Aircraft

SyberJet, the company that took over the Sino Swearingen SJ30 design after the company went bankrupt, broke ground yesterday on a new 30,000-square-foot completion, delivery and training center at the Cedar City Regional Airport (KCDC) in Cedar City, Utah. Several hundred people were in attendance at the groundbreaking event, including government officials, suppliers, family members […]

If you want real value from an airplane backed by a company with a great track record and a long history, look no further. The FAA has given its stamp of approval for Quicksilver Aircraft to begin producing and selling the factory-built Sport S2SE, a two-seat special light sport aircraft (S-LSA) that will sell for […]

A new private pilot, who had big dreams but not big money, was contemplating purchasing an older Mooney. He had limited mechanical skills and no concept of the potential cost of maintaining a complex airplane. He just liked the looks of the plane and its performance. Roger that. Many people buy their first aircraft for […]

We recently told you about Airbus’s ambitious plans for the VoltAir concept, a proposed electric-powered airliner that could take to the skies within 20 years — that vision is one step closer to reality with the successful flight test of a prototype electric airplane, called the E-Fan, in Bordeaux, France, that Airbus says was built […]

Most people who entered the doors of the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, to attend the 2014 edition of the Helicopter Association International’s annual convention, Heli-Expo, on Feb. 25 headed straight for the Bell Helicopter booth. A massive floor-to-ceiling arced screen had been set up, cornering off a significant portion of the display. One […]

While Bell Helicopter proved at Heli-Expo that the 505 Jet Ranger X is already a contender in the SLS market, there are some formidable platforms in this class of helicopters that have already been established. What follows are four comparable five-seat light turbine helicopters that Bell will have to work very hard at beating out […]

Icon Aircraft has provided an update on the Icon A5 amphibious LSA program. It has been nine months since the Tehachapi, California-based company received the go ahead from the FAA for a requested weight increase, which allowed Icon to give the A5 a gross weight of 1,510 pounds. With the weight increase secured, the engineering […]

The idea that the flight-control computers in a modern fly-by-wire airplane are in charge all of the time still sparks debate among pilots more than 25 years after the technology became the de facto standard in Airbus airliners. The very notion that the computers can ignore the pilot’s inputs if they so choose but the […]

The beginnings of any new flight segment is filled as much with dreams as with achievements, but one European company, Solar Flight, has been doing electrics for going on 25 years now. The company’s latest project, the Sunseeker Duo, made its first flight a few months ago and Solar Flight is now talking results. The […]

The FAA is giving helicopter operators another year to comply with new safety rules announced by the agency in February. The announcement of the delay came only a few days before the rules were set to go into effect, which was scheduled to happen today. Instead the date for compliance is now set for April […]