News

The pilot of a Beaver floatplane that crashed appears to be the only one who can shed light on the cause of the accident, which killed six passengers on Sunday off British Columbia’s west coast. The Seair Beaver had just left Saturna Island, about 30 miles south of Vancouver, when witnesses said it “nosedived” into […]

The aircraft industry needs new orders now if it’s to avoid even deeper cuts in the future, even though the economy seems to be on the mend according to a Canadian study. The Conference Board of Canada report (free registration required) says order cancellations over the past year have cut backlogs at Bombardier and other […]

The FAA is behind schedule on its proposal for new rules addressing pilot fatigue, and they won’t be out until sometime early next year, Peggy Gilligan, the FAA’s associate administrator for aviation safety, told a Senate panel on Tuesday. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate aviation subcommittee, said lawmakers were running out of […]

The FAA this week published a final rule prohibiting takeoffs with “polished frost,” which it defines as “frost buffed to make it smooth,” on the wings, stabilizers and control surfaces of aircraft operated under fractional or charter rules. The rule requires operators to remove any frost adhering to critical surfaces prior to takeoff. Since most […]

The Seattle Times is reporting that the beefed-up wing root structure of the Boeing 787 survived testing on Monday and the aircraft is scheduled for a first flight on Dec. 22. Quoting unnamed sources, the newspaper said it had been told that while engineers have not yet given the final approval on the tests, those […]

No, this is not a ChemTrail airticle, but the UK’s Met Office has concluded that high level contrails do have a global and localized effect … on sunshine levels. One contrail studied by the office turned into a high level cirrus cloud that, at the peak of its formation, “covered an area of more than […]

The FAA and NTSB are investigating why a Piper PA25 tow airplane and a Schleicher ASW 27 high-performance sailplane were involved in a collision over Middletown, Calif., that killed both pilots involved; there were no passengers. The FAA said both aircraft were approaching the same runway from different directions, but did not specifically state that […]

When controllers at Minneapolis Center first made contact with wayward Northwest Flight 188, they said, “I just have to verify that the cockpit is secure,” and the crew responded “It is secure and we got distracted, we were, ah…”. Transcripts released Friday by the FAA claim the next part of the sentence was unintelligible, but […]

After previously joining arms with local residents and environmental groups to halt a similar proposal, the California Pilots Association is citing pilot-specific environmental concerns in its fight against the proposed construction of a power plant near a non-towered California airport. Speaking for some 5,000 pilots in the California Pilots Association (CPA), Andy Wilson told the […]

The FAA, prompted initially by a safety review initiated by a 1994 fatal crash, last Monday proposed rules that may require installation of enhanced ice-protection systems on aircraft and changes to procedures for crews operating under part 121. The FAA described its motives this way: “Neither the current operating regulations nor the certification regulations” in […]