Jets

GE Honda Aero Engines has earned Part 33 certification process for the HF120 turbofan engines, receiving the sign-off from the FAA last week. The news puts the much-anticipated HondaJet on a clear path to certification. A spokesman for HondaJet said now that the engines are certified, an update on the progress of the certification of […]

This morning, Textron AirLand successfully completed the first flight of the Scorpion, the company’s new tactical twinjet, which was announced earlier this year. The Scorpion took off from McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas, and flew for 1.4 hours. “The flight was completed according to plan,” said test pilot Dan Hinson. “Having flown many […]

Textron, the parent company of Cessna, is moving fast on the development of its sexy straight-wing military twinjet, the Scorpion, which surprised the world with its emergence earlier this year. As evidenced by the following video, Scorpion test pilots have completed the first taxi tests and are getting close to taking the airplane to the […]

In 1939, flamboyant California playboy George Whittell Jr. commissioned master boat builder John Hacker to create the Thunderbird, a huge luxury yacht that matched Whittell’s polished DC-2. Inspired by that design, Embraer Executive Jets has reversed the dynamic with its Skyacht One – a luxury version of the Lineage 1000E business jet that draws on […]

A London business jet broker reports it has sold a Gulfstream G650 for an owner who took delivery in July. The jet went to a Japanese real estate firm for $70 million, netting a profit of $10 million, according to The Jet Business (despite the fact that list price on the G650 is $64.5 million). […]

Dassault Aviation chief test pilot Philippe Deleume has become the first person to experience the flight characteristics of the Falcon 5X, which Dassault introduced at the National Business Aviation Association’s annual convention in October. Deleume took the controls of the newly developed Falcon 5X simulation bench at the company’s design office in St Cloud, France. […]

The FAA has certified Bombardier’s Learjet 75 light jet, a follow-on model to the Learjet 45 featuring new avionics, winglets and more powerful engines. Bombardier noted that the Learjet 75 offers improved takeoff field length performance over its predecessor thanks to its new Honeywell TFE731-40BR engines. The twinjet also features the new Bombardier Vision avionics […]

To say I was looking forward to flying Cessna’s new Citation M2 is a great understatement. As I flew from Austin, Texas, up to Wichita, Kansas, in my Garmin-equipped SR22 to meet with the folks from Cessna, I couldn’t help but wonder how Cessna had made a light jet designed more than 20 years ago […]

**2013 Cessna Citation M2 ** ** ** The Cessna Citation M2 flown for this report was a factory test article with conforming avionics (with a few minor exceptions) but without a production interior. The airplane was outfitted with the Garmin G3000 integrated avionics suite with digital autopilot, dual GTC 570 touch-screen controllers, datalink, ADS-B, Garmin […]

The odds of Cessna reclaiming its spot as the maker of the fastest civilian airplane just grew stronger. While Gulfstream one-upped the Wichita-based company when its Mach 0.925 G650 business jet was brought to market last year, Cessna announced last week that it has proven the promised performance capabilities of the Citation X speedster to […]