a blend of 40 percent algae-derived biofuel. United, the parent company of Continental, said it intends to buy 20 […]

A new software upgrade for iPads caused some problems last month for pilots who depend on the tablets for navigation, but Apple now says a fix is in the works, NBAA said on Tuesday. The iOS 5.0.1 software update will correct a file-management feature that was causing some files to be automatically deleted from chart […]

Can extensive use of simulators really reduce training times and costs? Redbird Flight Simulations and King Schools hope to prove it can with the opening of Redbird Skyport. In a podcast interview, Jerry Gregoire, president of Redbird, said the FBO and flight school is also a laboratory to test a new curriculum from King Schools […]

The 2011 China Airline Pilot Training Summit was held in Shanghai last Wednesday to address a looming pilot shortage. There are about 12,000 airline pilots in China. Up to 18,000 more are needed by 2015. The seven Chinese flight schools cannot meet such demand. The interim solution of sending students to train overseas is far […]

For the second time this year a pilot in the RAF’s Red Arrows air demonstration team has been killed in an accident, but in Tuesday’s mishap it appears the aircraft never left the ground. Early details are sketchy but it appears the pilot was killed when the ejection seat activated while the aircraft was parked […]

As a barometer for the health of so-called emerging markets, the Dubai Air Show has earned a prominent place on the airshow calendar in the last couple of decades and the biannual extravaganza gets under way Nov. 13. Four years ago, the burgeoning Middle East and Asian airline industry saturated manufacturers’ backlogs with billions of […]

Worldwide deliveries of new general aviation aircraft dropped almost 10 percent in the first nine months of 2011, compared to the same period last year, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association reported on Monday. The rate of decline is slower than it was over the same period last year, GAMA said, when deliveries fell 15 percent. […]

Although Boeing has started deliveries of its three-years-late 787 Dreamliner, launch customer ANA is grousing about another costly hiccup in the timeline. Boeing touted the ease of transition to the 787 as a selling point, saying 777 pilots could make the switch in about a week. ANA says it’s spending five weeks to train Dreamliner […]

A $25 million lawsuit filed last week in Texas is the first in what is expected to be many following the Sept. 16 crash of a race plane at the National Championship Air Races in Reno. The crash of Jimmy Leeward’s highly modified P-51 adjacent to a seating area killed 11 people, including Leeward, and […]

Boeing will add about eight inches to the nose gear of the existing Boeing 737 to squeeze 68-inch-diameter fans into the nacelles of the MAX variant announced in August. The engines, LEAP-1Bs from CFM in France, will offer comparable fuel savings and noise reduction to Airbus’s re-engined A320neo but the relatively low-slung 737 was not […]