Engines

The zero-emissions solution proposed and under development by startup company ZeroAvia has attracted the attention of a cadre of interesting players that have now signed on to deliver a substantial round of funding to the program. New investment from the Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures (established by Bill Gates in 2015), Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Horizons Ventures, Shell Ventures, and Summa […]

Chances are, if you fly turboprop-powered aircraft, you have some time behind the Pratt & Whitney PT6 series engines. My own introduction to the legendary engine came when I first flew the Cessna Grand Caravan—and the marriage of the 182-like handling with the performance and reliability of the PT6A-114A (in that case) made the airplane […]

Pilot Workshops has launched “Aircraft Engines: A Pilot-Friendly Manual” on September 22, adding to its series of guides for pilots and aircraft owners with a well-targeted text for aircraft engine care and feeding. The manual, available in print or eBook format, is organized by task, with descriptive photos and diagrams on each page, and written […]

Long before I became a pilot, I read something somewhere about the extreme dangers of shock cooling a piston aircraft engine. The article didn’t specify which engines. It tossed a large, wet blanket over every Lycoming and Continental ever made. The idea of cylinders cracking on a steep descent with all that cold air passing […]

Following an accident on Southwest Airlines (SWA) Flight 1380 in April 2018 that resulted in the death of passenger Jennifer Riordan, the National Transportation Safety Board announced the probable cause during a public board meeting held last week. A fractured fan blade from a CFM International CFM-56-7B engine, powering a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-700, led […]

While many pilots know General Electric as a company with significant history—it was founded in 1892—they may not realize that GE’s Aviation division just celebrated 100 years in 2017. Its first product, in July 1919, was a supercharger for the then-popular Liberty engine. The division evolved to the point that by 1937, while it installed […]

Despite the complaints we often hear about the “outdated” technology of opposed-piston engines, the industry has found nothing decisively better with which to propel smaller airplanes. Not for lack of trying: The history of small aircraft engines—in fact, of engines in general—is a freaks’ graveyard. There have been barrel-shaped engines, spherical engines, cubical engines and […]

Aerobatic performer Spencer Suderman got a nasty surprise this weekend as he was flying over the San Fernando Valley, one of the most congested parts of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Suderman was cruising at 7,500 feet on his way to Yuma, Arizona, when his propeller suddenly departed the Pitts S-1C biplane he was flying. […]

Paraphrasing the 19th century British politician John Dalberg-Acton’s well-known take on the corrupting influence of power, “Power tends to spoil pilots, and additional power spoils them even more.” No matter how fast an airplane flies, there’s always someone wondering why it can’t cruise just a little faster, or climb a little quicker or carry just […]