On an upbeat note, here are new jets coming down the line:

Bombardier is offering its Learjet 70, 75, and 85 models this year along with the Global 7000 in 2014 and the Global 8000 in 2018.

Bombardier will upgrade the Challenger 300.

Embraer’s Legacy 500, a competitor of the Challenger 300, will appear in public for the first time at EBACE this week with deliveries starting next year. The Legacy 450 will be delivered in 2015.

Pilatus is ready to talk (more) about its PC-24 jet.

Nextant is upgrading its 400XT.

Cessna is coming out with its M2, the new profit-saving Sovereign, the new Citation X, and the Latitude. In 2017 Cessna will deliver the Longitude.

Dassault will announce its super midsize jet( soon?), and this year offers the Falcon 2000S and 2000LXS.

Gulfstream is working on a replacement for the G450 and G550. It’s still a secret.

Landing gear is helpful. It was an unusual sight at Spirit of St. Louis Airport – a 1980 Centurian P210 doing a belly landing, reports KSDK.com.

He should have given a hoot. A man who allegedly repeatedly harassed and kicked an owl while paragliding and captured it on YouTube has created a firestorm among animal lovers and paragliders, reports FOX 13.  The Humane Society of Utah suspects it knows the man seen in the video and has asked for an investigation.

Miracle landing number one.  Quentin Elkins is lucky to be alive after his aircraft lost power and made an emergency landing four miles from Knoxville Downtown Island Airport, reports KnoxNews.com.

Miracle landing number two. A pilot of a seaplane had to make an emergency landing in Inlet, N.Y.’s, Seventh Lake, reports WKTV.  He was able to swim to shore uninjured.

Drugs in airplanes just don’t fly.  Two men are facing federal drug charges after the aircraft they had parked at Texas’  Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport was found to have  98 bundles of marijuana, four bundles of hashish and two bundles of mushrooms aboard the Piper PA-28, reports the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

This was a test. This was only a test.  You will be forgiven if you thought a recent training exercise by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service looked real. Fifty firefighters worked with ambulance crews, police officers and workers from other agencies to participate in a drill that used the crash of an aircraft into a high-rise building in Glasgow, reports STV News.

Wheels would have been helpful.  Pilot Roland Rinnerberger made an emergency belly landing at Scottsdale Municipal Airport, reports KJRH-TV.  He was not injured in the accident. Video of the landing can be seen here.

It just blew its top!  Two pilots departing from Midland International Airport flying a World War II-era German Messerschmitt Me 262 lost the aircraft’s rear canopy because it hadn’t been latched properly, reports the Midland Reporter-Telegram.  

It’s always good when you can walk away.  A pilot who made an emergency landing in a vineyard in Santa Rosa, Calif., walked away with no injuries, reports ABC7 News.  The pilot reported he was having a problem with the throttle, which caused his aircraft to idle.

The final waypoint on this STAR for arrivals landing to the west on Runway 26 Left or 26 Right is KEAVY, and like many waypoints today, there’s a story behind it.

Keavy Nenninger learned to fly while she was in high school by pumping gas into airplanes at Moontown Airport–a grassroots airport with a 2,180-foot grass runway just outside of Huntsville, Alabama. Ralph Hood wrote about her checkride in Flight Training magazine in the way that only Ralph Hood could write. She earned a degree in aerospace engineering from St. Louis University’s Parks College of Engineering and Aviation in 2010. There, Keavy was a member of the college’s flight team. She pursued a career in aviation, a passion that she lived and breathed. I met her once at a Women in Aviation conference and remember thinking, “Here’s somebody that’s going places in this industry.”

 Tragically, Keavy died July 23, 2011, in an aircraft accident in Maryland. “Keavy’s adventurous spirit was infectious and she died doing what she loved most–flying,” her obituary read.

Today would have been her 27th birthday.

Her friends will gather for a cookout at Moontown Airport on Saturday evening, May 4–not all that far, by air, from KEAVY, just northwest of Atlanta.

Water landing number one.  Four passengers aboard a Beechcraft A36 Bonanza managed to walk away with only minor injuries after the aircraft made an emergency landing in California’s Big Bear Lake, reports the LA Times. The pilot was attempting to land at Big Bear Airport after reporting he was having engine trouble.

Water landing number two. A pilot and his passenger sustained minor injuries after the Cessna seaplane they were flying flipped after landing in Florida’s St. Johns River, reports WTEV-TV.  The landing gear had been left down.

It’s two treats in one!  AvWeb reports seeing the Discovery 201, a pickup truck/aircraft combination at the recent Sun ‘n Fun Expo. The aircraft is a derivative of Russia’s Akord 201, which was used as a  heavy-hauling utility airplane.

Not the glider landing he wanted.  Glider pilot Jeff Long was not injured after his motor glider crashed into a tree at the Beechcraft Heritage Museum in Tullahoma, Tenn., reports the Tullahoma News.

“As a result of employee furloughs due to sequestration, the FAA is implementing traffic management initiatives at airports and facilities around the country. Travelers can expect to see a wide range of delays that will change throughout the day depending on staffing and weather related issues. For example, the FAA is experiencing staffing challenges at the New York and Los Angeles En Route Centers and at the Dallas-Ft. Worth and Las Vegas TRACONs. Controllers will space planes farther apart so they can manage traffic with current staff, which will lead to delays at airports including DFW, Las Vegas and LAX. The FAA also expects delays at Newark and LaGuardia because of weather and winds.

“The FAA will continue to work with the airlines throughout the day to try and minimize delays for travelers. We encourage all travelers to check their flight status and also to visit fly.faa.gov for the latest airport delay information.

“Yesterday more than 1,200 delays in the system were attributable to staffing reductions resulting from the furlough. There were more than 1,400 additional delays as a result of weather and other factors.”

So do your job, public. Sound off about how steamed you are over the delays. After all, you’re part of the game. Personally, I don’t like games.

The highway became a runway.  A crew of two flying a vintage Beechcraft 18 cargo aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing on an isolated part of Florida’s US 27 after losing both engines, reports CBS News.  The flight was an instructional one on handling stalls that became an actual emergency.

Nice landing, but having a nosewheel does help. The Independent.ie website has posted dramatic footage of a twin turbine aircraft making an emergency landing in Toowoomba, Australia, without its nosewheel.

Do the crime? Do the time!   Adam Gardenhire is facing 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to pointing a laser in the cockpits of a Netjets Cessna Citation and a police helicopter, reports AvWeb. His defense? “I didn’t know it was dangerous.”

Two more walk away. A pilot who made an emergency landing at North Carolina’s Piedmont Triad International Airport after the landing gear of his Mooney  M20F collapsed, reports MyFox8.com.  And another pilot walked away after making an emergency landing on New Zealand’s Gisborne beach, reports the Dominion Post.

OK, that WAS a joke.  France’s La Poste wrote a story about how it was going to start delivering newspapers via drone as part of its modernization program. The problem was, the story was an April Fool’s joke.