News

The Washington state legislature has passed a tax bill that dropped a proposed tax increase on aircraft, AOPA said in a news release on Wednesday. The proposed tax would have made the state’s registration rates the highest in the nation, AOPA said. Existing fees would have gone up by as much as 1,400 percent, according […]

Thomas Salme, 41, who acted as captain of a Boeing 737 without proper certification, has been banned from flying for 12 months by a Dutch court and charged with a fine of about $2700. Prosecutors had sought a fine of roughly $18,000 more, plus a 90-day jail term, but the judge rejected the higher penalties […]

An Airbus A330-300 with roughly 322 aboard operated by Cathay Pacific Airways as Flight CX780 out of Indonesia for Hong Kong touched down safely, but at about 230 knots, after experiencing malfunctions with both engines, Wednesday. In dealing with the problem, the crew intentionally idled the first engine, but the other became fixed at 70 […]

Pilots as well as maintenance workers need to know that the tires on transport-category aircraft require careful monitoring, the NTSB said this week. The board released a list of safety recommendations (PDF) on Wednesday stemming from its investigation of a fatal Learjet 60 crash in 2008. Tires can lose pressure so quickly that within a […]

The executive director of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI) has been released from a Michigan jail after he was arrested earlier this month on a charge of embezzlement of between $20,000 and $50,000. The charge relates to Blair’s term as manager of the Hastings Barry County Airport in Michigan from 2007 to 2009. […]

Investigators so far have found no mechanical problems with the Tupolev 154 that crashed on Saturday, killing the president of Poland and 95 others, but they are now looking into reports that various VIPs, either on the airplane or elsewhere, may have put pressure on the flight crew to attempt a landing despite the weather. […]

ProPublica, the news organization that won a court case in February to force the FAA to release aircraft tracking information previously kept secret, has released the results of its investigation in a story published on its own Web site and on the front page of Friday’s USA Today. ProPublica said the aircraft operators who requested […]

Facing a judge’s deadline to either come to terms or see the remains of Epic Aircraft go to a third party, a Chinese aviation company and a group of Epic LT builders have sealed a deal. China Aviation and the LT Builders Group together will pay $4.3 million for Epic’s assets. The builders will retain […]

Diamond Aircraft’s twin-engine DA42 NG, powered by two 170-hp Austro AE-300 turbo-diesel engines, Friday received FAA certification and is approved for both IFR and FIKI (flight into known icing) operations. The aircraft offers single level power, plus improved performance, increased gross weight and better fuel efficiency than its predecessor, the DA42 TDI, according to Diamond. […]

Cessna is working to accelerate deliveries of its 162 Skycatcher and iron out production-line inefficiencies caused by the addition of airframe modifications that resulted from spin testing, the Wichita Eagle reported Friday. Currently, Cessna has its Skycatchers produced by Shenyang Aircraft Corp. in China. Those aircraft are then shipped to Yingling Aviation for reassembly. From […]