News

Bird strikes are a perennial problem for aviators, but in Santa Barbara, Calif., airport managers found that improving bird habitat near the airport actually helped prevent bird-aircraft conflicts. Workers reconfigured a 10-acre wetland area to restore tidal flows. They found that the new habitat attracted small shorebirds such as sandpipers, which tend to fly in […]

The number of serious runway incursions has been dropping, the FAA said this week, and in fiscal year 2010, which ended on Sept. 30, there were just six serious incursions, half the number recorded in 2009. Overall, incursions have dropped 90 percent since fiscal year 2000. “The entire aviation community can be credited with the […]

All summer long, events around the country will honor the 100th anniversary of the start of naval aviation. The centennial marks the U.S. Navy’s first purchase of an aircraft, a Curtiss seaplane, in 1911. Celebrations will take place this month during Marine Week in St. Louis and at the Rhode Island Air National Guard Air […]

It’s been a good week for Bombardier’s CSeries program with a few new orders and a more positive outlook for the potentially game-changing design. An unnamed airline took three 110-seat versions of the ultra-efficient single-aisle aircraft and options for three more. The $350 million deal, if the options are exercised, is small in airline terms […]

Business aircraft traffic is now within 10 percent of the April 2008 peak and while that’s good news for some parts of the industry, the manufacturing side is still in the doldrums in many sectors. USA Today quoted JSSI CEO Lou Seno as saying flight hours took a big jump in the first quarter of […]

Hawker Beechcraft says it’s about halfway to certification of the Hawker 200 light business jet it unveiled last October at the National Business Aviation Association convention in Atlanta. Executive Vice President Shawn Vick said the second preproduction 200 had its first flight last week and is now taking part in the certification flight testing. There […]

Aviation advocates working with the TSA last year made progress in lessening the impact of TFRs on Hawaii’s airport businesses during a presidential visit, and now six GA groups are asking the TSA to loosen its grip nationwide. In a letter (PDF) to TSA Administrator John Pistole, the groups ask for procedures that would allow […]

A team of engineering students at Northeastern University in Boston have developed a system that allows a pilot to operate a flight simulator with brain waves. The pilot exerts control of a simulated airplane by looking at specific points on an array of LEDs mounted on Plexiglas in front of a television screen. “Typically, a […]

The Transportation Department’s recent decision to dismantle the BARR (Block Aircraft Registration Request) program, which allows aircraft operators to block identifying data from public flight-tracking systems, now faces a legal challenge from general aviation advocacy groups. NBAA, AOPA, and EAA said on Monday they will seek an injunction to prevent the DOT decision from taking […]

US Airways Flight 1549, which started out for Charlotte, N.C., on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 2009, should reach its destination in about a week. The fuselage of the Airbus A320-214 that was operated as Flight 1549 that day started the road journey on the back of a flatbed truck to the Carolinas Aviation Museum […]