Aircraft

(September 2011) In 1920 it was already common knowledge among pilots that, as airplanes got very close to the ground, they seemed to slide along on a slippery cushion of air. A decade later, the phenomenon — “ground effect” — had been investigated in wind tunnels and flight tests and was well documented, even if […]

Marking a milestone in India’s first public-private partnership for aircraft development, the country’s CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories and Mahindra Aerospace have flown their jointly developed C-NM5 piston single for the first time. Engineers from CSIR-NAL and Mahindra Aerospace spent close to three years designing the airplane before building the real thing over a 10-month period with […]

Embraer is nearing completion of the first Legacy 500 twin-engine business jet, allowing the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer to start flight testing of the $18.4 million (2008 dollars) model on schedule by the end of this year. The Legacy 500 is a slightly larger version of the Legacy 450, with which it shares 95 percent commonality, […]

In a sign that the general aviation market may be stabilizing, Piper Aircraft said new aircraft billings in the first half of the year rose 16 percent compared with the same period last year. And the company says next year is shaping up to be even better. Piper delivered 38 of its M-class airplanes in […]

A second wild ride of an Air France Airbus has gained the attention of safety investigators. French media reports emerged last week about an Air France flight that recently experienced some events similar to those of Flight 447 shortly before it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, reigniting debate over what caused the fatal crash that […]

(October 2011) In today’s challenging used biz-jet market, it’s safe to say that value is everything and that even then it’s sometimes not enough. This has led to some remarkable refurbishment programs designed to take much of the used airplane part out of the equation while actually giving buyers better performance — in some cases […]

French engineer and helicopter pilot Pascal Chretien recently flew into the history books with an aviation feat that took him only about one meter off the ground. Despite the low altitude, his completion of the first untethered, all-electric manned helicopter flight last month is quite an achievement. Flying a prototype he designed and built largely […]

(September 2011) Anyone who’s been around aviation for any length of time knows that there’s no such thing as a perfect airplane. As good as they are when they come out of the factory, they can almost always be made better with the application of some ingenuity and some well-thought-out hardware. Seemingly simple solutions and […]

EASA has issued an airworthiness directive (AD) in response to the runaway trim incident that temporarily grounded the Falcon 7X fleet in May. Most of the fleet was shortly returned to service. The new AD, developed in conjunction with Dassault, calls for a modification of the fly-by-wire system to allow for earlier failure detection and […]

A story that appeared Wednesday in The New York Times — but which actually dates back more than a year — reported on a U.S. Air Force program that takes lightly used, corporate-configured King Airs and turns them into spy planes — the newly named Liberty MC-12, which are used to gather intelligence on enemy […]