ForeFlight Safety Tools 📱, Mobile IFR Clearances 📋, Aircraft Compliance App ✈️
The ForeFlight safety features every pilot should know (10 minute read)
ForeFlight walks through the safety tooling scattered across the app, from Emergency Glide Mode — which computes a wind-corrected glide ring and highlights reachable landing sites when the engine quits — to Sentry-paired carbon monoxide alerting that fires above 200 PPM. Hazard Advisor, synthetic vision, wake turbulence alerts driven off ADS-B traffic data, and automated terrain and obstacle warnings sit behind the Essential and Premium tiers, while Premium adds animated forecast wind and temperature layers from the surface up to 63,000 feet. Unusual attitude and sink rate alerts require a connected certified AHRS source, which is the sort of prerequisite worth confirming before you count on the feature in the air.
Skip the radio: How to get your IFR clearance sent straight to your app (5 minute read)
The FAA's Mobile Clearance program went live August 1, 2026, letting IFR pilots pull a clearance straight into ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot instead of calling Clearance Delivery — currently at five airports including David Wayne Hooks Memorial (KDWH) and Sugar Land Regional (KSGR). After filing, you can request from 30 minutes before to 110 minutes after your filed ETD; the clearance arrives in familiar CRAFT format with a route visualization and a six-minute window to accept or reject. The FAA built the back end with MITRE starting in 2016 and worked with ForeFlight and Garmin on the pilot-facing interface, with the evaluation period scheduled to end in early 2027 before wider deployment.
New Aircraft Compliance App Simplifies Aviation Maintenance Tracking (2 minute read)
Aircraft Compliance, which debuted at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026, consolidates logbooks, inspections, Airworthiness Directives, and registration into a single readiness view built around the recordkeeping rules owners actually live under in 14 CFR 91.417. Color-coded alerts count down every deadline, squawks can be queued and emailed directly to an A&P, and a cost tracker posts actual spend against budget for each annual, AD, and inspection to produce a true cost per flight hour. Founder Travis Carney's pitch is answering one question at a glance — is this aircraft compliant right now — with records encrypted, automatically backed up, and exportable at any time. It is free during the current customer feedback period.
Overhead Sky: A Mac App That Names Local Aircraft in your Menu Bar (4 minute read)
Chris Miller's Overhead Sky sits in the macOS menu bar and names aircraft passing overhead using the adsb.lol aggregator, and the write-up is unusually candid about the engineering behind that choice. He rejected a commercial flight-data API that bills per aircraft returned, read the community feeds' licenses — airplanes.live is non-commercial, ADS-B Exchange's affordable tier likewise — and settled on adsb.lol because its ODbL terms permit commercial use with attribution. Verification that a user feeds the network runs client-side against adsb.lol's GET /0/me endpoint, which matches on source IP, and positions are coarsened to roughly a one-kilometre square before leaving the Mac to stay inside per-IP rate limits. It costs $24.99 one-off or $3.99 monthly, drops to $9.99 for feeders, and 10% of profit goes back to the ADS-B open-data community.
New Survey Highlights How General Aviation Pilots Feel About ADS-B (7 minute read)
Purdue's School of Aviation and Transportation Technology released initial findings from a 454-respondent national survey on Electronic Conspicuity technology, conducted between October 2, 2025 and January 18, 2026, with aircraft owners making up 62% of the sample. More than 82% agreed EC improves their personal safety and 83.3% said it improves overall National Airspace System safety, while 79.3% reported their aircraft already carry ADS-B transmitters. Support for the cost tradeoff ran 68% overall but climbed to 85.7% among pilots under 34 and 90.3% among those flying primarily for training, and familiarity tracked closely with acceptance — 26% of respondents had little to no familiarity with the term. The researchers frame the timing against the FAA's proposed BVLOS rule, where EC is expected to underpin detect-and-avoid.
Consumer Group Targets ADS-B Billing Restriction in ALERT Act (3 minute read)
Consumer Action for a Strong Economy is pressing congressional negotiators to strip Section 105 from the House-passed ALERT Act, the provision that would bar public and private entities from using ADS-B data to generate revenue from aircraft owners without consent. The House passed the bill 396-10 in April following the January 2025 midair near Reagan National; the Senate's ROTOR Act carries no comparable restriction, so the language is live in conference. CASE commissioned a YouGov poll of 1,000 likely midterm voters in which initial support ran 36% to 25% opposed, flipping to 49% opposed after respondents heard arguments both ways. AOPA and the FAA back the restriction — Administrator Bryan Bedford told the Senate Aviation Subcommittee on May 19 that ADS-B was "intended to be a safety and situational awareness tool" — and Montana, Florida, and Louisiana already limit ADS-B-based billing.
