Recent Updates

Yet another eVTOL company has announced it is in flight trials with the intention of upending the urban transportation market and Astro Aerospace, of Dallas, isn’t shy about the Jetson analogies. Not only is the company named after the 1960s cartoon family of the future’s dog, its prototype autonomous passenger carrying drone is called Elroy […]

Scattered among accident reports is the occasional hand prop attempt that goes wrong but not many concern high-performance aircraft. The accompanying video illustrates that it is indeed possible to spark up a Cirrus SR22’s IO-550 from the front but it needs to be done with an abundance of forethought and caution. It’s not clear who […]

A recent video about the famed Cornfield Bomber brought back some fond memories of that airplane for me. As a freshly minted Air Force pilot, I was lucky enough to get assigned to the 49th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York, then its home. Tail number 58-0787 is sometimes […]

The House and Senate could vote next week on a compromise FAA Reauthorization bill that was released on Saturday. The proposed bill eliminates the most contentious clause (allowing states to regulate rest and meal breaks for truck drivers) and has a few other changes that the House and Senate members reviewing it believe will pass […]

How Not To Botch The FAA Medical John Yodice wrote a column once on the legal perils of making a falsification on the medical application, even unintentional ones (such as accidentally forgetting a hospital stay). It results in a felony and can become years of jail time as well as a heavy fine (like $25k). […]

The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) Remote Sensing Division is working to collect aerial imagery of the damage caused by Hurricane Florence in the last week. Depending on weather conditions, NGS has been attempting two survey mission a day to locations identified by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and […]

JetBlue announced that its newest aircraft, an Airbus A321 it received on Wednesday, will make its first flights using a sustainable jet fuel blend. According to the company, the acceptance flight and JetBlue’s ferry flight, which is scheduled for September 20, will be the airline’s first flights to use sustainable (also called renewable) biofuel. JetBlue […]

Boeing and Cathay Pacific have announced that they will be jointly donating the first Boeing 777 to Arizona’s Pima Air & Space Museum. The aircraft, registered B-HNL, first flew on June 12, 1994, and was used by Boeing as a test airplane for several years afterwards. It was purchased by Cathay Pacific in 2000 and […]

The last piece of the FAA’s Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) system, which allows “near real-time processing of airspace authorizations” for drone operators, went live last week, according to a statement made by FAA Acting Administrator Dan Elwell. LAANC was rolled out incrementally by region, beginning with the south central U.S. at the […]