Welcome to News Brief.
Let's get you caught up on the news of the week.
Well, the Stihl
National Championship air races in Reno ended tragically on Sunday.
2021 Rookie of the Year Aaron Hoage was killed
in the crash of his 29 Super Delfina Jet.
The accident occurred during the final jet gold race.
Now, Hoage rounded a gate and began to climb.
An announcer said that was unusual.
Then the L 39, stopped
climbing, rolled left and right, and descended into the ground.
The Reno Air Racing Association suspended all operations after the accident.
The FAA and NTSB are all investigating.
Now, the AOPA
Air Safety Institute will be releasing an early analysis of this accident soon.
Watch for the pop up on their YouTube channel
and their
safety institute has just released another early analysis, this of a fatal accident
that unfortunately is putting more pressure on an already threatened airport.
Earlier this month, an instructor and student pilot
on an introductory flight crashed at Santa monica Airport.
The Piper Sport took off from Santa monica and cruised up and down the coast.
It returned to Santa monica and on short approach pitched up suddenly.
The second theory of why it pitched up is based
on some audio that we can get from live ATC dot net.
We can hear what appears to be someone in the cockpit
saying with an increasingly panicked voice, Let go, let go, let go.
After that, the airplane spirals down and crashes.
So based on that cockpit communications,
it could be that someone inside the cockpit, presumably the student
panicked for some reason, grabbed a stick.
The Piper sport has a stick out a yoke and pulled back aggressively.
And the other person in the cockpit, presumably the instructor simply didn't
have enough time or enough force to overcome the panicked occupant.
Well, you can watch
the full analysis on the Air Safety Institute's YouTube channel.
The link is in the description below.
Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, this accident is being used
by airport opponents as a reason to close the airport immediately.
The city of Santa monica and the FAA have a consent decree
which allows the city to close the airport at the end of 2028.
And the FAA has grounded Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft.
Last week, the booster failed during an Uncrewed flight.
The capsule engaged its emergency system and flew away from the booster
for a safe landing.
The FAA and Blue Origin are investigating the cause of the accident.
Now, the feds won't let the rocket fly again until what went wrong is now down.
There's no indication yet of what effect, if any, this will have on Blue Origin
Space Tourism business.
This was the first catastrophic failure of the new Shepard
launch system since it started flying back in 2015.
Here's another situation no one wants to be in.
Ditching an airplane followed by an emergency exit in the water.
It's a good idea to train for this scenario just in case.
Well, one way to prepare.
Take an underwater egress course.
AOPA senior photographer Chris Rose took the course
at FMTC Safety in Houma, Louisiana.
Chris practiced getting out of an AUET
or airplane underwater escape trainer and several scenarios
through a window, through a door, and after flipping upside down.
You know, I really think anybody that does any degree of,
you know, seaplane flying or even if you're just flying over water
a lot, you know, if you live in Florida or, you know, up around the Great Lakes,
I think that it's super important that everyone at least consider
taking this course or some variation of it, because it's
one of those things that unless you do it, you'll never know exactly how it feels.
And now I do. I do.
I would like to think that it would help me if if the unfortunate
situation ever happened where we went into the water.
But I feel a little bit better prepared for it now.
Well, the course is offered as part of the Seaplane
Safety Institute by Southern Seaplane, a flight school near New Orleans.
You can find the full video from the course on our YouTube channel
and find the link and then description.
We're getting closer to an electric airliner.
Eviation Alice prototype completed a high speed taxiing
rotation test Sunday should be the final step for its first flight.
Alice is a nine seat commuter aircraft that uses MagniX electric engines.
Aviation claims a 440 nautical mile range
and a top cruise speed of 250 knots for Alice.
Cape Air Regional Airline has already ordered 75.
Alice's.
Meanwhile, regional airline, Republic Airways, last one in front of the FAA.
Republic wanted to reduce the 1500 hour requirement for first officers.
The airline runs its own flight school and argued, among other things,
that its trained pilots were qualified to take the right seat with less
than the mandated number of hours.
FAA said nope,
Pilot
unions and other airlines also oppose the change.
The 1500 hour minimum for an air transport pilot certificate
was put into place after the Colgan Air accident in 2013.
However, it is possible to get an ATP rating
with less than 1500 hours if you have military flying experience
or a bachelor's degree in required aviation coursework.
Check out Air 61.1 59 and 160 for more information.
Or you can call in and ask the experts in our AOPA Pilot Information Center.
Republic Airways, by the way, partners with American Delta and United Airlines.
And United has now finalized a partnership with Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale.
The school has become part of United's Aviate program,
which provides a direct pathway to a United flight deck.
Some 21 schools and flight schools are now partners
and United aviate.
Tecnam's new Grand Lusso so is simple enough to serve as a flight school
trainer, yet capable enough to be a respectable cross-country machine.
It's the luxury model and the Italian manufacturer's P 2010 line.
The Grand Lusso has a spacious, swanky leather interior,
distinctive interior trim and Garmin G1000 NXi avionics.
It's powered by a Continental CD 170 turbo
diesel engine with a single power lever, no propeller, R.P.M.
lever and no mixer control.
So what's it like to fly?
AOPA's Tom Horne can tell you.
Read about his flight in the November issue of AOPA Pilot magazine.
Or watch the video on our YouTube channel.
And we're going to get a fancier WAAS soon.
WAAS - that's wide area augmentation system is
what makes civilian GPS accurate enough to use for instrument approaches.
The FAA has just contracted with Raytheon for a technical update to WAAS.
The update will make WAAS even more accurate.
If you'd like to understand how this works,
check out the link in the description below.
And a special honor for Air Force Colonel and astronaut Eileen Collins.
The National Aeronautic Association will be awarding her
the 2022 Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy in December.
The NRA said that Collins has been an explorer,
educator, spokesperson and champion for aerospace.
Collins was an Air Force command pilot, instructor and test pilot.
She joined Ness in 1991 and was the first woman to command the space shuttle.
Congratulations, Eileen.
But speaking of the Wright brothers.
One museum in Dayton has two flying replicas of the Wright Model B flier.
The Wright B Flier Museum is on the flight line at Dayton.
Wright Brothers Airport.
The focus is on the Wright's career in 1911.
They've been flying one of the replicas since the eighties.
The other one has just been finished and is still in phase one testing.
That airplane has been in the local area
significantly over events.
Bridge
whatever else.
But where they wanted to retire,
that one in favor of this one.
The principal difference is 3000 pounds to 2000 pounds.
And actually this is more representative
of what the B actually looked like.
The new one takes a bit of anachronistic license.
It's equipped with a Dynon sky view and ADS-B compliance.
You can see a longer video of our of the tour on our YouTube channel.
And that's it for News Brief this week.
Please subscribe like and comment.
And if you're not already an AOPA pilot, we'd love to have you join us.
We'll see you back here next Friday.