Aircraft

Last spring thousands of aviation enthusiasts and hundreds of companies flocked to the grounds of Sun ‘n Fun to take part in one of general aviation’s biggest annual events. One such company was Lockwood Aircraft Corp., a venture centered upon the one-of-a-kind homebuilt aircraft known as the AirCam and the tight-knit community of aviators who […]

Burt Rutan’s list of airplanes designed and flown (45), of honorary Doctoral Degrees (6!), of national and international awards (112), of patents held (7), and of design projects related to aviation in some way (several hundred) takes up 11 pages! This all occurred in the years between 1965, when he graduated from California Polytechnic University, […]

Embraer’s newly opened facility in Melbourne, Florida, is already about to expand. The Embraer Engineering and Technology Center, a 67,000-square-foot aviation research, development and design center, will be built adjacent to Embraer’s 80,000-square-foot Phenom assembly plant and 58,000-square-foot customer center, both of which opened last year. Construction on the new facility will begin immediately and […]

The launch of the 2012 Cirrus SR22 is noteworthy thanks to a couple of new features but even more so because, in aggregate, this is the year that the Cirrus SR22 has really arrived at the top of the heap. Back in the 1960s, the launches of a new model year’s airplanes used to be […]

Cirrus Aircraft has told Flying that it won’t be at next week’s Sun ‘n Fun fly-in in Lakeland, Florida. The company knows that the decision will prompt rumors, and it’s right. We’ve already started hearing them. Any time a major single-engine airplane manufacturer skips one of the country’s major airshows, the result is often suspicion […]

If you’re fascinated by anthills,** Boeing’s new flight tracking system** is definitely for you. The Boeing Flight Tracker shows Boeing airplane activity around the world during a 24-hour period based on data provided by OAG (Official Airline Guide). The displayed flights are not in real time. The current data is based on information collected in […]

Just a few months after EASA granted approval to GE Aviation’s new H80 turboprop engine, the FAA has given the engine the green light as well. With FAA type certification now in hand, the 800 horsepower H80 is cleared for use on the Thrush 510G crop duster, which made its first flight with the H80 […]

The shared ownership market got a new entry recently when Atlanta (PDK) based Ascension Air launched its Cirrus shared ownership service. Ascension Air offers eighth shares in new Cirrus SR22s at remarkably competitive rates. According to Ascension Air, pilots can get into a new airplane for around $10,000 down and a flat monthly fee of […]

Italian aircraft maker Tecnam, which is perhaps best known for its LSA models but which is now branching out in new directions, has issued a progress report on one of those new models, the four-place P-2010, which, taking a page out of Cessna’s Citation X/Ten playbook, it has nicknamed the Twenty-Ten. The to-be-certified model is […]

One of Cessna’s newest bizjets, the Citation M2, took to the skies on Friday for its maiden flight, remaining airborne for approximately an hour and half as the prototype’s crew conducted the first round of preliminary tests of the aircraft’s Garmin G3000 avionics suite, autopilot and engines. During the flight, which also included tests of […]