Aviation News

The U.S. military is continuing to show its commitment to the integration of unmanned aircraft, a strategy that is also being adopted in the civil world and causing alarm for many general aviation pilots, including us at Flying. This past weekend, the Navy moved on to the second flight-test phase of the X-47B Unmanned Combat […]

As the economic downturn continues to stymie demand in the light and midsize business jet sectors, Bombardier has announced it is pausing production of its Learjet 60XR. The decision comes after an extended period of low sales numbers for the seven-passenger jet, which boasts a 2,405 nm range and a cruise speed of Mach 0.81. […]

Test pilot and speed freak Chip Yates, already a record-holder for the world’s fastest electric motorcycle, broke another one last week in his all-electric airplane. In only its second flight, his Flight of the Century Long-EZ took to the skies over Inyokern Airport in California and reached a top speed of 202 MPH. The 16-minute […]

Despite overall good weather, attendance at this year’s EAA AirVenture fly-in was down from last year, with EAA reporting a drop of approximately 40,000 tickets from the 2011 show, the steep decline due no doubt in part to the continuing economic downturn. Despite attendance being off, the mood of those who did make it to […]

The FAA has issued a proposed final policy rule dealing with residential “through-the-fence” agreements for aircraft owners who live next to an airport and bring their airplanes from “hangar homes” onto airport property. The FAA had sought to eliminate such access on security and safety grounds, but the agency agreed to revisit the policy after […]

There was an unusual visitor at AirVenture this year, a roadable aircraft manufactured by PlaneDriven. The PD2 takes a Glasair Sportsman amateur built airplane and adds a separate 50-hp “drive unit” to the rear of the craft to provide ground power. To put the vehicle into drive mode, the pilot folds the wings, starts the […]

A federal judge is weighing whether to allow up to $5.3 million in bonuses for eight senior Hawker Beechcraft executives after the company’s union and federal regulators criticized the payouts as a money grab. The court has approved an exclusivity agreement with Superior Aviation Beijing allowing Hawker Beechcraft to sell the company to the Chinese […]

The NTSB is investigating a preflight incident over the weekend in which falling debris from a Boeing 787 engine triggered a grass fire at Charleston International Airport in South Carolina. There were no injuries as a result of Saturday’s fire, but analysts are now looking into what caused the GEnx engine failure and whether an […]

Considering how rare single-seat twins are outside the military, it’s remarkable how little information about N72TZ can be found on the Internet. The NTSB’s report on the fatal outcome of its first flight provides scant detail about the airplane itself. It seems, from bits and pieces mined here and there, to have been one of […]

The fuel-injected, fadec-equipped Rotax 912 iS, which was introduced by BRP earlier this spring, has achieved ASTM approval. What this milestone means is that LSA manufacturers can now install the engine and meet the industry’s consensus standards without the airplane being under an experimental certificate. Engines already installed will be able to get ASTM stickers […]