Merlin Advances Autonomous Flight System Toward Certification (2 minute read)
Merlin cleared the Stage of Involvement 3 review for two components of its Merlin Pilot autonomous flight system: the Flight Control Computer and the Automated Communication System, which interprets spoken ATC instructions and converts heading, altitude, and airspeed clearances into flight-control commands. The Civil Aviation Authority of New Zealand leads the Part 23 certification program under a bilateral safety agreement with the FAA, which is participating for possible U.S. validation; Merlin completed SOI 1 in 2023 and SOI 2 for the flight-control computer in October 2025. The company also closed an issue paper covering the AI and machine-learning natural-language processing in the communication system, meaning it and the regulator have agreed on what evidence will be required to evaluate those functions. This is a software-verification milestone toward takeoff-to-touchdown autonomy, not final certification.
Redbird Evolves (2 minute read)
Redbird Flight is rebuilding its simulator software and hardware around higher-fidelity, aircraft-specific configurations, starting with a ground-up G1000 NXi emulation that releases August 17, 2026 with Synthetic Vision Technology, HSI mapping on the primary flight display, and SafeTaxi. The accompanying E001 Enhanced Aircraft panel arrives in early 2027 carrying hardware for two G1000 GDU 1054Bs, a GMA1347 audio panel, and knobs for three analog standby instruments, and it can query the rest of the training device to determine which aircraft configurations it can simulate accurately at a given moment. CEO Charlie Gregoire says everything in the Enhanced Aircraft line is modular and backward compatible to the original FMX 1, so schools can update piecemeal, with Avidyne IFD and Garmin GTN configurations on the roadmap.
9GRadio: An Android RTL-SDR App for Decoding Aviation Radio Traffic (2 minute read)
Richard (9G5AR) released 9GRadio, an open-source Android app for spectrum monitoring that decodes ADS-B, ACARS, AIS, and RDS alongside the usual analog and digital voice modes, with demodulation covering AM, FM, NFM, WFM, USB, LSB, CW, DSB, and raw IQ. The more interesting piece is a full multilateration stack that locates transmitters using two or more networked 9GRadio receivers, and it is protocol-agnostic — it works with any mode carrying a digital identity, so ACARS, AIS, and digital voice all qualify, not just ADS-B. The app is not on the Google Play Store; the APK and full source live on the project's GitHub Releases page for sideloading.
FAA Adopts New AD for Diamond DA42 (2 minute read)
The FAA adopted an airworthiness directive for the Diamond DA42 covering uncommanded rudder deflection caused by a cracked nose landing gear hydraulic actuator rod end, which can force the rudder into left-hand deflection and interfere with the control system. The AD follows EASA Emergency AD 2026-0125-E issued in June and mandates an airplane flight manual revision, repetitive inspections of the rod ends for cracks, deformation, corrosion, and bearing free play, and replacement where needed — with an immediate flight operating restriction for airplanes past 1,000 hours time-in-service and compliance intervals as short as five flight cycles on some aircraft. The FAA forwent notice and comment given the risk, estimates 267 affected U.S. airplanes, and puts inspection cost at $340 per airplane per cycle for roughly four hours of work, or $90,780 fleet-wide, plus $22,695 for the manual revisions.
Hill Runs First Clean-Sheet British Helicopter Turbine in 60 Years (2 minute read)
Hill Helicopters' GT50 prototype reached self-sustaining operation on July 20, the first time the engine ran under its own power and, per the company, the first helicopter turbine designed, manufactured, and developed entirely in Britain since the 1960s. It ran near 27,000 rpm after light-off, held stable around 24,000, and briefly touched 33,000; before the powered run engineers found the lubrication pressure pumps outflowing the scavenge pumps and recalibrated them, and a borescope between runs found no internal rubbing. Design ratings are 400 hp maximum continuous, 440 hp for takeoff, and 500 hp for up to 30 seconds, none of which were demonstrated in these initial runs. The engine is destined for Hill's five-seat HX50, with ground testing projected for February 2027 and first flight in April.
