All General aviation articles – Page 578
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News
NASA awards cockpit contract
Graham Warwick/WASHINGTON DC NASA has awarded Avidyne and AvroTec a contract to develop a low-cost glass cockpit for general aviation aircraft. Team members Lancair and Raytheon will handle aircraft certification issues, and both AlliedSignal and Rockwell Collins will help with symbology development. The "highway in the sky" contract ...
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Eagle to boost US production
Australian composite light aircraft builder Eagle Aircraft plans to treble its production over the next 12 months, following FAA type certification of its aerodynamically-upgraded Eagle 150 sports trainer in the FAR 21.17(b) Special Class Very Light Aircraft (VLA) Category. Under a new Australia-USA bilateral agreement, the bulk of the ...
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News in Brief
Airborne Conference PictureTel and the German Aerospace Centre have completed live airborne videoconferencing trials in Italy. They are expected to have a significant impact on the future of multimedia in aviation. According to Slough, UK-based PictureTel, "-the event was set up to prove the feasibility of future multi-media communications ...
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LoPresti captures SwiftFury rights
LoPresti Speed Merchants has obtained the production rights and tooling for the two-seat SwiftFury sports aircraft, developed nearly 10 years ago by the former Piper Aircraft. LoPresti, which designs and manufacturers a host of after-market kits for improving the aerodynamics of factory airplanes, launched the SwiftFury with Piper in ...
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Demand for civil helicopters 'robust'
Two engine manufacturers are forecasting continued robust demand for civil helicopters despite concerns over some operating sectors. AlliedSignal Aerospace is projecting deliveries of 2,350 new turbine-powered helicopters over five years from 1999 to 2003, while Rolls-Royce (formerly Allison) has produced a broadly similar forecast for 5,410 civil deliveries over ...
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Diamond DA40 approval slips back to year end
Diamond Aircraft has pushed back certification of its DA40 four-seat single by 12 months. The piston-powered aircraft will enter service by the end of this year. Test flights of three pre-production prototypes of the 135kW (180hp) Lycoming-powered DA40 are continuing from Diamond's base in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. A production-conforming ...
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Pan Am Academy snaps up SimCom
Continuing its rapid expansion, Pan Am International Flight Academy (PAIFA) is to acquire training company SimCom International. SimCom, which operates simulator centres in Orlando and Vero Beach, Florida, and Scottsdale, Arizona, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of privately owned PAIFA. Miami-based PAIFA, which is building new simulator ...
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US Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel warns on Shuttle danger
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has warned NASA that its workforce has been so reduced by redundancies and a hiring freeze that Space Shuttle safety could be jeopardised. If new engineering and other staff are not employed, it could create a crisis over the next five to 10 years, ...
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Decibel count raised in US-EU hushkit battle
Ramon Lopez/WASHINGTON DC A transatlantic war of words over European Commission plans to place serious restrictions on hushkitted commercial aircraft operating in Western Europe has reached new levels following the European Parliament's endorsement of the legislation. The European Union's anti-noise rule is opposed by the Clinton Administration and ...
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Kaman fired up over water bomber move
Kaman Aerospace is optimistic of a sales breakthrough in Latin America for its K-MAX helicopter after last year's disastrous wildfires persuaded the Mexican Government to step up funding for aerial firefighting. "We think the timing is right," said Kaman commercial aviation operations manager Steve Daniels at the show, where ...
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News in Brief
Falcon delivery - Executive Jet has taken delivery of the first Dassault Falcon 2000 business jet for its Netjets fractional ownership programmes. The Woodbridge, New Jersey-based company has ordered 38 Falcon 2000s in total - 26 aircraft for the US programme and 12 for the European operation - and ranks ...
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US Coast Guard charts Deepwater course
RamonLopez/WASHINGTON DC The impending retirement of Sikorsky Jayhawks and other aircraft has sparked the competition The US Coast Guard (USCG) is looking for new hardware to maintain its core humanitarian, law enforcement and military missions into the 21st century, both in coastal/inland waterways, and for missions out ...
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Gavilan may establish production line in Mexico
El Gavilan, the Colombian manufacturer of the Gavilan 358 utility aircraft, says that it is negotiating with unidentified Mexican partners to set up a second production line in the country and to sell up to 30 aircraft a year. Marketing and projects manager Renato Avila says: "If the market ...
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Policing Europe
Kate Sarsfield/London Environmental and safety issues have led to a rise in sales of "new generation" twins, like the EC135 As Europe grapples with the political and cultural ramifications of unification, free market, single currency and open borders, a less savoury result of the dramatic changes under way requires a ...
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Fighting Firehawk
Peter Gray/Los Angeles Wildfires are a growing problem worldwide, as 1998 proved. Authorities usually use fixed wing tankers and light helicopters to fight fires, but the use of medium and heavylift helicopters has proved more cost effective, says Sikorsky. The US manufacturer has developed a firefighting version of ...
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Hushkit Rules
Europe's decision to jump ahead of international regulation over the highly contentious issue of noise pollution may put it "at the forefront of elaborating the most stringent environmental standards for aircraft" but equally runs the risk of destroying the longer term goal of uniform environmental standards. Nowhere is the ...
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Slump in Taiwanese passenger numbers could spark mergers
Brent Hannon/TAIPEI Taiwan's seven major airlines saw passenger numbers fall by more than 10% in 1998, compared with the previous year, making further consolidation within the ailing industry a strong possibility over the next 12 months. Passengers carried fell to 16.67 million - 10.4% down on 1997 figures ...
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An-12 crashes in Luanda
About 30 people are believed dead following the crash of an Antonov An-12 turboprop on 2 February in Angola. The pilot reported technical problems shortly after take off and turned back. The aircraft plunged into a densely populated neighbourhood on the fringes of Luanda about 10km (6 miles) from the ...
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FAA may get $300 million bonus in Transport budget
A planned $300 million budget increase for the US Federal Aviation Administration on top of the $9.8 billion it received in the 1998 financial year is in the pipeline from the Department of Transportation (DoT). The DoT's requested total budget of $51 billion this financial year includes $10.1 billion for ...
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Light shines at end of Greek air traffic tunnel
Julian Moxon/PARIS Additional reporting David Learmount/LONDON Pan European air traffic control (ATC) delays, resulting from traffic logjams over Greece, should be reduced considerably during the summer, following an employment agreement between air traffic controllers and the Greek civil aviation authority. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) infrastructure ...