Jets

A Boeing 787 completed a two-hour flight on Monday in the first test of the troubled airliner’s redesigned lithium battery system. The Dreamliner departed Everett, Washington, just after noon local time and flew along the Pacific coast into Oregon before returning to land at Paine Field. Afterward Boeing said the flight went “according to plan.” […]

Dassault’s newest business jets, the Falcon 2000S and Falcon 2000LXS, have received European certification, the French manufacturer announced today. Approval from the FAA, the company said, is expected to follow shortly. Unveiled in May 2011 at EBACE in Geneva, the Falcon 2000S is the new entry-level product in the Falcon family. Equipped with upgraded EASy […]

Eclipse Aerospace announced this week that it has started up the engines on the first production Model 550 very light jet, the new version of the Eclipse 500, production of which ceased when Eclipse Aviation was forced into bankruptcy in November 2008. The two Pratt & Whitney PW610F engines that power the Eclipse 550 collectively […]

The FAA on Tuesday approved a plan to test changes to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s lithium-ion batteries in a bid to certify a new design and get the grounded airliners back in the air. The Boeing plan includes changes to the internal battery components to minimize the possibility of short-circuiting, which can lead to overheating […]

Cessna’s new and improved Citation Sovereign moved a step closer toward certification on Tuesday as the first jet rolled off the production line in Wichita, Kansas. The improved Citation Sovereign, announced at the NBAA Convention last fall, is poised for certification and entry into service in the third quarter. It will bring a number of […]

Though Tamarack Aerospace Group, based in Sand Point, Idaho, emphasized that it was quoting “… preliminary results that we’ve seen with our prototype airplane …” a blog on the company website still had something to crow about. On a 1,100-nm flight from Dallas (KDAL) to Jackson Hole, Wyoming (KJAC), the TAG CitationJet equipped with the […]

Engineers at GE Global Research are laying claim to achieving the highest combination of temperatures ever recorded inside the compressor of a turbine engine. The developmental engine program is a cooperative research project between GE and the Air Force Research Laboratory. It’s called ADVENT (Adaptive Versatile Engine Technology) and makes heavy use of ceramic matrix […]

A half-inch-long crack in a turbine engine blade prompted the Pentagon to ground the fleet of 51 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters on Friday, the latest black eye for the troubled and oft-delayed military jet program. Engineers at Pratt & Whitney planned to conduct a detailed examination of the turbine blade on the F135 engine as […]

Testing components of supersonic aircraft in flight can be problematic, and the refined wing design of Aerion’s developmental supersonic business jet (SSBJ) is a case in point. The 40-inch by 80-inch redesigned airfoil section is attached to the belly of a NASA F-15B to test for aerodynamic and temperature effects at speeds up to Mach […]

Bombardier has released its financial results for 2012, and while the order backlog for Bombardier Aerospace products continues to grow, the report delivered some bad news as well. The all-composite Learjet 85, which was slated for entry into service this year, has now been delayed until the summer of 2014. Bombardier cited “several new technology […]