Business & Military

The pilot shortage is making itself felt in rising orders for new trainers, GAMA reported on Monday, in its shipments and billings report for the second quarter. Overall, the quarter’s results are mixed, said GAMA President Pete Bunce, but demand for training aircraft is driving up sales in both the piston and rotorcraft segments. Piston […]

Heard on ABQ CTR near GBN on 132.45: ABQ Center:Flight XYZ say ride conditions. Flight XYZ: no answer ABQ Center:Flight XYZ say ride conditions. Flight XYZ: no answer ABQ Center on 121.5:Flight XYZ, ABQ Center, if you hear us ident. Flight XYZ:Flight XYZ. Sorry my copilot was talking so loud about his race cars and […]

Venezuelan authorities said late Sunday that they thwarted an attempted assassination of President Nicolas Maduro by two explosive-laden drones. The authorities said they had detained six people in connection with the attack in which assailants flew two drones, each packed with about 2.2 pounds of C-4 explosive. The military said it defeated one of the […]

Military rescue aircraft were orbiting the site of a plane crash on a remote Alaska mountain ridge Sunday, unable to reach the downed sightseeing aircraft and its five occupants because of bad weather. The pilot of a de Havilland Beaver operated by K2 Aviation reported the crash Saturday about 6 p.m. on his satellite phone […]

Forget that shiny new octocopter, a Bay-area startup wants to make your Cessna 172 autonomous. XWing says it has created “plug and play” software that can make most light aircraft fly autonomously. Details on how it works have not been released but the technology will revolve around “sensing, reasoning and control,” according to aviation tech […]

The Air Force is hoping to ease its pilot shortage by speeding up the training of new pilots using virtual reality simulators. The first class of 20 Pilot Training Next (PTN) candidates, 15 officers and five enlisted personnel, finished their course on Friday and 13 of the officers passed. Two officers washed out and were […]

Twenty people died Saturday when one of the seven remaining airworthy Ju-52 airliners crashed while on a sightseeing trip in the Swiss Alps. The aircraft is reported to be HB-HOT, the same aircraft that visited AirVenture in 2012. There were 17 passengers and three crew onboard when the aircraft went down on a flight from […]

At AirVenture I accidentally came across the Aerovonics booth in the EAA Innovation Center and was blown away by their AV-20-S AoA multi-function instrument which will imminently be STC-AML’ed for certified aircraft. Most notable is that it uses ONLY existing pitot and static pressures to determine AoA via a Sperry algorithm developed in the 60’s. […]

AVweb’s weekly news roundup found reports on the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals’ Annual Convention and Career Expo, new scholarships for female helicopter pilots, a warranty extension on Superior Air Parts Millennium Cylinders and a service center network expansion for RAJAY Turbo Products. The Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP) will be holding its 42nd […]

The Delta Air Lines Foundation has awarded $350,000 in grant money to nine aviation maintenance training programs across the U.S., joining a growing list of major aviation companies that have recently taken steps to address predicted shortages of qualified pilots, crew and aviation maintenance personnel. According to Delta, the grant money will help with curriculum […]