News

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 […]

A notice of intended lawsuit targets California FBOs saying that supplying and using leaded aviation gasoline violates the California Safe Drinking Water & Toxic Enforcement Act (Prop 65), and Friday the FBOs fought back. The suit is being brought by the Center for Environmental Health and the Attorney General of the State of California. The […]

A Boeing 737-800 carrying 171 passengers out of Amsterdam for Paris Wednesday moved KLM to say it was “the first airline in the world” to operate a commercial flight on biokerosene (a used cooking oil, Jet-A mix), with more to come. KLM said that by September 2011, it will begin 200 more flights, flying the […]

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac) has signed an agreement with Ryanair to develop the C919, a new mid-size commercial jet, and, according to Ryanair, the deal creates real competition for Airbus and Boeing. Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said his company is “seriously interested in the development of a 200 seat variant of the […]