Aircraft

As Boeing moves ahead with plans to leave Wichita, Learjet revealed it will expand its footprint there. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and ** Bombardier** Business Aircraft President Steve Ridolfi on Tuesday announced an expansion of the company’s Learjet production site, saying the growth will create 450 new jobs over the next seven to 10 years. […]

Could it be the first sign of a broader industry turnaround? The blossoming of a single flower signaling the end of long, hard economic winter? It’s hard to say, but the news is encouraging: Robinson Helicopter Co. just reported it more than doubled its production in 2011, building 356 helicopters last year versus 162 in […]

The engineers at Tecnam appear to be frantically pumping out new LSA designs, and now the company is focusing its attention on tailwheel lovers – a group of pilots who are ignored by most manufacturers these days. A tailwheel version of the P92 has been brought to the market on the heels of the P92 […]

Tecnam has just increased the versatility of its popular P92 high-wing LSA series airplanes by introducing an amphibious version, the P92 Sea-Sky Hydroplane. This seaplane model will be offered for both the Echo Classic and its slightly larger and faster sibling, the Eaglet. Flight tests are in progress and the only performance numbers available so […]

A father and daughter from Alabama are continuing their medical mission in Haiti after safely ditching off the coast of Florida near the Bahamas on Saturday when the engine in their Cirrus SR22 suddenly quit. Dr. Richard McGlaughlin, 59, and his daughter, Elaine McGlaughlin, 25, departed from their home near Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday for […]

_Enola Gay. FIFI. The Great Artiste. Kee Bird. The Big Stink. _ It was an airplane dubbed “Superfortress.” Yet many of the most famous Boeing B-29 bombers that plied the skies during the latter days of World War II carried strangely meek-sounding individual names. Perhaps that’s of benefit to our collective psyche since the airplanes […]

At its Global Sales meeting at Disney’s Epcot Center in Florida, Cirrus unveiled the latest Cirrus SR22 to its dealers, and the big news is, it now has an optional fifth seat. The five-seat layout is not a new model but rather an optional seating layout for the 2012 SR22, so there’s no new model […]

Toy hauler, corporate transport, rescue platform. A look at the airplane that can do it all.

__It was a typical November day along the Front Range in Colorado at Rocky Mountain Metro Airport (Jeffco). Against an almost too-perfect sky, the wind was flowing downstream from the west, whistling through the struts and tiedown ropes of the airplanes parked on the wide-open ramp. Looking west toward the Rockies, the sight was a […]

Just when the city’s staggering job losses appeared at an end, Boeing on Wednesday announced plans to close its Wichita defense site next year and move tanker work that would have been performed there to Washington state. The decision will mean the elimination of positions for more than 2,000 workers. The company had said in […]