News

The time to respond to the FAA’s latest proposed changes to flight-training rules closed on Monday, and nearly 400 comments were logged. The National Association of Flight Instructors said that while overall the 16 proposals are on the right track, they still had issues. “Some of [the proposed changes] lack the detail needed to fully […]

Flight Design is the first LSA manufacturer to obtain type design approval and a production certificate from the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the company said this week. The approval for the CT design will make it easier for the company to deliver airplanes in the growing GA market there. “Up to now, LSA airplanes […]

Piper’s Mirage and Matrix single-engine aircraft can now be ordered with Garmin G1000 glass cockpits, the company announced this week. “The G1000 takes our premier aircraft to a new level of performance,” said Dennis Olcott, Piper’s VP of engineering. “The G1000 deployed in the Meridian — and now the Mirage and Matrix, as well — […]

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 […]