by Isabel Goyer

A couple of weeks before the National Business Aviation Association convention, at a gathering of journalists in Paris, French aircraft manufacturer Dassault launched its latest jet, the Falcon 5X, a twinjet. The project had been known as the SMS, though Dassault had never officially revealed any details of the program. The 5X, a 69,500-pound large-body […]

If you’ve seen the ads in Flying for the new David Clark DC Pro-X, you might have wondered what was up with this new product, which looks — save the color of the domes — like nothing David Clark has ever done before. I wondered too. The brand has a reputation for ruggedness, reliability and […]

It’s been almost 20 years now that diesel technology has been a promising alternative for light general aviation, though the adoption of compression engines has taken longer and has suffered more teething pains than its proponents anticipated. I’ve had the chance to fly five different airplanes with four different diesel engines — the original Thielert, […]

Is your pilot watch not big enough? Not flashy enough? Then consider the HM4 Thunderbolt, the latest in a series of watches by upscale Geneva-based mechanical art design house MB&F. The Thunderbolt is a conversation starter, to be sure. It is a watch inspired by both the A-10 Warthog and the post modern steampunk movement. […]

Amazon gave a whole new meaning to the concept of “air mail” on Sunday when the Internet giant announced a program to deliver packages to customers via drone, a plan that was first announced on the CBS news magazine show “60 Minutes.” In a video demonstration produced by Amazon, you can see a multicopter drone […]

Shell has developed what it seems to think is an unleaded avgas replacement that’s ready to go, once testing is complete and certification earned. The new 100-octane fuel would be a drop-in replacement for 100LL. Shell worked with Piper and Lycoming in conducting preliminary tests of the new fuel. In a press release Xinsheng (Sheng) […]

The pilot of the airplane that ATC saw flying a missed approach after the Boeing 747-400 Dreamlifter landed on the too-short runway at Jabara in Wichita Sunday night has spoken with Flying about his experience. The corporate pilot, who asked to remain nameless in this story, was inbound to Jabara “around 50 miles out,” deadheading […]

Now that the world knows the story of the Boeing 747 Dreamlifter that landed at the wrong Wichita-area airport on Wednesday night, everybody is asking the same question: how could it have happened? That is, how could a professional crew of a large cargo airliner get it so wrong? The answer is, it’s all too […]

Every pilot knows (or should know) that New Zealand is one of the most, if not the most, beautiful places to fly on the planet. But is it really fair that even their instrument approaches, which in our neck of the woods are typically grey and dismal affairs, should be spectacularly beautiful as well? We […]

The only good news about controlled flight into terrain accidents is that there’s usually no suffering. When an airplane travelling in excess of 100 knots hits an immovable object, the lights, to paraphrase Tony Soprano, simply go out. The fact that for practitioners of personal flying CFIT is still a major cause of accidents should […]