News

A high-ranking FAA source has confirmed that the FAA plans to almost triple the maximum weight for most light sport aircraft to 3600 pounds in rulemaking that will be introduced in January. The source confirmed the scant details of a Facebook post written by AOPA Senior VP of Media and Outreach Tom Haines from the […]

Santa Claus wears captain’s bars in the e-commerce economy but it’s some of the pilots who are getting gifts this holiday season. FedEx is offering its retirement-age captains as much as $110,000 in retention bonuses to keep working through this year’s busy time. Last year, FedEx and its competitor UPS had record years thanks to […]

Neither pilot in the cockpit of a Falcon 50 that crashed in Greenville, South Carolina, last week was rated to fly the aircraft as pilot in command, according to the preliminary report issued by the NTSB on Thursday. The report states that the pilot in the left seat “held an ATP certificate with a type […]

A bill to reauthorize the FAA (H.R. 302) was passed by the U.S. Senate by a vote of 93 to 6 on Wednesday. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, which made it through the House of Representatives last week, now only needs a presidential signature to become law. The legislation has earned praise from many […]

In partnership with Ethnos360 Aviation and Helivida, the Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) is providing disaster relief flights in Sulawesi, Indonesia, after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake and the resulting tsunami devastated the region on Sept. 28. MAF says it has been flying evacuation and emergency personnel transport missions since Tuesday. The organization has also set up […]

“Notams are a bunch of garbage,” NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said last week, at the board’s probable-cause meeting about last year’s close call in San Francisco. “The Notam system is really messed up,” he continued. “There are 10 pages of Notams [for the Air Canada flight] … and [the runway closure] is on page 8 […]

Lockheed Martin revealed its new concept for a fully reusable lunar lander at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Bremen, Germany on Wednesday. The lander will be designed to dock with NASA’s planned Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway for service, refueling and storage in between missions. According to Lockheed, it will be capable of carrying 2,000 pounds […]

The FAA is investigating an incident in which a police helicopter was used in an effort to disperse a large tailgate party that took place before a Penn State vs. Ohio State football game at Penn State University’s Beaver Stadium last weekend. As shown in the video below, a Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) helicopter flew […]

A vintage Boeing 747 that was repurposed to resemble Air Force One has left the Rhode Island airport where it had been for several years, and traveled on a barge up the Potomac River to National Harbor, Maryland, in the Washington, D.C., area. The airplane is a retired cargo plane and no longer flies. The […]

The FAA on Monday issued a new Airworthiness Directive that affects about 1,800 Boeing 737 aircraft operated in the U.S. The AD requires additional inspections of the fan blades in all the airplanes equipped with the same type of blades that caused a catastrophic engine failure in April, when one passenger died on a Southwest […]