News

Click for a video of Tucker from EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2008 Those of you who don’t regularly tune into the Oprah Winfrey show in the middle of your work day might want to set the DVR for whatever time it is she’s on Thursday. AVweb has learned that aerobatic master Sean D. Tucker is appearing […]

Colorado officials say they have evidence that shows the launch of a helium-filled balloon from Fort Collins last Thursday was a publicity stunt. Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden told a news conference Sunday that Richard and Mayumi Henne cooked up the hoax, in which their six-year-old son Falcon was initially reported to be on board […]

Business jets aren’t the toys of playboy CEOs who bathe in gold coins, but the tools of mid- and small-business managers and mid-level employees, according to a survey conducted by GAMA and NBAA and Harris Interactive, a market research firm. The two aviation advocacy groups surveyed 350 pilots, flight department managers and directors of aviation […]

The images are the story, and the story is that bears aren’t the best custodian for your fabric-covered airplane. Every now and then at AVweb, we receive an email from a reader and we can’t verify the story but feel like sharing it anyway. This is one of those times. The message sent to us […]

The NTSB is using the US Airways flight 1549 Hudson River ditching to allow air traffic controllers to independently label an aircraft’s discrete transponder code as an emergency code, regardless of the crew’s actions. (Link to PDF.) Capt. Chesley Sullenberger and FO Jeff Skiles, famous for their safe handling of an Airbus A320 as it […]

The change of ownership at an FBO in Southern California led Wednesday to former tenants filing a formal complaint with the FAA against the airport and ultimately could form precedent regarding airports that attempt to limit access. When the former FBO operator, Sailplane Enterprises Inc. glider school, decided to end operations at Hemet-Ryan Airport in […]

Republican Congressman Todd Tiahrt of Kansas Thursday introduced the General Aviation Jobs Act, designed to buoy small aircraft sales by extending bonus depreciation and more. The bill would extend the existing bonus depreciation allowance for two more years but would also shorten from five to three years the recovery period for property listed as non-commercial […]

Was it ever even possible that a 20′ x 5′ helium balloon could lift the weight of a six-year-old to 8,000 feet MSL? Let’s take a look at some numbers. Taking Falcon Heene’s father at his reported word, the balloon that news helicopters followed for two hours Thursday (because they thought Falcon was aboard) was […]

Do you use software for flight planning? Aviation Consumer magazine wants to know what computer tool you prefer, be it a package you paid for, downloaded for free, or just use on the web. Even if you just glance at the METARs on ADDS and figure you’ll stop for gas somewhere on the way, we’d […]

A home-made helium balloon landed in a Colorado field, Thursday afternoon without a small boy in side … and that was a surprise. For the preceding two hours, 24-hour news networks followed news helicopter footage of a 20×5-foot mylar homebuilt helium balloon that flew for two hours over Colorado, Thursday, because they believed there was […]