July 12 
Archerfield's JetCraft boss and warbird enthusiast has lashed out and got hold of a 'partly restored' Spitfire fuselage and a 'box' of components including 2 spare engines

Quote from an unnamed chin-rubbing LAME at the airfield "..is this thing for real!"

July  10 
The mid-air collision over Germany on July 2 appears to be as a result of the Russian pilot following a controllers instruction and not that of the automated TCAS on the Tu154

"..recorders showed that a Swiss air traffic controller's order for a Russian pilot to descend contradicted the cockpit warning system's command for the Tu154 to climb"

The Russian pilot hesitated before complying with the controller's descent instruction; the B757's captain by then was on his TCAS initiated descent

July  8 
In the USA light aircraft owners and operators have been warned to lock their aircraft as terrorists may try to use them to attack the United States

The US AOPA officials correctly say "the planes are too small to do much damage" but other so-called 'airline' experts disagree

AOPA indicate that of the 215,000 aircraft flying in the US, 200,000 are of the small private type

 July 10 
Warbirds are to feature this year at the Oshkosh airshow and it is expected that more than 20 North American P-51 Mustangs will perform mass fly-pasts and aerial displays

Back here in OZ only about a half-dozen P-51's remain flyable, the Caboolture based Mustang is the most recent restoration - earlier news report on that machine HERE

 July 12 
USA airline pilots can now carry firearms in the cockpit as a 'last resort' method of defence to a hijack

The industry objected and mentioned things like "..they were concerned about what kind of damage could be done to the aircraft and its crew from an errant bullet"

The pilots reply is that the "errant bullet damage" is a non-issue as it would be about 30 seconds before the next option of a military fighter missile launch that would destroy the aircraft

 July 11 
The Cypriot military lost both their army and air force leaders when the Bell 206 helicopter they were travelling in crashed on a riverbed near a village during a night exercise


"This is the first accident since the helicopter wing of the National Guard was formed 18 years ago"

Ground control lost contact with the B206 near Paphos, about 80 miles SW of Nicosia in the Mediterranean Sea