Aircraft

Textron Aviation president and CEO Scott Ernest announced on Monday that the company’s largest airplane, the $26 million Longitude large cabin jet, was making good progress and is on track for its targeted certification in 2017. That date that will presumably protect the company from the delays plaguing Dassault in the certification program for its […]

Dassault CEO Eric Trappier told reporters at EBACE that the Safran Silvercrest engine slated to power the company’s new Falcon 5X long range jet is delayed in its certification and suggested that the delay would likely push back certification of the 5X by many months. Dassault said the delay is a result of flight test […]

On the opening day of EBACE Textron Aviation announced that the standard avionics package for its entire King Air lineup would be the Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion suite. The flagship King Air 350 and popular King Air 250 will get the new flight decks by this summer, and the C90GTX will get it later […]

Gulfstream on Tuesday made a surprise announcement at the European business aviation gathering EBACE, sharing the news that its latest big bizjet, the G500, made its first flight on Monday. As we reported in our December issue, the G500 and G600 are closely related new jets that make use of the most advanced technology in […]

I was introduced to the art of buying and selling flying machines on a spring afternoon in 1965, standing next to an airplane salesman who’d just closed a deal on an AT-6 at Lunken Airport. The sound from that round engine as the buyer departed Runway 21R was glorious, but when it passed almost directly […]

When the idea to create a full-motion helicopter sim in which to train EMS personnel came to Joe Brown, CEO of Hartzell Propeller, he immediately thought of Jerry Gregoire, founder of Redbird Flight Simulations. Within a matter of months, the concept turned into a product, designed not to make money but to save lives. As […]

While the FAA is still establishing rules to govern unmanned aircraft systems, the agency continues to deliver materials to educate members of the public about what they can and cannot do with their drones. Most recently, the FAA has launched a campaign to make the public aware of a No Drone Zone in the area […]

You might not even have noticed, but the Cessna 182 has been out of production for the better part of the last three years. Would-be buyers of new Skylanes are painfully aware of this fact, and now they’re finally getting their wish. Cessna is putting the gasoline piston version of the Skylane back into production […]

I’ve been an airplane nut and have longed to have one of my very own for nearly as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, I have also been an inveterate cheapskate since childhood. Aviation is a fine vocation for a tightwad; if not quite a job requirement to begin with, frugality is at least one […]

Italian light airplane maker Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecnam is exploring a new two-seat jet design named the P JET. The sleek initial design has a side-by-side seating arrangement, tip tanks, and a twin tail. The airplane would be powered by a single jet engine mounted inside a pod on top of the fuselage — a configuration […]