Aircraft

“Landing gears are made retractable in all modern high-speed airplanes. The drag of fixed ‘under-carriages’ used in old-type, and still in small and slow airplanes, is avoided in this manner.” Thus wrote Sighard Hoerner, the great compiler of drag data, in 1951. One of the oddities of the present moment is that of the three […]

Aerion Corp., the company that has been working for more than a decade to bring a supersonic business jet to market, will receive technical and certification support from Airbus in its quest to fly the revolutionary would-be airplane before the decade is out. For its trouble Airbus will receive access to Aerion’s proprietary natural laminar […]

The quest for low-cost, environmentally friendly flight continues. One company working on a solar powered all-electric two-seater called the Sun Flyer is Aero Electric Aircraft Corp. along with its development partners Bye Aerospace and German PC Aero. AEAC has started conducting research and development flights with a single-seat technology demonstrator at Centennial Airport (APA) near […]

Dassault announced this week that it is working on certification that will allow its Falcon 7X tri-engine long-range business jet to operate at airports located at altitudes up to 15,000 feet. The 7X has successfully flown out of the Daocheng Yading Airport, the world’s highest commercial airport at 14,472 feet, just a few feet short […]

Fascination with creating the fastest airplanes has existed since the dawn of aviation. The first air races sprung up as early as 1909 and speed records quickly reached new highs, pushing aerodynamic engineers to reduce drag. As engine technology advanced, aircraft were designed around these new power plants, and over time the introduction of wind […]

Doc’s Friends, the Wichita-based nonprofit organization that is restoring the B-29 Superfortress Doc to flying condition, says the historic airplane will be ready to fly as soon as the avionics, fuel tanks and a few other last remaining items are finished. The goal is to get the airplane back in the air by the end […]

You never forget your first love, especially the first airplane that captured your heart and ignited a passion for aviation forever. Take a look at the Flying editors and the story of first airplane loves. And feel free to tell us what your first love was down in the comments below! ** ** Isabel Goyer: […]

Initiatives within the helicopter community to reduce accidents appear to have yielded positive results. The United States Helicopter Safety Team (USHST), an organization made up of representatives from government agencies, industry groups, OEMs and flight schools, has published statistics that show a dramatic decrease in helicopter accident rates in the past 10 years. The statistics […]

The FAA has issued an emergency Certificate of Authorization (COA) to the National Institute of Standards and Technology of Gaithersburg, Maryland, for the use of a drone to aid in the search for a 23-year-old woman who disappeared recently near Plano, Texas. The request to the FAA came from the Plano Police Department. The emergency […]

Since its entry into service in 1996, the Cessna Model 750 Citation X (it is not the letter “X” but the Roman numeral 10) has occupied a special place in the bizjet world. It put its number in the books as a sleek ­midsize jet that could rocket coast to coast in the United States […]