News

Pilots authorized by air traffic controllers to taxi onto runways and await takeoff clearance will be instructed to “line up and wait” rather than “position and hold” beginning on Sept. 30, the FAA reminded pilots this week. The new terminology, which was recommended by the NTSB, conforms to the terminology established in guidelines of the […]

Problems stemming from simulator training have been cited as contributing factors in airline accidents that caused more than half of the 522 fatalities over the last decade, according to a USA Today analysis published on Tuesday. Most recently, the NTSB cited deficient simulator training as a contributing factor in its final report on a December […]

Although business aviation in much of the world has been downplaying the luxury aspect and emphasizing efficiency and productivity, a major exhibition in Abu Dhabi next February embraces the undeniable comforts that come with private air travel. Most of the major business aviation companies are expected to take part in Big Boy Toys, which runs […]

Gulfstream’s new G650 recently reached Mach 0.995 on a test flight, which the company says establishes the business jet as the world’s fastest civil aircraft. That title that has long been held by Cessna’s Citation X, which flies at Mach 0.92. Gulfstream said the G650 achieved the maximum speed during flutter testing, when the test […]

The Avgas Coalition, which is made up of aviation industry groups and petroleum industry organizations, has told EPA more study is needed to determine whether leaded aviation fuel actually poses a risk great enough to warrant an “endangerment finding.” Such a finding would be the first step in banning lead from avgas. AOPA and the […]

Mexicana, Mexico’s largest airline, stopped flying at noon on Saturday, telling passengers still holding tickets it was sorry for the inconvenience. The airline entered bankruptcy protection earlier and was trying to reorganize when parent company Grupo Mexicana pulled the pin, citing, among other things, the inability to reach deals with unionized employees. “Financial deterioration and […]

Arizona education officials have apparently decided against following California in imposing potentially onerous financial and regulatory requirements on Part 61 flight schools. The Arizona State Board for Private Postsecondary Education unanimously rejected a proposal to consider Part 61 flight schools as “vocational” programs. Doing so would have made the generally smaller and less federally regulated […]

The Navy says it’s working on a software glitch that resulted in a helicopter drone flying autonomously toward Washington, D.C., last week. The Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout UAV is no toy helicopter. It grosses out at 3,150 pounds and is nearly 24 feet from nose-mounted multi-sensing eye to tail rotor. On Aug. 2, while […]

British Airways is investigating how an automated message came to be played on Aug. 24 over the intercom of an otherwise healthy in-flight 747, telling all 275 passengers the jet was going to ditch. The message, delivered by what a British tabloid called a “calm female voice,” said (according to multiple other sources), “This is […]