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The administration of President Barack Obama has approved a project to train Afghan combat pilots in Syria. This is believed to be the first time that the U.S. military has included Syria in a training program. The United States has long refused to sell aircraft and combat systems to Damascus. The U.S. Army's Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training & Instrumentation has drafted a tender in which military cadets from Afghanistan would undergo courses in English and pilot-training in several Middle East and other Muslim states. The countries included Syria, which is on the State Department list of terrorist sponsors....

The Federal Aviation Administration will let some pilots who take four popular antidepressants return to the skies, saying Friday that it is easing its long-standing ban on psychiatric medications. The old policy stemmed in part from concerns over possible side effects of psychiatric drugs, including sedation. But newer medications have fewer side effects, and pilots' associations have pressured the agency to reconsider the ban. FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said some pilots with depression likely weren't being treated or were doing so in secret out of fear of losing their jobs. "We need to change the culture and remove the stigma...

Two Navy fighter pilots have been grounded for their low flyover at a Georgia Tech football game in downtown Atlanta in November, according to several media reports. The aviators, identified by the Virginian-Pilot newspaper as Lt. Cmdr. Marc Fryman and Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Condon, are both Tech graduates. They flew F/A-18 Super Hornets a few hundred feet above Bobby Dodd Stadium after the national anthem prior to the Tech-Wake Forest game on Nov. 7. Navy rules require flyovers to be done at 1,000 feet or higher, according to NavyTimes. The Navy assigned Fryman and Condon to non-flying jobs. Several videos...

The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of World War II will finally be given the recognition and honor they deserve on March 10. That's when they will receive the Congressional Gold Medal in a ceremony to be held at the United States Capitol. These pilots were trailbrazers, a group of 1,102 female civilians that flew military aircraft under the direction of the United States Army Air Forces. They flew more than 60 million miles in 78 different types of aircraft, from the smallest trainers to the fastest fighters and the largest bombers. They undertook every type of mission except combat....

Pilots here received measurements for the first F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter equipment to move closer to training in the military's newest fighter aircraft Feb. 25 here. The new pilot equipment includes everything from underwear to cold-weather outer gear to anti-G garments. RFD Beaufort, the Lockheed Martin sub-contractor making the new equipment, took controlled measurements down to the millimeter to ensure comfort, safety and the pilot's capability to complete the mission in any scenario. Some of the equipment used by the first F-35 pilots will be based on legacy gear found on previous fighter aircraft. "The wing continues to...

It is among the U.S. Air Force’s most finite resources, but the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is still growing in capabilities, and it’s an aircraft America is happy to allow an ally to use. A long-standing exchange program that has seen USAF personnel trade places with those from the Royal Air Force was extended to the B-2 in 2004. The offer to open up the secretive B-2 mission to a key ally was made by then-President George W. Bush in an e-mail to then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. Among the achievements of the first British pilot, Sqn. Ldr. David Arthurton, was...

"UP cops nab IM terrorist planning aerial strike" Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui, TNN, 2 February 2010, 01:48am IST SNIPPET: "LUCKNOW/NEW DELHI: The arrest of Shehzad alias Pappu — one of the key accused in the September 2008 serial blasts in Delhi and the Batla House encounter — by the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) of UP Police from Azamgarh on Monday evening is being seen as a major breakthrough in exposing a module that was planning to unleash air strikes. Shehzad, intelligence agencies had recently discovered, had undergone a training to fly planes from an institute in Bangalore and had surfaced as a...

According to a recent Air Force Times article, the F-22 Raptor has the lowest pilot-retention rate of any U.S. fighter or attack aircraft measured, at a rather abysmal 33%. Compare this to 81% for F-15E Strike Eagle pilots and 68% for F-15 Eagle pilots respectively, and, gentlemen, we’ve got a problem. Think about that for a second. If those numbers are correct (and we’re not sure about them, yet), the F-15E, a much older and less-technologically-advanced aircraft, enjoys almost 2.5 times the pilot retention rate of the vaunted F-22. The article didn’t give an explanation, just the brutal facts. However,...

A pilot's life: exhausting hours for meagre wages $20,000 pay and lengthy commutes to work renew fears for passengers' safety Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 January 2010 Some co-pilots say they now have second jobs to make ends meet. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA The old hands say there was never much glamour in piloting several tonnes of metal thousands of feet in the air. But there's no denying that to the earthbound back in the jet-set era half a century ago – when Pan Am's "Clippers" ruled the air lanes and service was modelled on transatlantic ocean liners – pilots were...

