by Isabel Goyer

Aerostar Aircraft Corporation showed up on Tuesday at AirVenture with a Pratt & Whitney PW615-powered 601P Aerostar modification. It was the first public showing of the airplane, which is undergoing early flight test and configuration. The airplane is a work in progress in many respects. There are no boots on it yet. The pressurization system […]

Embraer’s president of executive jets, Ernie Edwards, greeted journalists on a rainy Wednesday morning to present a status update on Embraer’s bizjet business. While this AirVenture appearance by a jet maker would have been unheard of a decade ago, the group of reporters on hand included several who work for outlets that exclusively write about […]

Have you ever wondered why the departure procedures from Oshkosh and its surrounding airports are so brief compared to the complex arrival procedures that govern airplanes heading into the show. It’s an easy explanation. Think of airplanes as being water flowing to Oshkosh and of Oshkosh as being a big puddle of airplanes located directly […]

EAA Chairman Tom Poberezny abruptly retired from the organization on Tuesday in a small event that wasn’t widely announced. During his improvised remarks at that ceremony, Poberezny thanked EAA members and stressed that the real strength of the organization was in its members and that the greatest pride he took in the job was in […]

The day before the official opening of AirVenture, Rockwell Collins in a press event at its impressive new AirVenture pavillion launched a touchscreen component to its Pro Line Fusion integrated flight deck. The touchscreens are scalable, meaning they can be incorporated into a number of installations going forward. The Fusion platform is already planned to […]

Blackhawk Modifications has gotten the FAA seal of approval for its Pratt & Whitney Canada engine upgrade program. The STC swaps out the 675-hp Pratt & Whitney PT-6A-114A for the 850-shp PT6A-42A, an increase of 26 percent. The mod gives operators an increase in takeoff work of 4 percent, 20 percent shorter takeoff performance, and […]

Flight Design came to AirVenture with a mockup of its four-seat C4 and said that it was close to making selections for the suppliers for the engine and the avionics. An all-carbon-fiber Part 23 high-cantilever-wing airplane designed to be a kind of amalgam of Skyhawk, Skylane and Cardinal, the C4 has projected specs — if […]

In a sign that the Chinese market is extremely important to the company, Gulfstream earlier this week changed the name of its super-midsize business jet from the Gulfstream G250 to the Gulfstream G280. The change was prompted because the company “determined that G280 is a more amenable number sequence in certain cultures,” said Larry Flynn, […]

The NTSB has launched a study of homebuilt aircraft that aims to gather data about the machines that make up what NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman cited as having played “A crucial and inspirational role in leading the way toward greater achievements in manned flight.” The purpose of the study, however, is not to inspire advancements […]

I recently got the chance to spend a couple of weeks doing some training at SimCom‘s Lee Vista training center (one of two such SimCom facilities in Orlando alone), and I had a great time. The great time was no coincidence: it’s part of SimCom’s business plan. No lie. SimCom got started as a pure […]