Aircraft

Earlier this week at a Cessna Citation owners conference in Wichita, Cessna President and CEO Scott Ernest responded to a blog in Tuesday’s Flying eNews entitled “Cessna CJ Hiatus: End of the Niche Jet.” The article wondered what Cessna’s slowdown in Citation production, announced earlier in the week, might mean in the long run for […]

With 13 airplanes on the production line, Cessna’s jet-A-burning Turbo Skylane JT-A is on schedule for certification and first deliveries before the end of June. “We are on track,” said Jeff Umscheid, business leader for the project. “We have been taking orders since [EAA AirVenture 2012 last summer].” The JT-A’s SMA diesel engine is exhibiting […]

The sleek Pipistrel Panthera piston-single prototype made a surprise journey over the Alps from its home in Slovenia to the Aero Friedrichshafen show in Germany yesterday. As soon as the airplane landed around 1 p.m. local time, it began drawing crowds wanting a closer look. The Panthera is a four-seater that its maker claims will […]

Diamond Aircraft is showing an intriguing mockup of the DA50 Turbine at the Aero Friedrichshafen show in Germany this week. The proposed model would be an upgraded version of Diamond’s developmental DA50 Magnum piston single, with power coming from a 450 shp AI-450S turbine engine built by Ukrainian company Motor Sich JSC. Diamond is showing […]

After hinting at the release of a new LSA design named Astore a few weeks ago, Costruzioni Aeronautiche Tecnam officially unveiled its most recent offering this week at the Aero Friedrichshafen show in Germany. And, as promised, the new design has a low wing. The only commonalities between the Astore and Tecnam’s other low-wing LSA […]

Commercial flights of the Boeing 787 could resume as early as next week after Boeing on Monday began installing reinforced lithium ion batteries on five grounded 787s operated by launch customer All Nippon Airways. Teams of Boeing engineers are working at four airports in Japan, including Tokyo’s Haneda and Narita hubs, where the Dreamliners have […]

Randall Fishman brought his ElectraFlyer ULS motorglider to EAA AirVenture last summer and made a follow-up visit to Sun ‘n Fun in Lakeland, Florida, earlier this month. In the time between, he has logged some 30 hours of flight time on the airplane, and many of the performance numbers have more real-world backdrop. For example, […]

The first production-conforming version of the much-anticipated Cirrus Jet is slated to roll out by the end of this year, with flight testing to begin in 2014. Since the first Cirrus Jet prototype was unveiled in 2008, the program has completed more than 600 flight hours. Cirrus is currently building the newest prototype — the […]

View our Global 6000 photo gallery here.| When I saw the it on the ramp at Bradley International Airport (BDL) in Connecticut, my first impression of the Bombardier Global 6000, the company’s latest ultra-long-range wonder, was simply that it is a staggeringly beautiful airplane. The one I was looking at, and which I’d shortly get […]

The ailerons of my homebuilt aircraft, Melmoth 2, are quite similar to those of a 1918 Fokker D.8. You would think that a great deal might have changed in nine decades, but apparently not. Perhaps it’s true, if not in biology then at least in aviation, that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” — that is, the development […]