Pilot | featured news

A flight from Los Angeles to Seattle was diverted to Portland late Thursday after one of the pilots lost consciousness. Alaska Airlines said Flight 473's first officer flew the Boeing 737-700 to Portland International Airport after the captain became ill over Oregon.

United Continental has reached a labor-contract agreement with the unions representing the 11,000 pilots of the carrier, which is still working out the kinks of its 2010 merger.

It's happened to most of us. We suddenly wake up and find ourselves disoriented, wondering where we are, and possibly mistaking a light in the distance for something completely different.

On Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said that pilots on American Airlines flights will be officially allowed to use iPads instead of paper flight manuals in the cockpit, just a few feet from the most critical avionics on a plane, even during takeoff and landing.

Questions were raised Friday over the training of the pilots on the doomed Air France Flight 447, after analysis of the plane's voice and data recorders by a French investigation body.

Pilots wrestled with the controls of an Air France airliner for more than four minutes before it plunged into the Atlantic with its nose up, killing all 228 people on board, French investigators said on Friday.

Federal officials say the pilot of a small airplane is dead after a crash in central Illinois. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro says the single engine home-built aircraft took off from the Decatur Airport on Thursday afternoon and crashed 1.5 miles east of the airport.

The Transportation Security Administration will let uniformed airline pilots skip the body scans and pat-downs at airport checkpoints.

The major U.S. airline industry association criticized efforts to revamp pilot-fatigue rules, calling the government's proposals overly restrictive, politically motivated and scientifically flawed.

Pilots' unions for US Airways and American Airlines are urging their members to avoid full-body scanning at airport security checkpoints, citing health risks and concerns about intrusiveness and security officer behavior.