Aircraft

Van’s builders have been practically begging BRS Aerospace to offer its whole-airframe emergency recovery parachutes for the lineup of popular homebuilts – and now BRS has delivered by making the rocket-fired chutes available for the Van’s RV-7 and RV-9. It took some creative engineering to add a parachute to the RV models, but the company […]

Boeing’s run of dismal press relating to the 787 Dreamliner continued this week with a report out of Japan that the fire suppression system on the advanced jet could improperly discharge fire suppressant to the wrong engine in the event of a fire. Japan’s All Nippon Airways said it discovered a wiring fault that would […]

Cessna has rolled out the first production Citation M2, the successor to the entry-level Citation CJ1+, designed expressly to be the step-up model for owner-pilots of the Mustang. Like the Mustang, M2 has Garmin avionics, but in this case they are not G1000 but the cutting-edge G3000, designed for light jets. The new 400-knot jet […]

Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX completed an impressive precision flight on Tuesday with the Falcon 9 rocket, also called the Grasshopper. In what SpaceX referred to as a divert test, the rocket climbed to an altitude of about 800 feet, then moved about 300 feet laterally before making a picture perfect landing at the center of its […]

As a result of multiple cases of cylinder head cracks and cylinder head-to-barrel separations related to cylinder assemblies supplied by Engine Components International (ECi) in Continental engines, the FAA has proposed an airworthiness directive that could cost aircraft owners big money. The affected engines include Continental’s IO-520, TSIO-520, IO-550 and IOF-550 among others — engines […]

On Saturday August 24 the National Transportation Safety Board will hold a seminar on “lessons learned” from accidents involving experimental amateur-built (E-AB) aircraft. Though some 33,000 E-ABs constitute a bit less than 10 percent of the U.S. GA fleet, the category accounts for 15 percent of accidents and more than 20 percent of fatal accidents, […]

Cirrus Aircraft was one of the players behind this year’s improved delivery numbers for the first half. According to the General Aviation Manufacturers Association report, aircraft deliveries were up 8.9 percent overall compared with last year’s first six months, with deliveries of piston airplanes up 16.1 percent. Cirrus reported a 32-percent increase during the second […]

Two teams of students participated in Glasair’s “Two Weeks to Taxi” fast build program, and the aircraft they helped produce were on display at Oshkosh AirVenture last week. During a ceremony at the Jeppesen tent, most of the students were introduced along with their teachers. After the two-week initial build period was completed, further assembly […]

John and Martha King, founders of King Schools, and Matt Zuccaro, president of Helicopter Association International (HAI), announced at AirVenture this week the launch of a flight instructor refresher course (FIRC) specifically designed for helicopter instructors. This is the first time a helicopter-specific FIRC has been offered online. As with King Schools’ regular FIRC, the […]

Kestrel Aircraft’s CEO and president Alan Klapmeier and the company’s COO and executive vice president of product development Steve Serfling provided an update to the media on the Kestrel single-engine turboprop project in a press conference at AirVenture. Klapmeier said he had hoped to be able to announce full funding for the Kestrel turboprop program […]