Recent Updates

As the huge Stratolaunch aircraft prepares for its first flight at Mojave, company founder Paul Allen is thinking about using it not just to deliver satellites to space, but perhaps also to carry an all-new space shuttle. “I would love to see us have a full reusable system and have weekly, if not more often, […]

Aircraft engines are normally designated by obscure numbers only an engineer could love but as a clear expression of market intent, GE is giving its new turboprop engine a name: the GE Catalyst Advanced Turboprop engine. (Heretofore, it was simply the ATP engine.) GE announced the new engine in 2015 and last fall, it reported […]

The White House plans to request that law enforcement and security agencies be permitted to track and shoot down civilian drones, according to Endgadget, a technology site. The proposal thus far lacks specifics, but would reportedly apply to multiple U.S. government agencies charged with security responsibilities. The report surfaced at the FAA’s third annual Unmanned […]

Gail Halvorsen. Some readers will instantly recognize that name, some will search the mists of their memories and others will draw a blank. Which are you? In 1948, Gail Halvorsen was a 27-year-old prematurely balding Air Force transport pilot who gained overnight fame as the beloved Candy Bomber during the Berlin Airlift. At 97, Halvorsen […]

The U.S. Air Force is losing its pilots to lucrative airline jobs, according to a report in this week’s Air Force Times, and that’s likely to continue if the military pilots don’t get more flight time and upgraded airplanes. “We are seeing an Air Force that is back on its heels,” John Venable, a former […]

The FAA is expanding a program that will provide “near real-time” processing of requests for access to controlled airspace from drone operators, the agency said on Tuesday. A prototype system that was deployed last November has performed successfully, the FAA said, and the agency will now conduct a nationwide beta test, beginning April 30, that […]

Six months after announcing the move, the FAA’s reorganization of its flight standards (AFS) and certification services (AIR) became official as of March 5. The agency has been running those operations under the new regime since last August but the rule that enshrines the reorganization in the regulations became effective March 5. The reorganization eliminates […]

Rep. Sam Graves’s office says they first heard that he was being considered to head the FAA in news reports last week. The long-time Missouri Republican, pilot and co-chair of the House general aviation caucus, was among three short-listed candidates named by Axios in a story last week that focused on President Donald Trump’s alleged […]

An international game of cat and mouse has the Canadian government pitted against a wealthy South African family at the center of a political corruption scandal and the disappearance of their luxury business jet. Now Canada’s state-owned Export Development Bank is trying to repossess the 2014 Bombardier Global 6000 saying it’s owed $27 million of […]

As Women of Aviation Week begins this week, the country with the highest ratio of femaleairline pilots may come as a surprise to some. India has the most female pilots per capita as a little more than 12 percent of Indian airline pilots are women. Finland is neck and neck with India but most other […]