Aircraft

With an apparent growing need for flight training all around the world, Cessna has secured a big order for the most popular training airplane in history, the 172 Skyhawk. ViraZH, a flight training provider in Moscow, signed a contract for 79 Skyhawks at last week’s Jet Expo Russia, which took place at the Vnukovo-3 Business […]

We received a press release from Lam Aviation concerning a novel type of aileron, which was said to have brought about remarkable performance gains on a Lancair Columbia testbed. Cruising speed increased by 12 to 16 knots, fuel consumption decreased by 20 to 30 percent, and rate of climb increased by 40 to 50 percent. […]

In the driving rain, I taxied the big Gulfstream G650 across the ramp, being careful to keep it at a crawl on the slightly downhill grade. The line guy in optic-green rain gear directed me to nose up to the slab-sided metal hangar, its proud Gulfstream logo just visible through the fast-moving streaks of water […]

Airbus won enviro-bragging rights at last week’s GreenTec award ceremony, claiming Europe’s “most important environment and business award” for its work on fuel cells in commercial aircraft. But all eyes were also focused on the latest model from Volocopter, which was suspended from the ceiling during the presentation. Volocopter’s recently completed two-seat prototype, the VC200, […]

A group named Directional Aviation Capital has purchased Flexjet, the fractional ownership business formerly operated as a division of Bombardier. There is no doubt that the new owners have great faith in the business. As part of the ownership change, the newly formed Flexjet, LLC signed a deal with Bombardier that could add up to […]

Pipistrel has introduced a new LSA, which offers the capability of quickly turning the airplane from a motorglider into a cross-country cruiser. The Sinus Flex is a standard Sinus model, which was designed with a 49-foot 1.5-inch wingspan. But the outermost parts of the Flex version’s wings are removable and can be substituted for shorter […]

Cessna took the first production version of its latest Citation, the M2, to the skies from the company’s facility in Independence, Kansas, where the twinjet will be produced alongside the Citation Mustang and Cessna’s single-engine products. Production test pilots Terry Martindale and Corey Eckhart flew the M2 up to 17,500 feet, testing the jet for […]

The market for aircraft refurbishment is on pace to expand to $4.3 billion per year over the next five years, according to a report by MarketsandMarkets.com. That’s up from $3.04 billion spent in 2012. The report cites needs for fleet expansion among airlines and cargo carriers, but also the business aviation sector. Undoubtedly, the big […]

de Havilland Mosquito photos by Scott Slocum| When I first came across Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft as a new associate editor at Flying magazine in the mid-1990s, I was already a longtime aviation-history enthusiast — an incurable condition I inherited from my father. Jane’s, as I hope you know, is the record of aircraft […]

Beechcraft celebrated this week as the production version of the new AT-6 Texan II light attack airplane completed its first flight in Wichita. “It flies beautifully,” Lionel Alford, one of the test pilots of the inaugural flight, said after the successful mission. “This achievement highlights the tremendous effort of the entire Beechcraft team involved in […]