News

Cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs soon will be training in the Cirrus SR20. The Air Force has ordered 25 of the airplanes, branded as the T-53A, Cirrus announced on Tuesday. “The T-53A meets or exceeds all of our performance and operational criteria and is very well-suited to our mission,” said […]

It continues to be a buyer’s market for used business aircraft but it may not last much longer. According to JetNet’s latest report the used business jet inventory dropped 1.2 percent in May to 14.2 percent, moving ever closer to the healthy rate of about 12 percent. However, the good news of the declining inventory […]

In a rare event last staged 25 years ago, three blimps competed in a race above New York’s Hudson River, launching on July Fourth. The race took place about 5 p.m., with fair blue skies and balmy weather, covering about three miles from start to finish. The three ships rendezvoused at about 1,000 feet above […]

A Chinese leasing company has confirmed it intends to order 50 high-end Gulfstream business jets in a deal worth more than $2 billion. The deal with the China Minsheng Banking Corp.’s leasing arm involves an unspecified number of G650, G550 and G450 jets, the most modern in Gulfstream’s line. Order confirmations and deliveries will take […]

The U.S. still operates about 80 percent of the world’s business jets but if recent trends continue, that dominance will end. At a conference in Shannon, Ireland, last week, delegates to the Financial Solutions for Business Aircraft event were told that the business jet market has shifted considerably in the last five years, with 72 […]

Aeronautical engineer Robert Widmer, a pioneer in the development of supersonic aircraft and fly-by-wire computerized flight control, died on June 20 in Fort Worth, Texas, The New York Times reported on Sunday. Inspired by Chuck Yeager’s supersonic flight in 1947, Widmer was determined to design the first supersonic bomber. His bosses at Convair weren’t interested, […]

Mid-shift air traffic controllers will be allowed to listen to the radio and read “appropriate printed material” but they won’t be allowed to nap under a new deal on fatigue prevention announced Friday. Controllers who think they’re too tired to work can also ask for leave. The agreement between the FAA and the National Air […]

For the first time, Australian authorities have grounded a major airline over safety concerns. On Saturday the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) pulled the operating certificates for Tiger Airways for a week after Tiger pilots busted low-altitude limits twice in one month. On June 7, a Tiger A320 was tagged on radar at 1,500 feet […]

Amid a flurry of dueling press releases, the stakeholders in the LightSquared/GPS controversy turned their fortunes over to the Federal Communications Commission in what has become one of the most controversial applications before the commission in recent memory. LightSquared wants to build a nationwide network of 40,000 broadband Internet transmitters using radio frequencies in a […]

An RAF Spitfire flown by American pilot Roland “Bud” Wolfe dug itself deep into an Irish hillside on Nov. 30, 1941, after he bailed out, and now, 70 years later, that aircraft has been recovered. The recovery effort included an aviation historian, a team of archaeologists and the BBC, and will serve as the subject […]