Aviation News

Insufficient testing and a poor understanding of a novel lithium-ion battery design contributed to the grounding of Boeing’s 787 fleet last year after two separate fire and smoke incidents in January 2013, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report issued on Monday. Boeing, the FAA and the 787’s Japanese battery maker shared the blame […]

Cirrus Aircraft celebrated the maiden flight of the second certification flight test Vision SF50 jet, dubbed C1, from the company’s headquarters in Duluth, Minnesota. C1 joins the first production test airplane, C0, in the FAA certification program, anticipated to lead to first customer deliveries of the single-engine Cirrus jet next year. C1’s first flight took […]

The FAA has launched Phase I testing of four unleaded aviation fuels at its William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, officially beginning aviation’s much heralded transition away from low lead avgas. Two fuels developed by Swift Fuels and one fuel each developed by Shell and Total are now undergoing laboratory and […]

Dr. Mark Rosekind will be leaving the National Transportation Safety Board to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an agency under heavy fire this year for lapses in the face of vehicle recalls and safety defects. Rosekind’s departure will leave the NTSB at its minimum three members needed to conduct normal business. Earlier this […]

The leading iOS app, ForeFlight, continues to get cool new features, and the latest ones up the ante considerably, making ForeFlight the most dynamic app available on any platform. In this case, “dynamic” means an app that is not only hard hitting but also constantly updating as you go. The first new feature, called Flight […]

If you attended the Flying Aviation Expo in Palm Springs, California, you may have noticed a Pilatus PC-12 NG on display. If you didn’t take a closer look, you may not have noticed that this was not any Pilatus — it had been modified for special missions. Called the PC-12 NG Spectre, the airplane was […]

The Solar Impulse team has completed its last test flights in Switzerland and has started to disassemble the Solar Impulse 2 (Si2) in preparation for shipping to Abu Dhabi, where the all-solar-powered airplane will take off on its round-the-world journey. The team expects to start the historic flight in early March. After the first Solar […]

TBM fliers from near and far descended on New Orleans recently for Daher Socata’s record-breaking 2014 TBM Owners and Pilots Association convention. A total of 107 TBM airplanes – nearly ¼ of the entire North American TBM fleet – flew in for the event, raising attendance three percent over last year’s figures. The more than […]

The General Aviation Manufacturers Association and Build A Plane are gearing up for the third installment of their Aviation Design Challenge, in which high schools will put their aviation and aerospace knowledge to the test and compete for the big prize. The Challenge aims to promote science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. The first […]

Remember that record flyover of 49 Van’s RVs at last season’s Chiefs-Raiders game in Kansas City? The FAA remembers too. In the wake of that sanctioned overflight, some pilots of Experimental-category airplanes are now receiving letters of investigation from the agency for other flights that may have run afoul of regulations. Formation flights over NFL […]