Aviation News

Solar Impulse 2 is stuck on the ground in Hawaii after suffering “irreversible” battery damage caused by overheating during its record-setting, five-day flight from Nagoya, Japan, project leaders said. The solar-powered airplane, with Swiss pilot André Borschberg at the controls, landed safely in Hawaii on July 3, completing the longest leg of its around-the-world attempt […]

James “Jim” Bede, the sometimes-controversial airplane designer who created more than a dozen airplanes types since the 1960s — including the Bede BD-5J micro jet that appeared in a James Bond film — died on July 9 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was 82. Born in Cleveland in April 1933, Bede graduated from Wichita State University […]

Dueling press releases arrived in my email inbox at around the same time on Friday morning, one from Airbus claiming the E-Fan demonstrator had made history by becoming the first electric-powered airplane to cross the English Channel and another saying French pilot Hugues Duval had actually pulled off the same feat the night before in […]

Have you seen the TV ads for the new “Mission: Impossible” movie, the ones showing Tom Cruise improbably hanging on for dear life on the outside of a military transport plane as it blasts into the sky? Hollywood CGI is getting pretty good, I recall thinking. Well, that was no CGI. Cruise actually strapped onto […]

Airbus Group’s E-Fan demonstrator was able to successfully cross the English Channel on Friday morning, mirroring Louis Blériot’s historical flight nearly 106 years ago. But the record flight is already proving controversial. Taking off from Lydd Airport in southern England, the twin-fan electric airplane completed the flight in 38 minutes, reaching a cruise altitude of […]

After winning the first round of Air Race 1 World Cup in Tunisia in early June, Thom Richard stormed across the finish line first, once again, in the second round of the competition in Lleida, Spain, on June 28. The longtime Reno Air Race pilot was up against the heat (a grueling 104 degrees) and […]

In an UP-inspired stunt, 26-year-old Daniel Boria soared above Alberta, Canada, Sunday on a lawn chair tethered to 110 helium balloons. The Calgary resident reached an altitude between 8,000 and 10,000 feet, according to the Calgary International Airport’s estimates, before jumping with a parachute. He hoped to draw attention to his cleaning business by flying […]

The United Airlines fleet is back in the air after a sudden computer glitch yesterday grounded its airplanes worldwide, impacting nearly 5,000 flights. United issued a statement blaming the problem on “a network connectivity issue this morning,” and apologizing to customers for any inconvenience. Later Wednesday, Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson said United’s outage was […]

The aviation world hasn’t witnessed this type of intrigue in 106 years — at least as far as an English Channel crossing is concerned. Seeking to replicate Louis Blériot’s famous overwater flight in July 1909, two would-be electric-airplane producers, Airbus and Pipistrel, are preparing to make historic Channel crossings this week in battery-powered prototypes. But […]

Tuesday’s deadly midair collision of an F-16 and Cessna 150 in South Carolina was the first in the United States between a military and civilian airplane in a decade, highlighting how rare such tragedies are while also pointing to the need to remain especially vigilant when airplanes of vastly different performance capabilities mix in the […]