Recent Updates

The FAA and Department of Transportation released the list of airport improvement programs (AIP) that they will fund out of the discretionary portion of the AIP budget for the 2017 fiscal year earlier this week. For small airports, AIP grants can cover 90-95% of the cost of airport improvements such as runway or taxiway construction, […]

Following the 2011 Budget Control Act, better known as the bill requiring “sequestration,” the U.S. Air Force put eight of its newly upgraded C-5M Galaxy strategic airlifters into backup aircraft inventory—a highly ready but non-flying status—in order to keep operational costs under control, but Lt. Gen. Jerry D. Harris, the Air Force deputy chief of […]

The newest version of ForeFlight’s electronic flight bag software will include advanced fuel and performance planning tools for an additional $100 per year ($200 per year over the basic subscription price). Tyson Weihs, ForeFlight co-founder and CEO, said, “The new performance product that we’re launching delivers high performance flight planning for high performance airplanes.” The […]

Paul Allen’s ambitious, fixed-wing satellite launch platform, the Stratolaunch, rolled out of its hangar Wednesday to begin ground and taxi testing. The colossal twin-fuselage aircraft, built by Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, is projected to be—by wingspan—the largest aircraft to have ever taken flight, at 385 feet wide. The prototype has a 500,000-pound empty weight, a […]

With Memorial Day behind us, the summer season takes off, and EAA has plenty of events in the works for this summer’s biggest aviation show, AirVenture. The U.S. Navy Blue Angels will make their first full team performance at the show on Friday and Saturday. Also flying at the show for the first time will […]

The NTSB this week released a preliminary report on the fatal Learjet crash in Teterboro two weeks ago, in which two pilots were killed. While approaching the airport, the crew started to turn toward the assigned runway later than usual, the safety board said. The airplane didn’t start to turn until it was less than […]

Lockheed Martin’s LM-100J civil freighter has completed its first flight, the company has announced. The airplane, part of the Super Hercules cargo line, will perform in a variety of roles, such as firefighting, medevac and VIP transport. It also can deliver bulk and oversize goods to hard-to-reach locations. The first flight went “flawlessly,” said Wayne […]

A sequel to Top Gun, the popular movie about pilots in the U.S. Navy flight school, will begin shooting sometime in the next year, actor Tom Cruise told reporters last week. Asked about the rumors during the Australian morning show “Sunrise,” Cruise said, “It is definitely happening.” No other details were released by Cruise or […]

A high-tech airship is under construction in a Silicon Valley hangar, according to a recent report in the Guardian, and it will likely be more than 650 feet from nose to tail. “It’s going to be massive on a grand scale,” one source told the paper, though that would still be smaller than classic airships […]

A member of the U.S. Navy’s skydiving team, the Leap Frogs, died on Sunday afternoon after his parachute malfunctioned during a Fleet Week airshow in Jersey City, N.J., the Navy has confirmed. The skydiver, whose name has not been released, landed in the Hudson River and was immediately retrieved by U.S. Coast Guard members who […]