Stephen Pope

The pine trees in south Georgia sure grow tall. This was the singular thought that kept racing through my mind as we blasted across the open peanut field at 145 miles per hour five feet off the ground before pitching up at the last instant to skim over the tops of the 90-foot-tall trees, missing […]

Even as Eurocopter continues with the rapid development of its X3 compound helicopter, the company is planning a two-phase introduction of the advanced X4 helicopter, with the first version entering service in 2017 followed by the second in 2020. The X4 is an EC 155 replacement that Eurocopter says will test the boundaries of what […]

I spent the last couple of days in Queretaro, Mexico, the flashpoint for the Mexican rebellion against Spain in 1810 and, more recently, the site of a brand new Bombardier factory where composite structural components including fuselages and wings for the Learjet 85 are being manufactured. The biggest surprises on my visit weren’t inside the […]

Bombardier is prepping for the start of certification flight testing of the all-composite Learjet 85 as the first of five eventual test airplanes for the program undergoes final assembly in Wichita. Bombardier isn’t saying exactly when the first flight will occur, but with certification and entry-into-service of the Learjet 85 targeted for late next year, […]

An apparently confused pilot of a Piper Arrow recently landed on State Route 64 instead of at Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park Airport, according to a report by the Arizona Republic. “The plane did not crash, [it] simply landed on the highway,” the paper quoted an Arizona Department of Public Safety official as saying. “We […]

Investigators are trying to determine whether a flock of birds might have caused the crash of a Eurocopter AS355 in central New Jersey that killed a retired New York City police officer. Michael Scarfia, 65, of Staten Island was identified as the pilot of the twin-engine helicopter that went down in a cornfield shortly after […]

As we continue to ponder what we’ll fill our gas tanks with in the future – Diesel? Biofuel? Maybe even plastic, as one intrepid Cessna 182 pilot hopes to do soon – it’s pretty interesting to look back through aviation history and realize that even early pioneers sought out alternatives to the gasoline internal combustion […]

In what would be a blockbuster shakeup of Europe’s aerospace industry, Britain’s BAE Systems and Airbus-owner EADS announced on Wednesday that they have entered advanced merger talks to create an industry behemoth that would overtake rival Boeing in global sales. The proposed deal, the biggest in Europe since the 2000 merger that created EADS under […]

The National Research Council of Canada is preparing for the first-ever test flights of a civil jet powered by 100-percent unblended biofuel. Most testing to date has been flown with a 50-50 blend of biofuel and regular jet fuel. Created from mustard oilseeds, the ReadiJet fuel the NRC plans to use in its Falcon 20 […]

Suddenly there’s a red-hot competition under way to develop rotorcraft capable of flying at sustained speeds well above the theoretical limits of conventional helicopters. To meet the challenge, engineers at some of the top helicopter manufacturers are turning out radical concepts that look downright bizarre. But the big surprise is these odd birds actually fly […]