Recent Updates

This week, AVweb’s news roundup found reports on new aircraft batteries from True Blue Power, a website supporting congressional action to allow flight operations at airports closed by presidential visits and good news for several military airfields in the U.K. True Blue Power introduced its new, fifth-generation main ship batteries at the Helicopter Association International […]

Boeing 737 MAX Grounding I strongly suspect that many (if not a majority) of airlines do not include enough aircraft handling simulator training on their conversion courses, especially on difference courses. For example, converting from the B737-800 to the 737 MAX should include simulator training specifically aimed at how to deal with a malfunctioning MCAS, […]

With a 1735-page PDF document, EASA has published its complete set of “Easy Access Rules for Flight Crews” in accordance with regulation (EU) No 1178/2011. EASA eRules will be a comprehensive access system for the drafting, sharing and storing of rules. It will also act as the agency’s single source for all aviation safety rules […]

The Swiss Civil Aviation Authority (BAZL) has revoked operator JU-Air’s authorization to conduct commercial flights with its historic Junkers JU-52 aircraft. The decision comes about half a year after the tragic accident of the company’s JU-52 HB-HOT, which left three crewmembers and 17 passengers dead after the aircraft spiraled into terrain on a flight between […]

NASA has successfully captured the first images of the interaction between shockwaves from two supersonic aircraft in flight. Using a technique called schlieren photography, a process used to image density gradients in fluids, researchers were able to photograph the shockwaves caused by a pair of U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School T-38s as they passed […]

The FAA has uncovered new information from the wreckage of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 “concerning the aircraft’s configuration just after takeoff that, taken together with newly refined data from satellite-based tracking of the aircraft’s flight path, indicates some similarities between the ET302 and [Lion Air] JT610 accidents,” according to the emergency order issued by the […]

Mary Grady, one of AVweb’s longest-serving, most dedicated and respected contributing editors, died at her home in Warwick, Rhode Island, on March 12 after a long illness. Mary was one of the founding members of the internet experiment that became AVweb and continued as a key staff writer until her health challenges prompted a leave […]

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has determined that the fatal crash of a Learjet 35A near New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport (TEB) on May 15, 2017, was caused by the pilot’s “attempt to salvage an unstabilized visual approach.” According to the NTSB, the aircraft stalled while conducting a circle-to-land maneuver and crashed into a commercial […]

From the moment the Commerce Department got its governmental mitts on pilot licensing in 1926, politics and aviation have been inextricably entwined. But rarely is that on such naked display as it was Wednesday when the FAA announced that it was joining much of the rest of the world in grounding Boeing’s 737 MAX after […]