Pilot Groups Press FAA On Aircraft Registry Data (2 minute read)
AOPA, EAA, NBAA, and Vertical Aviation International sent the FAA a July 31 letter urging tighter limits on public release of aircraft owners' names and addresses as the agency implements privacy provisions of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024. Since March 2025 owners have been able to request withholding through the FAA's CARES system, and the agency is now weighing whether to withhold some owner information by default rather than case by case. The groups' technical argument is the combination problem: registry data joined to flight-tracking services links an aircraft's movements to a named owner, which they say falls outside the registry's actual purposes of establishing ownership, recording security interests, and supporting safety oversight. AOPA's Jim Coon singled out airport fee collection as the use that "crosses the line."
Utah Begins Real-World Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Demonstrations (1 minute read)
The Utah Department of Transportation flew an Ampaire EEL hybrid-electric aircraft close to 250 miles from Salt Lake City to Cedar City, the first of several demonstrations planned over the next three years under the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program. The EEL serves as the testbed for Ampaire's AMP-H570 hybrid-electric propulsion system, and flying it across Utah's mountainous terrain is meant to generate operational data for future cargo and passenger services. UDOT's "uFLY" program is a lead project within the eIPP, with the collected data intended to inform future FAA rulemaking on advanced air mobility and applications spanning cargo delivery, emergency response, and rural connectivity across the Western U.S.
ForeFlight Power Users Training Continues to Grow with More Than 3 Hours of New Content (2 minute read)
ForeFlight's education team added more than three hours of lessons to its Power Users Training course, bringing the total past eight hours of video. The new material covers Emergency Glide, Map Annotations 2.0, Mobile Clearance Delivery, Custom Content importing, and ClearNOTAMs — the AI-powered feature that translates heavily coded NOTAMs into plain-language summaries. The course runs $75 a year through the Sporty's Pilot Training app on iPad, iPhone, and web, and the new lessons are free to current subscribers. It's built around real-world pilot workflows rather than feature-by-feature demos, extending existing modules on Route Advisor, Dynamic Procedures, weight and balance, and Logbook.
Military GPS Jamming Under Scrutiny In Fatal New Mexico Medevac Accident (3 minute read)
New reporting has renewed scrutiny of a military electronic warfare exercise near White Sands Missile Range as a possible factor in the May crash of a medevac Beechcraft King Air flying Roswell to Ruidoso, which killed both pilots and two medical crewmembers. The crew reportedly lost reliable satellite navigation while approaching mountainous terrain at night, and three other aircraft in the area experienced GPS disruptions during the same exercise, suggesting the interference extended well beyond a single flight. Investigators have linked the outage to the sequence of events but have not concluded that jamming caused the accident, and no probable cause has been determined. AOPA figures cited in the story show reported GPS disruption events in the continental U.S. climbing from four in 2020 to 50 in 2024, with another 40 recorded in 2025.
AI Flies X-62 VISTA Live-Target Intercepts (2 minute read)
The Air Force's X-62 VISTA — a heavily modified Block 30 F-16D — completed 27 AI-controlled intercepts across eight April flights at Edwards, with an onboard AI agent maneuvering the aircraft against a T-38 using live infrared data from Lockheed Martin's Legion Pod search-and-track sensor. The distinction from prior autonomy work is that the agent responded directly to an operational airborne sensor rather than to simulated target information. A parallel program, HAVE HOLIDAYS, installed a third-party autonomous agent in the X-62's Enterprise Open Mission System Architecture computer and evaluated safety rules meant to keep an autonomous aircraft inside operator-established limits. Planned upgrades include an RTX PhantomStrike radar and expanded compute, and the first X-62 Research Symposium runs at Edwards August 11-13.
Elixir, Turbotech Move Turbine Trainer Toward Certification (2 minute read)
Elixir Aircraft and Turbotech signed a July 22 memorandum of understanding to move the two-seat Elixir Turbine past its demonstrator phase into industrial development, covering production integration and preparation for EASA and FAA certification programs targeting a 2030 entry into service. The airframe pairs Elixir's Carbon OneShot composite structure with Turbotech's TP-R90 turbine, which uses single-lever power control and runs on multiple fuels including sustainable aviation fuel. The demonstrator first ran its engine on the ground in February 2025 and flew that June before completing an initial flight-test campaign. Elixir is aiming the turbine at flight schools chasing lower operating costs and longer intervals between overhauls; it is a separate program from the piston trainer that earned FAA certification in July 2025 and began U.S. deliveries this year.
