Recent Updates

Fuel Strainer Lottery A significant omission from Jeff Parnau’s very interesting article is the Decathlon’s fourth fuel drain point under the rear fuselage aft of the rear seat that is easily overlooked. It is there because the gascolator is not the lowest point in the fuel system when the aircraft is parked. The plumbing to […]

Bill Cutter, a well-known figure in business aviation died Tuesday at the age of 86. Cutter led Cutter Aviation, taking over from his father William P. Cutter, who founded the business in 1928. Cutter spent his life in aviation and in the Cutter family business, personally interacting with staff and taking a hands-on role in […]

Thirty-six members of the U.S. Senate sent a bipartisan letter to the FAA on Tuesday urging the administration to implement a provision that would make airports using the contract tower program eligible for Airport Improvement Program (AIP) grants. The provision allowing AIP funding for airports with contract towers was included in the FAA Reauthorization Act […]

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, completed its first successful trip to space on Thursday morning. As shown in the video below,Unity was initially carried to 43,000 feet by WhiteKnightTwo, an aircraft specifically designed to ferry the spacecraft to launch altitude. After release, Unity reached speeds of up to Mach 2.9 and attained an altitude of […]

A Hawker Hunter crashed during an Air National Guard training exercise off the coast of Hawaii on Wednesday. The pilot was able to eject and was rescued about three miles south of Oahu by a private sailboat. He was then transferred to a U.S. Coast Guard vessel and taken to a hospital. It has been […]

The FAA has announced that is redesigning flight paths and air traffic control procedures for aircraft flying over Central and South Florida as part of its Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) airspace modernization initiative. The administration says the endeavor, called the South-Central Florida Metroplex project, will replace “dozens of existing air traffic procedures with […]

Flight Design partner AeroJones Aviation Technology has announced that it will be building a new on-airport manufacturing plant at Dalu General Airport in Zhenjiang, China. Along with a better location and the ability to develop a more efficient facility from the ground up, the company says the move will provide much needed direct access to […]

A modified Robinson R44 designed and built by Tier 1 Engineering has set a Guinness World Record for the farthest distance traveled by an electric-powered helicopter, the company announced this week. The flight launched from the Los Alamitos Army Airfield in California, and covered 30nautical miles at an average speed of 80 knots, at about […]

The nasty mix of ice and snow that blanketed the Southeast on the weekend is expected to linger through Monday, cancelling thousands of flights and causing a ripple through the whole system. Charlotte Douglas International Airport appeared to be the hardest hit major airport. Although the temperature increased to just above freezing late Sunday, it […]