Recent Updates

This week’s news feed produced the disturbing and surprising announcement that Missouri’s Rep. Sam Graves will vote in favor of ATC privatization, otherwise known as HR 2997, but in real terms the biggest public giveaway to the airlines since the depression. Graves, you probably know, is head of the House general aviation caucus and has […]

One of the most influential members of the so-called GA Caucus in Congress recently announced his support for privatization of air traffic control as a vote looms next week on the bill that would hand it over to a nonprofit corporation. Rep. Sam Graves voted against privatization last year but, according to The Hill, Graves […]

An air force pilot in Belarus may have had some explaining to do after he ejected from his MiG-29 during a fiery failed takeoff attempt. Video of the incident was posted to Facebook July 5 but the incident happened in February during a military exercise in Babruysk. In the video, the fighter does what appears […]

The Pratt & Whitney F135 engine of a U.S. Air Force F-35A caught on fire during start, severely damaging the aircraft, due to a tailwind, says the Air Force Incident Investigation Board’s (AIB) report released this week. The pilot of the aircraft received some burns during egress and damage to the aircraft is expected to […]

The first Pilatus PC-24 destined for customer use crossed a major milestone on Wednesday when the wings and fuselage were “married” and the airframe was lowered onto its landing gear at the Pilatus headquarters in Stans, Switzerland. Andr Zimmermann, VP in charge of the PC-24 at Pilatus, told media representatives, “I am extremely pleased that […]

The History Channel says it’s having a look at a Japanese historian’s claim that a photograph that underpinned a much-hyped television special on the fate of Amelia Earhart was taken two years before she left on her round-the-world flight. As the documentary was hitting the airways, blogger baron_yamaneko from Japan was posting a digitized image […]

In the deadliest U.S. airplane crash since Colgan Air in 2009, 16 people died on Monday afternoon when a C-130 operated by the Marine Corps crashed in a soybean field in Mississippi. There were no survivors, and authorities are still working to confirm the exact number of people on board. Photos and videos online show […]

Bell Helicopter’s twin-engine 525 Relentless is back in the air after being grounded for about a year following a fatal crash in Texas, the company has announced. Two Bell Helicopter pilots were killed in July 2016 when the 525 crashed during a test flight near the company’s facility in eastern Texas. “Bell Helicopter has worked […]

The Falcon 5X, an all-new widebody business jet by Dassault Aviation, has flown for the first time, the company has announced. The flight lasted for two hours. The Safran Silvercrest engines installed on the test plane are a “preliminary version,” Dassault said. According to the company, “design issues” have delayed the engine’s development four years […]

The U.K. and Norway say they’ll soon lift a 17-month ban on the use of two models of Airbus Super Puma helicopters to service offshore oil operations. The H225LP and AS332L2 helicopters were taken off that kind of duty after a crash in April of 2016 in which the rotor blades separated from a Super […]