Aircraft

| The five members of the National Transportation Safety Board seated at the semicircular dais are demanding answers. Inside the theater-style auditorium at 429 L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C., they grill safety experts and industry leaders for four long days. Their mission: to understand why the previous year was the deadliest ever for emergency medical […]

Helicopter pilots looking for guidelines for situations not covered by checklists, procedures or operating manuals can now get help from a new set of standards called the Helicopter Pilots Model Code of Conduct. The document was designed to help pilots interpret ambiguous regulations and to provide criteria for how to operate their helicopters while minimizing […]

Icon Aircraft has finished designing and testing the angle-of-attack indication system in the Icon A5 light sport amphibian and created an informative video showing just how the device works (view it below). The Icon A5’s AoA indicator is a round dial in the pilot’s line of sight showing a picture of a wing that increases […]

The German government has given the nod to what appears to be the first certification of an all-electric airplane, the eSpyder. While the certification was completed in February of this year, the announcement was just recently made. The eSpyder is an ultralight design with a single-seat cockpit held up by a fuselage boom onto which […]

Reading Ken Scott’s very sound advice to would-be homebuilders in Flying‘s May issue got me thinking about my own experiences, and how things have changed since I got involved in homebuilding. I started thinking about building an airplane around 1963. At that time there were no prefab kits on the market and only a limited […]

One of the toughest tasks in all of aviation is landing a jet on the narrow, rolling deck of an aircraft carrier. It might be even tougher when the job is done without a pilot on board. Yesterday an X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator successfully completed not one but two landings aboard the […]

Lisa Airplanes recently announced the company is resuming development of its Akoya LSA, a two-seat amphibian with foldable wings and retractable landing gear. The project was put on hold last summer when the young French company entered receivership after much-needed funding failed to come through. Lisa Airplanes said it “coped with the observation period during […]

Piper Aircraft has made a series of test flights in a Lycoming-powered Archer running on 93-octane premium automotive gasoline as the Vero Beach, Florida, manufacturer seeks a more environmentally friendly alternative to 100LL fuel. For the tests Piper worked with Airworthy AutoGas of Phoenix to evaluate a new high-purity unleaded fuel due to go on […]

Sonex Aircraft has announced that it will make production slots available for its “personal jet,” the single-place SubSonex kitplane. Details on terms of the order process (price, deposits, schedule, refund policy, and so on) are expected to be released at the Sonex Homecoming and Open House Fly-in event, on Sunday, July 28. The event begins […]

Europe’s EASA has signed off on a modified version of Tecnam’s best-selling P2002 Sierra with a variable pitch propeller. The P2002JF provides an increase in cruise speed of 5 to 7 knots and improved climb performance of an extra 150 to 200 fpm, the company claims. The new version of the two-seat low-wing LSA will […]