The first of four Eclipse 500 flight certification aircraft made its maiden flight Dec. 31, “as we promised,” CEO Vern Raburn said. It made two flights on that first day of operations with production Pratt & Whitney Canada 610F turbofan engines. The flight of N503EA initiated a 15-month program that ultimately will involve seven airframes, […]
News
Those we lost in 2004
Aviation lost many of its most notable people last year. General Aviation News would like to pay tribute to some of those people, who had such a profound effect on all of our lives. JEROME F. LEDERER Jerome F. Lederer, whose work made aviation safer for all of us, died Jan. 6. He was 101. […]
Baby girl delivered on float plane
When Isabelle Chinuhuk asks her parents, Jenifer and Jamie, “How did I get here?” they can honestly answer “by float plane.” The little girl was born Dec. 26 aboard a Pacific Airways deHavilland Beaver en route to Ketchikan. The Chinuhuks live in Metlakatla and didn’t expect the baby until mid-January. Pacific Airways is a scheduled […]
Dine with Orville and Wilbur
Most pilots agree that you can’t have a good airport without a good restaurant, so when The Narrows Landing restaurant opened last summer at the Tacoma Narrows Airport (TIW) in Gig Harbor, Wash., there was dancing in the hangars. Owners are Hal, Dossie and Tom Barker. Tom, in addition to being the chef, is Hal […]
There goes lunch…
Can you imagine 200 hours of somersaults? Unusual attitudes are one thing, but how would you like to perform nose-over-tail somersaults in the Space Shuttle? The return to flight rehearsals for the Space Shuttle now include that maneuver. The idea is that the flip will expose the underside of the shuttle for tile inspection. A […]
Fly a different plane each day
Can’t get enough flying? How about flying every day? You can — at least at your desk — with the 365 Tiny Paper Airplanes Page-A-Day Calendar from Workman Publishing. The calendar, designed by paper airplane world record holder Ken Blackburn and engineer Jeff Lammers, features a year of paper airplanes small enough to fit in […]
80-year-old woman sets record as oldest to experience zero gravity
Neither age nor gravity stopped 80-year-old Dorothy Simpson from flying into the record books. According to Guinness World Records, she recently became the world’s oldest woman to experience weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight with Space Adventures, Ltd. “”I didn’t set out to break any records,”” says Simpson. “”But experiencing weightlessness on my Zero-G flight was […]
Pioneer flying traffic reporter dies
Walt Starling, one of the first flying traffic reporters, died of cancer Jan. 4 at his home in Maryland. He was 52 years old. Starling’s career started as a class project at the University of Maryland, where he was studying radio and television in 1973. His assignment was to create a job for himself. He […]
NAHF enshrines John Alison
The National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, will enshrine World War II tactician and fighter ace John R. Alison, record-setting aviatrix and aerobatic champion Betty Skelton Frankman, pioneering military aviatrix Nancy Harkness Love, and Skunk Works engineer and aerospace industry leader Benjamin (Ben) R. Rich this summer.