Aviation News

At the NBAA Convention, Airbus announced that it had reached the 100 mark in sales of its Airbus corporate jets, a $5.5 billion milestone that took the company 10 years to reach but that also exceeded its goals by nearly 50 percent. Originally consisting of only the ACJ, an ultra-long-range corporate-configured A319 airliner, the lineup […]

Several years ago when Boeing launched its bizjet spinoff, nobody knew whether the idea of taking a commercial jet and reworking it for the business/VIP market would work. There is no longer any question about it. Since the launch of its business, Boeing Business Jets has expanded its lineup to include two other models of […]

Like just about everybody else in business aviation, Piaggio, makers of the fast, sexy P.180 Avanti II twin turboprop, is seeing a surge in orders. The company earned an order for 22 Avanti IIs from fractional provider Avantair, with deliveries starting up in 2011. The pending deal is worth more than $150 million and the […]

Embraer, which had announced previously that it intends to fill out its line of business jets, showed full-size cabin mock-ups of two new midsize jets it is considering at the NBAA Convention in Atlanta. The Brazilian manufacturer is calling them the MSJ (midsize jet) and the MLJ (midlight jet), and both are all-new designs that […]

The latest version of the venerable Hawker line of business jets, the 900XP, has been certified and deliveries have begun. The 900XP airframe is unchanged from the previous 850XP model with winglets, but new, more powerful Honeywell TFE731-50R engines increase range and speed while chopping runway requirements. The new engines give the 900XP a 2,800 […]

At AirVenture Diamond Aircraft made the U.S. unveiling of its fastest, most powerful piston single, the five-place, fixed-gear DA50 SuperStar. Powered by a 350 hp turbocharged Teledyne Continental engine, the Super Star will be around a 200-knot airplane-no specifics on altitude, power settings or fuel flow were given-with an initial range of 900 nm, though […]

Borrowing a play from the automakers’ book to create buzz around a show, Eclipse unveiled its Eclipse Concept Jet (ECJ) on the first day of Oshkosh. The little single-engine jet was built in great secrecy in Virginia by a firm specializing in one-off creations. Eclipse managed almost total surprise except for a number of people […]

See the PiperJet proof-of-concept under construction Piper’s single-engine jet, seen here in real-life and in an artist’s rendering, is working its way through development. The company says that despite some changes to its design, the airplane is still on track for certification by the end of 2010. I recently visited the Piper factory and was […]

The 500-hour pilot held a private license for aircraft single-engine land. He did not have an instrument rating, but had been receiving instruction toward one. The airplane was a J35 Bonanza, manufactured in 1958 and equipped with tip tanks that increased its fuel capacity to 100 gallons. The pilot was solo when he left New […]