Aircraft

With media attention increasingly focused on the safety of UAVs, the House aviation subcommittee will hold a hearing this week on the status of drone integration into U.S. airspace. The hearing will focus on the state of the emerging UAV industry in the United States, including the FAA’s efforts to safely integrate unmanned drones into […]

Dassault is making good progress on the development of the** Falcon 5X wide-body twinjet**, which was announced at the National Business Aviation Association’s annual convention last year, and the Falcon 8X, the ultra-long-range bizjet announced at the European Business Aviation Convention and Expo this year. Company pilots started testing the 5X in a simulator environment […]

A company out of Cotswold, England, called Faradair, which also has roots in the United States, is in the process of developing an airplane that incorporates environmentally friendly propulsion methods melded into what it calls a Bio Electric Hybrid Aircraft, or BEHA for short. The hybrid airplane is designed for six occupants and features a […]

Torrance, California-based Robinson Helicopter has achieved FAA certification for inflatable floats for its turbine-powered R66 — an option named the R66 Turbine Marine. The floats were primarily added for emergency purposes in case of a forced landing while flying over water. While primarily designed for emergency use, the floats are approved for water takeoffs during […]

About a year ago we reported on the development of a flying car by a company in Slovenia called Aeromobil. The company has now taken a new version of the aircraft to the skies — the Aeromobil 3.0 — and it looks like progress has been made. In comparing the video of the new version […]

Insufficient testing and a poor understanding of a novel lithium-ion battery design contributed to the grounding of Boeing’s 787 fleet last year after two separate fire and smoke incidents in January 2013, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report issued on Monday. Boeing, the FAA and the 787’s Japanese battery maker shared the blame […]

Cirrus Aircraft celebrated the maiden flight of the second certification flight test Vision SF50 jet, dubbed C1, from the company’s headquarters in Duluth, Minnesota. C1 joins the first production test airplane, C0, in the FAA certification program, anticipated to lead to first customer deliveries of the single-engine Cirrus jet next year. C1’s first flight took […]

If you attended the Flying Aviation Expo in Palm Springs, California, you may have noticed a Pilatus PC-12 NG on display. If you didn’t take a closer look, you may not have noticed that this was not any Pilatus — it had been modified for special missions. Called the PC-12 NG Spectre, the airplane was […]

The Solar Impulse team has completed its last test flights in Switzerland and has started to disassemble the Solar Impulse 2 (Si2) in preparation for shipping to Abu Dhabi, where the all-solar-powered airplane will take off on its round-the-world journey. The team expects to start the historic flight in early March. After the first Solar […]

TBM fliers from near and far descended on New Orleans recently for Daher Socata’s record-breaking 2014 TBM Owners and Pilots Association convention. A total of 107 TBM airplanes – nearly ¼ of the entire North American TBM fleet – flew in for the event, raising attendance three percent over last year’s figures. The more than […]