Piper M700 FURY Receives FIKI Certification avweb.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from avweb.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Photo: Mark Phelps - AVweb
Glendon Fraser, director of the Newburgh, New York-based Lee A. Archer Jr. Redtail Youth Flying Program, accepted the keys to an appropriately red-tailed Piper Pilot 100i trainer during a ceremony at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh on Tuesday, July 27. Acting President and CEO of Piper Aircraft John Calcagno made the handoff in front of a vintage photograph depicting members of the famed Tuskegee Airmen being briefed for a combat mission. The red-tailed Piper, the first of two ordered in May, was parked in the background.
The aircraft will be the first flown at the Red Tail Academy, the name harking back to the nickname given the World War II-era African American pilots more formally known as the Tuskegee Airmen after the Alabama town where they received their advanced training. In combat, their P-51 Mustang fighters featured blood-red tail feathers, as will the new trainers to be used in the Red Tail Academy. Bomber crews escorted by the �