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Pilots are generally curious about what it’s like to fly other aircraft — airline pilots dream about aerobatics, military aviators wonder about Boeing cockpits, and piston drivers might imagine trying out gliders or DC-3s or jetpacks. But there was one cockpit that only one crew ever got to experience — the Apollo 11 Lunar Module […]

The single-place Belite ultralight, which evolved from an earlier Kitfox design, flew for the first time on July 4, the company said this week. Although the company had announced a “first flight” a couple of weeks ago, that initial effort was described as only a “test hop” down the runway, with more extensive flight testing […]

The airliner that crashed and burned in Iran on Wednesday about 15 minutes after takeoff, killing all 168 on board, was a Russian-built Tupolev 154 operated by Caspian Airlines, based in Iran. An aviation official said a fire broke out in an engine, and the crew attempted an emergency landing. The cockpit voice recorder has […]

The Arlington Fly-In held last weekend in Washington state reported a 14-percent jump in attendance over last year, and it is just the latest big show to report strong numbers. “What can I say, it was great — a phenomenal turnout this year,” said Barb Tolbert, executive director for the Arlington event. “We are still […]

photo by Chris Dorst, Charleston Gazette click for larger version The crew of a Southwest Airlines 737-300 made a safe emergency landing after a hole opened in the fuselage at about 34,000 feet during a flight from Nashville to Baltimore on Monday evening. It was not immediately clear what caused the hole, about one foot […]

AOPA says it tried to help CBS balance a story it ran on the distribution of stimulus money to small airports but didn’t get the chance. The network pointed out that about a third of the $1.1 billion in stimulus money earmarked for “little-used airports or ones catering to recreational flyers, corporate jets and remote […]

A bipartisan committee of senators has introduced an FAA reauthorization bill that sets 2018 as the deadline for GPS-based air traffic control through the whole National Airspace System. The bill was introduced by leading transportation and security committee chairs and will go to the Senate Commerce Committee for discussion before hitting the floor of the […]

Cirrus Aircraft said on Tuesday that it will team up with Aerospace Products International to provide spare parts to owners of its SR-series piston airplanes. “Cirrus customers will benefit from API’s 24-hour-per-day service [and] one-stop shopping for all aircraft parts needs,” Cirrus said in a statement. The new preferred services agreement marks a key milestone […]

When Cessna put the Columbus program on hold in April, hope remained that the jet, which would have been Cessna’s biggest ever, would reappear sometime in the future. “Don’t write the Columbus off your radar screen,” said Lewis Campbell, CEO of Textron, Cessna’s parent company, at the time. But last week, Textron said the Columbus […]

Southwest Airlines says it’s found no evidence of structural problems in the rest of its roughly 200 Boeing 737-300 aircraft after a football-sized hole appeared in the fuselage of one of the planes Monday. The hole occurred near the vertical stabilizer. Flight 2294 was on its way from Nashville to Baltimore at 34,000 feet when […]