News

A “substantial” bump in sales of the Meridian turboprop helped drive an upward performance trend for Piper Aircraft in the first quarter of this year to $26 million in billings, the company said this week. The Meridian sells for more than $2 million, and Piper delivered seven in the first quarter 2011, compared to only […]

In the first quarter of this year, 188 piston aircraft were delivered by U.S. manufacturers, compared to 166 in the first quarter of last year, a 13-percent increase, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association reported on Tuesday. “This good news may be indicative of the start of a recovery inthe traditional markets that we hope will […]

Don’t see a video screen?Try disabling ad blockers and refreshing this page.If that doesn’t work, click here to download the video directly. Note: You may have more success viewing this particular video in a browser other than Internet Explorer. The latest design from Scaled Composites, a military reconnaissance aircraft that can fly with or without […]

Don’t see a video screen?Try disabling ad blockers and refreshing this page.If that doesn’t work, click here to download the video directly. What happens when you slam on the brakes on a fully loaded Boeing 747-8 at 200 mph with the brake pads worn to bare metal? Not much, it turns out, and that’s a […]

St. Louis County, Mo.’s tax department is targeting aircraft owners in an enforcement campaign aimed at collecting what may be millions of dollars in back property taxes. “We intend to recoup revenue that was owed to this county and has not been paid,” Jake Zimmerman, the county’s newly-elected tax assessor, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. […]

Stars And Stripes reported Friday that all 137 F-22 Raptors have been grounded over concerns about the aircraft’s oxygen system that may stem in part from a November fatal crash in Alaska. Following the November crash, the stealthy fighter jet has been restricted to altitudes of 25,000 and below. Officials say the restriction is due […]

Space Adventures pioneered the program that has to date launched eight private individuals into orbital space flight and now they’re looking to expand their offerings to include trips around the moon by 2015. The company says it has already sold one of two seats available for the flight. It would use a Soyuz-TMA spacecraft with […]

The all-purpose, idealistic answer is to start over, according to the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators, which met this week in Atlanta in the first-of-its-kind symposium to improve the quality and delivery of flight education. The practical answer, however, is a lot more complicated than that, according to the recommendations made by individual committees […]

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said Thursday that FAA budget cuts may endanger both the agency’s ability to oversee “the world’s safest aviation system” and may in fact stunt the very economic growth austere budgets are designed to create. Speaking at the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators symposium in Atlanta, Babbitt said safety oversight isn’t […]

The other news of last Sunday, May 1, 2011, was the discovery of a debris field that later led to recovery of Air France Flight 447’s cockpit and voice data recorders, and we now know more about how they did it. The Airbus A330 that was Flight 447 was lost with all 228 aboard, in […]