Pilot, Federal Aviation Administration | featured news

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.

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.

Some airline pilots would be required to get nine hours of rest between one work day and the next, an hour more than now, under proposed changes in federal rules.

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Airlines should create and enforce policies to ensure that pilots focus on flying their planes safely instead of being distracted by laptop computers and other devices, the Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration said Monday.

The Federal Aviation Administration is changing a generations-old policy banning pilots from taking antidepressants, saying the new policy will improve safety by bringing to the surface pilots who either ignore signs of depression or lie about their use of medication for fear of losing their licenses to fly.