Besides two Hawaiian Airlines flight diversions in three days, there have been several flights affected by unruly passengers since the failed terror attack on Christmas Day, including one Friday in Atlanta. The recent spike in flight diversions across the U.S. has many asking if anxiety in the skies is causing pilots to make quick decisions to re-route flights because of unruly passengers. "There's always going to be certain number of needed deplanements from unruly passengers, there's a certain amount that always takes place but i think the media is covering it more often now and also everybody is more on...

Pilots Out of Loop on Terrorist Attempt? Pilots Want To Know About Attacks: APA The Allied Pilots Association, which represents American Airlines pilots, says most airborne flight crews weren't notified of the Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Northwest Airlines A330. The group is calling for changes after what it describes as "communications failures" left the majority of airborne flight crews in the dark about the attempted bombing. In a message to members, the APA's security committee said the Transportation Security Administration specifically told airlines to notify only the crews of airborne westbound trans-Atlantic flights of the attack on the...

WASHINGTON — A call from a flight attendant to the pilots of the Northwest Airlines plane that overshot Minneapolis catapulted the cockpit crew from complacency to confusion. On Oct. 23, 2009 file image made from video and made available by KGW-TV in Portland, Ore., shows Northwest pilot Richard Cole at his home in Salem, Ore. Interviews with the flight crew and other documents released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board indicate the pilots were completely unaware of their predicament until the moment the intercom rang. They were unaware that they had flown their Airbus A320 with 144 passenger more...

“’The information is so thoroughly compromised that any vetting system built on it is unreliable,’ said Schiffer per ABC News."

After the crew finally resumed radio contact, their first communication responding to controller messages was: "Ah, roger, ah, we got distracted and we've flown over ah Minneapolis. We are overhead Eau Claire [Wis.] and would like to make a one-eighty..." ... Soon after radio chatter resumed, a controller said, "I just have to verify that the cockpit is secure." The pilots responded: "It is secure, we got distracted..." As previously reported, the controllers were concerned about a range of scenarios, including the possibility of terrorists being aboard the plane. During the long silence, air-traffic control managers had contacted the military...

Chief Warrant Officer Steve Bridges, 2nd Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment, 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, shows 2nd Lt. Karam Ebrahem, an Iraqi Air Force student pilot, the inner workings of a U.S. helicopter during an open house on Forward Operating Base Warrior, Kirkuk, Nov. 25. Photo by Pfc. Justin A. Naylor, 1st Cav. Div. KIRKUK — Iraqi Air Force student pilots came here to Forward Operating Base Warrior, Nov. 25, to speak with U.S. pilots and get a closer look at their aviation assets. It has taken months of training, hard work and dedication for this group of IqAF helicopter student...

KIRKUK — Lt. Col. Chris Spigelmire defines success as, "The better we do our jobs, the fewer people they'll send to replace us until we don't have to be here at all." "The trick is," he added, "the Iraqi Air Force has to be able to do what we're doing without us around." Spigelmire, deployed from Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas, commands the 521st Air Expeditionary Advisory Squadron. He and his two dozen Airmen have two missions: – Help Iraqis train their new pilot corps – Prepare qualified Iraqi pilots to assume mission operations "We're also training the trainers so...

Demand for private jets is way down and NetJets will lay off almost 500 pilots as a result -- almost 20% of its staff of 3,000 pilots. because of a decrease in demand. NetJets is a unit of investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway

The U.S. Air Force has a morale problem with its combat pilots. The issue is lack of action for the pilots. That, plus the increased use of unmanned aircraft, and the very real prospect that the age of the manned combat aircraft may be coming to an end. This is made worse with hundreds of fighter pilots being assigned to operating Predator and Reaper UAVs. This was not popular duty, even though the pilots still draw flight pay. It is tedious work, although the UAV operators often saw more combat action than they did when piloting F-16s or F-15s. The...

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday revoked the licenses of the two Northwest Airlines pilots who overshot their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles. The pilots — Timothy Cheney of Gig Harbor, Wash., the captain, and Richard Cole of Salem, Ore., the first officer — told safety investigators they were working on their personal laptop computers and lost track of time and place. The pilots, who were out of communications with air traffic controllers for 91 minutes, violated numerous federal safety regulations in the incident last Wednesday night, the FAA said in a statement. The violations included failing to comply with...

Many a person has missed their stop on a bus or train at one time or another because they were engrossed in a weighty conversation or a book. But when the pilots of Northwest Airlines flight 188 became distracted it had more serious consequences as they overflew their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles. "They were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness," the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) explained. When the pilots got their "situational awareness" back they turned the Airbus A320 around and landed it safely on Wednesday evening, apparently without any of...